The Hebraic Significance in World Education

FOCUS Do you find emphasis on carefully listening to teachers, transmitting the cultural heritage, and instilling appropriate behavior among the purposes of contemporary American education? What is your opinion about religion’s role in education? Why has the teaching of religion and religious observances been so controversial in American education? Refocus again on this question when you read Chapter 9, Legal Aspects of Education. is based on the Torah, the sacred scripture taught and studied by Jews from childhood on throughout their lives.17

Stressing listening, recitation, and commentary on the sacred texts and their moral prescriptions and proscriptions, the purpose of Judaic education is to inculcate the young into their culture by transmitting religious beliefs, prayers, and rituals from one generation to the next.18

As in most early societies, parents were responsible for their children’s education and were the initial teachers. The father taught the Torah and religious observances to his children who learned to honor their father and mother, as the commandments prescribed. As Jewish society became more settled and specialized, teachers (elders, priests, and scribes) who taught in schools augmented, but did not replace, the parental role.

By the seventh century BCE, rabbis—men especially learned in scripture—emerged as teachers among the Jewish people in Israel and Babylonia. In rabbinical schools, instruction emphasized careful listening to sacred readings by the rabbi and reading, memorization, and recitation. By listening, reading, and memorizing, students were expected to internalize the lesson’s meaning and message. To build group cohesion and identity, children listened to stories about important events in the history of the Hebrew people—such as their exodus from Egypt. Rituals were taught that commemorated these events.19

3-4a the Hebraic significance in World education

The Hebraic religious tradition is of special significance for the Jewish people in that it contributes to their cultural identification as a unique covenantal people of God. It has contributed to the Jewish determination to survive as a people despite persecutions, pogroms, and the Holocaust during World War II. The Jews brought the concept of monotheism into Arabic Islamic and Western Christian cultures.

17Ibid., p. 13. 18Ibid., p. 33. 19Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 1–2.

timeline

ancient egyPt

e r s toc k. com t t u S ot o /S h

Jose I gnaci o 3100 BCE Menes united upper and Lower Egypt; Development of hieroglyphic script 2900 BCE use of paper made from papyrus

2600 BCE Construction of great pyramids of Gaza

3600 BCE 3200 BCE 2800 BCE 2400 BCE 2000 BCE

3500 BCE settlements in nile River Valley