Commandments and Concerns: Jewish Religious Education in Secular Society

Preface

Preface There arc some people who deserve explanation about this book, and others who deserve thanks. To those who expected a completely detached treatment ofJewish religious education, I must explain that I find it hard to be detached. But I have tried to be fair and honest. To readers who expected solutions to all problems of reo ligious education and recipes for "making them more religious," I must apologize by saying that the disciplines I have integrated in my work are not attuned to that. From these disciplines I have learned that what we need hefore recipes is reflection and that, after reflection, we may decide to forgo recipes altogether and simply think, talk, and teach with more intelligence, competence, and conviction. I shall go into this matter at length, so there is no point in dwelling upon it here. So much for apologies. My thanks go to my teachers and friends, to all those who helped me in various ways with the book, and to my family. First, I should like to mention my teacher, colleague, and friend, Professor Seymour Fox ofthe Hebrew University, from whom I learned how to read and "do" philosophy of education. His influence on my educational thinking extends far beyond the footnotes that cite him, and the educational conversation that we have conducted between us for many years is reflected in many ideas developed here. I also owe a debt ofgratitude to Professor Ernst Akiva Simon, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University, whose religious-educational thought has enriched my life and thinking. He was not formally my teacher, but in many respects he is certainly a mentor. And then there are the many viii Preface people at the Hebrew University's Melton Centre for Jewish Education and beyond who have commented, encouraged, and generally helped by being knowledgeable and being friends. Professor Arnold Eisen of Stanford University deserves special thanks for encouraging me to expand on an article that was the springboard for this book. Dr. Barry Chazan and Mr. Alan Hoffman, directors of the Hebrew University's Melton Centre for Jewish Education in the Diaspora, made important comments, gave much appreciated advice, and were helpful in many ways. The members of the Curriculum Project on the Teaching of Jewish Values in the Diaspora of the Hebrew University'S Melton Centre, a project Jwas privileged to head, enriched my thinking on my subject immensely, and I am grateful to all of them. Also, I wish to thank Drs. Barry Holtz and Eduardo Rauch ofthe Jewish Theological Seminary's Melton Center for Jewish Education and Dr. Avraham Shapiro of Tel Aviv University for their interest, which blurred, with Rosenzweigian finesse, the distinction between the professional and the personal. And, of course. the superb typing of Ms. Barbara Piperno and Ms. Terri Picow is especially appreciated. They not only turned untidy pages into a tidy manuscript but also commented when ideas seemed unclear or sentences obscure. Very special thanks are due to Ms. Barbara Spector, my editor at The Jewish Publication Society. Ms. Spector and I conducted very illuminating postal conversations that led me to re-examine many sentences, words, and ideas. I am grateful to her for her patience and insight. Last but not least, thanks are due to Dr. David Patterson and his staff at the Oxford Centre for Post-Graduate Hebrew Studies in Yamton, England. The wonderful summer of 1983 that I spent as a visiting scholar at the Centre I did much revising and some rethinking, and it was there that I put the finishing touches on this book. There are many others I wish to thank, people with whom I have thrashed out educational ideas, particularly in our Jemsalem community of Jewish educators , but mentioning additional names may be more offensive to those not included than gratifying to those noted. Thanks to all of you! That religious affirmations should be comprehensive yet critical I learned from my parents. I was taught by my father, of blessed memory. and by my mother, that one can be anehored fmnly in religious community without sacrifice of individual sensibility or loss of spiritual freedom. Their lives and teaching exemplify what I have come to see as the creative tension between explicit and implicit religiosity-between what is accepted as self-understood and what invites search and reverent openness. Pn:face ix My children, I suppose, deserve both apologies and thanks. They have been...