The Future of Jewish Education in the Age of Relativism

MOSAIC

In 1970, the Romanian-born Orthodox rabbi and theologian Eliezer Berkovits wrote an essay titled “Jewish Education in a World Adrift.” In it he called on Jews to resist the nihilism, boredom, and permissiveness of contemporary society, starting by bolstering Jewish schools. Mark Gottlieb discusses Berkovits’s novel approach to halakhah and Jewish thought and the relevance of the essay’s argument for the present day. (Interview by Jonathan Silver. Audio, 36 minutes.)

GO HERE TO LISTEN

July 18, 2017 | 3 Comments »

Leave a Reply

3 Comments / 3 Comments

  1. @ Felix Quigley:
    Only able to sit through two thirds of this. You realize, you and I are examples of the “permissiveness” and “relativism” Rabbi Berkowitz was against.

    It’s possible to be a fundamentalist and want to give away the store and its possible to be a secularist and a Jewish patriot.

    Time was the roles were reversed. I hope they will be again.

  2. @ Felix Quigley:
    Ha Ha. I was wondering where you were. You and Abolish should have at it. And when are you going to sue David Singer for misappropriating the word, “international.”
    At the risk of sounding like a Christian, “the more the merrier.”

  3. THEY ARE CON ARTISTS…THEY AVOID REALITY…NOT A MENTION OF CAPITALISM

    If Judaism wil not do
    it for Jews, there is nothing else left in the world to do it for
    them. The question is no longer, how to preserve our Jewish
    heritage, but how to preserve life itself in dignity and meaningfulness.

    Sounds great! Lovely fancy words from these guys but I ask what do they mean? I think it is typical academic garbage.

    What are the Jews going to teach their children about:

    1. Marx, lenin, Trotsky
    2. The Russian Revolution
    3. The Civil War
    4. The rise of Stalinism
    5. The rise of Fascism
    6. The Spanish Civil War

    He says the world has “abandoned its moral moorings”. Again fancy words.

    Raises the question of what is morality in a situation where capitalism greed for profit, chaos caused by capitalism, possibility of global warming as one among many issues caused by capitalism and stalinism, wipe out of countless species, disappearing of animals like the tiger and elephant…and ISIS?

    What are Jewish teachers going to teach the Jewish children about these things because the children certainly do need to be taught about these things.

    These guys on this podcast are con artists. Come down to earth guys it is the only one we have.