Increasingly around the country at the most local level, parents are agitating against school boards to ban books – up tremendously in the past year or so. One interview I heard was with a man saying that it is the parents’ job to teach their child(ren) about (for example) sexuality. Another interview was with a teenager who was in the LGBTQ community speaking about the import of seeing their own experience reflected through books and lessening their isolation. Who is right?

While I agree that some content is not appropriate for young people, and while I always believe in parental input at a local level, I trust the well-schooled librarians to bring their expertise to the proper committee or professional structure. Their decisions will guide how much of the real world our students will experience through literature – which, we recognize, is tame compared to what they might be seeing online or experiencing first hand.

Further, I must point out that, speaking on behalf of The People of the Book, those who are banning books for sexual content would have to ban a good portion of the Torah plus her commentary and midrashim. And we won’t even talk about the Talmud! While no 13-year-old wants to ascend the bimah and chant about bodily emissions, childbirth and forbidden sexual unions, one of the messages is that the Torah, and therefore Judaism, speaks to every aspect of life – if we but let it. It is upon us to dig deeper through a combination of interactive study, commentary and life experience. A text read only at the surface level – p’shat in Hebrew – is almost as elusive as a banned text. Consider this a personal invitation to Torah study.

That these attempted bans have increased exponentially over the past year or two says more to me about the parents than about the books – especially since some of the books have been on school libraries’ shelves for years. Let us take action at the local level. Let us get to know our librarians – school and public – and hear from them about banning books. Let us keep informed as to whether these challenges are arising and before making our opinions known, let us first read the supposedly inappropriate content and then engage in dialogue. Let us wear our title proudly “The People of the Book.”