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Moral Development and Tikkun Olam
Appeared in Jewish Education News, 1999.
In 1994, CAJE co-published with The Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values a curriculum entitled Jewish Civics: A Tikkun Olam/World Repair Manual. Now in a second edition with a separate teacher's guide, the curriculum examines key social and political issues that have been the focus of the American Jewish community's energy over the past several decades. It features a unique Jewish values matrix which provides a systematic approach to values-based decision making related primarily to how Jews might engage in public issues of contemporary importance. We have been most gratified to find our 38-point matrix adapted and utilized in settings for children, teens, college and young leadership training programs for adults.
The curriculum became the centerpiece for a Jewish Civics Initiative (JCI) co-sponsored by The Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values and the Jewish Education Service of North America. Fifteen communities now participate in this program designed for high school aged students (mostly 11th and 12th graders). It involves studying the Jewish Civics curriculum, a JCI Retreat in Washington D.C. and then a community service project based in the home community. The service projects have ranged from literacy projects for inner city children, to intercultural dialogue projects, to ongoing volunteering in local homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
When we were approached by the Jim Joseph Foundation to revise the curriculum, making it suitable for a Jewish day school audience, we began to wrestle with how best to make the case for the engagement of Jews in the world around them. In particular, to the extent that the primary audience for the new curriculum would be Orthodox schools we wanted to make the case for Jewish civic involvement in public issues that went beyond the borders of the Jewish community. How could we best convey the notion that the principle of tzelem elohim applied to both Jews and non-Jews? How could we transmit the understanding that support for Jews and Jewish causes and working with other religious and ethnic groups were not mutually exclusive?
To make that case, we needed to frame the moral imperative for social engagement in light of concepts directly rooted in Torah sources. This was not so simple. Classical Jewish tradition has no conceptual framework for political activism. There is no key term in rabbinic or biblical Hebrew for "civics" or politics. These are Greek concepts. Instead, Jewish traditional sources tend to see the primary arena of social exchange as taking place between individuals. To arrive at the desired role that an individual might play vis a vis society, one must extrapolate from the duties and obligations incumbent on individuals in the realm of interpersonal relations. Thus Jewish social and political engagement becomes an extension of the the rabbinic understanding of what it means to be a moral person.
The strategy that we developed to connect personal Jewish behavior with Jewish civic behavior was an adaptation of Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Kohlberg's theory helps us to understand how it is that people move through a ladder of moral stages which drive our behavior. Kohlberg's stages, in ascending order of sophistication are:
- fear of punishment self-interest self-image duty social contract
- absolute justice and kindness
Kohlberg helps us to understand that people attain different levels of moral development. The development is a corollary to age and maturation. While everyone passes through the stages of moral development in the same sequence, different people stop maturing from a moral point of view at different stages. Although few people succeed to function at the highest levels in any consistent way, these levels are attainable. At the same time, human behavior is such that people move between the different levels for different activities. What is critical from an educational perspective is that children need to evolve through each stage consecutively, and they will do so at their particular pace. When trying to motivate moral behavior, a child who is functioning at the level of self-interest will not be able to respond to a parent or a teacher who appeals to their sense of duty.
For several reasons this approach recommended itself to us as a way to challenge students to think about their responsibilities to themselves, to the Jewish community and to the world at large. First, properly presented, it is non-judgmental. A person who is motivated to ethical behavior because it positively impacts on their self-image is not a worse person than a person who understands how his/her behavior contributes to the common good (social contract). At the same time, by showing how one might engage in certain moral behaviors at a higher level of the ladder, a person can be motivated to increasingly altruistic behavior.
Second, it became clear to us that the study of Jewish texts was, in itself, a yardstick that revealed a certain place in the moral continuum on the part of the reader. So many texts can be understood on several levels of Kohlberg's ladder. The very discussion of those texts in a class was a way of creating cross-stage conversation among peers that helped everyone to grow to their next level of development. All of Kohlberg's levels are represented in one form or another in Torah and rabbinic passages. Kohlberg argues that individuals grow from one stage to the next by being exposed to the next level of argument. What better way to have people grow morally than by considering classical Jewish texts!We began to look for texts that suggested one or more of Kohlberg's stages of moral development. What emerged was a recasting of Kohlberg's ladder in a Jewish key, although we modified it to include a seventh level, above the level of absolute justice and kindness--kiddush ha-shem, - actions that grow out of the most selfless form of religious devotion.What follows is the grid we created which is featured in our new curriculum, Jews, Judaism and Civic Responsibility (1998).
(see addendum)
A few words about application. Because the focus of our programs is on promoting tikkun olam, social activism and civic engagement, we use the Jewish moral development grid to think about and analyze public issues. For example we might ask a class to discuss the position taken by the Jewish community on affirmative action programs using the grid. What becomes clear is that at a Level Two, Jews opposing affirmative action programs have a clear sense that it does not serve the Jewish community's self interest because we are over-represented in colleges, graduate programs and professional schools as well as in choice vocations. At the same time, Jews with a sense of social utility or social contract will be much more favorably disposed to programs that provide disadvantaged minorities with opportunities that they would not otherwise have.
Another example. What should be the Jewish community's position be on accusations made against the government of Israel about the human rights treatment of Palestinians? There are those who make the case that the media and human rights monitoring organizations are exercising a double standard, accusing Israel of behavior that is often hidden from the public eye in Arab countries. On the other hand there are Jewish groups that feel that Israel needs to be held up to the highest standards of the Jewish tradition regardless of the behavior of neighboring countries or to the perceived threats that might otherwise justify harsher treatment of Palestinians suspected of bringing harm to Israeli civilians. This too is a discussion that is enriched when placed in the context of our Jewish moral development grid. It would not be hard to apply the same grid to look at other types of behavior that might be more in the realm of personal decision making and interpersonal relationships.
Finally, the Jewish moral development grid can be a useful tool in the study of Jewish texts. For students to be challenged to speculate about the moral level that a commentator was addressing when writing a particular passage or interpreting a Biblical verse opens up a way for students to begin to have a more nuanced understanding of the exegetical process. It is thus possible to give students a glimpse of the most altruistic possibilities framed by the Jewish tradition and then challenge them to live up to it.
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Renewing Jewish Life through Jewish Civics
Appeared in Journal of Jewish Communal Service, June, 2000
So often, those of us involved in the Jewish community contemplate the great challenges that face us and we fail to place our predicament into a larger societal context which may help us find solutions to those problems. We end up to talking to the same people, reading the same books and periodicals, and interacting with the same organizational universe. It is not surprising that it sometimes seems as if we are going around in circles! We are.
I'd like to take a step back to reflect on what we, in the Jewish community call, our "Jewish identity problem". Everyone continues to cite the statistics which suggest that we are a vanishing people. Federations mobilize for ambitious campaigns to promote trips to Israel for teens, family education and increased availability of Jewish camps and schools for families, all as part of their important continuity agendas. All of these programs will, no doubt, be helpful to get increased numbers of Jewish young people to have positive Jewish experiences which will make them more likely to seek out Jewish identification when they get older. Still, there persists the nagging doubt whether any or all of these measures have the strength to withstand the powerful draw of a secular culture which seems to draw Jews away from the Jewish community.
It is helpful to put our particular "identity" dilemma into a broader American context. John Gardner, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching who served as Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the late 1960's and went on to found Common Cause (1970) and Independent Sector (1979 ) has been one of the singular voices in America on the issue of citizen responsibility as it bears on the quality of our communal and national life. As a writer and activist, Gardner has tried to address the disengagement of Americans from the governmental and non-governmental forces that control their lives.
To read his analysis as well as his proposals for remedy helps to put our "Jewish dilemma" into a larger context. In an essay entitled "National Renewal" (1995) Gardner wrote: "We are seeing the collapse of communities of obligation and commitment. One reason for the decline in the observance of ethical values is that the soil in which such values are rooted and nurtured--the family and community--is being blown away in the dust storm of American life. Individuals torn loose from a context of community and shared values lose the conviction that they can influence the events and circumstances of their lives and the world around them. Obvious consequences are discouragement, frustration and anger. A less obvious consequence is diminution of individual responsibility and commitment."
What Gardner is talking about in his article is a breakdown of social responsibility and civic commitment and the evidence supporting his observations is overwhelming. The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA found in its most recent survey that interest in government and politics among college freshman is at an all-time low. Two-thirds of those surveyed felt that there was nothing they could do to change society. A complementary study by the Pew Research Center entitled, "For the People and the Press" noted the irony that the generation that has come of age with unprecedented access to information via technology and, in particular, the internet, and longer term exposure to formal education than at any time in history is, nevertheless, far more ignorant of current issues than any previous generation of Americans. It is not coincidental that participation in the political process as measured by voting, has also dropped precipitously by young people. In the past twenty years voting among young people aged 18-24 has dropped from 50% to 36%.
Cynicism about the American political system is widely prevalent among young people today. They have been given little reason to believe that their active engagement in social and political issues matter. An earlier study, published by People for the American Way, found that young people cherish America's freedoms without understanding what it takes to preserve them; that today's youth are far less inclined to be politically involved than previous generations; and that personal happiness and professional success are far higher priorities than any interest in communal or public involvements that might benefit society as a whole.
The health of a democracy can be measured by the level of involvement of its citizens, and the indicators are not good. Educators and public officials are painfully aware that American society has failed to inculcate in its citizenry a deep and abiding commitment to civics. Ironically, the very dissipation of the threat to democracy from without has raised concerns about the threats to democracy from within.
For a time, the Jewish community seemed immune from this trend. As an immigrant community arriving to these shores, Jews were profoundly aware of how much more freedom and opportunity was available to them than in Europe. Jews threw themselves into the business of becoming good Americans. Participation in the work of the Jewish community as well as an increasing involvement in issues of concern to the general society characterized the "civics" of American Jews. Jews voted in far greater numbers than the general population. They joined and came to lead numerous organizations dedicated to social justice and welfare. As Jews became more prosperous, their money became the engine that helped to underwrite many such causes.
Politics became a natural venue for Jewish civic activity. Leonard Fein in The Inner Life of American Jews observes that even non-traditional Jews remained "messianic," but their religion became politics. In other words, Jews took a religious impulse and translated it into the world of politics. Jews first entered the political arena through the civil service, which allowed bright and talented Jews to enter into government service. Over the course of the last decade however, Jews have moved from background staff positions to increasingly prominent elected and appointed offices. A not insignificant indicator of the acceptance that Jews enjoy in America is the fact that by the 1990's one could count ten Jews in the U.S. Senate and between 30-40 Jewish members of the House of Representatives, some from districts with virtually no Jewish population.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Jews came to enjoy such an influential role in American politics over the last few decades. In stark contrast to the failure of the Jewish community to gain adequate access to the Roosevelt administration in order to obtain help for European Jewry during the Holocaust, in the second half of the twentieth century the Jewish community became legendary for its ability to influence American public policy. This influence manifested itself most obviously in securing support for the plight of Soviet Jews and for the State of Israel. But the Jewish community was, as well, a key player in many other causes, including civil rights, women's rights, separation of church and state, human rights and economic opportunities for the disadvantaged of society.
Today, the Jewish community is still, arguably, the most politically active and influential ethnic/religious group in America. Yet there are alarming trends that suggest that this might not continue to be the case. The National Jewish Population Study conducted by the Council of Jewish Federations in 1990 found that the younger generation of American Jews had a far lower commitment to support the State of Israel and other oppressed Jewish populations around the world than their parents' generation. The study also found that the younger generation of Jews was less inclined to support the institutions that organize and mobilize the Jewish community such as Federations and community relations councils.
All of which points in the direction of Jewish civics. A Jewish community that is far more assimilated into American society than ever before is going to manifest less and less of the traits of an immigrant ethnic community struggling to make its mark on the host culture. Where once it was natural for American Jews to interact with American society through Jewish intermediary agencies, today it is increasingly likely that Jews will mainstream into every sector of American society as Jewish Americans. The end result of such a development is the progressive weakening of the fabric of the Jewish community.
If John Gardner frets over the abandonment of civic commitment on the part of Americans, the Jewish community worries no less about the extent to which increasing numbers of Jews no longer feel any strong connection to organized Jewish life. The fact that the Jewish community shares this dilemma with American society at large provides little solace; it may however help to put the problem into the kind of broader context that might point to some long term strategies and solutions.
Civics is a word used to describe the range of rights and responsibilities of being a citizen in a given society. The ability to convey an understanding of civics to members of society is basic to the preservation of a democratic form of government. But whole societies are not the only structures that call for participatory citizenship. Any voluntary organization or community of people is made up of individuals who are enlisted in an implicit contract with the larger entity. Sometimes that contract involves paying dues (being a member of a swim club). Sometimes it involves regular attendance (a student in a school). Both of these simple examples portray civic responsibilities which, when fulfilled, entitle the individual to certain rights.
In the case of the Jewish community, membership is multi-dimensional and it carries certain rights and responsibilities. Among the responsibilities of this "Jewish citizenship" might be: being a dues paying member of a synagogue, visiting Israel with some frequency, or contributing money to UJA/Federation campaigns or to a host of other worthwhile social justice and social service causes. Numerous other examples could be given, all of which are recognized as valid ways of being a "citizen" of the Jewish people. Many Jews participate in more than one mode of identification with Jewish institutions, culture and history. Some participate in none.
The primary "right" of Jewish citizenship is the privilege of feeling part of a historical community of significance which still sets for itself the goal of transforming the world into a kingdom of righteousness. The more one participates in and contributes to the life of the Jewish people, the more one comes to "own" that sense of belonging.
How do we measure the extent to which Jews feel this sense of belonging? Jewish identity is an elusive concept. Sociologists can measure the percentage of Jews who light Chanukah candles, join synagogues or intermarry. But they cannot measure the number of Jews who feel themselves to be part of the Jewish people. The measurable behavior of many such people may give scant indication that they are Jews yet these are both marginally and potentially affiliated Jews. Some of these Jews cycle in and out of Jewish affiliations and others would be inclined to join a synagogue or contribute to a campaign under the right circumstances. But the reality of the Jewish people as we enter the dawn of a new century is that the marginally/potentially affiliated Jew outnumber those who are committed.
Recognizing this reality calls for a radically different approach to the Jewish education of children and to outreach to the unaffiliated. It calls for, in short, education for Jewish citizenship. In the same way that adult converts to Judaism must do more than learn about the Jewish religion, all Jews, young and old must get some exposure to the responsibilities of being part of the Jewish people. This entails an understanding of the political matrix in which Jews might relate to Israel, expectations of financial commitments to a host of causes and organizations and obligations to a community that seeks to perpetuate a minority sub-culture in America.
For too long the mainstream Jewish community has been making assumptions about Jews that are no longer accurate. The baby-boomer generation, born after WWII and now coming into its own professionally and as leaders in society, has a vastly different psyche than the generation of Jews who built the Jewish organizational structure that is currently in place.
- They do not respond viscerally to appeals based on the Holocaust or the State of Israel; they do not defer automatically to religious or communal authority figures;
- they do not derive their sense of place in American society primarily based on their Jewish connections.
This does not make this generation of Jews, bad Jews. They are simply a new breed of Jew and to channel their loyalties in the direction of the Jewish people will require understanding them better.
The new breed of American Jew is aware of the historical persecution of Jews but does not have a persecution complex. They are sensitive to anti-semitism because of the lessons of the Holocaust but they do not mistrust gentiles in the way that did Jews who were born in Europe and who lived through WWII. For similar reasons, new breed American Jews are not as willing to excuse Israel her every excess because of "what Jews went through" or justify it because of security threats. The moral judgments that younger Jews make tend to be more universal and are as likely to move them to sympathize with the cause of the Palestinians as with Israel.
The legacy of the 1960's and the Watergate era combined to make this generation of Jews far more suspicious of any mode of hierarchy or authority figure. Even the workplace has responded to this generational bias and now offers greater opportunities for participatory management. Young Jews are therefore not willing to defer to autocratic synagogues or to heavy handed Federations. Fewer and fewer young Jews are making the decision to become part of the organized Jewish community and they are devoting their passion and energies to activities outside of the rubric of Jewish life. If Jewish institutions are serious about doing outreach and are prepared to be open to the input of newcomers, young Jews will be drawn in. If not, young Jews who have little sense that they must affiliate or must give to Jewish causes, won't.
There seems to me to be two strategies to address this wholesale breakdown of Jewish civic commitment. One has to do with learning and the other with doing. Let me say a few words about each.
If we ask ourselves how it is that American public education tries to teach citizenship to students we find that they teach American history, a little bit about government and then attempt to give students some first hand exposure to how they can be part of the political process. Now it may be true that American society is not doing a very good job at transmitting a sense of civic responsibility to young Americans. Educators are recognizing that something more needs to be added to the mix but noone thinks that any of the basics can be eliminated. If we ask ourselves how synagogue schools and even day schools transmit such information to young Jews, we recognize how much work lies ahead of us.
What is the goal of Jewish civic education? First it is the task of telling the Jewish story.
This amounts to much more than teaching Jewish history. It is the story of Jewish commitment to the well being of their fellow Jews around the world and of the Jewish commitment to social justice for all of humanity. It is the story of how a community that was powerless to help European Jews during the Holocaust became, in a relatively short period of time, the most politically sophisticated sub-community in America. It is appreciating the galaxy of Jewish organizations that form an international polity, acting on behalf of the welfare and safety of the Jewish people as well as on a commitment to create a better world for all humanity. Finally, serious teaching of Jewish civics requires an examination of how the classical texts of the Jewish tradition have served as the foundation for a values orientation that can help us think about the "Jewish way" to engage in issues of social justice. A people which understands the significance of the teaching that human beings are created b'tzelem elohim, in the image of God, cannot function in the political realm with a sole focus on group self-interest and self-preservation.
Jews can and should take pride in this story. More importantly, they should live it. It is critical to cultivate in young Jews a sense of civic responsibility to the issues and institutions that occupy the American public square. While this case can be well made on the basis of American citizenship, there is also a clear mandate for such civic duty from the sacred texts and historical experience of the Jewish people. An even greater challenge, however, is to combine passionate involvement with American society and politics with ongoing reverence for the Jewish tradition and commitment to the Jewish community. The goal is for a young person to walk away with an understanding that to be a Jews is tantamount to being a citizen of the Jewish people.
Of course the best kind of learning comes from doing and this brings us to the second strategy for the renewal of Jewish life through Jewish civics. Recently, educators in the United States have made a major commitment to make community service a staple of the educational experience of young adults. A recent study conducted by Independent Sector revealed that 59% of teenagers engage in some form of community service. Over 90% of teens surveyed said that thy would volunteer if asked. Increasing numbers of school districts are making community service a requirement for graduation. The past decade has brought tremendous new energy to the entire field of community service in America. In addition to non-profit ventures like Campus Compact, the Campus Outreach Opportunity League and Youth Service America, all created in the 1980's, the National and Community Service Act of 1990 created the Corporation for National Service which has helped to raise the profile and funding for many forms of community service for young people. Shirley Sagawa, one of the leaders in the field of community service and former executive vice-president of the Corporation for National Service, notes that a key benefit of service is its ability to develop active citizens whose engagement also extends to awareness of current social and political issues and higher participation in the political process measured by activities such as voting.
There are some encouraging signs that the Jewish community is beginning to recognize the importance of community service, using service experiences to deepen the commitment of Jews to Judaism and to the Jewish community. This past year witnessed the launching of two innovative programs that provided young Jewish adults with a year-long engagement with community service or community organizing-AVODAH out of New York and the Jewish Organizing Initiative out of Boston. The American Jewish World Service has offered a Jewish Volunteer Corps for individuals willing to spend from one to six months overseas in a developing country. The Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values's Jewish Civics Initiative has high school students engaged in social change and community service projects all around the United States.
Still we are only scratching the surface. My sense is that an organized effort to place Jews in places where they can perform service to those less fortunate members of our society would attract tens of thousands of Jews who would not otherwise cast their lot with the Jewish community. In Washington, over 1,500 Jews volunteer on Christmas Day through the D.C. JCC. Yachad, a Jewish organization addressing the low income housing needs in downtown Washington recruits hundreds of volunteers for a Sukkot in April program which helps to renovate houses of low income people. Synagogues get hundreds of volunteers for Mitzvah Days, and though there are those who would dismiss this social action engagement as too superficial and too infrequent, the fact is that it represents an interest that can be built on.
Many younger Jews who are disinclined to become part of the organized Jewish community will say that all the community wants out of them is their money. What if the community came to those same Jews and asked of them precisely what the Biblical prophets would have asked of any Jews in any generation--to give of their plenty to the poor, the widow and the orphan? What if such efforts were combined with the study of the very Jewish texts that made such action a mitzvah? What if cells of young Jewish volunteers working in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, with AIDS patients, in environmental cleanup projects, or tutoring inner city children were then organized for shabbat potluck dinners as well? And then began to study together? And then reached out to youth groups so that more and more service activity could be inter-generational?
The list of "what if" could go on and on. Step back from it and you see the makings of Jewish renewal and renaissance.
In his essay, "National Renewal", John Gardner offers a three part remedy to the social disintegration that has become so much a part of the American landscape. First he calls for "citizen deliberation"--a commitment to deepen the understanding of Americans of the basic issues that confront us as a nation. Second is "citizen involvement"--a call to go far beyond election day citizenship in which one feels that civic duty is dispensed with by voting on election day. Citizen involvement requires people to band together to monitor the quality of our schools, to become custodians of our public spaces, to be watchdogs of the conduct of the business community which affects every aspect of our life and to be engaged in the discussions that lead to the public policies that govern our society. Third, Gardner calls for a wholesale commitment to "community service" in which millions of Americans will devote increased amounts of volunteer time to the organizations and institutions in our community that contribute to the common good.
In reflecting on Gardner's prescription for national renewal, I am struck with the parallel to the teaching of Pirkei Avot about the three pillars on which our world stands. Community deliberation is essentially, Torah. Involvement is the Jewish commitment to avodah. And community service suggests the Jewish mandate for us to engage in gemilut chasadim.
Some two centuries after Jewish emancipation, it is amazing that so many who care about the Jewish future still think about the community as if we were still ghettoized. It is clear that the trends and forces in American society will affect Jews far more powerfully than anything that we manufacture in the Jewish community. It thus behooves us to think about the solutions to our communal viability in the larger context of American life as well. I think that we will find there allies in thought and in action that will surprise us. If we are broadminded enough and forward thinking enough, joining forces with these allies may lead to a communal renewal that will be part of a larger national renewal that will enrich us all.
Notes and Addenda to "Renewing Jewish Life through Jewish Civics"
- Weakening ties to the Jewish community are paralleled by similar trends in American society which show a decline in civic commitment among Americans. The trends in both Jewish and American society are more pronounced among the younger age cohorts. The article points to some new educational and service initiatives that hold out the promise to meet the younger generation "where they are at". It also suggests that, properly contextualized, programs that connect Jews with social justice and service opportunities in general society hold out the greatest promise to get younger Jews re-connected to the Jewish community.
- The American College Student, 1998, Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles (1998).
- Democracy's Next Generation, People for the American Way, Washington D.C., 1989.
- HarperCollins, New York (1988).
- Volunteering and Giving Among American Teenagers, 1996. Independent Sector, Washington D.C., (1997)
- Halperin, Samuel and Sagawa, Shirley, Visions of Service: The future of the National and Community Service Act, National Women's Law Center and American Youth Policy Forum, Washington D.C., (1993).
- insert: Many of these younger Jewish organizations are now coming together in a Jewish service partnership which will be launching a website and making it easier for young Jews to find Jewish contexts for their impulse to engage in service and tikkun olam work.
- (this citation should probably appear after the first citation on the first page) National Renewal, John Gardner, Independent Sector and the National Civic League (1995).
- References:
Jewish Civics: A Tikkun Olam/World Repair Manual (second edition), Mark Gopin, Mark Levine and Sidney Schwarz, The Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, 1994.Jews, Judaism and Civic Responsibility, Zvi Nierman, Joshua Perry, Sidney Schwarz and Michoel Shepard, The Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, 1998. The Call of Service, Robert Coles, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1993.The One and the Many: America's Struggle for the Common Good, Martin Marty, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1997.
Common Fire: Lives of Commitment in a Complex World, Laurent Parks Daloz et. al, Beacon Press, Boston, 1996.
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