Commandments and Concerns: Jewish Religious Education in Secular Society

4. Religious Responses to Secular Solutions

4 Religious Responses to Secular Solutions THE STATUS OF SECULAR DELIBERATION: PROBLEM OR SOLUTION? In the previous chapter. we surveyed what may be called secular or untraditional hypotheses about the problem of Judaism and Jewish education in the contemporary world. The search for this problem and the subsequently pr0posed solutions arose from a state ofunease experiencedas a crisis. This crisis, evidenced by symptoms of "disease"-of malfunctioning-indicated that previous understandings of "Judaism" and consequent "normative philosophies ofJewish education" were no longer to be considered adequate ways of dealing with the new social circumstances and spiritual orientations. The resulting discomfort, "the problematic situation." induced those who had cultural loyalties to their Jewishness but could no longer believe in the "historical-habitual" norms of the Jewish people to look for a way out of the unease, a solution to the problem ofmodemJewish existence. But before they could hope for a solution, they had to derme the problem. Before they could hope to cure the disease. they had to arrive at a diagnosis. This, as we have seen. they did in the following ways: 1. They reflected on modem thought and its "liberation" from religion. andthey attempted to place Jewishcollectiveexperience and aspirations within the framework ofgeneral developments that promised greater self-understanding and human fulfillment through science and secularization. 2. They sought to locate the national foci ofJewish identity in the historical tradition of the Jewish people, hoping to give-or restore-to the "nonreligious " components of Jewish culture the centrality and dignity these Religious Re,)ponses to Secular Solutions 65 elements deserved. In this way, they hoped to "correct" religious-Orthodox readings of Jewish history, more accurately depict the Jewish spirit, and provide a solid basis for their own (no longer religious) sense of Jewish cultural continuity. 3. At times, they expressed a determination to change the nature of historic Judaism on the basis of what they experienced as a breakdown of the theological tradition. That tradition was declared to malfunction in present circumstances , and the desire for Jewish survival and happincss was said to require the courage of radical change and metamorphosis. The secular diagnoses generally negated normative philosophies of education based on tradition or theologically formulated "ideal objectives": They called for deliberation that would locate the "real" problems and offer requisite solutions. These solutions, it was indicated, would be characterized by more freedom from tradition and more emphasis on "real" experience and challenges. The solutions took educational shape in Bundist, ethnic, and (most cnduringly) secular Zionist schools, youth movements, and camps. As if in response to the scornful anti-Zionist remark of the famed Gennan-Jewish philosopher Herman Cohen, "Those bums wish to be happy," I the Zionists declared , "Yes, we do." They thought that the disdain for happiness, which Cohen considered a moral imperative in an unredeemed world, was simply an inability to face realities; it was unease masking as nobility. And, as already noted, the problem, according to secular thinkers and educators, was to be found in the narrow and unjustified self-understanding that made JUdaism, in principle and in "essence," a reJigious affair. But, of course, this secular formulation of the problem was not a self-evident truth. The unwillingness or inability ofJews to believe in "the tradition" and its norms and religious meanings could also be interpreted as sinful or, at least, tragic. Thus, Yechezkel Kaufmann, who admitted that his contemporaries appeared unable to believe in the religious values of the Jewish tradition, nevertheless held that these values alone explained Jewish history and made continued national existence feasible. Taking issue with Ahad Ha-Am, for whom Jewish religion in the Diaspora was an expression of the national "organism 's" will to survive, Kaufmann insisted that it was not the case that the Jews had kept to their faith in order to perpetuate the nation. Rather, the nation had survived in order to embody its highest value: religious faith, which alone was the source of the nation's "national will." Thus, he wrote mournfully: Our situation is indeed tragic, the situation of aU those whose faith has been destroyed and who have no hope of returning to it but whose hearts still cling to the national entity that draws its life force from the faith. It is hard to rec- 66 Religion and Philosophy ofEducation oncile ourselves to the idea that our nationalism derives from a faith that no longer exists in our hearts...