Word: rabbies
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This challenge was issued by Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold, Associate Director of the Harvard B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation. He was thinking specifically of the mass of "non-committed" undergraduates who call themselves Jews because of Jewish birth, but who identify with neither their Judaic heritage, nor active religion...
...Rabbi Gold was somewhat disturbed by this "flirtation with commitment." "I do not favor the lack of earnestness indicated by casually picking and choosing ideas rather than determined searching." This searching--academic wanderings among new and different philosophies--is not eschewed by traditional Judaism; in fact, the pursuit of knowledge is revered as in perhaps no other religion...
...should not stop at potentially dangerous ideas," stated Rabbi Maurice L. Zigmond, Director of Harvard Hillel. "We must study all the facts, for learning is basic, and learning gives the possibility of choice." Is it too optimistic to believe that such open inquiry will lead the Jew closer to Judaism? Zigmond says that he is not worried about Jews merely flirting with commitment "because there will be commitment at some time or another...
...University community, the curriculum, and the teaching attitudes offer a distinctly Christian tradition. Rabbi Gold maintains, though, that the prevailing faith, not only in American universities, but in Western civilization, is not even Judeo-Christian, but Greco-Christian. How does the Jewish student, with only a poor knowledge of his own faith, fare when he meets such foreign and challenging philosophies for the first time...
...Rabbi Gold sees the student in a quandry, suffering from two basic deficiencies: first, he has no fundamental understanding of himself as a Jew; and second, he has no exposure to varieties of thought. "The Jewish student begins to see his Judaism through Christian glasses. This is deplorable, since it distorts his understanding of himself as a Jew. One has to know who he is as a Jew before being exposed to the Christian views...