14 Jun 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

Tabernacle, discussed in this week’s Torah

portion (Terumah/Behaaloscha). Of all the

furniture and equipment to be built for the

Tabernacle, 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 Sanctuary, casting its

sacred glow on the surroundings. (The

eight-branched Hanukah 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, the 11th century

French biblical commentator, 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 Tabernacle 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 ark,

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

Hashem.” 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 Hashem, to fulfill

His will and to build a world saturated with

goodness and Hashemliness. 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 King

Solomon knew a thing or two about the

compelling force of cynicism. Just read

through the book of Ecclesiastes. 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 Hashem and Observe His

commandments, for this is the whole

purpose of man.”