Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 3 December 2003 — Page 26

NAT 14 December 3. 2003

Silver Continued from page 5 openly, not afraid to speak our minds. He has been instrumental in bringing me back to my religious heritage," she said. "We have total respect for each other," he said. "It's bashert, destined to be, and we are very close friends. She exercises every day and has been inspirational, patiently so, in helping to improve my physical wellbeing and nutrition," added Steinfeld. They have taken several short trips together for family celebrations - Chicago, Louisville, Washington, D.C. - and are spending a week together in Cancun at Thanksgiving. They most certainly will have an additional reason to give thanks - each other. L'chayim!

Sandler Continued from page 9 people should not treat others in ways that they would not want to be treated. Clearly running through the various attempts by the earlier biblical and Talmudic writers to crystallize the central, fundamental idea of Judaism, as noted above, is an explicitly-stated emphasis upon the importance of justice and righteousness, as if to say: however different people may be, in any way, all people should be considered equal in dignity and respect. That idea further implies that other people are not to be considered as "objects" (as Martin Buber has so eloquently pointed out) whom one can "use" to enhance one's own power or profit. Many people will read these words and nod their heads in approval, but the reality is that those words have not yet become the central "human value system" in the lives of most of the people on this planet. A particularly interesting aspect of Hillel's encapsulation of "the entire Torah" is the fact that he chose to express what to him was the central idea of the Torah in a negatively-worded statement which mandates behavioral restraint. He had said, "What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor." The idea expressed in Hillel's words is clearly recognizable as the Golden Rule, which we know in its positively stated form: "Do unto

others as you would have them do unto you." This concept was well known to informed Jews by Hillel's time. The passage in Leviticus, Chapter 19:18, cited above, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," was written some 700 or 800 years before Hillel's time - and may well have been transmitted orally for many generations before that. Clearly, positively phrased commands such as "Forward march!" or "Write the following in your notebooks," or "Sit down," or "Help old ladies to cross the street" serve constructive purposes in many areas of social life, and they obviously have their place in the education of children. Why then, one might wonder, did Hillel, the great teacher and scholar that we know him to have been, choose to express this particular idea - in this instance to an adult non-Jew - in a negativelyphrased manner? Hillel apparently felt that all the learning, all the reading and writing, the praying and the meditating, the rituals, including daily animal sacrifices that had been a part of Jewish life for centuries, did not, in and of themselves, constitute the basic significance of Judaism. Hillel knew, as Moses, Micah, Isaiah, and the writer of Leviticus (and others) had known, that the most important, the most substantive philosophical teaching in the Torah - in Judaism - was the humanistic objective of fostering enlightened, civilized behavior in the everyday lives of the Jewish people - in the lives of all people - in their families, in their communities, in the world! To Hillel, if not to the assorted tyrants and barbarians of human history (and their hordes of supporters) it must have been clear that just as any person would not like for others to injure, attack, insult, or harm him in any way, so should every person, therefore, be taught to restrain himself from injuring, attacking, or insulting others. ("What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.") When Greek secular and scientific knowledge began to come to the attention of educated Jews, some time after 300 B.C.E., some Jews, fascinated by this new knowledge (understandably), abandoned their traditional Jewish learning (the biblical and Talmudic writings and commentaries) and began to learn Greek so that they could study astrono-

my, mathematics, physics, biology, the arts, etc. Many other Jewish students and scholars, however, like Hillel, retained their primary commitment to the basic humanistic objective of Jewish learning even while they acquainted themselves with the admittedly exciting new learning being spread by the Greeks. One such Talmudic scholar, Elazar Chisma, himself an accomplished mathematician and astronomer, wrote (as is recorded in the Talmud), "Astronomy and geometry are the after courses of wisdom," implying that the first principle of education should be the historic primary objective of Jewish study; namely, the raising and educating of children to become humane, enlightened, civilized human beings. In 1933, for example, when Adolf Hitler was voted into power in Germany, the German nation was the most highly educated nation in the world in mathematics, in engineering, in medicine, and in the sciences. Apparently, however, the curricula of all those highly educated engineers and scientists did not include any lessons that teach students to respect the essential human value of human life, irrespective of whetfr oeople happened to believe c rently, or happened to look different, from them, the Germans. Many Germans in and out of the Nazi government and their willing collaborators in other European countries, from the well educated to the poorly educated, were brainwashed to believe that fate had conferred upon them the right - the right (!) - to "exterminate" six million Jews, a quarter of a million gypsies, and five million other Europeans whom they considered to be "undesirables" (gays, people who were disfigured, the mentally ill, those with learning disabilities, those who sacrificed their lives in order to save the lives of others). At some point in his adult life Hillel may have thought to himself, "I think there would be much less mischief, much less greed, much less cruelty, violence, and barbarism in human society if people, irrespective of how well educated or poorly educated they might be, academically, were inculcated, from infancy, by precept and example, with Life Lesson Number One: to respect the dignity and humanity of other people irrespective of color or creed;

and Life Lesson Number Two: to instill into children sufficient strength to restrain the often tempting inclination to act in an evil or violent manner toward innocent human beings. Since Hillel did not have enough time to teach the nonJew, standing on one foot, the many specific positive teachings of the ethical philosophy of Judaism, he therefore opted for the strategy of teaching the non-Jew that the most important idea in the entire Torah, in his view, was restraining oneself from doing to one's fellow human beings what he would not want to have done to him. Hillel's statement of the Golden Rule, expressed in the negative, with its strong implication of restraint, is suggestive of comparison with what have come to be known as The Ten Commandments - literally. The Ten Sayings. How remarkable it is to take note of the fact that the writer of those Ten Sayings, presumably Moses (according to legend), may very well have had in his mind the identical idea that Hillel, more than a thousand years later, very likely had in his; namely, that as important as it was to teach people about positive acts of virtue, or to teach students about science, math, etc., it was even more important, as a practical matter in the day-to-day reality of human society, to teach them, first, the fundamental principle of restraining themselves from acting in an evil manner toward others. One is struck by the fact that seven of The Ten Commandments actually begin with the words "Thou shall not" and that two of the remaining three include the words "Thou shall not" in their statements. The Fifth Commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother," is the only one that does not contain the words "Thou shall not." Implied in the words "Honor thy father and thy mother," interestingly, is the subtle directive to defer one's own desires and inclinations to the advice and/or instruction of one's parents. Clearly, there is a strong philosophical emphasis of selfrestraint running through all of The Ten Commandments. Writing about Hillel's response to the non-Jew and about self-restraint in the early years of the 21st century, one is struck by how the concept of societal thinking about self-restraint has changed in the United States

and in the western world during the past 50 years. In the public schools and in most homes in the United States before World War II, self-control was assumed to be a very important virtue. Teachers and parents generally considered it to be their responsibility to instill this virtue into their children. The child-rearing and educational philosophy of the 1920s and 1930s, however, which strongly emphasized self-re-straint, especially during the years of hardship brought on by the Great Depression, gave way, after World War II, to a child-rearing philosophy of indulgence and permissiveness. After World War II, the parents of the baby boomers, who had been deprived during the Depression and then fought in the Great War, were doing very well in the 1950s and 60s. They wanted to give their children all those things that they never had - and more! They meant well. The children of those baby boomers are now parents themselves, and their children are not being raised with the same philosophy of indulgence and permissiveness that they knew when they were children. One cartoon of the times pictures two young children unwrapping an expensive present that one of them had received from his parents. The other child asked, "What is that?" His little friend answered, "I don't know; it must be another toy that my parents never had when they were children." In addition, popular psychology in the decades following World War II told parents and teachers that children must not just be quiet, passive recipients of information and knowledge but that they must be encouraged to express themselves. "Expression is health," and "restraint," some were saying, "could be unhealthy and could lead to serious problems later." As a consequence, many children today have been encouraged to verbalize their feelings and to act out their inclinations of the moment. Many children become seriously - sometimes violently - upset when parents or teachers prevent them from saying or doing whatever they please. Today, a popular mantra says "Get in touch with your feelings...if it feels good, do it!" If other people don't like it -when you play very loud music in your car, or at the beach, Continued on next page