10 Years of Believing in Jewish Day School Education

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Such a curriculum would challenge students to design
institutional and personal answers to the problems
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of the contemporary Jewish world.
The teacher, Heschel says, “is the creator of the future of our people.” If we understood the depth of these words,
would we pay our teachers so poorly, provide them with so little ongoing inspiration and professional development,
and (most of all) openly encourage so few of our children to become the next generation of teachers?
At the conclusion of this one small quote, Heschel defines the educational task as leading our students “…to
evaluate the past in order to clarify their future.” Elsewhere Heschel says, “…there is no vicarious revelation.”
For Heschel the past (which includes everything—text, history, tradition) must be looked at anew in every
generation. It is not static and certainly not irrelevant. “…Only he who is an heir is qualified to be a pioneer,”
he wrote, making clear that both ends of the spectrum are critical; education must be about creating and
enabling informed and critical pioneers. But for Heschel, education about the past was for a future that would
belong to the young. It is not, nor should it be, controlled. It must be “their(s).”
A curriculum so informed would, for but one example, challenge students to design institutional and
personal answers to the problems of the contemporary Jewish world. While teaching about established
Jewish institutions and organizations we should also be eliciting new ideas and approaches to problemsolving
from our students. What might the Jewish world look like from their perspective, values, and
emerging world views? Could they imagine (drawing from the Jewish historical experience that they
have studied) a different Middle East and Judeo-Islamic relationship? What would be required in order
to reach such an alternative reality?
Celebrating 10 years of believing in Jewish Education 39