Ariane Sherine - Parents have to make choices for the children

I very much enjoyed the first atheist bus campaign, especially the Advertising Standards Authority’s ruling that the word “probably” had to be added and the Christian bus driver who refused to drive a bus with this advert. There is something wonderfully British about all this.

However the latest campaign “Let me grow up and choose for myself” goes too far and just hasn’t been thought through. It appears to be working on a number of assumptions about parenting and religion which are questionable, at best. In addition, its advice is simply impractical and makes one wonder what the psychological impact would be on the children whose parents try this approach.

Parents are not a blank slate, any more than their children are. Whether based on “evolutionary psychology” or on tradition, they have values which are cultural as well as religious and it is natural and necessary for them to wish to pass these on to their children. Children are naturally inquisitive and when they ask questions about the world, they expect answers, or they keep on asking. Parents cannot say they will get back to them on these complex issues when they are old enough to understand; instead they have to try to explain things in a way which is appropriate to their children’s age and abilities, which precludes nuanced explanations. For example, when my own children at a young age wanted to understand the difference between the Conservative and Labour parties I explained that Tories won’t share their toys and Labour people would (in my defence, this was before New Labour!)

Religion is not just a small aspect of society and one wonders whether this campaign takes into account just how culturally Christian this country is. Would this campaign advocate banning Christmas to avoid explaining to children who Jesus was until they are able to appreciate the historical issues? Whole swathes of literature and music would become inaccessible without this cultural background – even Harry Potter celebrates Christmas.

The atheist campaign is concerned that a religious upbringing is a form of “child abuse” which damages a child’s rational faculties for life. The alleged Jesuit quote “give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man” seems to inform such thinking. Nevertheless, text based religions, such as Judaism, ideally require immersion in these texts from a young age and such education is helped by faith schools which have good and bad points, like all schools.
The Talmud says that a child should start learning these texts from the age of six and the Ethics of the Fathers has the rather poignant saying “one who studies Torah as a child, to what is he compared? To ink written on fresh paper. And one who studies Torah as an old man, to what is he compared? To ink written on blotted paper.” Of course, this is not to ignore the fact that Jewish male children are circumcised when they are eight days old, a choice which Jewish parents very much have to make for the children.

There are practical issues here as well. If parents attend religious services they are hardly likely to leave their children behind, which will lead to them having to explain things which the new campaign would preclude (as well as denying children the sense of being part of a community). Alternately, leaving them behind would simply pique their curiosity, also not a desirable outcome from the campaign’s view.

The logical consequence of this campaign is that children of religious parents are best taken into care and kept away from anyone who may influence them “inappropriately”. Whilst I have had discussions with atheists on CiF who claim that when they say a religious upbringing is “child abuse” they don’t mean this literally, one can but wonder what this does actually mean other than as rhetoric?

The reality is that parents make choices for the children, whether they are religious or not, and this is the essence of being a responsible parent. This campaign is damaging, misguided and impractical.

Fundamentalism in the United Synagogue (UK)

               Fundamentalism in the United Synagogue – reality or myth?

 

Today in modern orthodox Judaism, at a time of greater than ever educational opportunities, we are seeing a return to simple faith and a turning away from more analytic approaches to Judaism.   

This article explores this issue and was inspired by a recent book by Sol Schimmel, called “The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs, Fundamentalism and the Fear of Truth”, as well as a conversation I had recently with a friend about the impact of biblical criticism (BC) on Orthodox Judaism (OJ):

“....I’ll let you into a secret, but one which you may have guessed. I am a modern, Western, educated individual. In all areas of my life I accept the scholarly consensus as the most likely explanation for the time being. I understand that they may (indeed some certainly will) be shown to be wrong, but they are my working assumptions. The same should apply to BC, but because I want to be an orthodox Jew, and because I think OJ is irreconcilable with BC, I reject BC.”

Fundamentalism is a difficult subject . There is no fixed set of belief in classical rabbinical sources, and  the idea that Judaism has any clear set of beliefs has even been challenged by recent works such as Menachem Kellner’s Must a Jew Believe Anything.

Classic rabbinic works explicitly value diversity through its preservation of minority opinions, as explained in Mishnah Eduyot 1:4-6.  There are cases where the Talmud rules according to minority opinions (see bAvoda Zara 59a Tosafot s.v. amar Rav Papa) so there is a tradition of diversity rather than fundamentalism within Orthodox Judaism.

Maimonides set out the classic non-fundamentalist approach to Judaism in his Guide to the Perplexed which represents the rationalist’s approach to Judaism.  The issue with the Guide is that it is itself very perplexing.  This is due to it being explicitly set out as “secret” (esoteric) work.  Maimonides appears to have taken the view that the educated elite could benefit from his work whereas a more simple faith (the Thirteen Principles) was appropriate for most people.   This would lead to an ordered society which would allow intellectuals time to study while others did the mundane work.

Today, information about Judaism is just a click away and this esoteric approach is not an option. Most Jews are sufficiently educated to learn about critical approaches to their religious traditions, whether from books, the media, or other sources. 

We now less rather than more open in our approach, as I argue below.  A number of factors have led to this.  These include the impact on the Jewish world of:

a)      the enlightenment and the opportunities for social integration

b)      competing non-traditional Jewish movements such as the reform, Bundists and the zionists

c)       last but not least the Holocaust

These factors helped create and then destroy the more "moderate" orthodox responses to the enlightenment which were based in Germany specifically the Torah in Derekh Eretz (TIDE) movement started by R Shimshon Raphael Hirsch ztz'l whose approach is typified by this quote:

"The more, indeed, Judaism comprises the whole of man and extends its declared mission to the salvation of the whole of mankind, the less it is possible to confine its outlook to the synagogue. [Thus] the more the Jew is a Jew, the more universalist will be his views and aspirations [and] the less aloof will he be from ... art or science, culture or education ... [and] the more joyfully will he applaud whenever he sees truth and justice and peace and the ennoblement of man." (ibid)

When the most "enlightened" nation in the world descended to barbarism this undermined the enlightened approach typified by TIDE and many of those who survived turned away from this to less compromising beliefs, or became silent about these ideas for entirely understandable reasons.

Of course, TIDE did not completely disappear and we nowadays talk of “Modern Orthodoxy” as opposed to haredi (“ultra-orthodox”) however this is deeply problematic – as is evident from the fact that there is no coherent definition as to what “modern orthodoxy” actually is.

In the UK, modern orthodoxy is a vague term roughly interchangeable with “centrist orthodoxy”.  It also creates a false dichotomy with haredi groups, e.g. some modern orthodox groups can espouse very old-fashioned values and vice-versa. 

According to its web site, the United Synagogue believes in a “modern and inclusive brand of Judaism” – which sounds laudable until one asks what one means by modernity and what sort of inclusivity?

The United Synagogue has embraced haredi works such as Art Scroll over the past few years – whilst these can provide a good introduction to classic texts they can be historically inaccurate and present a world view which jars with modern sensibilities, especially enlightenment values.  The US has some rabbis who are most certainly not “modern orthodox” in their views and it has outsourced its education to kiruv (evangelical) groups which again do not espouse the enlightenment as a positive thing. 

Works such as the Soncino commentaries of the Bible which exemplified an open approach in citing non-Jewish and non-orthodox commentaries are now being updated because “the publishers [nowadays in effect the Judaica press] now feel that there is a need to acquaint the reader with the pure Jewish view of these holy books” (emphasis added).  The publisher is on record as saying that Orthodox Jews nowadays are not interested in what non-orthodox commentators have to say.   How this relates to the Maimonidean principle in Shemoneh Perakim to “accept the truth wherever it comes from” is far from clear.  The original Soncino works which did follow this principle are now only available from 2^nd hand book stores and will disappear.

Religion can be good for society except when it is fundamentalist, dogmatic, and intolerant.  I would suggest enlightenment values are the touch point here – we can and need to develop views of Judaism which are based around these values and recognise when co-religionists explicitly or implicitly reject them.

We need to consider whether the new publishers of Soncino are correct in their assessment that orthodox Jews are not interested in any other source of truth or wisdom outside their tradition, or whether we still wish to follow the Maimonidean principle of accepting the truth, wherever it may come from and incorporating that within our rich and broad tradition.