Adam Taub
What Does it Mean to be a Literate Jew?
Adam Taub - What Does it Mean to be a Literate Jew?
- Adam, okay, I’m going to just jump in and just say, a very warm welcome to everybody. We have a new addition to our lockdown family team of presenters, Adam Taub. So Adam studied natural sciences and law. He practised in the field of intellectual property before setting up a consultancy that coaches senior executives. He has a master’s in education from University College London. He has been a lecturer at the London School of Jewish Studies for 20 years, and is the co-founder of a charity called EPCA, that aims to inspire a love of Jewish learning in young Jewish students. Oh, and I want to add that Adam is married with four children, as I’ve just discovered now. So he comes with all of the… He’s a dad. Okay, so he’s going to discuss today, what does it mean to be a literate Jew? So over to you, Adam, and it’s a great pleasure to have you with us. Thank you.
- So Wendy, thank you so much for inviting me, and also to Trudy, who’s been a teacher of mine for over 30 years, who I know has been central to the Lockdown University, a real exemplar of what it means to be a teacher, so it’s a real honour to be asked to speak alongside her. And Wendy and Judy, I just want to say thank you so much for organising Lockdown University. I’ve already enjoyed so many of the wonderful talks. One of the highlights for me was just a couple of days ago, which was the conversation between Justice Albie Sachs and Judge Dennis Davis, which was inspiring and moving and does exactly what you hope education would do. So thank you for organising this. And there was, by the way, something particularly appropriate, listening to Albie Sachs speak about the liberation struggle of South Africa on , which obviously celebrates the Exodus story, which has been sort of the prototypical model of liberation movements the world over. And in many ways, the Lockdown University represents that passion for learning that’s at the heart of really what I want to be talking about today. Indeed, there’s a beautiful Jewish phrase that captures what that type of learning is called, and it’s called learning, and that means learning not for honour, not for wealth, not for any other reason, just for the sheer pleasure of learning.
So I want to talk about what is a literate Jew. Is there a body of literature with which a Jew should be familiar? What exactly is a literate Jew? Why do we think it might be important? And it’s a fascinating subject, and I only have time to sort of sketch an answer for you in the time we have available. And I want to break it into three questions and deal with each of those one at a time. The first I think, is the question that we rarely ask, but it’s really a fundamental question, which is, why should we be Jewish? What is the value of being Jewish? Then the second question is, why be literate? What does it mean to be literate? Why do we think it’s important? And finally, I’ll turn to the question is, what is it that makes a literate Jew? So let’s kick off. It is 1977, and I am 13 years old. I am standing on a podium and 400 pairs of eyes are watching me. I’ve been preparing for this moment for over a year, and I can feel my knees are knocking, and I am extremely nervous. I’ve never experienced anything like this. The scroll lies open before me, and I begin. And for 30 minutes I am going to sing in public, even though my voice is lousy, even though I have never done it before, and I will never do it again. And at the end, I am so relieved. I turn around and I see all these people looking at me, my family, my friends, my congregation, at last, the ordeal is over. So why do we do this to our children? Why do we make them go through bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies? And I can tell you that 40 years on, I still remember the Torah portion that I read, and even bits of the speech that I gave. So it’s clearly an extremely powerful experience that can influence how we develop. And I want to point out something very strange about bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies. Many societies around the world have rights of passage that mark the transition from boyhood to manhood. And these rights of passage are normally marked by trials of strength or of courage. Judaism’s approach is quite different, and it may well be unique, because the trial is a trial of literacy. And while I haven’t got time to address the issue of women in Judaism, it’s a huge topic and not one I can deal with in this particular discussion. I would say this about bat mitzvah, it’s a ceremony that has grown in prestige over my lifetime. And because it’s sort of uncharted territory for Judaism, it’s allowed some very creative celebrations. And over the years, I’ve been extremely impressed by the quality of some of the bat mitzvah presentations that have been so literate, and I would say in some senses, more literate than simply the recital of a Torah portion. So let’s come to that basic question. Why be Jewish? We rarely ask it. It’s a bit like the American Independence Declaration.
We hold it to be a self-evident truth. Of course we should be Jewish. But why? And it’s a large topic. I used to give a four week course about why be Jewish, but I’m going to try and condense it for you and just sketch the basic ideas. I’m going to give you six reasons that work for me, and I hope that one or more of them will resonate with you. But before I give you those reasons, I want to start with two reasons that I am not going to give you for being Jewish, that other people might. So the first non reason, the reason that I won’t give you for being Jewish is, we have to be Jewish because of what Hitler did to our people. Now, in the aftermath of the Second World War, Emil Fackenheim articulated the idea of the 614th commandment. We must not give Hitler a posthumous victory. And it was a valiant attempt to wrest some sense of purpose from the Holocaust. But it is not a sustaining vision. It is not sufficiently motivating for the third or the fourth generation after the Holocaust. No one says we have to be Jewish because of what Hadrian did to Bar Kokhba. We need positive reasons to be Jewish. And the second non-reason that I won’t give you for being Jewish is, . “Who has chosen us from all peoples and given us his Torah.” And this is the that we make over the Torah reading. Now, for those people who accept the premise that God exists, that he’s chosen us, that the Torah is his word, that there’s no need, therefore, for any other reason at all, it’s the ace in the pack as it were.
And for those people who don’t accept the premise or even the existence of God, the reason holds no sway at all. So instead, I want to give you six positive reasons that don’t depend upon the existence of God. Two of them are reasons to belong to any religion or community. And four of them are specific to Judaism. So reason number one, it is very valuable to belong to a community. There’s a famous African proverb, I’m sure you’re familiar with it. “It takes a village to raise a child.” And it’s absolutely true, to raise a child, it helps enormously to live within a community that shares traditions and practises that reinforces the values you want to transmit to your children. And a key part of it is the focus on lifecycle events, birth, death, marriage, coming of age. Religion understands how rituals and ceremonies crystallise the significance of these events, and turns them into meaningful nurturing experiences. And that’s really why I started with bar mitzvah, which is a superb example of a lifecycle event that contains all the key ingredients, personal challenge, public acclaim, a new life stage with new rights and responsibilities. I often tell non-Jewish friends that bar and bat mitzvah is one of the secrets of Jewish success. I ask them, how many of them know 13 year olds who’ve spoken in front of a hundred adults? And very few of them can even name one person, one young person who’s done that. And yet I and all of my Jewish friends and all of our children have done that. And it can, and it should be an amazing boost to a child’s confidence. Okay, reason two, Judaism is a second lens through which to view the world. The great benefit of having a dual identity is that you have two lenses with which to view the world. And the analogy I use is the Hubble telescope, which is in orbit beyond the Earth’s atmosphere and sends back images of deep space. Now the main telescope is an optical one, which captures those glorious images with which we are familiar. But there are also four other instruments on board. There’s an infrared camera, a mass spectrometer and so on. And each one gives a different perspective on the universe. So for me, my secular education is the primary lens through which I view the world. It’s my optical telescope, if you like.
But my Judaism is the second lens, and I bring that to bear with a whole different set of tools, ideas, stories, and experiences that help me to make sense of the world. Everyone who has a dual identity has a second lens, and it’s tremendously valuable, not least because it reminds you at all times that there is more than one way to look at things. But why a Jewish lens? Any second culture will give you a different perspective. What makes a Jewish lens uniquely valuable? So let me come onto the four reasons that makes being Jewish so special. So reason three, we are a global diaspora community. Now, it may only be around 18 or so million Jews in the world, but we are incredibly well networked. In an internet age, it might not be so surprising, but go back 50 years, and the Jewish connectedness is astonishing. The Rothschilds established a dynasty by sending five brothers to five different cities around the world. And even today I find it extraordinary that I can walk into a shore anywhere in the world and expect to be invited for a Shabbat meal. We are deeply and richly connected. And my favourite story about this is the story about an American Jew who goes to Israel for the first time, and he’s taken by an Israeli friend to a comedy club in Tel Aviv. And all night long the American Jew is laughing uproariously at the comedians. And at the end of the evening, the Israeli says to him, “I didn’t know you speak such good Hebrew.”
And the American Jew replies, “Well, actually I don’t speak a word of Hebrew, but you know, I trust these guys.” So reason four, for 2000 years, we have lived as a minority. Jews have been a minority wherever we have lived. We’ve been powerless. And paradoxically, it has been very beneficial for us. Jewish leaders could not impose their will by force. There had to be acceptance by the people which prevented the worst excesses of religious coercion. We were self-governing. We created our own laws, both religious and civil, and as a result, we developed a deep respect for law and justice, rather than power and force. We learned to debate and negotiate solutions. Indeed, the Talmud, the record of our laws and traditions is a compendium of arguments. It records minority views that are rejected, alongside the majority views that are upheld. It enshrines the value of honourable disagreement. There’s a wonderful phrase in the Talmud that describes the conflicting opinions of the houses of Hillel and Shammai. And it says, , “Both these and these are the words of the living God.” Now how can that be? Surely one of them is right and one of them is wrong. But it is in that beautiful paradox that the essence of civil and civilised society lies. Furthermore, our communities developed largely as meritocracy, not dynasties. Anyone could rise to leadership if they had the talent and the application. Indeed, the Bible itself can be read as a polemic against primogeniture, the inheritance of the rights of the firstborn. All the time we see the younger brother triumphing over the older brother, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his brothers, David over his brothers.
We believe in merit in Judaism. And finally, being a minority gave us an innate sympathy with enlightenment ideals and democratic principles that protected minorities. And it’s one of the reasons I believe why Jews have been at the forefront of civil and human rights movements the world over. Okay, reason five, we have made and we continue to make a remarkable contribution to humanity. We do have an extraordinary story. Our story goes back 4,000 years and it encompasses almost every empire that’s existed. Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Christian, Muslim. Okay? We missed out on the Aztecs and the Mayans, and we didn’t have a lot to do with China and India. But apart from that, we were pretty much everywhere. And our story runs parallel to that of global history. Isaiah prophesied at the time of the first Olympic Games, Zechariah and Confucius are contemporaries. It gives us a unique perspective on the world in which our narrative intersects with the full stream of global history. And not only did we live under these many different regimes and empires, we contributed enormously to them. We were driven by that urgent intensity of the outsider who is constantly striving to prove his or her value, loyalty and gratitude towards the host. Many authors have articulated the contribution that the Jews have made to the world. None better than Jonathan Sacks, who collects many of those accolades from non-Jews, In his book, “Radical Then, Radical Now,” and it’s a book by the way, I would include in any shortlist of core Jewish books. He quotes, for example, from the 19th century American President and he says, “I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilise men than any other nation. If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilising the nations.”
And similarly, the conservative historian, in more recent times, Paul Johnson, who passed away recently, wrote, “All the great conceptual discoveries of the intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they have been revealed. But it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them, we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human, of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person, of individual conscience and social responsibility, of peace as an abstract ideal, and love as the foundation of justice and many other items which constitute the basic furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews, it might have been a much emptier place.” Now Jonathan Sacks attributed the contribution of the Jews to a covenantal relationship with God. And I think that’s a really helpful way to conceptualise what has made the Jews such a formidable force for innovation and social justice. But I think you can also read history and understand the Jewish story without relying on a partnership with the divine. So the five reasons I’ve given to you so far go a long way to explaining our longevity and our contribution to humanity. But there is one last reason, reason six, we have an extraordinary literary culture. For every famous Jewish painter or sculptor, there are dozens of famous Jewish writers. Judaism is first and foremost a literary tradition. Christianity focused on art and music. Judaism focused on literature. In part it’s because of the second commandment, the prohibition against graven images. In part it’s because we were constantly on the move, always at the pleasure of our hosts community, always with one bag packed. And it’s much easier to pack a book and some ideas than it is to pack a Michelangelo or even a cathedral. We are the people of the book and what a book it is. I don’t have time to do the Jewish literary tradition justice, but let me say this, Erich Auerbach, in his famous essay, “Odysseus’ Scar,” describes the Bible as the world’s first novel, and it influences everything that comes after it. From the New Testament and the Quran, to the novels and films of our own era. The stories of the Bible encapsulate the challenge, the moral ambiguity of life, which is why they’ve provided endless fascination for generations.
On the Radio Four programme “Desert Island Discs,” the guests are always given a copy of the Bible and Shakespeare, because these two works are the foundational texts of Western civilization. Our literary focus led to a unique and astonishing characteristic of Jewish communities around the world, and that was universal education for children through Most Jewish children in history could read and write. In this, we were utterly exceptional. Every Jew had access to knowledge. So if knowledge is power, then no one decentralised it more than the Jews. Okay, so those are my six reasons for being Jewish, positive reasons. I hope one or two of them have resonated with you. And at this stage, normally I would take some questions, but ‘cause of the format, what I thought I would do is I’ll go on and I will collect the questions at the end and then respond to those. So let’s turn to the next question, which is why be literate? Well, you may think that the answer is obvious. Everyone should be literate. Knowledge is power. We live in a knowledge economy. Of course, people need knowledge, but knowledge and literacy are two different notions. Knowledge is information in a general sense, it could relate to a historical incident, a scientific principle, or simply general knowledge. But literacy in the way that I’m using it, is a specific body of knowledge that’s the bedrock of a culture or a community. It’s what everyone in that community should know in order to be a full participant. Literacy has come to be one of the most controversial issues in education today. It straddles a fault line that runs through the heart of educational philosophy.
And I want to briefly explain it to you because it is actually very important. In 1987, an English professor at the University of Virginia, Eric Donald Hirsch, known as E.D. Hirsch, published a book that has come to define the educational battle lines that are still being fought today. In effect, Hirsch launched a counter reformation in the field of education. The book was called, “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.” And the book opens with these words, “To be culturally literate, is to possess the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world. The breadth of that information is great, extending over science and arts.” The book was an attack on the theories that had come to dominate liberal education since the 1950s. Those theories stem ultimately from the romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that we should encourage the natural development of young children. He thought that a child’s intellectual and social skills would develop naturally if they were not interfered with by adults. Rousseau’s ideas were adopted by John Dewey, the writer who has most deeply affected modern educational thinking. In Dewey’s most widely read book on education, “Schools of Tomorrow,” Published in 1915, Dewey placed his faith in children’s ability to learn general skills from a few typical experiences, and he rejected the notion of piling up information. This idea became the central pillar of liberal education from the 1950s onwards.
And it is still to this day, the dominant educational philosophy. Unfortunately, it turned out that Rousseau and Dewey were wrong. Children’s learning is not an innate natural process, but it is highly culturally mediated. We think in the ways that we are taught, drawing on the knowledge that we have acquired. All communities are founded upon shared information, what Hirsch calls their cultural heritage. So Americans are different from Germans, not because of any inherent genetic difference, but because each group possesses distinct cultural knowledge. And it’s this shared cultural knowledge that makes Americans American and Germans German. Hirsch wanted American public schools to return to teaching students this core knowledge so that they could flourish in an American society. It wasn’t a new idea, it was the rediscovery of a very old idea that schooling is really about making citizens, people who can participate in and contribute to their society. The notion goes way back to the 18th century, when the United States had a chief school master called Noah Webster, and he put it this way, “The education of youth is in all governments an object of the first consequence. The impressions received in early life usually form the character of individuals. A union of which forms the general character of a nation.” Webster could see that the new US nation would only work effectively together if its language, ideals, and loyalties were commonly shared. And that’s why he developed Webster’s American Dictionary of English Usage, which is still in print today. In order to unite the emerging nation under a single common language.
A 150 years later, E.D. Hirsch reasserted the importance of this idea, cultural literacy. And at the end of the book there was an appendix, and this is where the trouble began. The long appendix comprises over half the book, and it consists of around 5,000 terms. All the things that E.D. Hirsch felt encapsulated American cultural heritage. And it includes not just books, but music, films, aphorisms, science, geography, and so on. Here’s just a very short snippet, a section from the appendix, which I selected completely at random. Here’s what it reads. “Photon, photosynthesis, pianissimo, Pablo Picasso, piccolo, the Pied Piper of Hamlin, the Pilgrim’s progress, the pill, Pinocchio, Pittsburgh, the plagues of Egypt.” You see for E.D. Hirsch, cultural heritage is not just books, it’s all the things that we assume the other person knows when we are talking to them, so that when we make a reference, we know the other person will understand it. Parenthetically, I was discussing this notion with my brother Daniel, and he asked me an interesting question. He said, “Would I consider my grandmother Jewishly literate?” Now, she came to the UK from Poland, and I wouldn’t say that she was widely read, but she was Jewishly literate, because she understood vast amounts about Judaism that were outside pure book knowledge. So coming back to E.D. Hirsch, he publishes his book 1987, and immediately the critics denounce it as elitist.
They condemn the appendix for including too many dead white males. They accuse Hirsch of trying to create a canon that would entrench white privilege. And this is despite the fact that Hirsch argues that his list was not meant to be definitive, and that he welcomed it being critiqued and broadened. To this day, the world of education remains split into these two sharply opposing camps. And in one camp there are those who support child-centered learning. And in the other camp, there are those who believe in core knowledge and cultural heritage. So the question is, does the debate matter? And the answer is, it matters very, very much. For two reasons. First, by the 1960s, the effect of this new form, this doctrine of teaching in the US, began to show up in declining verbal scores, in particular in US middle schools and high schools. Language mastery depends on common knowledge. And if that’s not taught, students struggle to read. And it’s the most disadvantaged students who struggle the most. And the second reason it really matters is that without shared cultural heritage, our society can begin to fall apart. And you see it unfortunately today in identity politics, which places greater weight on lived experience, than it does on core knowledge, on opinion and feeling, rather than fact. Without a shared cultural heritage that binds us together, we fragment into multiple identities. So in short, Hirsch argues that shared cultural knowledge is essential for two reasons. First of all, to understand the world, because so much communication is implied, and we need the background knowledge in order to decode the meaning. And secondly, to build citizenship through a shared cultural heritage, which gives us a common story and the ability to understand each other.
So does it matter for us, for the Jewish community? Yes, it matters very much. Because the changes that occur in the wider world are felt within the Jewish community, only with even greater intensity. Aside from the Ultra-Orthodox, which is a separate discussion, the Jewish world is extremely porous to new social ideas. We’re greatly influenced by wider cultural trends, and our education system has felt those trends intensely. Our education system has largely followed the child-centered philosophy inspired by Dewey. And so we focus on building identity, rather than providing a strong grounding in Jewish texts, history and ideas. And I can give you evidence of the problem from the UK, and I hear anecdotal evidence from around the world. So 10 years ago, my colleague Joe Rosenfeld and I, set up a charity called EDGAR to teach basic Jewish literacy to primary school children, because we saw that the children were not learning material that would’ve been regarded as fundamental a few decades ago. And in my lifetime in the UK, I’ve seen considerable slippage in standards which were never that demanding, to be honest, to begin with. In the 1970s, for example, in the UK, there were junior and senior syllabuses, exams for. These exams required translational skills, general knowledge.
And today the course and the examinations no longer exist. A decade ago, the UK had a modern Jewish history A/O level, which truly used to teach. And now that no longer exists, due to a lack of commitment among Jewish schools and parents. Most children leave UK Jewish schools with faltering Hebrew reading skills and little other knowledge. They feel proud to be Jewish, make no mistake, but their identity is built on shallow foundations. They know little about Jewish literature and history. And when it comes to Israel, well they can tell you where you can get a latte on Herzliya Beach, but not the name of the first president of the state. We are failing our children because we are not giving them sufficient knowledge to think deeply about issues. So when they’re confronted by powerful challenges to their identity, they have little on which to draw. And when it comes to Israel and they encounter sophisticated arguments on campus, they have little knowledge to present Israel’s perspective fairly and articulately. So that is why we should be literate. It helps bind us together, it creates communities, and it gives us understanding. So let me turn now to the final question. What should a Jew know in order to be literate? So I looked back in Jewish history to try and find the earliest curriculum that I could, and the earliest attempt to define a Jewish curriculum goes back 2000 years to the time of the Mishnah. It’s not the first curriculum in history, but it is the first curriculum that aims for universal literacy. Pirkei Avot is one of the most popular books in Jewish tradition. It’s a series of aphorisms by the sages of the Mishnah.
And we read in chapter five, Mishnah 25, “Yehuda ben Taima used to say, at five, one should begin the study of Torah. At 10, one should begin the Mishnah, At 13, one becomes obligated in the commandments. At 15, one should begin the study of the Talmud. And at 18, one should get married.” Now the last bit is not on the curriculum of my kids’ schools, but it is interesting that the Mishnah sees no distinction between a curriculum of study and a curriculum of life. Rashi, the famous mediaeval commentator, explains that at 10, a student should study the Mishnah according to its plain meaning. Now, it’s just becoming familiar with the subject matter. But when it comes to the study of Talmud at 15, so begins the deeper analysis of the Mishnah, looking at different cases and contrasting them, examining basic principles, deriving the law. In other words, Rashi suggests that the sages in this Mishnah are not just recommending a series of age specific books, but rather they’re describing the intellectual development of the child. In the mediaeval period, Ramban Nachmanides wrote a famous letter that sets out his idea of a programme of study, and he writes as follows, “These are the regulations which I, Solomon, the son of the martyr, Rabbi Isaac, the son of Zadoc, of blessed memory, draw up for myself. That as long as I’m in good health and free from accident, I will not eat before I have studied one page of Talmud. Should I transgress this rule intentionally, I must not drink wine on that day, or I shall pay half a Zehub to charity. Also, every week I shall read the Torah portion, twice in Hebrew and once in the Aramaic translation. Should I fail to complete this rule, then I must pay two Zehub to charity.”
Now, it’s a really interesting model of education in which education is seen as a daily task, not something that’s confined to the schoolhouse or the academy. And the other thing I really like about this passage is that Ramban is writing to his son, but he’s not imposing his views upon him. Rather he’s telling him how he himself behaves. He’s acting as a role model, and in that way hopes that his children will follow him. In recent times, there have also been a number of interesting curriculum. One of them is by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, who wrote a book called “Jewish Literacy,” which became like a standard bar mitzvah book. Many of you may have seen it. And it was actually inspired by E. D. Hirsch’s book, “Cultural Literacy.” It has short entries on dozens of topics. It’s like a mini encyclopaedia of key Jewish concepts, and it’s a book that I often recommend to people who are looking for an overview of Jewish history and culture and ideas. But it’s a mediated experience rather than direct contact with the works themselves. It’s meant to be a primer, a guide, and hopefully leads on to reading the text themselves. More recently, a writer called Adam Kirsch, who’s a poet and a literary critic, has written a very good book on 18 classic works of Jewish literature, and another one on modern Jewish literature. And these are more than primers, they’re essays about the books, and they offer really interesting insight as well. So what books would I include in a modern Jewish canon?
Well, 30 years ago when I went to University, Hillel had a really interesting scheme, and it was called 25 books. They selected 25 key Jewish books that any student could purchase for just 15 pounds. And the idea was that this would form the central part, the core of a Jewish library. So recently I contacted some of my friends and colleagues, and I asked them to send me a list of books that they would recommend for a contemporary version of the 25 books. And the list that I got covered the gamut of history, philosophy, politics, literature, and comedy. And by the end, my list ran to 50 books rather than 25. And I’m not going to go through it now, but at the end I’m going to tell you how you can get a copy of it. But the reason I want to go through it now also is that I’m concerned that if I give you a list of books, it will give you the wrong impression that this is what you need to read in order to be literate, that literacy is a destination rather than an ongoing journey. And so I come back to E.D. Hirsch, his critics attacked him, if you remember, for trying to define what every American needs to know.
What a cultured American is. But E.D. Hirsch said, “No, my list is a starting point, not the whole thing, not the end point. It should be added to, it should be increased, and it should presumably be changed over the years as well.” And so too the Hillel project of 25 books, it was described as the beginning of your Jewish library, not the whole library itself. And when I reviewed the books, I thought to myself, “Five, six maybe, eight of them would no longer make my cut of the top 25 books.” Cultural literacy is that core body of knowledge that people in a society should share in order to communicate effectively. Now, you and I are going to differ over what that body should contain, and that’s healthy, because we will each expand the other’s horizons. That body of knowledge will also change over time, but they will always be a great deal of consensus about what we should know. And it’s that consensus, that shared knowledge that is the basis of our means of communication with each other. And nothing illustrates the point better than humour, because humour relies entirely on a shared understanding for a joke to work. So I want to share something with you. In Israel, there’s a programme which is called, , “The Jews Are Coming.” And it’s created by secular Israelis and it parodies Bible stories. And I want to show you a short clip of the story of Joseph being sold by his brothers. It’s in Hebrew, but it has subtitles. And Judy, if you can just roll the clip. Okay, so that’s, and I find what makes the sketch so funny is the depth of the knowledge behind the parody.
Now the writers are not religious, but they are deeply informed about the story, and even the rabbinic commentaries that they’re mentioning in passing. And it’s our shared knowledge that allows us to get the joke. Unlike that American Jew, we don’t have to trust these guys. We are on the same wavelength. And just in case you think that this is a long talk, just to say that, “Isn’t it great that we can share a good Jewish joke around the world?” I want to convince you that it means much more than that. So I want to end with this story about the power of literacy, the power of a shared, cultural heritage. And it’s told by Yossi Klein Halevi, who’s a brilliant reporter and writer, who currently has two books on my list of 50 core Jewish books. And it relates the inaugural address of member of Knesset, Ruth Calderon, to the Knesset in 2013. It is February the 2nd, 2013, the opening session of the 19th Knesset. And Ruth Calderon, newly elected parliamentarian, ascends the podium to deliver her inaugural address. She’s carrying a volume of Talmud, better known as an educator than a politician. She’s a founder of a movement to empower secular Israelis in reclaiming traditional Jewish study, without necessarily taking on religious observance. And she’s here today not so much to declare the cultural revolution, as to embody its maturation. “This book that is in my hands changed my life,” she says. “And it is to a great extent, the reason why I’m here today.” She is, she says, “Every Israeli. Daughter of refugees, right wing Sephardim father from Bulgaria, left wing Ashkenazi mother from Germany, they created a home imbued with secular faith of Zionist rebirth.”
Her state education began with the heroic figures of the Bible, ignored the irrelevant and vaguely shameful centuries of exile, and leaped to the heroic figures of the Zionist revolution. “I was never acquainted,” she says, “With the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Kabbalah, .” As a teenager though, she began to sense the absence of 2000 years of civilization. “I missed depth, I contained a void. I didn’t know how to fill that void. But when I first encountered the Talmud and became completely enamoured with its language, it’s humour, it’s profound thinking, its modes of discussion, I sensed that I had found the love of my life. The Torah is not the property of one movement or another. It is a gift that every one of us received, and we have been granted the opportunity to meditate upon it. Nobody took the Talmud and rabbinic literature from us. We gave it away with our own hands.” And then Ruth Calderon proceeds to do what no one has ever done before on this podium. She opens a volume of Talmud and teaches. She chooses a disturbing Talmudic story. The story tells of a rabbi named Rechumei, who was so devoted to his own rabbi, the renowned Rava, that he would remain with him throughout the year, returning home only for Yom Kippur. One Yom Kippur, he forgot to come home altogether. His wife shed a tear. He was sitting on a roof. The roof collapsed under him, and he died. In this place and time, it is a loaded metaphor, implicitly aimed at Haredi men who studied Torah full-time and have separated themselves from home, the national home.
But Caldron hasn’t come only to disturb and rebuke. She’s come to engage ideological rivals. “Rechumei in Aramaic,” she says, “Means love. Rechumei is derived from the word , womb, someone who knows how to include, how to completely accept. Just as a woman’s womb contains the baby. The choice of word for love is quite beautiful,” she says. “We know that the Greek word for womb gives us the word hysteria. But by contrast, the Aramaic choice by the sages turns it into love. It is a feminist gesture by the sages.” Presiding over the session is Yitzhak Vaknin of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Whatever scepticism he may have had about this woman with a Talmud has vanished. The word Rechumei, he tells Calderon, is the numerological equivalent of 248. The same number as positive mitzvot. “ ,” says a delighted Calderon. May you have strength. ‘I think the idea she’s saying is wonderful,“ the MK from Shas tells the Knesset. Suddenly this place of divisiveness and cynicism has turned into a study hall. "What can we learn from the story of Rabbi Rechumei?” says Calderon. “First I learned that one who forgets that he’s sitting on another’s shoulders, whether those of neglected wives of IDF soldiers, will fall. Righteousness is not adherence to the Torah at the expense of sensitivity to human beings. The metaphor becomes explicit. Sometimes we non-Haredim feel like the woman, waiting, serving in the army, doing all the work, while others sit on the roof and study Torah. And sometimes those others feel that they bear the entire weight of tradition, Torah, and our culture while we go to the beach and have a great time. Both I and my disputant feel solely responsible for the Jewish people’s home. Until I understand this, I will not perceive the problem properly and will not be able to find a solution.”
This is her challenge to the Knesset, to the people of Israel. Can we replace a zero sum discourse with the dialectic of the Talmud, in which arguments sustains rather than threatens relationships? Calderon ends by reciting an improvised and egalitarian prayer to the God of our fathers and mothers for success in her work as a public servant, “For keeping my integrity and innocence intact.” Vaknin loudly says, “Amen.” It is a stunning affirmation to Calderon’s dare that religious pluralism in Israel will happen, not through protests and recrimination, but with generosity and self-confidence, holding a volume of Talmud and claiming ownership to a shared tradition. My friends, I’m not oblivious to Israel’s fourth general election in two years, and the possibility of a fifth one to come. I’m not oblivious to the shortcomings of the state of Israel or the Jewish people. It’s been said that we are an extraordinary people made up of ordinary individuals. Our uniqueness comes from our shared cultural heritage, which we should treasure. And it comes with an obligation, an obligation to pass on our cultural heritage to the next generation so that they too can participate in and contribute to our community. And in the words of the Shema, the cornerstone prayer of Judaism, taken from book of Devarim, , and these words with which I obligate you today shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them to your children. Talking of them when you sit at home and when you go on your way, when you lie down and when you rise up.
It’s an astonishing model of education. One that understands we learn not just in the school room and the academy, but in every aspect of our lives. And that we as parents and teachers impart our cultural heritage to the next generation, through all that we do. Through the way that we speak, the way that we act, the way that we debate, and the way that we learn. So finally, my 50 core Jewish books. If you would like to receive a copy, all you have to do is email Judy who will be inundated with your emails. And in your email, give the name of one or more books that you would include in the list and the reason why, and we will add your books to the list and send it back to you. And the truth is we’ll send you the list even if you don’t recommend a book, but I’d love to know what you would include in Jewish cultural literacy. Thank you so much. Let me just see.
So, hi, I’m going to jump in here. I just want to say thank you for a really, really excellent presentation. So please do not email Judy. What I want to say. No, because Judy has another job.
Okay.
She’s got a huge job when working for me. So I don’t want to contradict you, but what I want to say is we will definitely send out that email to everybody else. You’re going to everybody, 12,000 people are going to get a book list.
Fine. That sounds fair to me.
If you do have a recommendation for another book, I’m telling this to all people that are listening, I think there are 2000 people on today. So for those of you who do want to contribute, we would definitely be very grateful for all contributions. So then send your contribution to Judy and we will send it on. Does that work?
That sounds excellent.
Okay. That’s just a tiny bit, my vision.
That’s no problem at all. I would not want to create a serious-
An avalanche. An avalanche of emails. So, okay. So once again to all of you, I just want to reiterate, we are going to send you out the book list, and we’ll be very grateful if you had anything to add to send it back to Judy and then she will send it on. So would you mind just reiterating the name of the book that you recommended in the first place.
I’m so sorry, which one was it?
You said it was the basic book that-
Oh yes. So hold on a second. So there’s a couple.
Adam. Yeah, Adam, you mentioned the name of one book. Okay.
The first one was obviously Jonathan Sacks’, which is ,“Radical Then, Radical Now,” which I think is excellent.
It says what?
“Radical Then, Radical Now,” of all of his books, I would say this one encapsulates his thinking. It’s an early book, but encapsulates his thinking most clearly, and covers a lot of the subjects that he then expands on later in other books. And in terms of illiteracy, is this coming over backwards? Back to front? Or is this clear?
Oh I think that was the one Jewish, so it’s Rabbi… Clear.
So this is “Jewish Wisdom.” It’s actually “Jewish Literacy,” forgive me, I picked out the wrong one from my shelf. It’s called, “Jewish Literacy.” This one is a subsequent book he wrote, and it’s by Rabbi Telushkin.
Is that by Rabbi Telushkin?
Yeah, by Telushkin.
Where does he live? Is he still-
He’s still in America, he’s still in the States.
Is he in New York?
Yes, he’s in New York as far as I know. Yes, I believe so. And the other one I mentioned was also this one, which is Adam Kirsch’s, “The People and the Books,” which is 18 classic works of Jewish literature. And I think it’s a really, really interesting read and it really engages with the text as well. So those are some of them, but I will actually… Hopefully when when you get the list, you’ll get a list of other books as well. But I really, really would appreciate if people have the opportunity to think about it and send me what they think should go on. I think that would be amazing. I’d just love to use this as an opportunity.
Great. So we do have a couple of minutes for… Hold on, Judy is sending me a text. No, she’s not.
I’m saying let’s do questions. Okay.
Okay.
Right.
Q&A and Comments:
- So just looking through, Judy, have you seen any in particular that you think should be answered? There’s lots of comments. Let me just see. Your affirmations.
Q: The risk of literate Jews becoming rigid fundamentalists worries me. What are your thoughts?
A: Okay, excellent questions. I actually think that literate Jews are the antidote to becoming fundamentalists. I think fundamentalists very often lack a breadth of experience and knowledge, and an appreciation of how inclusive and broad Judaism is. The more literate you are, the more you’ll appreciate the diversity of opinions and the fact that things have been very different. I’ll give you one example. We have such a view of the Pale of Settlement, of being this sort of Fiddler on the roof kind of place. It was actually so vibrant and so different to what you would imagine when you read some of the histories of that period. You realise that Jews were secular, they were cultured. The Yiddish writing is extraordinary. So I actually think that the more that you read, the more it bolsters you in your view that you must be inclusive, and appreciate other people have different perspectives.
What else we got here?
Q: How will we ever make it up to them from COVID? Do we Jews have a special responsibility to alleviate this pending disaster about COVID that young children have actually been deprived of learning?
A: I think it is an enormous blow in particular disadvantaged children. And Hirsch mentions this brilliantly. He talks about how cultural literacy allows disadvantaged children to emerge from their backgrounds. And so I really do think it is a tremendous thing if one can be involved in education, whether it is as a teacher, or whether it’s supporting schools, or whether it’s mentoring or coaching. I think it’s a very Jewish idea, the fact that we have something to give. And if we can do it through schools and through education, I think that would be wonderful. Any others? Book knowledge… I think we’ve covered everything. I would only be too happy if there were other questions to follow it up. But I think Judy, I think we’ve gone through most of the questions. If there’s any others, please email me or whatever, and I’m only too happy to answer them directly.
Adam, are you happy for us to send out your email address?
If people want to speak to me or want to email me? It’s not difficult to find, so I’m happy if it’s attached to the book list, you can include it in the book list.
Okay, that’s a very good idea. So if you have a question, just add the question to our book list and then we will send it on to Adam. So this is a most wonderful forum and it’s a beautiful community, but there are a lot of people, and we just don’t… There are only four of us. Actually there’s really three of us who are doing all the logistics. It’s myself, and Judy, and Carly, and Shawna, the four of us. So, but even-
I apologise.
So three, Shawna, Judy, and myself.
But yes, it would be lovely if there’s some way of me learning how people feel about it, even if they put it now at the moment into the chat, or the Q and A, suggestions of the books that they would like, and I would add them to the list as well. But I think we’ve covered all of the questions.
So that was fabulous. Thank you very, very much Adam, that was a taster, and it is so, so, so important, as you said, it’s got to come from the home and it’s got to come from the community, both.
I agree.
One has to endorse the other, and then one really does pass the values on, because if the parents are not interested, so even if you send your children to Jewish schools and the parents are dismissive of what they’re learning at school, it will not be endorsed.
And one of the problems we have in the UK community is that we have such a high level of attendance at schools, which are publicly funded-
Right.
That we feel many parents feel they’ve done their job by simply sending them to a Jewish school.
Exactly. So how many of those children who go to Jewish schools can actually run a Seder?
We know that literacy rates are not great.
Exactly.
And we have eight… Over 80% of Jewish kids are in Jewish primary schools, and around 50% are in Jewish secondary schools.
Right.
We’ve placed a big bet on our schools, how effective that they’re being in giving cultural literacy to our kids is a question mark.
Very good. All right, well thank you very much. To be continued and we look forward to meeting up soon. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Thank you everybody. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. Bye.