The belief in reward and punishment is one of the principles of our faith, so I can see the importance of letting us know about the consequences of our actions. However, what see repeatedly in Tanach and later in our history is that the warnings did not help. When the prophets urged us to do teshuva no doubt some people took the warnings to heart, but the goal - avoiding the churban, was not achieved.
So what are we to learn from this? How should parents educate children and how should our mentors and leaders teach us? In our historical experience, if there was no rebuke, people deteriorated. If there were exhortations to improve, it did not help enough to avert the catastrophes of our history (though it probably averted all sorts of evil decrees we don't know about).
And how do the warnings of Tanach fit with ideas that have been presented in the past few decades, based on research and experiments, that show that neither punishments nor rewards are that effective in teaching children and have even been proven to be counterproductive?
most of us have to learn some things the hard way
ReplyDeleteNice site! :) I added you to my blogroll.
ReplyDeleteRosie: Does it help? For example, after the "hard way" of the Holocaust, did more Jews become religious or did more drop religious observance?
ReplyDeleteR' Oliver: Thank you.
I think that what we as Jews did learn from the Holocaust is that whatever type of Jews we are, the anti-Semites hate us all the same. Those Jews who believe themselves to be superior to other Jews should remember that Ashkenazim and Sephardim went up in smoke the same way and frum and non-frum Jews were equally persecuted. Jews who married out or converted out were also slaughtered so every Jew will have to use the Holocaust as a lesson that to the world, as well as to Hashem, we Jews are all equals as far as our intrinsic human value.
ReplyDelete