Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 313

“Judaism is committed to the notion that education can and must reach the inner man, that its goal is to refine and to exalt the nature of man.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 56)

In 1635, 141 years before the American Revolution, public education began in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1642, 134 years before the American Revolution, Massachusetts Bay required parents to teach their children to read and write! In Deuteronomy, Chapter 6 verse 7 we are commanded to “teach them diligently to your children”, and in the Talmud we are told a father is “obligated to teach his son Torah” among other things pointing to the validity of what Rabbi Heschel is saying above and pointing to the importance of education for the soul of every human being, the soul of a nation dedicated to freedom, to growing a “more perfect union”, to being that “shining city on a hill”, to growing into the person we know we can be and want to be. Just as education has been crucial to Judaism and to the American experiment, it was also important to the Church, which St. Augustine began a school in the church he founded in Canterbury to study religious texts to improve and “exalt the nature of man.” Throughout the Arab world from 750 educating the young both in the Koran and other subjects was deemed important.

Education was always about the inner life of the child, the youth, the teen, the adult. Spiritual, religious education was never to be about the keeping of facts or the one-way to do something as evidenced by the myriad of arguments as to how to fulfill a commandment found in the Talmud. Education was/is to help us grow our inner life and change our outer actions. It is/was to “speak of them when sit in your house, you walk on the way, lie down, rise up” as Deuteronomy continues to teach us. We are told to keep them as “frontlets before our eyes” and “a sign upon our hand” so we are constantly available to learn, to implement, to change. Remembering what we said at Mount Sinai, “we will do and we will understand”. Unfortunately, education has been under attack for quite some time. In 2014, “only 23% of the 9100 eighth graders were at or above proficiency levels in civics” according to an article in the School Library Journal. In Judaism religious education is not much better as too many 13 year-olds are given the option of ending their religious and spiritual education once their B-Mitzvah is over. Prior to this, the state of education is always inspiring one to learn more. In all sects of Judaism, priority is given to teaching the dogma of the sect over the truth of the Bible, the “spin” of the Rabbi over the teaching students and their parents how to read the texts themselves, put themselves into the texts, learn the lessons and understand it uniquely for themselves and the moment. Hence, the problem of education is that neither public nor private, neither secular nor religious cares to “reach the inner man” nor “to exalt the nature of man”, rather it is to promote their agenda rather than truth, create cult followers rather than human beings with the power and the tools to change themselves and their world, to understand, interpret, and implement the ways of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the teachings of Buddha, etc in their own unique way, enhance their inner life and “exalt the nature” of themselves. Religious education is so awful, fallen so far that in 2023 Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, reported that “multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, in their preaching-‘turn the other cheek’-to have someone come up and say “where did you get these liberal talking points”!! The Rabbis of the West Bank and the Far-right in Israel and the world believe it is okay to kill Palestinians because they are “Amalek” without any remorse!!

We hear much about “Am Yisrael Chai”, the people of Israel lives! Yet, we have never been one people with one way of seeing things, we have never agreed with one interpretation nor one teaching except for the Shema as the ‘watchword of the Jewish people’ and even the Shema is open to many interpretations, that something happened at Sinai, that the Torah is at least 2500+ years old and not much more. This is because Jewish education is supposed to have us “argue for the sake of heaven” so we can keep learning, keep turning the texts that influence our daily living over and over again in order to grow internally, to mature our souls and educate our intuitions. We cannot continue to be Jews and love Judaism while going against the dictate of the commands of Deuteronomy 6:4-9! We cannot say we are living a Jewish/Christian/Muslim life while treating the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan badly! We cannot say we are the saviors while we use the rhetoric of the autocrats, while we support the degradation of any group of people no matter what some in that group have done to us.

Education is the key to understanding ourselves, to growing our inner core, to having the strength to say NO to the bullies. Refining and exalting the nature of human beings forces us to let go of our need to compare, our need to be in despair because of comparisons, to accept our gifts as enough, to know we matter, to know we are growing into a richer and more meaningful way of living. This is crucial for our children to grow up knowing and for us to keep remembering as adults.  Education is the key to growing our souls to know better than to follow the wrong path without any awareness, it is the key to “lift up our eyes” and see what is truly in front of us, what is behind us and how to make better decisions and take the next right actions. We have to re-invest in our own education, in the education of those around us, in our communal education so we achieve 80-90% proficiency in Civics, in following the teachings of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. Education is the only way to fulfill the commandment of Deuteronomy Chapter 30:19; CHOOSE LIFE.

Education is the only way I am able to exist in the world of spirit, to be a decent human being, to acknowledge my “miss the marks” as well as the “hit the marks’ I achieve. It is the path I began in 1987 when I asked my brother to send me a Prayer Book and a Bible when I was in prison. It is a path that I know is never done for me, I keep finding teachers and students, learning partners and guides to help me stay fresh and not get stale. I am amazed at how I, like many others, get pigeon-holed into one way of being seen. I have been told that my message and my delivery is not conducive to ‘regular congregations’ and, every time I have spoken places, I am pretty well received, the message is ignored usually after I leave and it is heard. I continue to learn and grow, I continue to see the past in new lights and learn new lessons, I continue to learn, I continue to grow, I continue to CHOOSE LIFE. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark