David Hazony paints a bleak picture of Israeli education in his article “Higher Concerns” (Azure 27, Winter 2007). Sadly, it does not do full justice to the grim reality. We in Israel are mired in an education crisis far deeper and wider than Hazony describes. Even if Israeli academia were to be restored to its former glory apropos the study of Judaism and the humanities, it is questionable whether this would be sufficient to cure the malaise affecting Israel’s current leadership, which is, in my opinion, akin to that of a terminally ill patient.

Schooling, education, and culture in general have lost their prestige as essential Israeli values, and have been marginalized in the face of frighteningly cynical economic and political forces. Science and technology are now the driving forces behind Israel’s economic growth, but there can be no effective education in these fields without a corresponding investment of effort and resources in the study of the tradition, history, and archaeology of the Jewish people in Israel and the diaspora. Science and technology are universal subjects, independent of nationality, and one can study them and excel at them anywhere in the world. Israel is certainly not the best place to learn or build a career in these professions. Thus, anyone wanting to learn and apply them in Israel must do so out of a sense of national responsibility and a desire to contribute to the advancement of his country. Therefore, he needs to grow up in an atmosphere in which it is clear to him why he must study and work here and not somewhere else—and the “here” is the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa (the Technion), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Bar-Ilan University, and the Universities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, whose names bear the imprint of the history of the land of Israel and the Jewish nation that built it.

I deeply regret that I cannot see anyone in the ranks of today’s leadership who acts out of a true concern for the promotion of the country’s spiritual affairs, and whose past and present actions serve as an example and a model to be imitated and esteemed. I cannot identify a single leader who could inspire the multitudes to social, educational, and cultural activism. The rifts in Israeli society that have spawned extremist political and religious factions have blighted us with phenomena such as draft evasion, drug addiction, and horrifying levels of verbal and physical violence. They have also marginalized education and culture, and have left our schools to play the meager technical role of training experts in various fields—a role in which they have no guarantee of longterm success in the face of fierce competition in the international arena.

In a relatively short period of sixty years, then, we have succeeded in building something magnificent—namely, a Jewish state—and then destroying it with our own hands. We have turned our backs on everything that contributed to that extraordinary creation, including the culture of learning in all the Jewish diasporas, and have attempted to copy, unsuccessfully, the developed countries of the West in an effort to be just like every other nation. We have hacked away at the rich and varied Jewish cultures of the world in an attempt to create an “Israeli” culture that lacks substance and meaning. The result is a superficial amalgam that is slowly dissolving into a swamp of corruption and cynicism.

The era of Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion—who, in even darker days for our country, started a Jewish Bible study group in his own home, and authored the book Ben-Gurion Looks at the Bible-ended all too soon, and certainly before it managed to put down strong roots. Indeed, the idea that one of this country’s leaders would study and teach the Bible in his home seems quite absurd today.

Winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Israel Institute of Technology (the Technion)
Haifa

 

Ido Hevroni’s excellent article “The Midrash as Marriage Guide” (Azure 29, Summer 2007), ably shows how halachais always necessary for a Jewish religious life, but not sufficient actually to constitute it. For that more sufficient constitution, Jews need agada; i.e., we need not only the precepts of halacha but, just as much, the personal examples of how the halachic life is to be fully lived. The narrative of agada is replete with such examples. This is especially so with regard to Jewish marriage, something so central to Jewish existence that it is taken to be an analogue to God’s covenantal relationship with the people Israel, which we see in the rabbinic treatment of Song of Songs in general, and in the particular text from Song of Songs Rabba that Hevroni cites and discusses at length in his piece.

Furthermore, agada not only supplies content to the reality structured by halacha, it also influences the way halacha is interpreted and applied. To show how this is done in the context of Hevroni’s article, let me gloss his point that “The halacha does not rule here on whether it is obligatory to divorce the first [childless] wife, or if it is instead possible to take an additional wife.” This question goes back to the time when Abraham takes Hagar as his second wife in order to have a child with her, since his first wife Sarah has been unable to bear children, and she now seems to be beyond childbearing age. Yet, despite the fact that Abraham (then still called “Abram”) does not divorce Sarah (then still called “Sarai”), when discussing the obligation of Jews to procreate, the rabbis rule, “If a man took a wife and lived with her for ten years and she bore no child, he may not abstain (eino rashai levatel)… he shall divorce her and give her her ketuba” (Tosefta Yevamot 8:4; Yevamot 64a; see also Jerusalem Yevamot 6:3 and Genesis Rabba 45:3; Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of Marriage 15:8). So, just as a man has the duty to procreate, so too does a man have the duty to divorce his childless wife after the stipulated period of time. And, judging from this text, anyway, taking an additional wife does not seem to be an option for this man in lieu of divorcing his first wife, despite the fact that Abraham took Hagar as his second wife without divorcing Sarah.

All that notwithstanding, the great fourteenth-century Spanish Jewish jurist R. Isaac Ben Sheshet Barfat (the Rivash) writes about this rabbinic ruling, “In fact, this is the letter of the law (shurat hadin), but what can we do? In our days we have never seen, nor have we heard of it for many generations, that a court was bound to do this: To force a man to divorce his wife… if he did not have children with her” (Responsa of the Rivash, 15). In other words, what was originally a man’s duty, which he may not neglect, now becomes a man’s right, which he may or may not exercise. Moreover, what seems to have been the court’s duty to enforce divorce in the case of prolonged childlessness now becomes the court’s right, which, like the right of this man, it may now choose not to exercise. Thus we might conclude that a man may continue to be married to his childless wife if their relationship has more to it than procreation. And we might conclude that the court does not want to intrude into the intimacy of marriage unless, as the Rivash points out, the marriage was a clearly forbidden union ab initio.

David Novak
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada