I thought about Daniel Roth's challenge to educators as I read an article by Ariel Rackovsky about the difficulties faced by American Jewry to engage in any "Israeli" conversation, inasmuch as American Jews cannot communicate (or understand) the language and culture of contemporary Israel. (The article, entitled "Feeling 'Off' on Yom HaAtzmaut" can be accessed at [
www.thelehrhaus.com].)
Among his arguments is this quote from Leon Wieseltier:
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The American Jewish community is the first great community in the history of our people that believes that it can receive, develop, and perpetuate the Jewish tradition not in a Jewish language. By an overwhelming majority, American Jews cannot read or speak or write Hebrew, or Yiddish. This is genuinely shocking. American Jewry is quite literally unlettered.
The assumption of American Jewry that it can do without a Jewish language is an arrogance without precedent in Jewish history. And this illiteracy, I suggest, will leave American Judaism and American Jewishness forever crippled and scandalously thin.â€
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Thus, I do not believe that the crucial question is whether or not we teach the Megillat Ester together with the Ramban. The question is whether we educators are making sure that our students have the tools with which to engage in this – and other – conversations about contemporary Israel.
Abie
