Judaism. . . A Deeply Nourishing Source of Human Flourishing

Professor Barry Holtz raises what is in essence an age-old question about Jewish education: What role will it (continue) to play in defining what it means to be Jewish? In puzzling about contemporary Jewry, Holtz asserts what any true-blue Jewish educator would claim, namely that well-crafted educational experiences positively influence one’s Jewish identity, values, and ideas about the world individuals inhabit.

Holtz correctly notes that salient findings of the seminal “A Time to Act” presaged that Judaism would need to become a “compelling source for personal human flourishing” if it was to engage Jews, educationally, in substantive encounters with the faith and its sacrosanct teachings, hallowed values, ritual practices, and storied history. He opines that the relationship between knowing and doing is uncertain while adhering to the value of learning for its own sake. By contrast, Michael Zeldin, commenting on the intrinsically valuable nature of Jewish learning, adds the critically important observation that such learning must not be “merely instrumental to some future Jewish identity.” Zeldin argues that Jewish education is perpetually relevant in teaching “resonance and spirituality that come from attachment to Judaism, Jewishness, and the Jewish people as well as for the dissonance that allows Jews to explore the rationale for being Jewish” (“Remembering What We Never Knew: Jewish Education in the 21st Century,” Founders Day Address, HUC-Jewish Institute of Religion, February 28, 2008).

In considering these contrasting points of view, I am reminded of remarks made by my former Jim Joseph Foundation colleague, Adene Sacks, who in her acceptance of the prestigious Jewish Funders Network JJ Greenberg Memorial Award brilliantly contemporized Jewish learning in the contexts of finding a teacher and a chaver (friend). Ms. Sacks invoked the growing influence of networks (of all types) on one’s identity formation; the weak and strong ties networking entails and what those connections mean to a person’s sense of self; the so-called bridging and bonding capital that network users acquire and accumulate as a result of their network activity. It turns out, Sacks insightfully contends, that learning for its own sake in the 21st century, given the pervasive presence of networks, will ineluctably become learning done in relationships learners have with others.

Moreover, to Holtz’s point that “we are committed to transmitting a body of knowledge and related skills—broadly defined—to our students,” I would argue that the very nature of education has changed, manifestly and irreversibly so. In brief, what most typically involved transmission of circumscribed bodies of content and demonstration of static sets of skills by experts to novices in fixed time and space no longer monopolize the structure for teaching and learning. Technology has fundamentally subverted this classical model of education—democratizing it and, in so doing, making even deep learning possible in real time, anytime, anywhere. New modalities of learning involve avatars, simulations, maker spaces, virtual realities, use of original source material heretofore unavailable for use except in limited edition print format, etc. New fields of study now regularly are created, with formerly discrete disciplines animating one another and leading to novel interdisciplinary discoveries.

Hyper accelerated technological change and radical new forms of social organization have ruptured venerable Jewish practices. According to Dr. Paula Hyman, modernity has “fractured Jewish experience, destroying the hegemony of rabbinic Judaism and the authority of traditional Jewish elites. Contemporary currents of thought like postmodernism and multiculturalism have challenged virtually all certainties and shaken all canons. No canon is fixed, and all guardians of cultural transmission are required to make hard choices” (“Who Is an Educated Jew?” Posted on My Jewish Learning). Challenges to conventions in Jewish worship, rabbinic ordination, denominationalism, even halakhah are now commonplace as Judaism is actively reimagined and reconceptualized.

Additionally, in a 21st-century universe, people intermingle across geographic, generational, racial, religious, ethnic, cultural, and even economic boundaries in making for unprecedented diversity of human interaction. Jews have never enjoyed the freedoms they do today, nefarious and virulent anti-Semitism notwithstanding.

As a result of profound historical shifts in so many aspects of human affairs, then, perhaps we need to confront different kinds of questions about Jewish education than those Holtz poses. It seems to me the relevance of Jewish education to being Jewish in today’s world has less to do with discrete content and specific educational outcomes than with matters of inventive, easily accessible ways for individuals to mine Judaism’s rich treasury of wisdom for purposes of making meaning and living authentically in a complex, dynamic society.

If I am correct, then the community should feel relatively comfortable about the investments in Jewish education that foundations and funders have been making now for more than a decade. In my experience, significant numbers of today’s supporters of Jewish education construe it broadly (as Holtz acknowledges), fund it generously, help to widely populate the community with highly trained professional educators, and respond to opportunities to support myriad promising educational innovations in a spirit that bespeaks good faith in the power of Jewish education to continue to nourish the Jewish people.

While I fret about a future in which too many Jews might sit in solitude at their own Shabbos tables, it does not trouble me to see Jewish education as integral to a Jewish individual’s life-long pursuits of purpose and community without predicting how that education is best attained or prescribing its content. I agree with Hyman that “the legacy of our generation may well be a postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion and a recognition that a diverse people requires cultural diversity.”

Judaism can be a deeply nourishing source for human flourishing. We are an ever-renewing people. I am sanguine that we will creatively adapt centuries-old Jewish education content in finding effective ways to enrich Jewish minds, impart life affirming Jewish values, and inspire a next generation of Jews to design invigorated Jewish communities of belonging, relevance, and meaning.

Dr. Chip Edelsberg devoted more than two decades to Jewish synagogue, federation, and foundation executive-level work. He is a professional educator by training. Dr. Edelsberg now teaches and writes on trends in education and philanthropy, consults social sector organizations on performance improvement, and mentors next generation leaders.