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Burton R. Thorman Editor: Renee Goldman TEMPLE RODEF SHALOM Phone: 532-2217 Rabbi: Laszlo Berkowits President: Burton R. Thorman Editor: Renee Goldman tss Edition No. 43 A Monthly Newsletter FEBRUARY 1966 WORSHIP SERVICES All Worship Services are held in the First Christian Church, 6165 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Virginia, at 8:15 p.m., unless otherwise Indicated. Friday, February tth, BAR MITZVAH OF MICHAEL COHEN, 8:15 p.m * son of Joseph and Blanche Cohen Friday, February 11th, WORSHIP SERVICE 3:15 p.m. Candle Lighting: Goldie Weck Hef torah Reading: Richard Beym Friday. February 18th, WORSHIP SERVICE: 8:15 p.m. Candle Lighting: Anna Kobn - Haf torah Reading: Samuel Yudkin Friday, February 25th, WORSHIP SERVICE 8:15 p.m. Candle Lighting: Esther Davis Haftorah Reading: Paul Pfeiffer -2- EVENTS Wednesday, February 2nd, WOMENS GROUP EVENING MEETING 8:00 p.m. Ravenwood Towers Clubroom Rabbi Berkowits will review The Source, by James Michener. Husbands and friends are invited. Sunday, February 6th, CONGREGATIONAL MEETING 10: 15 a.m. Lemon Road Elementary School 7:30 p.m. SEMINAR STUDY GROUP Rabbis Home (Ravenwood Towers) Monday, February 7th, WOMENS GROUP BOARD MEETING 11: 30 a.m. Temple Office 7:30 p.m. TEMPLE BOARD MEETING Temple Office 9 :05 p.m. TEMPLE BOWLING LEAGUE Falls Church Bowl America Lanes 140 Maple Street, Falls Church Wednesday, February 9th, SOCIAL ACTION MEETING 8:1S p.m. Temple Office Wednesday, February 16th, CULTURAL PROGRAM 8:00 p.m. Ravenwood Towers Clubroom Sunday, February 20th, SEMINAR STUDY GROUP 7:30 p.m. Rabbis Home (Ravenwood Towers) . S • S • • COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES The Alexandria Chapter f Bnai Brith Women would be very happy to welcome members of the Congregation to its membership. Interested women are urged to eobtact Mrs. Milton Kramer (931-2085) for further information, * * FROM THE RABBIS DESK ilr JEWISH LEARNING AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION By Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof Temple Rodef Shalom, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania JUDAISM HAS ALWAYS been unique in its attitude towards education., While learning was present in many religions, ancient and medieval, mass learning was non-existent. Learning was for the clerics,, All that was asked of the average person was simple faith. Judaism was the only religion which hel4 study and learning a religious duty. Therefore education had to be made accessible to all. The education given to Jewish boys In past centuries envisioned as its essential goal men who are lifelong students, prepared to fulfill a crucial Jewish, religious obligation. Study in adult life was not something to be proud of. , nor something to be congratulated upon but was a ful- fillment of a God-given mandate. For this west thou created." In Judaism, learning was religion; this was an attitude unparalleled among the religions of the world. But there was something iather remarkable about this difficult and complicated Talmudic education. Efforts were frequently made to re- form it, but such efforts failed. Judah Loew ben Bezalel raged against the complicated pilpulistic studies and advocated a return to the rela- tive simplicities of the Mishnah. Yet for all his influence, he fail. Though he did add the idea of the circle for the study of the Mishnah In many communities ., he did not diminish one whit the mass devotion of Jews to the complicated Talmudic pilpul 0 Similarly, as great an authority as YaIr Chain Bachrach outlined a whole plan of improved edu- cation to take the place of the existing complex legal education, with all its Intricacies. He, too, never succeeded. Why did these great men fail, when it must have been obvious to all that Jewish education as it was practiced was so difficult? Anyone could see that such edu- cation was extremely arduous for children. Why begin children, almost in the kindergarten years, with Talmudic complexities? Why were all efforts at reform resisted? This question may lead us into a fuller understanding of the great Talmudic education of the Jewish past. It was not really"educatlon" of the person so much as a personal religiots duty itself. Since that was the aim, the more difficult the duty the more noble the devotion it evoked. Why make Gods commandments easy? Thus, while the education was an expression of religion, it would be incorrect to call it "religious education." If young people had been taught Maimonides opening book of the "Yad," "The Laws of the Foundationsof the Torah"; or if Bachyas "Duties of the Heart" were central In their curriculum, then their education would actually have been "religious education." But what they really had was not this at all. They were first given a rough and ready linguistic education in order to be able to understand a legal literature. It was an educa- tion for lawyers, because our religion considered that the study of this legal literature was a primary religious duty. Learnin was our religion (an important part of it) but our learning was not religious education." Yet, under that system, we had scores of generations of completely religious people! Nevertheless, I believe we make a mistake when we assume a causal relationship between the religious loyalty of past generations and the religious activity of their Talmudic study, The (cont a) Jewish Learning (contd) legal learning, with its intricate argumentation for which Jewish edu- cation was a preparation, was not the "cause" of their religion. It was a magnificent manifestation of it. Their homes were religioue Every observance reminded them of their duty to God. Their closed Jewish environment was religious. And the non-Jewish environment around them was religious. Their learning, therefore, was never meant to be an education for becoming religious. It was an expression ofa religion already there, and a noble expression at that. It wasP not necessary to teach religion to Jewish children all these centuries. It existed all around them and they breathed it at home, in , the synagogue and in the schools Direct religious education can be said to,haVe..be!fl superfluous in the Jewish Middle Ages. Even today, in pious Jewish districts . the yeshivah students in Chass1c families are not , being. taughtreligion; they are simply, expressing religion through their t:Lmudic studies; The basic change in religious education brought about by Reform was the inescapable result of a complete change in the Jewish environment. In fact, there was a complete change in the whole world in which. Western Jews lived. It was the revolutionary fact that the world ceased to be universally, or one might say, instinctively roligious. It was rapidly becoming a secular world. That is what modernism meant, -r.elly, The scholastic philosophies of the Middle Ages gave way..to, the critical philosophies of modern times. The church and the, syna- gogue were no longer the chief sources of general education. Now e, state schools and the universities taught it as a secular discipline. Now, for the first time, if. children were to be raised as religious -in an increasingly non-religious world, religion had actually to be Vaught to them, a need which never had arisen before. That is. where Feform education was different from all preceding Jewish education; ,it was directly an educatirn for religion. .. - To absorb religion naturally is certainly more effective than need ing to learn it as a subject." But now there was no choice, and tea:ching methods had to be improvised. Today we are inclined to. be a "little scornful of some of the earlier textbooks, especially .of. the ca.techisimswhich were used in those days. It is well enough .for,u.s ,to sar .that these textbooks were. merely an imitation of Cetholic and, Protestant catechistic training. But the fact 1s that the se early., Reormf educators felt the, urgent need for teaching the essentials .oil. religion itself,. directly and efficiently, for there was no longer a natural Jewish religious environment in which belief. in God .and bed iencè to his laws could be naturally absorbed. ,The , method may heve,, been wrong and unimaginative, but it revealed the need for direct, religious education which had never been felt before.. No child .in,.the time of Moses Isserles in Cracow needed to b ,e taught that there;i a. God who governs the universe and whose laws must be obeyed. But a hundred years ago a child in Hamburg and in New York needed to bee. ' taught just that. History forced us to move from legal education to religious education, This new and urgent need explains the turn.in Reform curriculum from Talmud to Bible. It is not the complete explanation for this .a}iift, but it is a significant element in the total explanation. In the Talmud, especially in the halachic portions which.were studiedjnost, the heroes were the brilliant rabbis. In the Bible, the hero was God Himself.. In the Talmud, the heights were reached by prophetic ct. Therefore, if the presence of God were to be made a reality, (cont d) Jewish Learning (contd) the Bible which breathes His presence on every page must be the cen- tral textbook. Of course, once we removed ourselves from the exclus- ive preoccupation with Talmudic argumentation there was now room for a variety of subjects, and we were able to add history, handwork, intergroup relationship, ethical stories, etc. We were searching In many directions for material from which we could teach God more direct- ly than could be taught from the Talmud. This also explains the change in the educational Institutions which occurred under the influence of Reform. In Europe there was no real distinction between the congregation and the community. The various synagogue groups were part of the general community, and therefore the education was communal education. In America, with the Jewish commun- ities growing by successive waves of immigration from different parts of the world at ditferent stages of westernization, there was no real Jewish community, merely separate Jewish groups.
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