Dear Friends,
My son attends the same school as the youth whose
inquiry is the initial subject of what appears to be a discussion that has
gotten off track. I will not speak for Robin in this though I have spoken to
her about the project and about problems with the initial idea.
"Power and Privilege," is the name of the class not
the name of the assignment. The class description is as follows - "Power and
Perception in Prophetic Literature: Through in-depth textual analysis of the
literature of the prophets, students will explore issues such as conflict
and identity, seeing and being seen, and the role of “perspective” in
creating and resolving conflict. Students will study biblical figures such
as Gideon, Samuel, David and Jeremiah using both traditional methods
(kushiot and terutzim) in combination with modern methods of literary
criticism to wrestle with questions related to personal responsibility,
ethics, power, love and conflict."
The Jewish Community High School of the Bay is a
community school, which does its best to maintain a balanced community of
students and teachers across Jewish denominations. JCHS is not a bastion of
anti-semitism and I don't think that the honest inquiries of one of their
students deserves to be demeaned. Remember, this is a young person ASKING A
QUESTION.
In my view the problem in the question is that it
implies an understanding of race and class that emerge out of 19th century
racial and political philosophical thinking. Jewish history vastly predates
these ideas. As a result there are no pure answers to these sorts of
questions in Jewish texts that predate these ideas. Jews have involved
themselves in issues of class and race in the era in which these ideas were
available. How Jews have acquitted themselves will be the subject of
discussion on campus when this youth is in college. I humbly suggest to you
that anxiety over how to deal with anti-semitism may be precisely the source
of this student's question.
As librarians (and booksellers) I thought that the
mission was to help our patrons in their inquiries. As Jewish librarians
(and booksellers) I thought that the mission was to help our patrons with a
Jewish understanding that might be lacking in the larger world. Can we go
with that?
All the best,
Henry
__
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
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