Yom Kippur and Bloom's Taxonomy

The Gates have closed. The notes of the shofar are a memory. The evening to evening observance of Yom Kippur has provided us with an extended opportunity to think Jewishly about ourselves, our families, our world, and our God.

On Yom Kippur, we recall events both joyful and troubling from the past year. We try to make sense of our behavior in a variety of sometimes challenging circumstances. We promise to implement changes and set new priorities. We choose to participate in a communal confession of our sins. We decide to make our actions in the coming year more productive, more reflective of Jewish values, more personally fulfilling, more responsive to the needs of family and community.

In short, we employ a range of lower and higher level thinking skills like those described in Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain. Bloom's Taxonomy is resoundingly secular. It doesn't mention Prayer, Divine Judgement, Sacred Connections, Holy Texts, or God. The purpose of Bloom's Taxonomy is to classify the way humans think.

According to Bloom, there are six major thinking skills listed in order of complexity: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Each thinking skill can be developed and demonstrated through a myriad of intellectual activities . These intellectual activities are listed in the form of Bloom's Taxonomy verbs. (For printable lists of Bloom's Taxonomy verbs, go to the topic "Bloom's Taxonomy" at http://www.teachervision.com/ )

The way humans think...the very act of categorizing and listing some of the actions of which the human mind is capable points to the Divine. We have the power to tell, to predict, to instruct, to differentiate, to formulate, to choose - and these are only a fraction of the actions derived from Bloom's Taxonomy. Yom Kippur reminds us to use our wondrous God-given intellect for good, to turn away from destructive thoughts and apply our thinking skills to the enormous task of creating a better world. We have been given the gift of uniquely human thought processes. Yom Kippur reminds us that we are being judged in how we make use of this gift.
Have a truly good year.
L'shanah tovah - tikateivu v' teichatemu