Moshe Sokolow

Dr. Sokolow is Fanya Gottesfeld-Heller Professor of

Jewish Education, Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish
Education and Administration, Yeshiva University;
and Editor, Ten Da‘at

BOOK REVIEW
VISIONS OF JEWISH EDUCATION
ed. Seymour Fox, Israel Scheffler, Daniel Marom
(Cambridge University Press, 2003)
ISBN: 0-529-82147-9 340 pp + index
$70. hardback ($26. paperback)

The editors of this significant book have made allowance for all four
of the operative definitions of the word “visions” in its title. Some of its
contents are a revelation, others reflect imagination and still others
evince perception, while the balance simply represents a point of view.
The challenges that confront the reader are to identify which portions
of the book fit which definitions and (begging the deconstructionists’
pardon) whether their contributors would have us view the contents as
normative and descriptive or deliberative and prescriptive.

The universal, the particular and the denominational

The book, whose genesis is in a project connected to the Philosophy
of Education Research Center at Harvard University, comprises six
visions, belonging, respectively, to Isadore Twersky, Menachem Brinker,
Moshe Greenberg, Michael A. Meyer, Michael Rosenak and Israel
Scheffler. Considerations of practice and implementation are discussed
by editors Seymour Fox and Daniel Marom. While the visions are
couched in the idiosyncratic terms of Jewish education, their import for
general moral, or character education is palpable. In the useful distinc-
tion employed by Michael Rosenak in his vision (180), this book speaks
in the universal language of education, while its contents find their

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expression in a particular literature. In this spirit, I have occasionally

placed the particular within parentheses to allow the comments to be
read universally as well.
Since Jewish education in the United States is overwhelmingly
denominational in origin and orientation, it is noteworthy that only one
vision—that of Michael A. Meyer—flies an explicit denominational flag
(Reform). It is more noteworthy that it also appears to be the only
vision to have sparked an ongoing discussion by denominational theo-
reticians and practitioners. Sara Lee, Director of the Rhea Hirsch School
of Education at (Reform) Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion/Los Angeles, writing in the journal of the (Reform) Central
Conference of American Rabbis (Spring, 1999), chronicles the progress
of Professor Meyer’s paper. First presented in 1996, it has since been
discussed by the (Reform) Union of American Hebrew Congregations
Commission on Jewish Education, utilized in a day school project of
the HUC-JIR, and discussed by students as part of a Colloquium on
Reform Judaism. In that same issue of CCAR, it serves as the center-
piece of a symposium entitled: “The Educated Reform Jew,” where it is
accompanied by five ancillary essays on such subjects as autonomy,
integration, commitment, texts and values.
One cannot refrain from speculating whether the other contribu-
tions were similarly intended to represent or reflect denominational
points of view. Menahem Brinker’s Israeli perspective is explicitly la-
beled “liberal-secular.” Was Twersky the designated traditional Ortho-
dox contributor, Rosenak, the modern Orthodox, Greenberg, the
Conservative and Scheffler, the unaffiliated? In fact, pre-publication
references indicate that—at some point—the volume was tentatively
entitled Visions of Learning: Variant Conceptions of Jewish Education.
Visions and Revisions: Translating theory into practice
Regardless, the operative question is whether the remaining essays
can similarly be put into play in the denominational spheres of influ-
ence to which they bear the greatest affinity. Or, is the book fated to
abide in the kind of splendid isolation and detachment from reality that
philosophy has so often endured and—paradoxically, sometimes even
perversely—enjoyed? [An occupational foible of some educational phi-
losophers is to patronize practitioners by imputing to them a simplistic

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or erroneous understanding of theory. Thus we are chided, in the

editors’ introduction (9), for “vulgarizing” John Dewey’s theory of
meaning as though rarified abstraction is always preferable to even
imperfect implementation. Jewish education has long had difficulty
with this attitude, evoking the lasting verity of the Talmudic adage:
“Theory (Midrash) is not essential; practice (Ma`aseh) is.”]
Implementation, then, is the gauntlet that I feel emboldened to pick
up and I would like to do so by responding to the vision of the late
Isadore Twersky, entitled: “What Must a Jew Study—and Why?” Two
other visions resonate with me particularly: First is Rosenak, because I
enjoy, at Yeshiva University, the professional fellowship of modern
Orthodox educators and the collegial debate over what Rosenak has
termed “the normative deliberative dialectic.” Second is Greenberg, on
two accounts: my previous tenure as a professor of Bible; and an abiding
conviction that the study of Bible embraces in its ample bosom all of the
affective, behavioral and cognitive objectives and experiences that con-
temporary religious education seeks and requires. “Keep looking it
over,” the Talmud says of its older sister, “for it is omni-significant.” As
constraints of time and space make a three-fold response impossible, I
shall restrict my comments here to one.
Twersky, Profesor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard
as well as a consummate “old world” Judaic scholar (talmid hakham),
regards Maimonides (1135-1204) as the polestar of religious Jewish
thought and observance and constructs his educational vision on that
medieval worthy’s voluminous writings and his own expertise in their
interpretation. I should like to examine some of his explicit and implicit
assumptions about the nature of learning, teaching and schooling, and
speculate on how his vision might take root in Orthodox yeshivah day
school education.
Twersky diagnoses a common etiology for the contemporary Jewish
educational malaise: secularization, which he defines as “a reservation
about the lifestyle and value-system of traditional society” that leads to
“disengagement and estrangement from Jewish tradition”(48). For this
pandemic, he prescribes a panacea: Maimonidean curricula and peda-
gogy, albeit to be applied differently in Orthodox and non-Orthodox
settings. Indeed, Menachem Brinker, Emeritus Professor of Hebrew
Literature and Philosophy at the Hebrew University and an avowed

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liberal secularist, advocates teaching Jewish students Maimonides, too

(99); he is opposed, however, to its presentation as authoritative and
binding. The task of school, in his words, is “to educate so that the
student is not required to conform to any given way of life” (98). This
poses a curious curricular quandary: Is it the Maimonidean canon that
is educative or the manner in which it is taught and learned? Indeed, it
is not Maimonides, per se, around whom this controversy swirls, but all
of Torah, whether in its narrow definition of the Pentateuch or its broad
definition that embraces all subsequent traditional literature written in
its interpretation. Is it to be presented as authoritative or authentic;
compulsory or advisory? In other words, while Twersky informs us of
the “What” and “Why” of Jewish study, what enlightenment would he
offer on the “How”?
Normative and deliberative: The role of hergel
Twersky’s answer, I believe, is implicit in his exposition of the well-
known tendency of Maimonides to ascertain the rationales behind all
the commandments (65-68), culminating in his observation that “the
search for the meaning and purpose of the commandment, the fervent
struggle to find its rationale, is a basic component of the knowledge of
God and a means for advancing a person on the path to perfection… If
one has no awareness of the ultimate purpose, then behavior becomes
perfunctory: carrying out the commandments from mindless habit. He
fulfills his obligations, but obtains no spiritual benefit from the effort”
(67).
In other—didactic—words, Twersky would not have religious edu-
cators compel Halakhah externally and normatively, but inculcate it
internally and deliberatively. Since Twersky concurs in the proposition
that the debate over contemporary Jewish education is about the
clarification of traditional values, I would like to translate this quan-
dary into the terms of a related pedagogical dilemma: Can a religious
[Jewish] educator inspire autonomous moral reasoning/values clarifi-
cation, while yet inculcating the disciplined obedience to [Halakhah,]
religious law?
The dilemma is patent. By abrogating autonomy, the educator may
succeed in erecting a pious hedge against the discovery of conflict
between the student’s own reasoning and the Law, but he forfeits the

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potent benefits of internalization. If, on the other hand, he were to

provide his students with the occasion to reaffirm the congruence of
reason and revelation, and reap the expected harvests of internalization
and actualization, he risks losing everything to even a single unrequited
conflict. For while the heteronomous morality of the Law and the
autonomous morality of the religiously observant need not conflict
(and the protean efforts of many rationalist moral philosophers have
demonstrated their usual congruence), the exceptions, be they few or
many, sorely try the rule.
The Maimonidean resolution to this dilemma—a la Twersky—is
hergel, defined as “habituation,” which Twersky deftly portrays as not
only the summum bonum of Jewish education, but its sine qua non as well
(82). Maimonidean pedagogy would have the religious educator enable
the student to establish an early and consistent pattern of affirmative
response to religious stimuli. When confronted by the need to choose
between the duties of the heart and the dictates of reason, someone so
habituated will be more likely to suspend the latter and incline towards
the former. As formulated by the 13th century Sefer haHinnukh (Book of
Education): affect follows behavior (literally: hearts are drawn after
actions). [The urge to compare Maimonidean hergel to Dewey’s use of
“habit” as a coefficient of experience (Experience & Education, 34) will
have to abate and await another opportunity or forum.]
Practical, pedagogical advice
How may this be accomplished in a curricular-instructional fash-
ion? Another senior Jewish religious educator, Moshe Ahrend, has
proposed several pedagogical-methodological conclusions that apply to
our paradigm:
(1) Let us not exaggerate the importnace of reason as though there actually
were a sufficient answer to each and every question. If everything can
be contained within the confines of reason, what would be left for
faith?
(2) Make commandments “rational” by means of Midrash and Aggadah
(Talmudic folklore) rather than philosophy, and encourage students to
question the answers we provide.
(3) The study of “what” must precede that of “why.” Only after insuring
that students comprehend the operative details of a commandment is

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there room to speculate on its rationale.

(4) The rationale we propose must advance our students’ comprehension
and not prolong their perplexity. Outdated reasons, including many of
the historicizations of Maimonides (!), are counterproductive.
[Moshe Ahrend, Itturim (Jerusalem, 1986), 81 (Hebrew)]
I might add, in conclusion, that it would do no harm to admit failure
to provide adequate rationales for some commandments and to abide
them, humbly, solely on the strength of their transcendent origins.
Oftentimes, the greatest threat to knowledge is the arrogation of omni-
science. As Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, mentor (and father-in-law) of
Professor Twersky and polestar of modern Orthodoxy for over half a
century, wrote of the experience of the Biblical “tree of knowledge:”
The moral law can never be legislated in ultimate terms by
the human mind. Any attempt on the part of scientific re-
search, no matter how progressive, to replace the moral law
engraved by the Divine hand on the two stone tablets of Sinai
with man-made rules of behavior is illegitimate. Adam tried
to legislate the moral norm; he was driven from paradise. In
our day, modern man is engaged in a similar undertaking,
which demonstrates pride and arrogance, and is doomed to
failure [“Catharsis”; Tradition 17/2 (1978), 52].
❖ ❖ ❖
This review first appeared on-line in Teachers College Record.

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