Little Red Talmud Torah

Dr. Golub, director of the Bureau of Jewish Education of Cincinnati, wrote this open letter in reply to an article by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver in the Bulletin November 18. Dr. Silver’s article attracted attention of Hebrew educators in all parts of the country, several taking strong exception to his conclusions.

In The Bulletin of Sunday, November 18, Rabbi Silver in his weekly column takes occasion to launch an attack against Jewish educators. Rabbi Silver states he had read in the Hadoar that among a group of young American Chalutzim there were no representatives of Talmud Torah students. He further asserts that most of the Talmud Torah graduates have gone over to the ranks of Communism. This serves the rabbi as an occasion for attacking the secularism and anti-religious character of Talmud Torahs and Bureaus of Jewish Education.

Jewish educators, Rabbi Silver charges, are conducting institutions that resemble more Berlitz than religious schools. The average Talmud Torah represents an arid grind of language instruction unrelieved by any warmth of spiritual or ethical teaching, and calculated to repel young people from Judaism.

CALLS ACCUSATION A SLANDER

An accusation against the leaders of our Talmud Torahs that they conduct dry language courses without including the classical religious literature and without attempting in any way to move the pupils emotionally is intentionally or unintentionally a slander. Torah, our religious classic par excellence, is the basic study in every Talmud Torah and is the main criterion for graduation. The prophets, early and latter, are taught in their original powerful cadences only in the Talmud Torahs. Similarly, Mishnaic and Talmudic literature are only taught in the upper departments of the Talmud Torahs. Nor are customs, ceremonial or worship omitted, as Rabbi Silver implies.

On the contrary, the Talmud Torah has developed a program of festive observance that stirs the child far more profoundly than the traditionally inherited forms ever could. The Talmud Torahs, too, have brought Jewish music and art into the Jewish child’s life, and have evolved a program of worship that is far more beautiful than that carried on in adult synagogues. The Bureaus of Education have even originated the Keren Ami, a spiritual form of children’s philanthropy. Human limitations of personnel often limit the degree of realization of the set ideals, and the wretched economic condition of our Bureaus has contributed to the loss of many able teachers. Like all human institutions, the realization often falls short of the goal. But then Rabbi Silver has a school of his own and he should understand.

WON’T SHUT EYES TO PROGRESS

But if the Talmud Torah makes an effort to save as much as is possible of Jewish tradition, the leaders in Jewish education refuse to close their eyes to serious changes in belief and outlook which the modern age has brought about. Rabbi Silver pleads that our children need “not only Jewish nationalism, but Judaism, the strong simple faith of their fathers, its colors, its warmth and its glowing mystery.” One cannot but restrain a smile at the source of this plea. One wonders when the magnificent Reform temple in which Rabbi Silvers ministers has lost its sophistication and has returned to the strong simple faith of the fathers. Memory is short and even intelligent persons, it seems, cannot overcome their nostalgia for yesterday, with its grime and slime.

How quickly we have forgotten that the generation which is today between twenty-five and forty-five was brought up on this old simple faith; that the Russian Communists who are destroying religion —that the Jewish Bundists in Eastern Europe, to whom everything Jewish is an anathema, received the precise upbringing which Rabbi Silver would now restore. That strong simple faith is already so much of the past that it has already become the romantic poetry of some of our brethren, and it is humanly understandable how sometimes romance is taken for reality.

HOLDS EDUCATORS ARE EARNEST GROUP

Jewish educators as a group are very earnest seekers after spiritual truth, and for that reason cannot find it in supernatural theology or in turbid self-mystification. We seek a realistic religion that can sincerely express us as moderns and Jews, and if we have not yet found it we refuse to drape our uncertainty with the patriotic mantle of the fathers.

And what the accusation in the Hadoar that, among a group of young Chalutzim planning to leave for Palestine, not one knew Hebrew. The writer is witness to another group where the opposite was the fact. The writer spent several days at a Hachsharah farm in Earlton, N. Y. In conjunction with the farm there was also conducted a camp of the Hashomer Hatzair. All the members of the Hachsharah farm spoke Hebrew and conducted most of their activities in Hebrew. A large portion of the camp, too, represented boys and girls of the Hebrew schools who knew Hebrew and could speak the language.

SCOFFS AT CHARGE OF COMMUNISM

Not content with accusing the Talmud Torahs of failing religiously, Rabbi Silver charges them with being breeding places of Communism. Poor, weak Talmud Torahs, what burdens they are made to bear! Red bait can apparently be invoked, even in a private Jewish quarrel. Rabbi Silver knows very well why it is that young New York Jews turn Communist, and that the reason has nothing to do with their Jewish schooling. Intelligent young people caught in the double vise of depression and severe anti-Jewish discrimination naturally rebel at the circumstances which limit them. Hunger has always made rebels. Have not our young people sufficient provocation to resent a social order in which they are already pariahs and outcasts at the very beginning of their careers? Can they readily forgive their own people for failing to batter down the exceptional discriminations which rise up against them as Jews? A Jewish community that so betrays it young people may expect only bitterness and hatred from them.

“CRUEL JEST” ON YOUNG MINDS

Rabbi Silver’s graduates, fortunately, are not faced with similar difficulties. But these young Jews of New York who are face to face with the struggle of existence cannot be fed on religious soothing syrup, on promises of bliss in the hereafter, or on abstract social idealism which they may never translate into conduct. And it is a cruel jest upon these young people to ascribe their state of mind to their Jewish schooling.

Finally, one may ask Rabbi Silver how complete his own success has been with a program that is all dedicated to religion and good deeds? Has he raised a generation of practical idealists, of men and women who are ready to devote themselves to the welfare of their community? How many of the hundreds of confirmants who have received his benediction have found their place in the ranks of workers for the Hebrew renascence or within the Zionist movement? Why have drives for funds in his city failed so consistently? Is it completely the fault of the other temples?

Dr. Golub, director of the Bureau of Jewish Education of Cincinnati, wrote this open letter in reply to an article by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver in the Bulletin November 18. Dr. Silver’s article attracted attention of Hebrew educators in all parts of the country, several taking strong exception to his conclusions.