In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

8 Encounter and Deliberation: Implicit Educational Theology CONTEMPORARY JEWISH THOUGHT: THE IMPLICIT MOOD Explicit religious educators have a nonnative philosophy of religious education (although, in the contemporary world, this philosophy is admittedly not simple to apply, and it will not speak to the non-committed). Nevertheless, explicit religious educators know what Judaism is and what it demands; ifthey find it impossible to convey the experience and the substance of real Judaism adequately to the community-at-Iarge, they are comforted in the fact that a saving remnant of "real Jews" stand behind them and give Judaism a concrete presence. The crisis of religious education is one of Jews who have "moved away" from religion, who do not say the Shema three times aday as "we do." The recommended strategy is entrenchment, religious segregation, and normative visibility; what is required is strengthening the "dimensions of religious commitment." There must be more knowledge, devoted practice, finn belief, and nonnatively guided religious experience. Martin Buber, who has already been cited as the most far-reaching implicit Jewish thinker of this century, paraphrases the expJicit approach succinctly. but he does so only in order to demolish it: You want true community-but where else can you hear its law if not in the word God spoke to His people? And how can you distinguish between what in God's word seems to you still fresh and applicable and what antiquated and spent? There is no other way: if you want to be Jews and to realize Judaism, you must return to pious submission to God and His law. [Reprinted by permission ofSchocken Books Inc. from On Judaism byMartin Buber. Copyright @ 1967 by Schocken Books Inc.]l 152 Theology ofJewish Education Buber reacts to this explicitly religious approach with passion and scorn: . . . we would not want to exchange our giddy insecurity and our untrammeled poverty for your confidence and your riches. For to you God is the one who created once, and then no more; but to us He is the One ofwhom people profess that He 'renews the wort of creation every day.... ' To you God is Being who revealed Himself once and never again. But to us, he speaks out of the burning bush of the present, and out of the Urim and Tummim of our innermost hearts. We honor the law, the armor of our peoplehood that was forged by venerable forces. • . . But we shall resist those who, invoking the already existing law, want to keep us from receiving new weapons from the hands ofthe living Gtld. But we can tolerate nothing that comes between us and the realization of God. [Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books Inc. from On Judoism by Martin Buber. Copyright © 1967 by Schocken Books Inc.]2 Buber insists on an unequivocable distinction between (implicit) "religiosity " and (explicit) "religion." "Religiosity starts anew with every young person, shaken to his very coreby the mystery; religion wants to force him into a system stabilized for all time.,·3 Religion is identified with passivity, preservation , the "organizing principle"; religiosity is active, bespeaking renewal , creativity. Buber's conception of religiosity and religious education is predicated on his beliefthat people find God wherever they encounter reality as "Thou," as the "place" wherein they are challenged-and confmned-by the Absolute, Who meets them as Person. When people are "open" to such an encounter they will find God: He is present whenever and wherever •'man lets Him in." Religious faith is not assent to doctrines but an orientation to life and to the presence of God in and "behind" all things and events. Religious education is not a form of taming and training young people who would, without it, remain wild and primitive. Rather, it is making them sensitive to the presence of the "unconditional" in the life of each person, indicating how it has been present in the life and memory of the historical community, thus enabling the young people to encounter their own selves within this community. Not all parts of the life and memory of this historical community are "close" to this "unconditional" or to the pupils, but the entire story and tradition relate a religious truth of struggle and dialogue. That God is merciful is an abstract statement; to penetrate the religious truth that lies beyond it, we must Dot shrink from opening the Bible to one of its most awful passages, the one where God rejects Saul, His anointed ... because he spared the life of Agag, the conquered king...

Share