The Responsibility of Teaching Unpopular Truths
Click here for a printer-friendly version of this blog post.
The Responsibility of Teaching Unpopular Truths
Let's begin with an anecdote. A student of mine recently made an offhand comment denouncing the authority of Torah due to its "endorsement" of slavery - an institution which this student regarded as axiomatically immoral. I suggested that before on can judge the morality or immorality of Biblical slavery, one must first examine what the Torah actually holds. What do the pesukim in Torah she'bi'Chsav (the Written Torah) say? How does Torah she'baal Peh (the Oral Torah) affect our understanding? What are the practical halachos (laws) which we actually follow/followed? What additional insights and perspectives are offered by the baalei Mesorah?
I devoted many hours to researching this topic and presented my findings to the student who raised the objection. Thankfully, by learning through these sources with the student, I was able to change his mind. I managed to convince him that the Torah's position on slavery is not immoral, and that his initial objection stemmed from ignorance of key facts as well as a misunderstanding of the Torah's intent in allowing slavery. (God willing, I will write all of this up as a blog post later this summer.)
Over the course of my research I came across a very interesting quotation in an article about "the Biblical view of slavery" and how it was viewed during the Civil War period of American history. Before we consider the quotation, here is the context provided by the author of the article:
Two Orthodox Jewish rabbis addressed the issue of slavery in sermons delivered to their flock on the Day of Fasting declared by President Buchanan. [2] Both defended the concept of slavery in theory, though not in the way it was practiced in the Southern states, and both argued against a war to keep the Union whole. The first of these rabbis was R’ Morris Jacob Raphall, rabbi of New York’s Bnai Jeshurun synagogue. His defense of slavery as a biblically ordained institution became extremely popular amongst the citizenry of the Confederacy. The second was R’ Bernard Illowy who gave his sermon in Baltimore’s Lloyd St. synagogue. This sermon was well received by the Jews of the South and earned him a pulpit in the Confederacy’s largest Jewish community, New Orleans.
The quotation I'd like to focus on is from the conclusion of R' Raphall's speech. After stating his case for the Biblical institution of slavery, R' Raphall closes with the following:
My friends, I find, and I am sorry to find, that I am delivering a pro-slavery discourse. I am no friend to slavery in the abstract, and still less friendly to the practical working of slavery. But I stand here as a teacher in Israel; not to place before you my own feelings and opinions, but to propound to you the word of God, the Bible view of slavery. With a due sense of my responsibility, I must state to you the truth and nothing but the truth, however unpalatable or unpopular that truth may be.
As a teacher, this statement really resonated with me. In the aforementioned discussion with my student about slavery, I was fortunate that he ultimately came to see and agree with the rationality of the Torah's position. But this certainly doesn't happen all of the time. I have taught many ideas which I know will not be viewed favorably by students, and I have given many answers in Q&A sessions which I know will not be well-received by my students. But as R' Raphall said, as a teacher in Israel, I am duty-bound to present the truth to the best of my ability, however unpalatable or unpopular that truth may be.
This is the approach that has been taken by the greatest chachamim (wise men) in every generation. To my mind one of the most striking examples of this is the Rambam's statement in his introduction to the Guide for the Perplexed [3]. He writes:
[W]hen I have a difficult subject before me – when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools – I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatsoever of the condemnation of the multitude. I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace.
Another favorite example of mine is Socrates's response to Crito, who was worried about what people might think:
But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many? ... We must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say. And therefore you begin in error when you advise that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust, good and evil, honorable and dishonorable.
But there is no greater embodiment of this approach than Avraham Avinu, our founding father. Chazal explain that the name "Avraham ha'Ivri" (lit. "Abraham the Hebrew") may be understood to mean that "Avraham stood on one side, while the whole world stood on the other" (Bereishis Rabbah 42:13). The Rambam [4] highlights this quality in his account of Avraham's backstory:
[Avraham's] mind probed and contemplated until he apprehended the Path of Truth ... He knew that there Exists One God, and He is the One Who moves the sphere, and He created everything, and there is no God in all existence besides Him.
And he knew that the entire nation erred and that the thing which caused them to err was that they worshipped the stars and the statues until the truth was lost from their minds. Avraham was forty years old when he recognized his Creator.
Once he recognized and knew, he began to refute the people of Ur Kasdim and to arrange disputations with them, and to say, “This is not the Path of Truth on which you tread!” He broke their idols, and he began to impart knowledge to the nation that it is only proper to worship the God of the universe, and that it is only proper to bow, offer sacrifices, and offer libations to Him, so that all of future created beings would recognize Him, and that it is proper to obliterate and to shatter all of the statues, in order that the entire nation should not err after them, like those who imagined that there was no God but them.
Once he prevailed over them with his proofs, the king sought to kill him. A miracle was done for him and he escaped to Charan. He began to take a stand and to proclaim in a great voice to the entire nation, and to make known to them that there is One God of the entire universe and it is proper to worship Him. He would walk and call and congregate the people from city to city and province to province, until he reached the Land of Canaan, where he called, as it is stated, “And he called there in the Name of Hashem, the God of the Universe” (Bereishis 21:33).
As the nation gathered around him and questioned him about his principles, he would teach every one of them, each one in accordance with his mind/psyche, until he returned him to the Path of Truth, until thousands and myriads were gathered unto him; they are “the Men of Avraham’s Household.”
The way things are going in America these days - with the recent surges in extreme political correctness, trigger warnings, safe spaces, etc. - the need to cling to the derech Avraham Avinu is more urgent than ever. There is a great temptation for Jewish educators to compromise truth due to the fear of upsetting their audience - especially when they feel that these truths might turn people off from Torah. The fact that the cultural climate of America is hostile towards "religion" makes it even harder to take an unapologetic stance as a representative of Judaism. But as the poet once said, "Rather let us suffer for speaking the truth, than that truth should suffer for want of speaking." Bringing people closer to Torah is virtuous so long as we do not harm Torah in the process.
At the same time, we must be sensitive to the student's psychological state. I once heard a shiur about the change in Avraham Avinu's method as described by the Rambam in the passage above. At the beginning of Avraham's teaching career, his approach was confrontational, "in your face," and iconoclastic - both figuratively and literally. This approach may have been somewhat successful ... until it almost got him killed.
After Hashem saved Avraham, and he relaunched his teaching career in Charan, he used a far gentler approach: "he would walk and call and congregate the people ... As the nation gathered around him and questioned him about his principles, he would teach every one of them, each one in accordance with his mind/psyche, until he returned him to the Path of Truth." This second method is the one that ultimately succeeded.
This is the challenge: to teach Torah in as authentic, undiluted, and uncompromising manner as possible, while simultaneously exercising the midas ha'rachamim (merciful) method of lefi daato shel ben aviv melamdo ("the father should teach in accordance with the mind/psyche of the son"). The fact that even Avraham went too far to one extreme on his first try shows how difficult it is to strike this balance.
So next time you find yourself faced with the task of teaching an unpopular truth, remember to ask yourself (to borrow and twist another religion's catch-phrase), "What would Avraham Avinu do?"
[1] The Biblical View of Slavery, Then and Now: In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, by Yaakov S. Weinstein. The article was published - and is available on - Hakirah.
[2] On December 14th, 1860, President James Buchanan decreed a national "day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer" in response to the conflict and unrest in the United States leading up to what would erupt as the Civil War. The text of this proclamation may be found here.
[3] Rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam / Maimonides), Guide for the Perplexed: Introduction
[4] ibid. Mishneh Torah: Sefer ha'Mada, Hilchos Avodah Zarah 1:3