Censored

NB: This article was not published, neither in this form nor in a drastically watered down version. It was felt that it was offensive to the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island. That which might have been offensive, I agreed to omit. Nevertheless, the September 21, 2007 edition of the Jewish Voice and Herald appeared without its usual "From the Old Olivetti" column. People noticed.

If the postal service is on the ball, you'll receive this shortly before or on Yom Kippur. Around the globe Jews rise and confess their sins. “Avenu Malkenu (Our Father our King) forgive us for the sin of...” and then there is an alphabetical recitation of crimes against man and God. Here's my confession. I didn't actually do any of those things. I wouldn't even think of doing most of them. But, still, ritualistically I rise and recite; I beat my breast with the congregation around the world. Somebody did those things. In case he's busy and can't make it to schul, I'll ask for him to be forgiven.

But this I do confess in sincerity: Avenu Malkenu, I did not fight hard enough to prevent a stain from besmirching the Rhode Island Jewish community. I tried. Really I did. But I lost. This newspaper was conceived as a tool to aid the campaign of the Jewish Federation, and so it remained for several years. But for the past dozen years the editorial board has been struggling to give the paper credibility by expanding coverage beyond pictures of rich people at fund raising events, and puff pieces on the good work done by Federation and its agencies. Those still intrude, but of late we've diversified into hard news covering stories of Jews in local, national and world events that didn't make it into the ProJo. We have added columnists whose job is to express an opinion, not to serve as cheerleaders, sometimes critical of Federation and its agencies, sometimes critical of Israel. We've doubled our output, going from a monthly to a bi-weekly, increasing the number of pages, adding color, etc.

A few years ago the then editor, the late Jane Sprague, suggested we publish obituaries. The editorial board approved. The obituaries were a community service, a gift of the Federation newspaper to the bereaved. Rich or poor, important or unknown, what we received we printed. For the first time in their lives, the little guys in the community got recognition—though they had to die first.

Concurrently it was decided that the paper should break even. Now, half the paper is editorial content, half is adverts. But still there's a shortfall, covered by Federation. A business committee was established to figure out ways to reduce Federation's subvention. One idea was to charge for obituaries. “No!” I railed when this was brought to the editorial board. “The ProJo does it.” “I didn't care. It's not Jewish.” “But Jewish papers do it.” “I didn't care—they are not behaving as Jews.” I lost the argument and a few weeks ago an announcement was posted that we would start charging for obituaries beginning September 1. (The implied suggestion, of course, was you were smart enough to die in August you'd beat the fee.)

What does this mean? It means that even in death the little guy and his family are to be marginalized. At least three people were so upset about this outrage that they wrote to the paper in protest. The Rhode Island Board of Rabbis voted unanimously to oppose the decision.

The business committee asks, “How else can we raise the money to meet the deficit?” Well, frankly, that's their problem, not mine, but here are some answers. Make the fee optional; start charging Federation for the advertising it puts onto our pages; increase the cost of commercial advertising; find an angel willing to make a whopping contribution (give the person naming rights—The Menachim Pupick Jewish Gazette has a nice ring to it); start charging a subscription fee; sell donuts in the lobby; cease publication.

But in the end all of these solutions fail to recognize that the job of Federation is to give money away! It raises $4,000,000 a year, keeps some to pay salaries and expenses and then apportions the rest to the Bureau of Jewish Education, to the Family Service, to schools to the JCC, and to this newspaper, no longer merely its shill, but now a valuable resource to the community. Every dollar Federation spends on the paper is not spent at the Seniors' Agency, but every dollar spent at the Senior's Agency is not spent at the Bureau. Which is more important, seniors or students? It's a stupid question. They are equally important. So is this newspaper, the one that contains this column you have read till nearly the end.

Avenu Malkenu, forgive us for even thinking of trying to balance our budget on the backs of the grieving poor.

On teaching history

Much of today's paper concerns education. I've been engaged in the process my entire life, from first grade at the Yeshiva of Flatbush (I was expelled) to the present as a college professor. I'm vain enough to think that some might like to know what professors (or at least one history professor) thinks of the process. I do not pretend that what I think of education is universally held, but I hope it is.

Let me begin with a negative. I don’t teach to the student present; I teach to his future self. I don’t only teach what happened, I teach methods of determining what happened; it’s not the same thing. Some students take one course with me and love it, while others hate it, some take multiple courses with me either out of love for the way I present or as evidence of masochism. In all cases the goal is the same—to make of them thinking human beings.

I assign grades, but I know that their grade can only be determined in a dozen years. Do they remember the facts beyond the course? If “yes,” fine; if not, it may not be important. Do they remember that they are part of history, not the end of it; that they are products of a chain of human endeavor inheriting from the past, contributing to the development, and then leaving the world to the next and the next and the next generations for as far as can be imagined? If so I have succeeded. If after a dozen years they are still asking of something they read or hear, “is this true?” then I have succeeded. If they become teachers and pass along the knowledge and the perspective I’ve taught, then I’ve succeeded. But whatever profession they enter, if when they hear a politician speak they can also hear Pericles, and Cicero and Caesar saying the same things, even if they don’t remember exactly where they heard all that first, I’ve succeeded. If when entering a polling booth they take their obligations seriously, I’ve succeeded.

It is to them I teach, the students who are not yet there but the people they will be in a dozen years, hearing the echoes of the lessons; they are the ones to whom my class is aimed. How successful I am can only be judged by them. This past Fourth of July I met a middle-aged man who asked if I remembered him. I said his face and voice were familiar but that I couldn't place them. He had been a student of mine in the early 1970s and he said that what he had learned from me was vital in his career. I asked what that career had been, expecting that his reply would be “teacher” but, no, he said he had been employed in the defense intelligence establishment. What was useful to him was not the facts I taught, but the questions I'd taught him to ask of documents, the process of discovering truth. He remembered. I had succeeded.

Teaching, to me, is the transmission of the accumulated wisdom (and failed attempts at wisdom) of mankind from antiquity to yesterday. It is the role of the teacher in society, especially the historian, to distill this accumulated knowledge and present it in readily digested portions. I do not know everything that happened in Europe; I do not teach everything I know; I hope to stimulate my students to want to know more than I have taught them, more than I currently know, to understand their role in history, to understand what and how the present receives from the past and contributes to the future.

I encourage my students to challenge me when they disagree and to prompt me when they want more than I have given them. In the process I hope that they learn that authority may be challenged, should be challenged, and how best to challenge it. This process intimidates some students. They don’t like their core ideas threatened and some don’t like my making them think about things they have always taken for granted. Some realize that raising uncomfortable issues is to their benefit, allowing them the opportunity to confirm with knowledge that which they had previously held only as an opinion. Some appreciate new perspectives (new to them) and change their minds about the issue at hand. I always require them to think about what they believe.

So, when I'm not typing columns on this old Olivetti, that's what I do.