As we welcome rosh chodesh Adar, a month of joy and transformation, we spoke with Rachel Friedrichs, Education Manager of OLAM partner NALA, about the surprising ways Jewish learning shapes her work in global health. She reflects on how her background in Jewish education informs her efforts to combat Neglected Tropical Diseases, and how Jewish wisdom inspires meaningful change in international development.

Q: How will your Jewish educational background contribute to your current work with NALA, an organization dedicated to eradicating Neglected Tropical Diseases across Ethiopia?

Rachel: As I'm thinking about how to articulate my answer to this question, I keep coming back to one particular memory I have from my years of teaching. On the second day of school, as my Introduction to Rabbinic Literature class was about to begin, one student's hand shot up from the back row. Before I could call on her, she blurted out, “I don't want to be a rabbi, so why do I need to take a rabbinic literature class?”

In one moment, this 14-year-old student managed to call my entire career as a Jewish educator into question. Why, indeed, should this secular, not particularly Jewishly affiliated adolescent, living in Boston in the 21st century, spend her time learning 1800-year-old texts that argue over when and how to say the evening shema prayer? Why indeed?

After discreetly wiping the sweat from my palms and and taking a moment to let the flush drain from my cheeks, a somewhat idealized and edited version of the ensuing conversation went something like this:

I asked her, “Do you identify as a Jew?”

“Yeah,” she answered.

“And do you plan to live as a Jew for the rest of your life?”

“ I guess so,” she muttered, somewhat bewilderedly.

“Well,” I asked, “how are you going to do that?”

As a Jewish educator, I always had the strong belief that my students’ Jewish learning should not merely be an intellectual pursuit. Rather, my ultimate goal was for them to take their learning outside the classroom; for it to infuse their everyday lives, inform their decisions, and enrich their Jewish identity.

And so, when thinking about how my Jewish educational background will contribute to my current work in public health at NALA Foundation, I think of that student, and the fact that the role of a Jewish educator is to make learning feel relevant, applicable, and impactful on their lived experience. As both a high school Talmud teacher, and later as a pedagogy instructor for MA students training to be Jewish studies teachers, I always tried to emphasize making learning actionable. And so, it is this skill set that I draw from now, working on social and behavioral change (SBC) programs to combat the spread of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in affected communities worldwide.

Our goal at NALA is not simply for people to understand the dangers of NTDs such as schistosomiasis or to be able to recite the benefits of latrine use, but our aim is to support individuals in making concrete behavioral changes that will lead to healthier lives and communities. We want communities to feel confident and equipped to take action based on what they have learned from NALA’s SBC initiatives. I am excited to be working closely with members of these communities, getting their input and perspective, to ensure that we are designing SBC programming that will be most relevant and impactful for them.

Q: What inspired you to want to enter the field of international development, and how do you want to bring Jewish wisdom and tradition to the field?

Rachel: Despite the fact that many friends and former colleagues thought I was making a radical career change by transitioning from Jewish education to the work of combating NTDs, there is another association I have between my Jewish  professional life and my current work at NALA. The Jewish tradition, and many of the texts I have taught in my classes over the years, are rife with disagreements and contradictions. Famously, the majority of the rabbinic corpus is built on the notion of competing perspectives, and is committed to presenting opposing positions on almost every issue. Most poignantly, perhaps, is the oft-cited line from the Talmud, “These and these are the words of the living God” (BT Eruvin 13b), indicating that two competing opinions – in this case the disagreements between the sages of the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai – should be held dear. We, as the descendants of this intellectual tradition, are expected to live in that tension.

This comfort with contradiction, in which I have been steeped for so many years, has, I think, prepared me intellectually and emotionally for my work at NALA. We commit to our work as though all of our projects, every choice, each small detail of the programs that we implement, have the power to meaningfully change the lives of the people living in the communities with which we work. And yet, at the same time, we also have to recognize the limitations of our efforts. We understand that making sustained and deep behavior change in the developing world is a slow process that often needs to unfold, messily, over time.

I imagine that one could easily get overwhelmed and dispirited when doing this sort of work, recognizing the enormous ‘bucket that needs to be filled’ to reduce the impact of NTDs in regions where they remain a significant challenge. Will this ‘one drop’ really make any difference? Yet, I don't feel perturbed by this apparent tension: This one drop that I am currently working on is insignificant, and yet I nonetheless continue to try to fill the bucket one drop at a time.

I have found that my comfort with this sort of cognitive dissonance has enabled me to approach my work at NALA, and its mission to mitigate the devastation of NTDs, with gusto and optimism on the one hand, and with humility and forbearance on the other. I do believe that I can meaningfully  contribute towards the sustained improved health of the communities with which we work. However, I also remain humble and patient as I learn from our work and observe its impact emerge over time.