The three-part series (ideas 31-33) concluded in the last installment received more than the usual exposure. It was included in its entirety in ArutzSheva's online edition and the last segment was distributed to Bar Ilan University's Lookjed international Jewish Educators list, where it continues to be the subject of much interesting discussion.
Below I have clipped responses from two valued friends and respondants.
First from Zvi Grumet:
You raise some interesting thoughts here, even though I don't agree with them all. I'd like to raise another one. Schools and formal study institutions are poor substitutes for the primary educational vehicle - the home and the family. When the school, or the books, become the prime vehicles for Jewish teaching, they lead to distortion (and worse) of Jewish values and experience. If we are talkning about restoring Jewish education to its former glory, we ideally need to shut down the schools and keep kids at home with their parents. I know the problems - not all parents are appropriate models, nor do they have the luxury (not to mention a host of other issues). Nonetheless, this should inform any endeavor to imagine a transformation of Jewish education. Family, home and community are the building blocks, and schools need to both mimic and integrate them.
and then from Bennett Ruda:
How is the challenge greater now than during the Haskalah when the freshness of new ideas and values made them even more tempting? One of the responses to that crisis (besides Rav Hirsch, whom you have quoted) is Rabbi Yisroel Salanter who dealt with how to internalize Jewish values and modes of behavior. You mention R. Shlomo Wolbe in 3 or your essays (1, 9 and 33). His approach, which you refer to approvingly is the Musar approach he learned from R. Yerucham Levovitz who learned it from R. Simcha Zissel, who learned it from R. Yisrael Salanter himself. R. Simcha Zissel himself (at least it appears to me) had a very pedagogic approach, using the tools that R. Salanter (and you) mention regarding meditation, but also kabbalas and certain hanhagas (putting on a special article of clothing when angry). One advantage he had (besides there being less of a pull of gashmius) was taking in children at a younger age, who stayed for years, stayed at the yeshiva (did not return home daily) and had full control over their lives (the last item in particular would be problem today).
The problem with Musar in today's context is that it is foreign to today's mind view, in terms of its demands on a person's time and effort. But that seems to a degree to be what you are suggesting. To what degree (if any) do you have a Musar approach in mind?
A brief response:
Zvi Grumet raises an issue that several others, on and off the list, have pointed out. My lack of discussion of the role of the family in educating children was not meant to exclude such a role. Rather, I think the family can and should work in partnership with schools. As Zvi begins to point out, there are certain sociolgical givens that prevent the family, in the best of circumstances, to do the job by itself. To take my own case as an example, I spend a great deal of time and effort on personally educating my children. Nonetheless, I am more than happy when my childrens' teachers take an interest in mentoring my children. I view such an interest as the most critical contribution that a school can make to my childrens' wellbeing. School and home complement each other even as they offer similar things. I disagree with the view put forward by another respondant that,"The main job of schools is to impart skills." I am not sure that this is any less the job of the home than is socialization. In the halachic ideal, both are the job of the home. Schools are meant to assist parents do that which societal specialization has made impractical: educate their children in the fullest sense of the word. Thus, if my greatest obligation in educating my children is their proper socialization, this will axiomatically become the greatest task of the school as well.
Perhaps one of the most important underlying assumptions of my thesis is that there can be no conceptual division of labor in Jewish education. Whatever Judaic studies skills we teach must be taught in a certain holistic context.
As for Bennett Ruda's question about the mussar movement, I think the limitations that he identifies have been correct from the inception of the movement and so rendered it an essentially elite phenomenon. While others view chassidut or neo-chassidut as a better model, I view it as also deficient for the converse reason: more in line with mass attitudes and aptitudes, it lacks the mainstream rigor necessary to bind today's sophistication with the classical Jewish intellectual tradition. Nonetheless, until and unless we can build a better model, we should use whatever tools we can use from all traditions to help us in the educational needs discussed in the original essay.
fn
Rabbi Francis Nataf
Educational Director,
David Cardozo Academy
7 Cassuto St.
Jerusalem, Israel
972 (0)2 6518745
(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of Tzemach Dovid)
Post to Discussion Board