In 2012, when we launched our integrated course on Jewish Thought, Philosophy, and Literature (formerly Tikvah, now JPhiL), a student asked, “Is there a Final?” to which Dr. Watts responded, “How you live your life is the Final.” From the beginning, we have sought to open students’ minds to the fact that through Judaism, individuals can contribute meaningfully, not only to conversations on philosophy and literature, but that by the very nature of their Jewish identities, they can make a significant impact on society.

While we have always known of the course’s short-term effects, we now know of its longer-term impacts on students’ approaches to critical thinking, their relationship to Judaism, and their relationship to God. And those impacts are profound. Students consistently report that in the years since, the course has moved them to live more integrated Jewish lives, transformed them as Jews and thinkers, and led them to feel for the first time that Judaism is relevant to their lives. Indeed, our graduates have aced their Final; this is why JPhiL is the crown jewel of our school’s curriculum.

How the Course Works

1. Topics, anchor texts, sources

Each unit revolves around a major theme, anchored by a literary text, such as Slavery and Social Contract/Natural Law (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), Punishment (The Scarlet Letter); Civil Disobedience (Emerson and Thoreau); Faith and Morality (Frankenstein); Ethics or Sinning for the Sake of Heaven (Tom Stoppard’s Foul Play); Fate, Free Will, and Destiny (To Kill a Mockingbird); Election (The Fixer); Torah u-Madda (My Name Is Asher Lev); and the tension between tradition and modernity. At the course’s end, students have a Portfolio/Reflection opportunity to consider their intellectual and spiritual growth throughout the year.

Through class discussions, integrative essays, debates, and presentations, students learn a range and depth of critical thinking skills that enable them to examine material from disparate vantage points. Perhaps most significantly, as they explore Jewish perspectives on timeless issues, students learn greater respect for the unique insights Judaism has given the West.

For example, Unit 1’s “syllabus” on Slavery and Social Contract/Natural Law integrates sources from across disciplines:

• Anchor Literary Text – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
• Biblical Jewish Sources – Exodus 21, Leviticus 25, Deuteronomy 14-15
• Jewish Philosophical Sources – Hizkuni on Genesis 7:21, Eruvin 100b, Intro to Talmud, R. Nissim Gaon, from Rav Kook’s Celebration of the Soul and Iggerot Ha-Ra’ayah, R. Nahum Rabinovitz’s The Way of Torah, R. Sacks’s Covenant and Conversation excerpts
• Western Philosophical Sources – Plato’s Euthyphro, Hobbes’ Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, The Declaration of Independence, Rousseau’s The Social Contract and Principles of Political Rights, Isaiah Berlin’s Two Types of Freedom
• Historical/Cultural Sources – Lincoln’s speech on The Dred Scott Decision, The Peoria Speech, and Fragment on Slavery; Bob Marley’s Redemption Song; Percival Everett’s James

2. Modeling integration by co-teachers: arguing, questioning, synthesizing, linking to literature, philosophy, Tanakh, Gemara, Jewish thinkers, history, and culture

Critical to the course is the presence of two teachers who jointly develop the curriculum and co-teach the class: Stacey Goldman, who brings a command of Jewish and general philosophical texts, and Eileen H. Watts, a literature scholar with particular expertise in English and Jewish-American literature. Although Mrs. Goldman facilitates the discussion of the Jewish texts and Dr. Watts the philosophical and literary sources, the presence of both teachers in the classroom is crucial.

Both constantly chime into the discussion by raising questions, connections, and perspectives drawn from their respective disciplines. This ensures that students are exposed to a robust range of sources that bear on the respective units. More importantly, it models integrated thinking for students, demonstrating the web of interconnections between all knowledge and the unique perspective each discipline brings to the subject at hand.

3. Writing JPhiL integrated papers

Conceptualizing and executing an essay that applies strands of Jewish thought and Western philosophy to a novel to yield a new interpretation of that novel is the course’s most challenging element. Students must first conceive of their arguments organically; that is, their chosen sources must speak to the novel naturally. This requires retraining the mind’s eye to see relevant connections among seemingly disparate texts. Here are a few representative samples of such essays:

Sample A – Essay Title: Societal Punishment in The Scarlet Letter

Thesis: Applying Plato’s Protagoras and Kant’s Philosophy of the Law to these two [scaffold] scenes in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter reveals that to achieve stability, society must impose punishment; in its absence, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth self-destruct, while it frees Hester.

Sample B – Essay Title: Natural Law in Huckleberry Finn

Thesis: Rav Kook’s and Rabbi Sacks’ treatments of slavery illuminate Huck’s growth from enslaved to the social contract to free through embracing natural law, thus demonstrating Twain’s unspoken assertion that natural law should trump the social contract of slavery.

Sample C – Essay Title: Yakov Bok’s Evolution in The Fixer

Thesis: In The Fixer, Yakov Bok’s perception of his chosenness changes throughout his imprisonment, reflecting an intellectual shift from Spinoza’s extrinsic view of election to the Kuzari’s intrinsic one.

Students report that once they have mastered this type of integrated thought, it becomes their default way of thinking in all other classes. Moreover, the demand to summarize each text in a way that flows naturally into a thesis statement forces students to think and write with a clarity and economy of language that are new to them. Learning to write these integrated papers has the steepest learning curve, but students are universally grateful for the climb.

4. The debate

The debate centers around the short story “On the Rainy River” in Tim O’Brien’s collection The Things They Carried. There, the author must reckon with his feelings about the Vietnam War and whether he will obey the draft or flee to Canada. In debating his decision, students must apply to their arguments the texts we study in our Civil Disobedience unit. While debate requires preparation, much of it is extemporaneous. This allows students to show themselves (and their teachers!) how they can, unscripted, integrate traditional Jewish and secular sources into a controversial topic.

5. The “Meeting of Minds” Project

Inspired by Steve Allen’s 1970s PBS program, we have our students create and present their own “Meeting of Minds” production. This format runs as follows: Steve Allen, the moderator, would introduce and interview, one at a time, historical personalities played by professional actors. These individuals would then discuss and debate major philosophical questions. Original guests included Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Paine, Francis Bacon, Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and the like. All interviewees were dressed in character.

Students are asked to choose a character to play and whether they would be willing to play the role of moderator. Those who choose the former conduct significant additional research into the biography, worldview, and writings of the chosen personality. Based on that research, particularly into the figure’s stance on ethics, the student makes a claim as to the thinker’s likely viewpoint regarding the premise at hand and presents arguments in favor of that position. The moderator is charged with culling the various opinions and crafting a dialogue among the various personalities. The entire class examines the proposed draft, adding comments or edits, and the moderator then finalizes the script.

Last year’s performance included Plato, Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rashi, Hester Prynne, Sara Schenirer, David Foster Wallace, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Mary Shelley as moderators.

The premise: If given a choice, would you choose to attend a secular college or a religious one? Why?

In a 24-page script, each character answered and debated the question.

Before an audience of administrators, available students, and faculty, the 80-minute presentation allows students to play out and internalize integration by creating a conversation between some of the greatest minds in history. The format also hones students’ critical thinking skills, as they are forced to consider how their respective characters would present a compelling set of arguments, as well as convincingly rebut any potential counterarguments. In playing the role of, say, Rashi, the student must become Rashi and faithfully articulate his positions on education. Students never forget the lessons in collaboration and teamwork, and never forget the experience of writing or performing their “Meeting of Minds.”

Alignment with the School’s Mission and Community

Torah u-Madda has been embedded in our school’s foundational principle: “Torah for the real world.” Our JPhiL course is, therefore, a microcosm of Modern Orthodox thought and practice, reflected in the integrated order of our daily classes: History, Gemara, Math, Music, Talmud, English, Science, Tanakh, Art. JPhiL simply pulls and weaves together their common threads. This, too, is part of what makes the course our school’s crown jewel.

While the traditional day school model has students learning numerous individual subjects like those above, often with little crossover or synthesis, our course integrates Literature with Jewish Ideas. Students not only study each subject at the highest level, but they also compare and contrast the visions of both, with the goal of exploring the ways in which biblical, Judaic, and philosophical approaches to life’s questions speak to universal human approaches to those same questions. Essentially, this course reveals that aside from dealing with issues specific to Jewish thought, Judaism’s rich history of philosophy and law anticipated and grappled with the universal issues addressed by Western literature and philosophy thousands of years later.

Obviously, there is a rich pedagogical history and many available curricula dedicated to teaching philosophical texts in terms of morality and ethics. However, we strive to extract moral and ethical issues from the Tanakh itself. For instance, our Civil Disobedience unit examines Exodus 1 and 2 to explore the acts of midwives, Jewish or Egyptian, and Pharaoh’s daughter as the first recorded acts of civil disobedience in history. The Faith and Morality unit, anchored by Frankenstein, studies how tzedek umishpat (righteousness and justice) are woven into the biblical text in a purposeful literary manner. To develop our Fate and Destiny unit, based on To Kill a Mockingbird, we analyze Abraham as he transforms himself, with God’s help, from a man of fate to a man of destiny in Genesis 15 at the covenant between the parts.

Using these methods, JPhiL provides an immersive, passionate dual-curricular experience. The class’s mission also encompasses teaching students to analyze literary texts, apply Jewish/philosophical works to literature, identify various approaches to a topic from a range of texts, and handle more and longer works simultaneously. In fact, the class has been so popular with parents and board members that one year, we taught “A Taste of Tikvah,” 6 evening sessions held in private homes for the community.

Representative Student and Parent Reflections on Tikvah/JPhiL’s Long-Term Impacts

“No other class provides the framework for such intense discussions or the chance to challenge yourself in such intellectually stimulating ways. Whenever one has to craft a thesis, they must look at a text through two different lenses: one secular and one religious.”

“Tikvah was the first time I saw Judaism as something intellectual. Suddenly, I was presented with thinkers much greater and holier than I, who confronted the same questions I had struggled with. Judaism was suddenly tangible, relatable, brilliant, nuanced, and complex.”

“Tikvah’s lessons and the ability to synthesize ideas continue to shape me long after the program. When I engage with secular texts, I instinctively seek out moral and spiritual insights, uncovering echoes of Torah in unexpected places. And when I study Torah, its influence no longer feels confined to the abstract or theoretical—it extends into every corner of my life.”

“Being introduced to Jewish texts and philosophy made me respect scripture and our religion more profoundly—I found that it more often aligned with my personal beliefs than I thought and not nearly as outdated as I believed. In fact, usually, it was still culturally relevant.”

“Modeling The Great Gatsby paper on Ecclesiastes addressed my most profound philosophical questions regarding religion, morality, the necessity of God, and the potential dangers of a Godless world. Connecting a secular book to a canonized text bridged the gap between secular and religious ideas.”

“Tikvah provided an incredible way to learn how to enhance our understanding of Torah in the context of secular wisdom and strengthened our fluency in and comfort with both.”

“Torah’s wisdom now shapes my understanding of the mundane and the profound, the creative and the reflective.”

“Looking at Jewish thought through the lenses of literature and philosophy broadens one’s thinking. This is especially salient for teenagers, who often grapple with profound questions as they explore their own Jewish beliefs. Embracing this broader way of thinking deepens their connection to Judaism and understanding of other disciplines. We have witnessed our son’s growth through this course, which has strengthened his appreciation for Judaism and literature.”

“Tikvah was my first real model/archetype of what it means to learn Torah—a live exploration and discussion attempting to discover truth and perspective wherever it can be found.”