[Avodah] The Fast of the 10th of Teveth - Israel's Life Among the Nations

[Prof. Levine]

The following is from RSRH's Essay Teveth V with the above title that 
is in his Collected Writings Volume II

We might wish to see our children and our grandchildren enjoying
freedom and equality among the nations. We can attain these objectives
only if we educate our children and grandchildren for that
freedom and equality. We must teach them respect and appreciation
for all the truly pure and human values that have ripened in the midst
of the nations. At the same time we must imbue our youth so
thoroughly with the glory of their life and calling as Jews, which
outshines all other human achievements, that they ought never to be
blinded by any other light or succumb to any temptation coming from
the outside. We must teach them the splendor of Judaism so that they
will understand that all pure human values are only fruits of the Jewish
spirit.

This goal will not be attained if we adopt the ways of modern
sophistry and th~e _ delusions of today's "priests and prophets" and
educate our children according to their thinking. We cannot tolerate
that non-Jewish culture becomes the standard to which Jewish values
and Jewish learning must defer.

We should never tolerate that our unique Divinely-ordained institutions
that survived over thousands of years should come to an
absurd end through our own fault.

But it would be a mistake if, frightened by the past experience of
such aberrations, we were to educate our children only for isolation
and keep them from all contacts with the nations. We must teach them'
to understand and appreciate the genuine values of the nations and not
only to fear them. No matter what we do, our children will certainly be
thrust upon a life' among the nations. We have to prepare them for this
test. The danger that they will be lost will be all the greater if we do not
prepare them for this test. Life among the nations, with all its facts and
errors, will take them by surprise if we have not trained them til distinguish
the true from the false, to know the difference between universal
values and notions still mired in human delusion. We will fail our
Jewish education if we have not trained our youth amidst free contacts
with European civilization, to love their Judaism, and particularly
their true, genuine lives as Jews, and to maintain these Jewish values
above all else.

In times such as ours we take this warning from the tenth day of
Teveth: Jerusalem fell because its people had not learned to hold fast
to Jewish truth in its dealings and contacts with the nations of the
world. May all of us hear this warning and take it to heart.
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