“A Lifetim e of Learning” - Partnership for Excellence in Jewish ...

A Religion of ContinuityMany theories have been advanced, butonly one is convincing. The secret of Jewishcontinuity is that no people has ever devotedmore of its energies to continuity. The focalpoint of Jewish life is the transmission of aheritage across the generations. Judaism’sfocus is its children. Abraham’s first wordsto God are, “What can You give me, if I amwithout children?” Rachel says, “Give mechildren, for without them it is as if I amdead.” To be a Jew is to be a link in thechain of generations. It is to be a child andthen a parent, to receive a heritage and tohand it on. Moses “received the Torah atSinai and handed it on ...” and so must we.Judaism is a religion of continuity.We who have grown up with Judaism are sofamiliar with this idea that we take it asself-evident, but it is not. It is exceptional,even unique. The first command in theTorah is not to believe, but to have children.Abraham is chosen not because he is righteous(only Noah is described as that) butbecause “he will instruct his children andhis household after him.” On the brink ofthe exodus from Egypt, Moses does notspend time telling the Israelites about theland of milk and honey that awaits themacross the Jordan. Instead he instructsthem about how they should teach futuregenerations. Three times he returns to thetheme: “And when your children ask you...,” “In days to come, when your son asksyou ...” “On that day you shall tell your son...” Not yet liberated, they are about to becomea nation of educators.eras of the people of Israel it is the enthronementof education as the sovereignJewish value.In one of the most famous verses of theTorah, Moses commands: “You shall teachthese things diligently to your children,speaking of them when you stay at home orwhen you travel on a journey, when you liedown and when you rise up.” The firstPsalm describes the happy human being asone who “studies Torah day and night.” Inan astonishing comment, the rabbis said:“Greater is an illegitimate scholar than anignorant high priest.” The central, burning,incandescent passion of Jews was study.Their citadels were schools. Their religiousleaders were sages: the word rabbi doesnot mean priest or holy man but teacher.Even when they were racked by poverty,they ensured that their children were educated.In twelfth century France a Christianscholar noted: “A Jew, however poor, if hehas ten sons, will put them all to letters,not for gain as the Christians do, but forthe understanding of God’s law - and notonly his sons but his daughters too.”In the shtetl of Eastern Europe, learningconferred prestige, status, authority, respect.Men of wealth were honoured, butscholars were honoured more. It was theywho occupied the seats of rank along thesynagogue’s eastern wall. In their delightfulstudy of the culture of the shtetl, Life iswith People, Zborowski and Herzog describeJewish family priorities: “The mother, whohas charge of household accounts, will cutthe family food costs to the limit if necessary,in order to pay for her son’s schooling.If worse comes to worst, she will pawn hercherished pearls in order to pay for theschool term. The boy must study, the boymust become a good Jew - for her the twoare synonymous.”The result was that Jews knew. They knewwho they were and why. They knew theirhistory. They knew their traditions. Theyknew where they came from and wheretheir hearts belonged. They had a sense ofidentity and pride. They knew Abrahamand Moses and Isaiah and Hillel and Akivaand Rashi and Maimonides, for they hadstudied their words and argued over theirmeaning. The Torah was the portablehomeland of the Jew, and they knew itslandscape, its mountains and valleys, betterthan the local scenery outside their windows.Jerusalem lay in ruins, but they werefamiliar with its streets from the prophetsand the Talmud and they walked in thegolden city of the mind.Nowhere else was literacy, scholarship, andhigh culture so widely diffused, so highlyprized as among this people of the book.Paul Johnson describes traditional Jewishlife as an “ancient and highly efficient socialmachine for the production of intellectuals.”It was an aristocracy of the spiritand mind. Not everyone, said Maimonides,can be a priest or a king. But the crown ofTorah -the greatest of all crowns - is availableto all.A P U B L I C A T I O N O F Y I T Z H A K R A B I N H I G H S C H O O LFrom the very outset, Judaism predicatedits survival on education. Not education inthe narrow, formal sense of the acquisitionof knowledge but something altogethermore vast. Indeed the word ‘education’ isaltogether inadequate to describe Judaism’sculture of study and debate, its absorptionin texts, commentaries and counter-commentaries,its devotion to literacy and lifelonglearning. Descartes said: I think,therefore I am. A Jew would have said: Ilearn, therefore I am. If there is one leitmotif,one dominant theme linking the various“ A L i f e t i m e o f L e a r n i n g ” • P A G E 11