When education officers call me asking for a reading passage about some value they’ve been told to teach in an education class, I want to tell them: forget it. Give up in advance. It will come out boring no matter what. How do I know? Because talking directly about values is both boring and useless.
The army has this thing of writing education lesson plans — in the style of conquering a fortified objective.
Lesson objective: the soldier will learn the value of camaraderie. Shoving values straight in your face. The problem is, it doesn’t work. I remember my commanders delivering values lessons where you could see plainly that a second earlier they’d read it in some lesson plan the company commander told them to deliver — and they simply regurgitated what they’d read — and we stood there embarrassed, and both they and we just wanted it to be over.
“Ummm, the value of camaraderie: we need to be friends because such and such…” — and not a single person remembers the rest. You think anyone became a better friend because of a values lesson plan like that? Forget it. But when the squad commander saw someone not helping his buddies fix up their gear — and then, from the depths of his heart, he raged and said: you bunch of degenerates — help each other — be human beings! And his eyes blazed — that went in. That, I remember.
Every good writer knows that a didactic story with a message delivered head-on — will not succeed. But a story that simply describes what happens and lets you think for yourself — that’s where the great, truly touching stories live.
You know what’s beautiful about the Torah and our Tanakh stories?
They almost never talk about abstract values. Only real-life examples and stories — with no moral tacked on at the end. No message pushed in your face. In the Torah there is almost never a direct message. At the end of the story of Joseph and his brothers, the Torah does not say: “And therefore, dear Jews, be friends with one another and don’t provoke jealousy, etc.”… Of course not! It hands you a story like a punch in the gut. You’re angry along with the brothers, you weep along with Joseph. And that’s it. It sinks in. Every additional word would be superfluous. In general, there are almost no abstract ideas — mostly short, sharp examples.
Let’s try translating a verse from Exodus chapter 23 into the style in which the IDF’s values are written:
“The soldier shall assist, help, contribute, and strive to exert an optimal influence wherever required; shall demonstrate the value of camaraderie through active involvement in events and a display of capability and personal responsibility, even in conflictual situations involving figures with whom he finds it difficult to identify, thereby demonstrating the value of giving at any cost… blah blah blah.”
Did you give up halfway through? I gave up just writing it.
Now let’s see how the Torah phrases that same value:
“If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden, would you refrain from helping him? You shall surely help him.”
Boom! Wow. Just 13 words, and look how much is here: there’s a story, there’s drama, there’s tension, there’s conflict. The donkey collapsed mid-journey, the whole load spilled, but I’m in a rush, dammit — what do I do? I’ll just keep walking and hope nobody notices I’m here. Walking quietly. Sneaking a glance. Shoot, he caught me looking. Ugh, worse — it’s Gedalia from the garage. I can’t stand the guy; now I even have an excuse — over my dead body am I helping him. Here, I’ll keep going as if I saw nothing. Hey, brother — stop, you’ve been seen — you can’t ignore this! It will haunt you. Come on, come lend a shoulder.
In the Middle Ages, the great Jewish philosophers were already trying to find the abstract ideas from which the whole Torah flows: Rabbi Saadia Gaon counts 10 principles, Maimonides counts 13 principles, Rabbi Hasdai Crescas counts 6 principles, and Rabbi Joseph Albo managed to narrow it down to just three.
But with all due respect to these giants, this search for principles stems from foreign influences: Greek philosophy and its Christian continuation. The Christian religion, for example, is built on a system of beliefs and opinions (dogmatics). But Judaism has no theology — it is a system of commandments. It concerns itself less with the nature of God — and more with practice: what a person is expected to do in the world.
It is the understanding that endless philosophizing about values does not necessarily lead to action. But the reverse is true: actions, doing, mitzvot — these are what instill values in the deepest way.
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Credit where credit is due: I encountered the insight that the Torah does not deal in abstract values in an article on the subject by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. Unfortunately I don’t remember its title. The insight that the Torah’s stories carry no direct message comes from Max Mordechai Shtener in his book “The Success of the Storytellers.”
