![Message from Rabbi Yogi Robkin]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1639079126/levineacademyorg/zinfsb3tgmkfmvbcrcgr/RabbiYogi.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1639079126/levineacademyorg/zinfsb3tgmkfmvbcrcgr/RabbiYogi.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1639079126/levineacademyorg/zinfsb3tgmkfmvbcrcgr/RabbiYogi.jpg","width":737}])
Is Levine Academy one day school or two? While the question itself appears quizzical, the reality among many students is a pronounced disconnect between the secular and Judaic sides of the school. It’s as if one must take sides. Shall I see the world through the modern, western lenses presented to me in my science and language arts classes, or shall I see the world through the lenses of our ancient tradition, as per the teachings of our Judaic courses? And while no one should have to choose between the two, students make this very choice every single day, elevating the importance of one area of Levine’s education to the detriment (and often mental exclusion) of the other. And since our kids are products of Western culture, one can imagine that our students are generally going to be quicker to discount the value and legitimacy of Judaic studies before questioning the likes of Einstein and Shakespeare. What a terrible shame! Especially considering the fact that we send our children to Jewish day schools precisely because we want our children to get the best that the secular and Jewish worlds have to offer.
The elective I have been teaching at Levine for nearly a year now, “Science and Torah”, is one of the classes currently being taught at the school which is meant to bridge this pedagogical gap, presenting the Torah to our students in a way that need not compromise their commitment to Western intellectual staples like logic and the scientific method. I teach in this course that although there are certain strains of Jewish thought that are dominated by the mystical interpretation of the Torah (The Arizal and his students are prime examples of this study), there are equally prominent strains of Jewish thought that are dominated by the school of “rationalism,” which encourages questioning preconceived notions of the Torah’s meaning in light of modern philosophical and scientific findings (Maimonidies in the twelfth century and Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch in the nineteenth century are classic examples of this mode of Jewish learning). A quote from Maimonidies’ philosophical magnum opus, the Guide to the Perplexed, sums up this scholastic method beautifully and succinctly: “The gates of interpretation are not closed to us.”
We navigate different approaches that tackle apparent contradictions between science and Torah, such as the age of the universe, Darwin’s theory of evolution, or even the existence of free will in light of modern findings in neuroscience. And while this often opens up a child’s mind to the distinct possibility that secular and Judaic studies are not mutually exclusive, it also introduces theological questions they may not have had to struggle with before: When is it acceptable to interpret the Torah metaphorically and not literally… and, if one accepts that some parts of the Torah aren’t meant to be a historical recounting of ancient events, why should we believe that other parts of the Torah are indeed factual? And while we may not have the time to tackle all of their questions in any given semester, I do believe that armed with their newfound knowledge, they will be inspired to search for answers to these newfound inquiries, instead of seeing them as just one more reason to dismiss the Judaic side of Levine Academy. Slowly but surely, one student after another, we are sewing the two halves of Levine Academy back together again and producing students who go out into the world all the more enlightened from their exposure to the full range of all that our school has to teach them.