By
Rav Jonathan Bailey
MARCH 15, 2004
I believe that God is a Universal Truth and He will therefore be universally found. In that, if I found an idea concerning RaMBaM’s definition of Teshuva in Hamlet that helped me to understand the idea more clearly, it needn’t be rejected just because Shakespeare said it. If the Little Prince wonderfully describes our relationship with God, why not learn it from there too, even though this French guy isn’t the one we normally study? For God is everywhere and therefore can, and should, be found everywhere.
This was an excerpt from my (very carefully monitored) ninety-second speech, which I delivered at my Chag HaSmicha (Rabbinical Ordination ceremony) in the summer of 2001, in Efrat, Israel. However, the thoughts reflected in that speech were not ones I had necessarily always believed in, been aware of or previously ever truly understood. The recognition of the distinct and invaluable importance to enhancing my Torah learning with universal knowledge came to me quite naturally, independent of any formal instruction in that specific approach to study.
It first
dawned on me seven years ago when I had decided that, although I had
majored in English Literature in university, I had still missed out
on so many of the ‘must read classics’ of our time and,
knowing that beginning my four-year smicha program would limit my exposure
to any substantial time for extra curricular reading, I decided to
schedule 45 minutes a day for reading novels. I then began scouring
the used bookstores in Yerushalyim to compile my amateur list of must
read books; the meticulous selection progress boiled down to if I had
even heard of the author or the title throughout my studies and it
was written before the 1900’s, it was a good place for me to
start.
I distinctly remember that I had been rereading Shakespeare’s Hamlet when I chanced upon Claudius delivering his ‘repentance speech’ in the vestibule, having just been found out of his heinous crime. I read through the words, looked up and reread the words just to make certain I had understood them correctly- Shakespeare had just elucidated for me a section of the RaMBaM’s treatise on repentance from his Mishnah Torah! Suddenly, I found myself further understanding Teshuva ideas through Dante’s Divine Comedy while concepts of life and death I had never fully understood in Kohelet became clearer, reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina!
For the next four years, I learned and read, compiling ideas, thoughts and numerous shiurim, making use of universal sources to further understand and more amply convey the Torah’s ideas I was studying and teaching. It was with this background that, when I was given the opportunity, I created the twelfth-grade course, Discovering Text.
Following this universal philosophy, and because this was technically a General Studies course, the choice of ‘texts’ for this class stemmed solely from which works would best illustrate the integral ideas I wanted to convey to the students and was not based on the traditionally accepted (Jewish) significance of the author or source. When we wanted to explore a view of the correct foci of life, therefore, we tapped into the great words of William Wordsworth, a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney and chapter 94 of David HaMelech’s Tehilim. To understand the varied approaches as to how to confront life decisions, we consulted Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’, Shlomo HaMelech’s Kohelet and Shakespeare’s famous ‘To Be or Not To Be’ soliloquy from Hamlet. The goal of the class was not a study in comparative literature, rather it was a study into the deeper more significant ideas of life, and in order to get a true sense of the varied views on the subjects, we tapped into varied authors that best addressed and elucidated these issues for us.
Mine is not a new idea and there have been and will surely be much greater thinkers than I that will understand and explain this philosophy more clearly, but, personally, I have found a most important and productive synthesis between my life of Torah and the universal world that surrounds me. I can only hope that I’ve transmitted some understanding and appreciation of this integral approach to the students who joined me this year in Discovering Text.
Rav Jonathan Bailey teaches Middle School and High School Judaic Studies at Yeshivat Rambam and is a member of the Torah Mitzion Community Kollel of Baltimore.