It is our absolute conviction that education if it is to be a reality must, as it has always been to the true Jew and the true Englishman, be firmly and fearlessly religious, the Chief Rabbi Dr. J. H. Hertz said speaking last night at the Savoy Hotel at the festival dinner of the Jewish Secondary School in London, which is situated at Finsbury Park. A sum of £1,250 was collected at the dinner in aid of the school.
Need I stress the fact, the Chief Rabbi went on, that Jewish education with its own sacred language and literature, its own hallowed historic customs, its own ideals, and beliefs, must have its own perspective and emphasis in transmitting to the men and women of to-morrow, the distinctive Jewish civilisation enshrined in Judaism. If we Jews have anything worth teaching the world – our spiritual outlook on the universe, our distinctive social and humanitarian ethic – why withhold it from our children, why withhold it from the world? Why always be intellectual borrowers? Jews have done some lending as well.
No one in Jewish education, the Chief Rabbi said, fathomed the meaning of Jewish education more deeply and saw the sacred duty of realising it more clearly than Dr. Victor Schonfeld (the founder of the school). He had a vision of a full harmonious Jewish education for the Jewish child, and did not rest till his vision was translated into reality. The seer of this vision has been taken from us, but his sacred undertaking must not be suffered to perish. It should be a matter of honour for every English Jew who believes in Jewish Judaism to help this first Anglo-Jewish Secondary School on the road to permanency, on the road to lasting and blessed results to Jews and Judaism in this country.
WHAT ARE MORE IMPORTANT NEEDS THAN JEWISH EDUCATION HAHAM DR. GASTER ASKS: FEEDING HUNGRY CLOTHING NAKED AND ASSUAGING PAIN URGENT AND EXCELLENT BUT NOT COMPARABLE IN IMPORTANCE TO JEWISH EDUCATION: UNFORTUNATELY JEWS SUFFERING MORE AND MORE FROM INFERIORITY COMPLEX AND TO SEND JEWISH CHILDREN TO ORDINARY SCHOOL IS TO INCULCATE FEELING OF INFERIORITY IN THESE DAYS OF DISINTEGRATING NON-JEWISH INFLUENCES ON ANGLO-JEWISH COMMUNITY AND RESTRICTION OF IMMIGRATION PREVENTING FRESH ORTHODOX LIFE BLOOD COMING IN MR. NATHAN LASKI SAYS EVERY AGENCY FOR INTENSIFICATION OF SURVIVING JEWISHNESS MUST BE UTILISED.
What are those needs? the Haham Dr. Gaster asked, referring to those people in the Community who said they could not assist them and that there were more urgent needs before the Community than their institution. What were those needs? They were to feed the hungry; clothe the naked and assuage pain. Those were very urgent and excellent objects, but they were, he thought, not comparable in importance to that of Jewish education – the clothing of the hungry – hungry for the word of God.
We Jews, unfortunately, are suffering more and more from the complex of inferiority, Dr. Gaster went on. To send little Jewish children to the ordinary secondary school means to alienate them and inculcate into their minds that feeling of inferiority.
No memorial could be more fitting to such a man, Mr. Nathan Laski, who was in the chair, said in the course of a tribute to the late Rabbi Victor Schonfeld. This school gives education in a wholly Jewish environment, he said, and shows by its example and its success that in a Jewish school boys can be educated at least as successfully and purposefully as in a State or non-Jewish environment. In these days when so many non-Jewish Community, and when, owing to rigid restriction of alien immigration no fresh orthodox life-blood can come to us from abroad-it behoves us to utilise and strengthen every agency for the intensification of such Jewishness as survives.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
