Evolving With The Values Of Kaplan And Heschel

Jewish education has the goal to make a contribution to modern times by making tradition applicable. For Kaplan, it is not enough to blindly accept the culture in which we live, rather we must question and evolve. To evolve with our values is not to say that the values themselves are changing in their essential meaning. Evolving with our values specifically points to the idea that we must have an eternal concern with relating our understanding of our values with the values of society, and choosing our actions based on this interaction. It is not enough to simply walk around and only have concern for how our personal actions will affect our personal lives. This transitive concern for our affect on the world enforces a cycle of action and of observation in tandem with one another.
Heschel stresses that freedom is not the freedom to act frivolously without regard for others; freedom is not to act as one desires. Freedom is a challenge against impulse. Impulse guides people to act with a dangerous amount of freedom when not they are not aware of the effect that freedom can have. The fact of having freedom means that we must use our freedom and our power to attain value in our lives. Heschel also argues for the protection …show more content…
They are both facing each other, eager to understand the other, yet at the same, ready to point out the others flaws in their arguments. Heschel is poignant in his argument about the goal of Jewish education. He argues that the goal is to enable students participate and share in the spiritual experience of Jewish living. The goal for Heschel is to not just to have knowledge, but also to be able to think critically and appreciate the act of studying. Heschel believes that there should be fewer textbooks that guide our actions, and more text people, meaning people who are able to interpret and react to what they are studying and will make decisions and perform based on their