185. Judaism: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

 

185. Judaism: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

 

 

Judaism  

 

     Religion is a school of its own, teaching what it values and what it marginalizes or  rejects, and why. Judaism, for instance, the older brother of Christianity, has norms which  have had important influence on the formation of American character. Although very few  Jews lived here until the late nineteenth century, the holy books of Christianity had been  conceived by people reared culturally and religiously as Jews, and the elders of the New  England colony actually looked upon themselves from time to time as the lost tribes of  Israel.    

 

      What can be extracted as living wisdom from these Jewish religious thinkers when sieved  through many centuries of Christian cloth? The following at a bedrock minimum: 

 

      1 . As a condition of creation, humans are called upon to honor their origins in flesh  through honoring the father and mother and in the spirit by closely studying the  first five books of the Old Testament (known as the Torah), to dwell upon divine  origins and a time when God directly interceded in the affairs of mankind. 

 

      2. The acceptance that authority is morally grounded in divine authority. The  Commandments must be kept; God will not allow compromise. From this comes  respect for law and further organization of Jewish culture around the belief that  there is a right way to do everything, discernible to intellect, revealed by wise  scholars to ordinary people. Close reading and subtly layered exegesis are Jewish  values which became benchmarks of Western intellect. 

 

      3. The Law of Hospitality to Strangers — in the tradition of Abraham and the angels,  the Jewish Talmud teaches that strangers are to be treated with respect and  affection. This openness to experience led to great advantages for Jews as they  traveled everywhere. It encouraged them to be curious, not always to remain self-  ghettoized, but to take risks in mingling. 

 

      4. A tradition of prayer, and respect for prayer, as a way to know "before whom you  stand," the legend written above the ark containing the Torah scrolls.  

 

     Judaism teaches that God wants our love and loves us in return. The first five books of  the Bible are His gift to purify our hearts with the story of a pilgrim people making its  way through the desert to God. Judaism teaches a way of life that sanctifies the everyday,  an outlook that sees no accidents — not a sparrow falling — without a moral charge to  select a course carefully, since God always offers a road to the good as well as a road to  trouble as His way of honoring free will. Christianity has to some extent incorporated  these precepts, but it also has a unique doctrine of its own, just as Muslim stress on  egalitarianism, and Hindu and Buddhist stresses on renunciation and self-knowledge are  centerpieces of those religions. I'll turn to what that uniqueness of Christianity is next.