Exactly six years ago this week, the late Rabbi Lord Sacks participated in a debate in the British House of Lords on the role of education in building a flourishing society. (GAJE reported on Rabbi Sacks’ debate remarks after he spoke them in the House of Lords.)
In a precise four-minute speech entitled “The world our children will inherit tomorrow is born in the schools we build today”, Rabbi Sacks pleaded for an educational system that instils in children knowledge and values.
“We need to give our children an internalised moral Satellite Navigation System so that they can find their way across the undiscovered country called the future. We need to give them the strongest possible sense of collective responsibility for the common good…. There is too much “I” and too little “We” in our culture and we need to teach our children to care for others, especially those not like us.”
Rabbi Sacks words echoed in the air this week like a clanging, piercing fire alarm against the unnerving and disheartening testimony at a congressional hearing in the US by the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. Neither could find it in her respective world view or conscience to state categorically that calling for the genocide of Jews amounted to harassment, bullying or intimidation. Each equivocated and dissembled, preferring to state that before the words amounted to intimidation they had to evolve into conduct. As if publicly, loudly advocating for the slaughter of Jews were not itself conduct. The context of the call for genocide was also determinative for the presidents in deciding whether Jews – as individuals or as a group – would feel harassed or intimidated when a mob of people or even a single person, urged others to kill Jews.
When the leaders of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, fail to grasp that actively calling for the genocide of Jews is more a matter of unpleasantness than of intimidation, we are entitled to ask of them: What sort of schools are they building today? And it thus becomes imperative to ask of our law-abiding, freedom-loving, democracy-imbued society, and indeed, of ourselves: what hate-laden world will our children inherit, as a result?
The questions are not speculative. In the aftermath of October 7, they take on a pressing urgency for us and for our society.
These are dark days, figuratively and literally. All of us who care to preserve and to strengthen our free and democratic way of life, have a role to play in lessening the darkness. The candles we light during Chanukah will be an unsubtle reminder that since we are all involved, we must all respond. We are all on the front lines in fighting to save our Judaism and our Jewishness from
those who resent us and who hate our religion and resulting peoplehood. As a result, we are all on the front lines in fighting to save our society.
The late Rabbi Joseph Kelman of Toronto often reminded congregants that the etymological root of the Hebrew word Chanukah was the same as that for chinuch, ie, education. The homiletical connection, he pointed out, was obvious: Education is – and has always been – the light by which every Jewish generation has kept aglow the eternal flame of Judaism. This is no mere rhetorical flourish. It is an observable truth that all of us – in some form and at some time – have witnessed and understood deeply in our hearts.
The responsibility of ensuring Jewish continuity is only partially fulfilled in holding dearly onto what we received from our forebears. Its fuller realization is in passing forward to our own children, before the end of our days on this earth, the values, traditions and beliefs our parents and grandparents attempted lovingly, as best they could, to entrust to us.
Since October 7, joining the battle to ensure Jewish continuity means also joining the battle to ensure the continuity of our free, tolerant, law-abiding society.
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Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.
Chag Urim Samayach. Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
December 8, 2023
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 