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The Case for Morality Religious Higher Education as Academia

Mordechai Ben-Menachem

Higher Education is Globalization and Integration-but is it? Stern Warning: This article is highly “Politically Incorrect” and proud of it. An oft-spoken historian’s rule is that the Hebrew Bible did not and could not have contributed anything significant to the rise of modern ideas and institutions. Quite the opposite, it is claimed by some to have been a hindrance. The ‘faith’ is drawn from Marx, that religion is the opiate of the masses-and who wants to be ‘masses’?! It is always more chic to be ‘liberal’ and ‘secular’ and anti-religion. And, if one can ‘get away’ with it, to be anti-religion while proudly declaring a state of utter ignorance about the subject. We probably all know of a certain biologist who makes a point of searing anti-religion statements while expressing pride in total ignorance of the subject.

This article is not about religion. It is about Higher Education and the similarities between two types of it, as well as certain debts academia owes to Judaic Higher Education.

Judaism has a very long history. Jewish Higher Education has a history nearly as long. Rabbi Akiva is known to have had an “academy” consisting of some 24,000 students, in the town of Bnei Brak, around the year 130 CE. What did they study? How did they study and learn? More importantly for this discussion: What were the pedagogy techniques? How ‘academic’ was it, in the sense of what we are familiar with today? And what can modern academics learn from this? Why is that last question of significance? Because those same and similar techniques are still used in Judaic Religious Higher Education today, with great success!