Q&A: Educating Children According to the Principles of the Trilogy
Educating Children According to the Principles of the Trilogy
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I just read your book “No Man Rules the Spirit.” I agree with almost all of your conclusions, and I’m not coming here to challenge whether they are correct.
But I think that educating children in light of this approach is difficult to the point of being nearly impossible. Your approach drains Judaism of any experiential dimension, and turns all the Jewish laws into divine decrees where the only important thing is to observe them, and it is impossible—or unimportant—to learn from them any content or values. For example, how can one educate a child to pray while explaining to him that prayer does not really help, and in fact is based on the Sages’ inadequate scientific knowledge, or on circumstances that no longer exist? Even if it is possible to educate children to observe laws they do not understand—and that too is very difficult—educating them to observe laws that also do not help and are also based on error seems to me to have very little chance of succeeding.
Even if you know many people who adopted such complex and “Lithuanian-style” views after they matured and formed an independent opinion, do you know anyone who managed to educate his children this way from a young age?
I know this is a practical argument and not related to the question of whether these views are true or not, but it is worth paying attention to these consequences.
Thank you very much.
Answer
An important question, but of course it is different from the substantive question (whether it is true or not). The alternative is to raise a child on holy lies. One can raise him on experience, but explain that when he grows up he will understand things differently. Speak more about the dimension of obligation than about benefit. Almost anything can be done gradually and in an age-appropriate way.
I also think that if asking in prayer does not help, there is no reason to educate a child to ask. He can be educated to fulfill the commandment of prayer like any other commandment. In your question you assume a conception of prayer that you yourself reject.
Discussion on Answer
I asked what you propose. If you have indeed become convinced that this is the situation, you have two options: lie to him, or tell him to pray as an obligation.
If it were completely clear to me that it never helps, I would never ask for things in prayer. But it is possible that here and there there is some involvement, and about that perhaps one can still ask. Just not rely on it. It is not correct to say that we do this only because people once thought so. If that were the whole story, I wouldn’t do it.
But as I wrote to you, I would not educate him around requests in prayer.
To Ariel — greetings,
The best educational method for trilogy-style education is to fulfill “and you shall walk in His ways,” to cleave to the Creator’s traits. And the trait of the God of the trilogy is that He maintains complete “radio silence”: He is silent and does not intervene.
So you too should practice: “Just as He does not intervene, so you too should not intervene.” Let your wife, the teachers and counselors, siblings and friends educate in their own way, and you should behave in accordance with your God’s trait: do not support and do not long for. If in the end you are not pleased with the results—why should you care, if the child chose his own path and is at peace with it? Why interfere with him?
With blessings,
Ratzin from the Wilderness of Zin
With God’s help, Friday eve of the holy Sabbath, “God shall answer,” 5780
“To pray” means “to hope” — so “to pray” means to fill oneself with hope, to charge oneself with hope. A person who does not think he needs the help of his Creator proudly trusts in himself and in his own power, as though he alone can “run the world.” As long as things are “going well” for him, he can think he is managing on his own; but when, Heaven forbid, things do not go as expected, he has nothing left but despair and bitterness.
That is not the lot of a person who prays. Even when everything is proceeding in an orderly way, he knows that his success does not come only from “my own power and the might of my hand.” He knows how impossible it is to “cover all the bases” and think of every unexpected mishap that threatens his success, and he offers prayer to his God that He be for him “helper, savior, and shield,” to complete his own efforts toward the good.
He asks his God for help in acquiring understanding so as to do the right deeds and repair what he has damaged. He asks for help in protection from suffering and in preserving his health and livelihood, so that he can fulfill his mission: to be like Abraham, calling out in the name of the Lord in the world, helping the weak and supporting the fallen and increasing holiness, connecting his entire being to his God.
A person who prays is not enclosed only within his own narrow private world. He also asks for the redemption of his people, the ingathering of its exiles, and the repair of its spiritual and political leadership, which will bring about the exaltation of Israel, the return of the Divine Presence to Zion, through which we will draw near to the heart’s desire that “all the living shall thank You forever” and recognize the kingship of the Lord, and then the blessing of peace will come to the world.
A person who prays does not allow himself to sink only into the burdens of life, but internalizes in his heart that he is part of a people that bears a mission and a hope for the redemption of the whole world, that it become a world of blessing and peace. And the more he asks the Lord for all these things, the more the one who prays will be filled with renewed energy and strength to act wisely in order to bring, even a little, the realization of those great destinies for which he prayed closer—because the Lord is a shield for Abraham, who acts with all vigor and strength to realize the vision.
With blessings for a peaceful Sabbath, a good new month, and a radiant Hanukkah,
Shatz
I meant the prayer that is halakhically obligatory. Would you explain to a child that prayer does not really help, but we still have to pray because people once thought it helped? Will he be persuaded to persist in such empty, meaningless mumbling? Or is it better not to tell him anything about that, and explain the truth only if he asks on his own? What message will the child absorb about Jewish law as a whole if he sees, for example, that his father reads analytical books during prayer, while most people around him regard that as invalid sloppiness?
I’m aware that these are considerations of psychology and not considerations of content, but with children psychology occupies a much more significant place than it does with adults. (And with adults too it has quite a bit of influence, but from them we expect reason to prevail.)