A Manual for Teaching Biblical HistoryKohn, Eugene
Religion
A Manual for Teaching Biblical History
Kohn, Eugene
Jewish religious education of children -- United States
"So then we can learn these two noble things from our lesson;
modesty adorns everybody even the greatest people, yes very often
the greatest people are the most modest. And further, when we have
begun to do something, let us do it with all our might and stick
to it till it is finished, no matter what it is, whether a school
lesson or setting a people free; whatever is worth doing at all is
worth doing well."
One could imagine the same moral attached to the story of George
Washington or of Cincinnatus and brought home as effectively by it.
The difference between the right and the wrong method of treating
the Biblical narrative from the point of view of the aim of such
instruction can be seen if we contrast the above with the simple
summary of the same lesson in the Passover Haggadah:
"Slaves were we unto Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord our God brought
us forth thence with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. And
if the Holy One, Blessed be He, had not brought forth our fathers
from Egypt behold we and our children and our children's children
might still be bondmen to Pharaoh in Egypt." And again: "In every
generation one is obliged to regard himself as if he in person had
come forth from Egypt, as it is said, 'And thou shalt tell thy son
in that day saying, It is because of that which the Lord did for me
when I went forth from Egypt.' Not our fathers alone did the Holy
One, Blessed be He, redeem but us also did He redeem with them, as
it is said, 'And us did He bring forth thence in order to bring us
hither to give us the land which He had sworn to our fathers.'"
According to the method of the former quotation Biblical history is
no more related to the child than the story of the Iliad, according
to the latter it is his own history, the study of which helps him to
self knowledge, to the knowledge of his Jewish self, the knowledge
of the ties that bind him to his fellow Jews and the Jewish people
to its God. Much more might be said of the effect upon the method
of instruction of a clear conception of the aim of instruction in
Biblical history when thus conceived in terms of Jewish life, but a
study of the lessons given in this book will suffice to explain this
without the need of further amplification, so we may pass to the
consideration of the subject-matter to be taught as a determining
factor in the method of instruction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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