Nu, back to school?

Editorial

The Independent's Back-to-School issue is an annual tradition. But, in a sense, it is a misnomer. Back to school assumes we have taken a break from our education, but in Jewish tradition, there is no summer holiday from learning.

This is more than mere semantics. Education and lifelong learning defined Jewish tradition millennia before anyone else was using the term "lifelong learning." When our ancestors were dispersed from Zion 19 centuries ago, our exile could have meant the end of our peoplehood, as so many peoples have disappeared from the pages of history.

But we passed our generations of exile in the book. Because we had Torah – a written testament – our ancestors were able to continue our traditions, with some variations, whether they were in Azerbaijan, Addis Ababa or Alsace. When we reunited in Zion after the end of our exile, we found that our years apart had certainly altered our observances – our foods are as diverse as the world's, our physical appearances are varied and our customs differ. But, even after nearly two millennia away from home, our core characteristics and values remained so astonishingly alike that they can be easily recognized regardless of our own origins.

It was because of the Jewish people's devotion to Torah that we did not vanish into the nations in which we lived. For centuries, we preserved our values, our mitzvot and our longing to return to Zion through the observance of 613 commandments and the same moral lessons of our ancestors. As time progressed, the rabbinic Judaism of the Talmud enriched the intellectual ferment in ways that would profoundly define the meaning of Judaism. And a flourishing of various Jewish cultures in the world helped redefine Jewishness in myriad ways.

These were not easy centuries, to understate the case. But one of the most revolutionary challenges to traditional Judaism emerged in the form of the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment, which began in the 18th century. The rationalist Jewish thinkers of the Haskalah threatened the carefully ordered nature that had preserved Judaism through so many tumultuous centuries. A culture so seemingly fragile could have been devastated by so fundamental a shift as that presented by the Haskalah. Instead, as it has done so many times, Judaism proved flexible, and the enlightenment expanded millennia of traditional Jewish religious education outward, applying Jewish perspectives and values to the issues raised by advancements in scientific and secular learning. In this way, the definition of learning, for Jews, changed. Education was always a mitzvah akin to prayer, but after the Haskalah, secular or scientific learning became increasingly accepted as a form of learning, valued almost as highly as religious learning. This phenomenon was aided by Jewish history, which decreed that Jews would be unwise to invest in anything that could not be bundled up and carried away at short notice. So, reverence for education became one of the primary essential characteristics of Jewish peoplehood.

This magnificent tradition has not declined. As life for Jews became more rooted and less subject to sudden expulsion – in increasingly tolerant democracies and, finally, in the state of Israel – the value of education did not diminish. Now, Israel is the country with the highest per-capita rate of scholarly publication and is home to several of the world's most advanced institutes of learning.

Closer to home, Jewish education continues to strengthen with the years. In this decade alone, British Columbia has seen the creation of our first purpose-built Jewish community high school, the outstanding King David High School. We have seen the creation of an Orthodox yeshivah and beis midrash in the form of the Pacific Torah Institute. And Hillel – a vital component in Jewish education and continuity – has expanded from one campus to the three largest universities in British Columbia and is beginning construction on a landmark new home for Jewish students on the campus of UBC. Meanwhile, community day schools are flourishing, synagogue-based after-school and weekend learning is thriving, as is TAG, the community's teen enrichment program. The Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver offers a vast array of academic and recreational learning opportunities, and almost every organization that is part of Jewish life offers some form of educational programming.

Even for those young people who have a couple of months out of formal schooling in the summertime, there is a booming Jewish camping scene in this region, where young Jews live and learn Jewishly in ways they will never forget.

Still, just as the end of summer means the coming of Rosh Hashanah, the new year, so does it beckon a fresh academic start for so many of us, young and old. It's time to go back to school. As if we ever left.

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