Enlightenment Challenge or "Nervous Syndrome"
Article by Rabbi Eli Horowitz
'The foundation of the nation in its future attitude depends on the foundation of education. It has already been learned from all the sages that correction in education is correction in everything "
Regardless of a person's worldview, be it materialistic or idealistic, whatever his social and national aspirations may be - it is clear to any sage that any change and social progress must be based on a change in the human, humane part of man and society, the separate part from other animals.
Reason, human emotion, moral inclination, creative impulse, the demand for freedom, mysterious awareness - all these are the material in which a new form needs to be imprinted, and to be more precise, these are aspects of life whose exposure and deepening will give birth to a new face for society as a whole.
If so, the correction in education that addresses the refinement and development of the human aspects of society (and the special youth) is a correction in all, and the future of the nation, resilience and prosperity, will be shaped and decided in its studio houses.
The "founding fathers" of the Zionist movement were well acquainted with this, and together with the "Hebrew teachers" played a crucial role in translating revolutionary and sublime ideas into a public consciousness capable of penetrating the minds and hearts of an entire generation and motivating them to creative and heroic settlements.
Anyone who imagined that the role of education and culture, in the principled and revolutionary sense was exhausted, came the recent events (the Oslo Accords, the terrorist attacks, Goldstein, the assassination of Rabin) and pointed out his mistake.
And whoever thinks that electronic communication and light literature, the bombing of the senses in well-orchestrated footnotes - question have already turned the living beit midrash, and the in-depth writing into anachronism - I think, is today attacked at least with doubts.
It is impossible for it, for the aspiration of the revival of the nation not to be based on spiritual and cultural values, and it is impossible for the dialectical pendulum in the resurrection of the nation not to push for the renewal and renewal of these values.
On the seventh day of the assassination of the late Prime Minister Rabin, the author A.B. Joshua compares the right (religious) view with the left spiritual view. In clear and dignified language he presented the indulgence of the past, the adherence to the homeland, primordial beliefs - of the right, and in contrast, the spiritual left, striving for the fulfillment of humane values, looking forward to a glorious future in which man lives free from the shackles of the past.
And immediately two paintings came to my mind. On the one hand, I was captivated by the talented writer with his charms, the charms of the illuminating open future. And that who does not long for the full realization of all the good in man, all that enlightens and delights in humanity. And at that very moment, another painting, much less sympathetic, came to my mind's eye. A drawing of a lizard (a water dog in the vernacular). Long, fat, dreadful nerve.
My youth hobby was growing flowers, with complete devotion, I was busy exposing the fertile sands of the fertile Hula Valley, and I will not forget that summer morning I went out to inspect a blooming tagetes bed - a bed I had seen before green and abundant freshness, and here it is all faded and wilted,
The test I did on the leaves, on the branches, on the flowers, yielded nothing. I uprooted some plants to check their root system and they too were found to be normal, more or less,
Then I saw the tiny hole in the root neck, where our room penetrated with astonishing precision, sucking the skeleton that connects the subterranean roots with the entire visible growth system, branches, leaves, and flowers.
Easily, casually, eradicate a whole or two of the flower bed, for there is no growth and no flowering and no prosperity and no radiance of the coveted tomorrow if not out of a strong and brave suction from the underground hidden roots.
Embracing the past alone, nostalgic longing for the good old days, the first roots - this is a barren occupation that alienates the essence and certificate of the roots themselves, but an attempt to build a fresh and flourishing life, a new creative life, from disengagement from the roots - end Holocaust, and beacon - profanity and withering.
In my youth I waged war on the material nerve that separates and destroys. The war was on baits, poisons and a booty boot.
The spiritual-cultural nerve must also be fought. Not in poison nor in a boot, but in intelligent deepening, in penetrating into the roots of morality, in determining an educational tract that will encompass the whole space of man's spiritual crown, and will tire of superficiality and shallowness.
Eli Horovitz
Another article in the same context:
BSD
22 Tevet 5766 (1996)
'How great have your deeds, O Lord, deepened your thoughts. No burning man knew, and Kasil would not understand it. In the flower are wicked like grass. And all the verbs on. Destroy them forever. And you are exalted to the world of the Lord. (Psalm 22)
A terrible hour of wicked blossoming, a glimpse of the workers of evil. Not just people. Methods, schools, public norms, moods. And the people are shocked, embarrassed, angry, hurt.
And in the absence of a solid status, small foxes and terrorists arise in Kerem Hemed Beit Yisrael. These will praise the abominable of all, and these will drip on every drop of blood and turn it into political capital even before it dries up.
A burning man did not know the meaning of anything and Kasil would not understand where things were going. And necessity pushes for the search for the depth of the divine thought in it, and it is indeed evident in the poet's words: "To destroy them forever and ever."
In the process of our formation for the people - a tormented process, that all the songs of its merriment will not forget its father, a miraculous process, that all the rivers of cynicism will not forget India - in this process forces and currents from different passages come together. Healthy forces that contribute to shaping a full and fresh national portrait, as well as murky hidden currents of broken morals, confused beliefs, shallowness and ignorance secretly disrupt our normal growth.
And there are those currents that are concentrated in a narrow channel, and in the mysterious moment terribly break out over the surface, and the magnitude of their sorrow and ugliness shocks the pillars of the whole building.
And the shock is big, deep and real.
No man and no nation is caught in the hour of distress and sorrow. The inner stunned rage, the sense of loss and space, instantly become poisonous arrows of brotherly hatred. Old resentments, repressed, break through their barriers, and the air of the land becomes polluted.
And we did not lose hope. Nor will you lose, because "despair" (of the paralyzing and degenerate kind) is absent from our national lexicon.
And the mission of the wise of heart: to harness the turbulent and erupting energy to the more necessary mission, to the divine intention: "to destroy them forever and ever."
In the process of our formation for the people - a tormented process, that all the songs of its merriment will not forget its father, a miraculous process, that all the rivers of cynicism will not forget India - in this process forces and currents from different passages come together. Healthy forces that contribute to shaping a full and fresh national portrait, as well as murky hidden currents of broken morals, confused beliefs, shallowness and ignorance secretly disrupt our normal growth.
And there are those currents that are concentrated in a narrow channel, and in the mysterious moment terribly break out over the surface, and the magnitude of their sorrow and ugliness shocks the pillars of the whole building.
And the shock is big, deep and real.
No man and no nation is caught in the hour of distress and sorrow. The inner stunned rage, the sense of loss and space, instantly become poisonous arrows of brotherly hatred. Old resentments, repressed, break through their barriers, and the air of the land becomes polluted.
And we did not lose hope. Nor will you lose, because "despair" (of the paralyzing and degenerate kind) is absent from our national lexicon.
And the mission of the wise of heart: to harness the turbulent and erupting energy to the more necessary mission, to the divine intention: "to destroy them forever and ever."
You did not destroy the wicked people, this created legal and police systems that could be trusted. Certainly not the destruction of entire publics and sectors of the people by a pen dipped in the venom of hostility, to which man's malice and primitive animal tendencies were created, but the destruction of cerebral palsy and curvature of the heart, crude education and lax morality.
The task is to sing a new song, by erasing the worlds of lies and forgery that separate brother and brother, removing the artificial partitions that disable the harmony of Israeli life. The extinction of schools and norms and moods that shame our life and bring to Camila, the flowers of our creations.
Build new solid foundations (or uncover ancient foundations), foundations that allow for joint, rebuilding. One building of one people, whose solidarity will be praised precisely by the tens of thousands of different shades as tens of thousands with the House of Israel.
First, one has to get out of the agricultural metaphor, and say simple things, in relation to the foundations of education, private and general.
'The question will always fall on childhood, how do we know it in relation to education. If it is only as kosher for a woman (for adulthood), or if it has great value in itself "(Sermon by Rabbi Kook, article p. 230)
Childhood, the roots of individual life, is a time of turmoil. On the one hand, an unmediated encounter with the world, innocence and purity, unconditional trust, a simple and natural inclination to the good. On the other hand, weakness and softness, lack of judgment, egocentric outbursts, etc.
Should childhood be treated as a biological necessity? (After all, it is not practical for a woman to carry an 18-year-old boy in her womb), whose role in education is to move him out of the world as quickly as possible - to mature the child, or to have self-worth for childhood with its special qualities.
The answer will be derived from the worldview of the questioner. Whether existence is the axis around which life revolves, physical-economic existence, or a refined, creative-artistic existence
It is clear that girls do not have a right to exist on their own, since the child does not work and earn a living, nor does he create and develop. The child is a raw material that can be turned by education into a powerful and effective tool of action.
But if life is conducted according to the purity in which, according to the good, grace and innocence that is embodied among them - then childhood will be recognized as a precious period in itself and perhaps even the most excellent of the periods of life, until the rest of life is concerned with establishing goodness and childlike purity.
According to this model, the role of education is to impart to the child wisdom, cleverness, skills and personal power, while preserving and developing the precious foundations of childhood. The desired fruit of such an education will be an adult who will be illuminated by the finest childhood foundations out of greatness and discretion. In other words - the very roots of childhood will appear as branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits of adulthood.
As an investigation of the two models in individual education, so it is in relation to general education
A nation whose collective life object is founded on existence alone, on concern for security and economy, even if an enlightened and developed aesthetic and cultural spirit is added to it, such a nation will see the appearance of everything in its integration into international systems and all their components (and competitions).
Her early days, childhood and fabrication days, may be a subject of nostalgia and folklore, but as an influential factor policies can only interfere, and erasing them from her consciousness will benefit her. Embracing the past, the homeland, primordial beliefs, and childhood experiences will be considered a harmful reactionary factor.
In contrast, a nation whose inner point of life is the radical moral aspiration, the purer idealism, a nation that finds in its childhood the more complete and brilliant incarnations of G-d's image in man, its attitude towards it, to its childhood, will be completely different.
"Know yourself"
For her, an acquaintance with her self will never be detached from her original roots. She, too, will be involved in all worldly endeavors, in scientific and economic development, in aesthetic creation, in gothic and ethical progress, but in all these she will not deny her original self. On the contrary, all global innovation and development will be happily internalized in her, by which she will put into practice her unique starting point with more sophistication and intensity.
Isaiah, the "cosmopolitan" prophet, who heralded the universal peace vision of the sword classes for shovels and the spears for the singers, also outlined the path to that sublime goal, and the path is the supreme educational order for the people of Israel - the destruction of the hungry.
'Look at the flint of their quarry and the pit of their pierced pit. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah, rejoice ”(Isaiah 11: 1).
Eli Horovitz
