Dear Shalom,

Judaism has long struggled with the challenge of exposing young people to stories about others leaving our faith community. Sholom Aleichem portrayed the phenomenon well in "Fiddler on the Roof" as did many less famous stories by haskala influenced writers like Grade, Bialik, etc. These writers can be dismissed as writers of fiction but real life stories such as the one mentioned by Rabbi Simkovitch are harder to ignore.

Regarding teaching contemporary books to students that describe leaving our present day faith community, I would suggest teaching selected parts of books such as the one by Ms. Mervis about leaving Modern Orthodoxy or by Shulim Dean leaving his Chasidic community or any of Chaim Potok's books where he portrays his struggles through religious communal member soul searching journeys (the scene in the Chosen where the Rebbi's son sees Freud's book on dreams and has a crisis of faith comes to mind).

This should also be balanced with selections from books about joining our faith community such as "The Bamboo Cradle" or David Klinghofer's book " And the Lord shall gather me in" or Isaac Bashevis Singer's classic "The Penitent".

The traditional alternative approach of altogether avoiding such stories of leaving the community is understandable. Some teachers choose to avoid books like "As a Driven Leaf" that provides an empathetic portrayal of the famous Talmudic Heretic, Elisha ben Avuyah. Even though his faithful student Rabbi Meier could handle the contradictions presented by his teacher's flawed faith, many others could not easily do so.

I agree with Rabbi Simkovich in the sense that ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away. Rav Hirsch in Volume 7 of his Collected Writings in his article about educating a child according to the way life will lead them maintains that isolation is no longer possible and inoculation by small exposure to potentially unhealthy ideas antithetical to Torah and learning how to respond to them is the best educational approach in the modern era.

I am saddened by the all or nothing binary choice of joining our community completely or leaving our community completely.

Many less observant Jews can and do find their place in a more modern or less traditional Jewish community that fits them well even when a more traditional or rigid community does not fit them well.

I believe it is ok to tell students that Judaism is not all or nothing and we don't have to throw out the baby with the bath water.

Shalom,
Elisha Paul



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2018 06:58PM by mlb.