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Is there a Jewish way of transmitting faith?
Colette Kessler

 

Is there a Jewish way of transmitting faith? This question could be answered in large part by the quip: If there were no transmission of faith there would be no Judaism! I am aware that by writing thus I have allowed myself to use the proposed terminology and by doing so have withdrawn not only from Jewish terminology but also from the thought that it conveys.

«We will do ...»

To make this clear I propose to consider a well known text from midrashic literature (Song of Songs Rabbah 1.4,1) which refers to one of the basic events in the development of the Jewish people, ma'amad har Sinai, the revelation of Sinai.

And God said to Moses: Ask Israel if they wish my Torah . . . And the Israelites answered: We wish it, and what it ordains we will accomplish. — But, said Moses, what will be the sureties of your promise, in the sight of the Lord? — Let our ancestors be our guarantors, said the Israelites. — Your ancestors will die; how can they be your guarantors? — Let our prophets be our guarantors. — Your prophets are not yet born: how can they be your guarantors? — Then the women of Israel said to the Prophet: May our children be our guarantors. God will teach you the Torah, you will teach it to the fathers; they will teach it to their children, and their children to their children, and the children of their children to their children. — And Moses asked the children: Will you be the guarantors of your fathers before the Eternal? — They replied: We will. Then all the Israelites cried: Our children will be our guarantors; all that the Eternal will ordain, we will do and we will hear . . . (translation based on the French version by Edmond Fleg in Moire raconte par les Sages).

This Midrash makes an unheard-of affirmation: Israel acquires the distinction of being the chosen people and assumes its priestly vocation thanks to and through its children. God's plan for the world is transmitted by children. The hope born in Abraham by his acceptance of the covenant appears to be suspended on the lips and on the hearts of the little children of Israel. The setting in motion of « sacred history g, its unfolding and its final accomplishment, is in the hands of those who have only their innocence to offer. This Midrash thus invites us from the start to understand the risk inherent in revelation, the risk of failure, failure resulting from a rupture in transmission, from a lack of guarantors of the revelation. At the same time it stresses the invincible experience of all who, from generation to generation, until the coming of the messiah, will feel responsible for the unfolding of history.

To make clear the originality of the biblical revelation and of Judaism, a second observation must be made. Sure that the children will accept, the Israelites do not say: « We shall believe in the Eternal g, but: « All that the Eternal commands us we shall do and we shall hear. i> They undertake to act and afterwards understand. They are united by the emuna which, though translated by « faith g, is not synonymous with belief. Emuna is trust, involvement and adherence through action. This fundamental teaching of Judaism is corroborated by another key verse of the Torah (Gen. 18:19). God said of Abraham: « I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.”

Faith does not express itself by subscribing to a belief, by demonstrating the existence of God, or by elaborating theoretical data on his essence; faith is witness to trust and to fidelity by the performance of just actions so as to build from age to age and from generation to generation (in Hebrew toledot) cities of justice on this earth. Faith is commitment to accomplish the obligations of the Torah because through the Torah creation is perfected; it is expressed by moral conduct and ritual actions. Faith is not limited to a private relationship between God and man. It inserts the Jew into «a collective identity » which he discovers and makes grow within himself by study and perusal of the texts that have come forth from this ma'amad Sinai, this event in which his ancestors accepted « the infinite responsibility of the world ».

You shall teach …

These considerations, not only preliminary but also primordial, enable us to situate the question of the transmission of faith more accurately in the Jewish perspective. Thanks to the Midrash quoted above, we understand more clearly that the existence of the community, at each point in its history, was considered as dependent on the diffusion of knowledge. Let it suffice to recall that during the seise of Jerusalem, the Temple — and with it the Judaism of which it was the center —was threatened with destruction. But Judaism was saved by one of the greatest masters of the time, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, who went to Jabneh to found a « school n. A little later (towards 135 CE.), Rabbi Akiba chose to die a martyr rather than to cease teaching the Torah which the Romans, among others, had forbidden. Here it is fitting to quote a striking aphorism of the Talmud (Shabbat 119b). The verse « Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm n (1 Gluon. 16:22) is commented upon as follows:

« Touch not mine anointed n refers to school children; « and do my prophets no harm », to disciples of the Sages. . . . The world endures only for the sake of the breath of school children. . . . School children may not be made to neglect their studies even for the building of the Temple. . . . Every town in which there are no school children shall be destroyed.

The biblical verbs expressing the idea of transmission are numerous: repeat, teach, recount, tell, transmit. By proclaiming evening and morning in the Shema Yisrael (Dent. 6) the unity of God, the Jew accepts, according to the traditional expression, « the yoke of the kingdom of heaven ». He pronounces and accepts the commandment: « You shall teach these words to your children. n To teach Judaism is not a commandment, a mitzvah, like the others, but, according to our rabbis: « The study of the Torah equals all the mitzvot », talmud Torah keneged kulam (Mishnah Peal, 1.1), that is to say, to teach the Torah to children, adolescents and adults is the most important of all the commandments of Judaism. This is why teaching is first be=gun in the privileged circle of the family. There it could he said that from the cradle each observance, the celebration of each feast, enables the father, and above all the mother, to « recount », to « explain » and — by recalling the past — to illustrate what is happening in the present. The family celebration of the Passover seder is of particular relevance here. During it the 4 mimed » account of the escape from Egypt is arranged in the form of a dialogue between the father and the children. These latter have not only the possibility but the duty of asking questions, thus taking an active part in this central ceremony of family liturgy.

The organization of « obligatory teaching » in Judaism at all levels, primary, secondary and advanced, goes back to very ancient times (to the first half of the first century BCE.), and some of the teaching methods of those times do not seem particularly out of date. Classes should consist of twenty-five children — for more there should be an assistant teacher; over forty would necessitate the opening of another class. The principles given by a certain Joseph Judah ibn Aknin of Barcelona are still relevant: the good teacher must completely master his subject; he must apply to his own life the principles to be inculcated into his pupils; he must care for his pupils as if they were his own children, etc. Obviously this teaching was only obligatory, and sometimes only authorized, for Jewish subjects — Bible, Mishnah, Torah — and it had to be done in Hebrew. It is noteworthy that from the most elementary teaching, such as that of the alphabet, through the Torah up to the Talmud, care was taken to stress the fundamental moral and ethical aspects of Judaism. Thus, according to a text of the treatise Shabbat (104a), the order of the alphabet was taught by attributing to each letter in succession a moral virtue:

“Gimmel Daleth, [means] show kindness to the poor [Gemol Dallim]. Why is the foot of the Gimmel stretched toward the Daleth? Because it is] fitting for the benevolent to run after [seek out] the poor. » Another example: « Why do young children commence with [the Book of] the Law of the Priests [i.e. Leviticus], and not with [the Book of] Genesis? — Surely it is because young children are pure, and the sacrifices are pure; so let the pure come and engage in the study of the pure” (Leviticus Rabbah VII.3).

Not answers but questions

Today the circumstances of Jewish existence have fundamentally changed. Many Jews, by assenting to modernity after emancipation, have sought to live as A Israelites » more or less assimilated. They have thus forgotten those treasures of their past which could enable them the bet ter to confront the present. However, the traumatic or inspiring events which they have lived during the past thirty years have made them once again conscious of the necessity of rediscovering their Jewish identity. They have then understood that to give their children the most thorough Jewish education possible, even if the time consecrated to it is relatively short (three or six hours a week), is — today even more than yesterday — a major imperative. Certainly to live according to the Torah is no longer an easy matter. Today children and young people are often witnesses to a reality that attracts, frightens, seizes or rejects them. More than ever they need to discover a meaning in life and in existence, and consequently to find masters to enable them to « return to their books *. But sometimes they do not know — or do not yet know — what they are looking for. This means that they need to find teachers who are aware of the necessity of being something more than transmitters of knowledge. They must lead their pupils to a real awareness because they themselves have understood that « the spiritual life does not consist of answers but of questions n (E. Levinas).

Before the unavoidable tension between the changes in the contemporary Jewish world and the rediscovered demand for a teaching rooted and founded in the great writings of Judaism and justified by them, teachers must always be conscious of some of the aims that they should set themselves. For example: to awaken a feeling of attachment to the Jewish people by making the children aware of their role as active links in the chain of tradition and their responsibility for this role; to transmit the love of Jewish studies, especially Hebrew, the language of the Bible, which continues to be the vehicle of the whole of Jewish thought; to make them aware of the fact that Judaism is not only a culture but also a particular way of living and thinking; to help them to understand that the channel of theirdestiny as men and women is active and joyful acceptance of their uniqueness and of their responsibility as Jews; to explain the existential links uniting the Jews of the Diaspora with those in Israel; and to show them the way to the most fraternal dialogue possible with the non-Jewish children and young people who surround them.

Some teaching techniques have certainly changed, but the more or less common use of audio-visual material is of very little importance compared with the atmosphere created in a class. What counts above all is the person of the teacher, the reality of his involvement, and his power to make the writings of the past « speak o, to raise questions that can give a meaning to the present. For the Bible and its commentaries do not give dogmatic responses; they are pregnant with the questions of all men of all times, and stimulate them in their search for truth. Finally, and this is not always the easiest thing, the children and young people of a more or less assimilated milieu must be brought to a consciousness of the demands and meaning of the mitzvah. The mitzvah, the commandment which can be ritual, symbolizes the most fundamental demands of the Torah. It is, according to Abraham IIeschel, the « place where earth and heaven meet z. To accomplish the mitzvot is to « translate into action* knowledge gained, and above all to evolve a way of life in response to the plan of God and in responsibility for this plan.

To rouse in children and young people a love of study and a taste for the mitzvot is to endeavor to ai transmit faith g. To develop and preserve education is to make it possible for our children today as yesterday to hear the Lord of Sinai and to say in their turn “ we shall be the guarantors ».
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By what method ... ?

For us, liturgy is absolutely fundamental. It is in ritual, in the mitzvah, in the fulfilling of the most routine commandment, that the child, the pre-adolescent, like the adolescent and the adult, puts into practice all the knowledge acquired, and expresses in action his faith in God. In all of biblical and Jewish tradition there is a certain reserve in speaking of God. Everything goes on as if you were trying to live, before God, day by day, in the most ordinary actions of life, speaking very little of God. So much so, that in Judaism you do not even pronounce the name of God. This is very important for the evolution of the child's progress in his religious life. Perhaps you don't even ask him questions like: « Do you believe or don't you? n He tries, by working, studying, being part of a living group, gradually to discover what one day he may perhaps call faith, adherence to the one God.

(Colette Kessler, « Comment partager notre foi avec les enfants? z R€ forme, orme, 22 janvier 1977, p. 12).
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Colette Kessler is directress of Talmud Torah (religious education) of the Union libdrale israelite in Paris and member of the editorial board of Hamore, a journal for Jewish teachers. She is co-author of A l'ecoute du judaIsme prepared by the Centre National de l'Enseignement Religieux in France.