Speech
Takhlit - Teaching for Lasting Outcomes (1970)
The Talmud (Ber. 17B) uses the term takhlit, purpose, in discussing what should be the lasting outcomes of Jewish education. מרגלא בפומיה דרבא – תכלית חכחמה תשובה ומעשים טובים. Rava used to say: the takhlit of wisdom is teshuvah (the transformation of personality) and maasim tovim (good deeds). A parallel that immediately comes to mind is the Platonic tri-partite soul. Plato divides the soul into three: the cognitive, or intellectual; the effective, or emotional; and the volitional, that which commits a man to action. In medieval Hebrew thought these were known as sekhel, regesh, and ratzon. What Rava does is to place the first at the service of the latter two. In contemporary terms we would say: the purpose of learn- ing, the takhlit we seek, is the commitment to Jewish action and to the sense of Jewish identity. Jewish education endeavors to produce, first, young men and women who will live their personal lives in a Jewish manner, and participate fully in the affairs and concerns of the Jewish community, both locally and throughout the world. Second, and even more fundamentally, it seeks to secure in him or her an inner sense of identity as a Jew, the transformation of the student’s personality from some- thing Jewishly unformed to something Jewishly informed: its Judaization. We want the product of all our efforts to be Jewish both inwardly and outwardly, psychologically and practically. Of course, those who have differing Jewish commitments will vary in their interpretations of these ideals. From the stand- point of Jewish tradition, it would be necessary for a young man, for instance, to be acquainted with Talmud, to study Torah every day, and to observe kashrut, Shabbat, taharat ha- mishpachah. For others, the standards may be different. But all Jewish educators can agree on the general rubric of “feeling Jewish” and of acting Jewishly. II Now, teachers today — and perhaps it was always that way — are caught in a terrible bind. Economically, socially, cultur…
