01 Jun BEHAALOSCHA: THE DEATH OF CONVICTION THE BLESSINGS AND PITFALLS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION

Open-Mindedness
Much has been
written about
the apparent absence
in our society of
passion directed
toward any ideal
beyond our personal
needs and pleasures. Nothing in the
contemporary secular conversation calls on
us to give up or sacrifice anything truly
valuable for anybody or anything else. Even
marriage and the family unit, once
considered sacred institutions worth
sacrificing for, are easily discarded when they
conflict with one’s personal comforts.
The original cause of this condition, it seems,
is the gift of liberty that our generation has
been blessed with. Our open education has
endowed us with access to a sundry of
cultures, races, ethnic groups, and belief
systems, liberating us from many a phobia
caused by single-minded tribalism and
religious or social dogma. This in itself is
healthy: Open-mindedness diminishes
bigotry and advocates tolerance and respect
for groups and people different than us.
Yet like all blessings, this one too, does not
come without a challenge.
Liberal education is not a goal in and of itself;
it is a means to an end. Emancipated from
dogma and indoctrination, you are empowered
to choose a path with inner conviction. You
can embrace a vision that is truly yours.
Relationships, love, morality, faith, goodness,
and commitment can now emerge from the
depth of your being, rather than from social
conventions and external pressures. But for
this to occur, children and students need
parents, mentors and educators who can show

them how to utilize the blessings of open-
mindedness to build character, to develop an

idealistic personality and achieve moral
greatness.
To our dismay, the opposite has occurred. We
live arguably in the most sophisticated age,
free to question all absolutes with the
objectivity of reason. We have been redeemed,
to a significant degree, from the maladies of
bigotry, intolerance and prejudice that have
plagued humanity for millennia. But instead
of seeing our liberty as an opportunity to
promote powerful moral commitments
stemming from authentic and un-coerced
desires, we utilized our zest to de-legitimize
and trivialize any commitment that runs too
deep. Many have retreated into self-centered
solitariness, expending much energy in
defending the principle that no choice is
worthwhile enough to be taken too seriously.
Is it possible that 5,000 years of the human
search for truth were meant to culminate with

no ideal larger than the quest for self-
preservation and gratification?

Our extreme and endless open mindedness
has often diminished, rather than built, the

character of the youth. It has deprived many
of the millennia-long awareness that there are
truths worth fighting for, ideals worth aspiring
towards, relationships worth sacrificing for.
Timidity and reservation became the staple of
our generation. With all of our technological
progress, the fact remains that millions of
Americans find it impossible to maintain
stable marriages, to raise happy children and
to find true meaning in their existence. Fifty
percent of first marriages are likely to end in
divorce, and one million new children are
added each year to the “list” of broken
families. Alas, we have come to know, in
Oscar Wilde’s words, the price of everything
and the value of nothing. We understand our
bodies like never before but have become
distant from our souls. Moral feebleness,
philosophical haziness, and even a weakened
will to survive have become all too
common. When you have nothing to fight for,
are you really alive?
The Russian Novelists
I raised this issue with Russian literature

Professor Dr. Andrew Kaufman Ph.D., co-
author of the renowned Russian for Dummies.

He wrote to me:
I have found that people whose lives are
infused with clear injustices are less wishy
washy on moral questions. That’s what has
fascinated me about the great Russian writers,
whom I have studied for many years. They
had no problem taking clear moral stands on
issues, because they had stark evidence in
front of them of the differences between
justice and injustice, freedom and slavery,
morality and corruption. Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky among others, had no difficulty
taking a clear moral stand on issues. These
issues weren’t intellectual abstractions to
them. They were painfully real.
The American universities, on the other hand,
have done my generation a real disservice.
They’ve skewed students’ perspectives and
only enhanced their naturally sheltered state.
This generation of students has to it an
internal softness. The newly enlightened
young Americans have lost their moral nerve.
They don’t believe in absolute truths and
higher ideals, because they are told in the
universities that to do so would be
‘insensitive,’ or ‘undemocratic.’ It’s a real
problem, because when we cannot define evil
as evil, we make sure it continues to exist and
grow.
The Uniqueness of the Menorah
There is an intriguing element in the
construction of the Mishkan, discussed in this
week’s parsha. Of all the furniture and
equipment to be built for the Mishkan, only a
few were required to be made of a single
piece of gold. One of them was the menorah,
the five-foot-tall seven-branched golden
candelabra, kindled every evening in the
Mikdash, casting its sacred glow on the
surroundings. (The eight-branched Chanukah

menorah is a commemoration of this nightly
ritual in the Temple.)
”You shall make a menorah of pure gold,” the
Torah instructs, “the menorah should be made
of a single piece of beaten gold.” The menorah
was an elaborate structure, comprised of
many shapes, forms and nuanced designs, yet
it needed to be hammered out from a single
ingot of gold; no part of it may be made
separately and attached afterwards.
Rashi explains this instruction clearly: “He
should not make it [the menorah] of sections,
nor should he make its branches and lamps of
separate pieces and connect them afterward in
the style of metal-workers which they call
“soulder” in Old French. Rather, it should all
come from a single piece. He (the craftsman)
beats it with a mallet and cuts it with craftsman
tools, separating the branches to either side…
The craftsman draws the parts of the menorah
out of the solid block of gold.”
Why the Headache?
Now, you need not be a skilled craftsman to
appreciate how difficult a task this was. The
menorah was an extremely complex and
intricately designed article. Why does the
Torah demand it be hammered out from a
single lump of gold? Why not construct the
menorah from separate pieces of metal and
then weld them together?
What is even more intriguing is that the
menorah was one of only three articles in the
Mishkan that the Torah required to be built in
this fashion! Most other articles, like the table
with the show bread, the altars, the washing
basin, even the holiest article—the aron,
could all be built from separate pieces of
material. Yet the menorah, perhaps the most
intricate article in the Temple, needed to be
fleshed out of a single lump of gold. What is
the message behind this?
The Torah, it has been suggested, is attempting
to convey a profound insight into the human
condition and the objective of education. If
you ever wish to become a menorah, a source
of light to others, you must ensure that you
are made of “one piece.” To be a leader, a
pillar of conviction and a wellspring of
inspiration, you cannot afford to be
dichotomized. You need to know who you are
and what you stand for. You must be holistic.
Ambivalence and ambiguity make for good
conversation at campus cafes, or on op-ed
pages. Yet in all of their glamorous
sophistication, they lack the capacity to
inspire youth. Passion and conviction are the
fruits of a deep and integrated sense of self.
Children do not respond well to ambivalence,
because it often leaves them with a sense of
uncertainty and with a hole in their hearts.
Judaism always understood that if you wish to
live a self-contained life, you can be made of
many pieces, dichotomized and fragmented.
But if you wish to become a menorah, if you
wish to inspire your children and students, if

you wish to cast a light on a dark world and to
kindle sparks and brighten lives you must be
made of “one piece.” You may still struggle
and wonder, yet you must know who you are,
what you believe in, and why you are alive.
Why Were You Created?
For fourteen years I was privileged to attend
the weekly addresses of a brilliant teacher, a
man well educated in the sciences, arts and
philosophies, who professed encyclopedic
knowledge in the fields of physics, science (in
the broadest sense of the term), history and
literature, and mastery over the enormous
body of Biblical, Talmudic, Halachik and
Kabbalistic texts. He was also a profoundly
open-minded individual, with a keen
understanding of the complexities of the
human mind. Yet in almost every one of his
speeches and addresses, he would quote this
apparently simplistic Talmudic statement: “I
was created in order to serve G-d.”
I often wondered why this extraordinary
thinker felt compelled to quote this dictum
again and again. Why the need to repeat
something we have all heard hundreds of
times? In retrospect I have come to understand
that by reiterating this message continuously,
sincerely and wholeheartedly, our Rebbe
(teacher) wished to communicate to his
disciples a powerful message: Appreciate
diversity, tolerate otherness, and open
yourself up to the colorfulness of the world.
But never allow yourself to become
emotionally and mentally torn in the process.
Remember who you are and what you were
created for. You were created to serve G-d, to
fulfill His will and to build a world saturated
with goodness and G-dliness. Do not allow
life to become so complicated that you are no
longer sure who you are and what you
represent.
The wise and open-minded Shlomo HaMelech
knew a thing or two about the compelling
force of cynicism. Just read through the Sefer
Koheles. Yet he also understood that
skepticism is a means, not an end. The final
verse of this deeply disturbing biblical book is
what is missing from today’s educational
curriculum:
“The final word after all that is known is this:
Fear G-d and Observe His commandments,
for this is the whole purpose of man.”