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Tough Topics - Education
There is a saying in the Talmud (the major source of ancient rabbinic thinking): “The world endures only for the sake of the breath out of the mouths of children who go to school.”
Education for individual Jewish children (or, indeed, adults) is of value for Jewish society as a whole: Jewish life rests on the ability of Jews to think. This is because Jewish communities are generally organised democratically and need everyone’s participation.
Public Jewish education goes back at least 2000 years, to the time of the second Temple. It soon became important for everyone to be able to read—and being educated was actually seen as part of being religious: for that reason, learning became the most popular form of Jewish entertainment. It was thought to be a life-long process, transcending the formal bounds of an educational institution.
Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, most learning happened in the home, usually around the dining table, involving reading, explanation and debate. Shabbat and festivals would particularly allow time for this. A special honour and religious duty was to offer hospitality, temporary or semi-permanent, to yeshivah students away from home.
Yeshivot (from the word to 'sit') are academies for intensive and systematic study, especially of the Talmud. The learning styles in yeshivot were and are highly participatory, with a heavy emphasis on peer learning, pair work, and discussion and debate.
Whereas, in the past, Jewish education was mainly a study of Jewish subjects (Talmud, the Bible, law and so on), in the modern age, Jews have increasingly been attending non-Jewish schools and universities previously barred to them: here education is secular and so, for many Jews, Jewish study has become supplementary—in the evenings, for example. However, the 20th century saw the growth of Jewish day schools (and some boarding schools) that combine modern study similar to that in secular schools with specifically Jewish pursuits. The purpose is to demonstrate that there need be no conflict between ‘religion’ and ‘'science’, between ‘faith’ and ‘reason’; indeed, that to be religious means knowing and thinking and acting, as well as believing.