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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...
...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...
...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...
Open Mind. Much of the discussion concerned the basic question of what role religion should play in tax-supported schools. Nobody was entirely satisfied with religious "lessons" by secular teachers. Rabbi Gordis decried handing over the work of church and home to public schools, which might develop a "religion-by-rote." Agnostic Lekachman agreed: "I consider religion to be much too important in human history to see it reduced to a patriotic exercise in the classroom...
...ally of social tolerance, class fluidity, and the open mind." It is the one agent that may postpone choices "until they can become the acts of adults rather than the reflexes of children . . . The public school is too valuable to encourage alternatives to it." With much of this Rabbi Gordis agreed: "One can scarcely expect American society to help underwrite the cost of parochial education, the merits of which may be freely granted, but one of the results of which may well be the destruction of the public school system . . . Parents whose loyalty to their church leads them to send...