Students, brothers and (sh)tender thoughts

One plays ice hockey; the other prefers dodgeball.

One lives in Baltimore; the other just moved to West Hempstead.

One rumbles through sheathes of Talmudic text; the other races through volumes of English literature.

Two brothers. Two very different fellows.

Two brothers, different in lots of ways, but united and identical in their devotion to faith, commitment to community, dedication to principle, love of family and involvement in a project that combined their respective vocations in one exciting adventure.

Last week, two of our four children, Hillel the Teacher and Daniel the Contractor, joined forces to introduce a dozen high school English students to construction, woodworking and carpentry.

Two of our boys invited 12 of Hillel's boys to build their own table-top "shtenders," Yiddish for podium. Actually, a shtender is more than a podium to speak from, it's a base to pray from and a comfortable zone to study from. It's a solid mound you can lean on, write on and, in which you can store your personal items. It's a "cubby" you can take with you, an unlocked locker from which you can unlock and release your thoughts, and a lectern that lets you speak to the world or simply sit back and listen as the world speaks to you.

Last week a bunch of kids each got to build a shtender; build it, personalize it and make it their own because they made it on their own with a little help from Hilly the teacher and Danny the builder.

Actually, they received a little more than a little help from Dan as he encountered kids for whom a "nail" is what's at the tip of your finger, "drill" is what a dentist does, "boards" mean SATs, and a "tool chest" is a box containing the Yellow Pages, a cell-phone and a checkbook.

These kids were convinced a "hammerhead" is a shark (and a shark is a lawyer like Hill's and Dan's siblings, Jeremy and Talia).

As they traded their power ties for power tools, two of the teens believed constructing their shtenders was like a see-saw; what one kid would see, the other saw! Meanwhile others, so geared to using only their thumbs to text, couldn't believe they could use their own two hands to build. But build they did as they came to appreciate that one can actually create anew and not just order online; that there is a beauty to crafting something from scratch and watching something come together for real and not just on a screen, that there is a pride that comes from being able to say not just "I bought that" but rather "I made that."

In 11 "short" hours (it took a tad longer than either Dan or Hill had anticipated as mothers brought lunch, then snacks, then dinner to the "work zone" and their young "men at work") a dozen high school students learned caution, patience and teamwork as they learned to draft, design, measure, cut, sand, paste, bolt, paint and stain. In a world that too often cries "hands off," their experience was hands on.

They also got to see two brothers come together as one. They watched as the teacher of words and ideas helped forge a solid platform from which to espouse them; even as the man of action and forger of unbending structures was sensitive to, and receptive of, the fragile texts placed upon them.

They saw two brothers, different but the same, supportive of each other and of the common task before them. Two brothers sharing a goal to frame not just wooden items but developing characters, to demonstrate not just the value of having a skill, but the skill it requires to have values.

All the students agreed that they walked away from the day not only with something built that they could always use to lean on, but with an awful lot learned that they could forever build on... and that made two brothers very, very happy.

© Copyright © 2010 Ron Goldman Ron Goldman is an attorney in private practice with offices in Cedarhurst and can be reached @

1-800-846-9013