Q&A: An Educational Method According to the Rabbi
An Educational Method According to the Rabbi
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I would very much like my children to grow up and be educated in my way, meaning in the Rabbi’s approach to faith, Torah, Jewish law, and in general the Rabbi’s rational mode of thought (not rationalistic).
Where’s the problem? Like you, like me, and probably like others who follow this site, we reached the conclusions we reached only after going through conventional Religious Zionist (or Haredi) education, getting a taste of dogmatism, and now also knowing how to identify dogmatism and other confused ways of thinking and keep our distance from them.
I wonder: had we not first studied the things we studied and only then been exposed to your way of thinking, would we have accepted intellectually the things you say? In other words, what you say about faith, Torah study, and Jewish law makes sense to me, at least in my opinion, but that is after I previously heard and studied other things that did not sit right with me. Without that early exposure to the usual state-religious way of teaching faith, Torah, and Jewish law, is it possible to understand what you claim and teach? Seemingly yes, because words of truth are true even without needing to go astray first.
Has anyone ever even tried to educate from the outset according to your thought?
Answer
I don’t understand why you assume that it’s impossible to educate in such a way without first going through the existing approaches. I agree that there are risks in this, as in any educational path. I also agree that it should be done gradually, as with any education.
Discussion on Answer
I understand. I think one should distinguish between the approach itself and the explanation of it. When I explain it to those who were educated in the conventional way, I have to explain what is incorrect and put them on a diet. But if one educates this way from the start, there is no need for such explanations.
But I don’t know.
Because even you, when explaining things, refer a great deal to many things we learned, to mistaken conceptions, to books that we came to understand are a shame to study because they add no value.
You refer to all kinds of currents in Israel that we thought about in way x because we experienced them, and we, as the y-generation of your teaching, simply would not see any need to bring our children close to them, etc.
We are all “wise” because we went through / experienced this kind of Judaism, and therefore we also know how to deal (more or less) with the claims of those who hold those approaches, and it is easy for us to explain to ourselves why they are mistaken and why we are getting a bit closer than they are to the truth.
Take for example the “lean Judaism” you discussed in the second book of the trilogy. You know how to diet only after you’ve eaten all the various fattening foods.
A child who never eats the fattening foods will not know that his menu was dietetic from the outset, and may fall for the fattening foods later on.
At the root of the question: is your thought necessarily a mature thought? Meaning, can it only be grasped after one necessarily passes through the stage of childhood?