The Encyclopedia That Gave Me a Choice

When I was eight years old, my father began taking me to synagogue on Shabbat. We were living in Israel, and my family was what Israelis called traditional. We did not drive on the Sabbath or light a fire, though we did turn electric lights on and off. My father went to the synagogue every Saturday, but not during the week.

At first, I was proud to go with him. He opened the prayer book and showed me what to read. I read the words carefully, with good intentions and sincere belief. The next week, I read the same prayers again. After two or three weeks, I went to my mother with a question.

“God knows everything,” I said. “Why do I need to tell Him the same things every time? It would make sense to say these things once, or maybe once a year. But why every week?”

My mother said, “It is not for Him. It is for you.”

That answer stayed with me. If the prayers were not needed by God, perhaps they used to build a community, and teaching children where authority lived.

My parents wanted their children to combine Judaism and modernity. They loved Jewish tradition, but they also believed in modern education. My mother used to say, “Penicillin works better than prayer.” She said it with good reason. She had never known her father, who died during the First World War. As a child, she had been sent to a modern school, but after only three years the religious leaders responsible for supporting her demanded that she leave. From the age of ten, she worked as a cleaning lady and later as an assistant in an office. She always resented being denied a decent education.

Yet she did not reject Judaism. She loved Jewish traditions, was proud of her heritage, and admired people who combined the Torah and science. My father was similar. His parents were Orthodox. He studied first in a religious school and later in a modern high school. He became a bookkeeper and accountant, took classes to improve his skills, and followed public affairs closely. He believed in democracy, free markets, a welfare state, and the separation of church and state. My parents wanted us to inherit a religious tradition and benefit from the modern world. For a while, I assumed those things could easily live together.

Then I began studying Genesis in school. I loved the story of creation and knew by heart what God created on each day. That was my first understanding of physics: the world had an order, and the order had been spoken into being.

But in fourth grade, our history teacher, Mrs. Halachmi, told us that Greek mythology had its own stories about creation and the gods. This surprised me. On a school trip, I asked her whether she considered the stories in Genesis to be stories. “Some people believe in them,” she said. “I think that they are stories. They represent the understanding of many years ago. I believe more in scientific explanations.” That answer shocked me. 

When I was ten, my father bought me a youth encyclopedia called Michlal. I read it from cover to cover. It introduced me to evolution, Darwin, the Enlightenment, John Locke, and other people and ideas. The encyclopedia made the world larger.

I started to doubt Judaism. Some of my Orthodox relatives told me that all wisdom was contained in the Talmud and that the rest was inferior. That no longer made sense to me. Most of the inventions, institutions, and ideas that shaped modern life had been created outside the Jewish tradition. Even Jews who made enormous contributions, such as Einstein, were participating in a broader human culture. 

Furthermore, the more familiar I become I found parts of it difficult to accept. I loved the emphasis on justice and helping the poor. But other passages troubled me: The sacrifices at the Temple, the death penalty (stoning) for both adultery and rebellion against parents, and commands (Annihilate the Canaanites). My father and teachers treated many of these passages as ancient, even primitive, and not applicable to modern life. But I understood that others read such texts literally. Furthermore, I learned from some orthodox relatives that the Holocaust as a punishment for our (Jewish people) sins. I found this outrageous. If God is our father, what kind of father kills a third of his children, many of them observant and faithful, because some did not follow His rules?

By the age of twelve or so, I realized that I was not religious. This did not mean that I deny that there is some supreme system that created and managed the world, and the universe is governed by something far beyond human understanding. But I came to believe that Judaism, like other religions, was mostly made by human beings. I did not stop being Jewish. I stopped being religious. I respected religious people, as long as they allowed me to live in my own way. 

At my bar mitzvah, some relatives tried to insert into my speech a vow to follow Judaism. I skipped that part. When it came time to choose a high school, my mother suggested an excellent semi-religious school, and some relatives proposed a modern yeshiva. I refused. I wanted the best secular school I could attend, and fortunately I was accepted to the High School of the Hebrew University. I think that deep inside my father was happy with my choice. My mother was too.

Leaving tradition was not emotionally simple. I felt guilty driving on Shabbat. I felt guilty eating on Yom Kippur. Secularization is sometimes described as liberation, and it can be that. But it is also a slow reorganization of loyalties. The voices of childhood do not disappear simply because one has ceased to obey them. I was lucky. My transition was relatively smooth. My parents were supportive, and I had access to books, teachers, science, and the wider world. I could question without being cast out.

Many people do not have that privilege.

The lesson of my transition is not that every child should become secular. A free society must allow religion to flourish. Parents have the right to raise children within their faith and traditions, and to hope that their children will follow in their footsteps. But children also have rights. They are not simply vessels for the beliefs of their parents or communities. They are future adults. They deserve access to the knowledge that will allow them to understand the world and eventually choose their own direction.

This is why I worry when religious communities, in Israel or elsewhere, limit children’s access to science, mathematics, history, literature, and civic knowledge. I think often of my mother, who was forced out of school at ten and never stopped resenting it. When Parents or society close the door to modern knowledge, it does not protect children. It limits their futures.

My own parents exposed my sisters and I both to Jewish tradition and to modern knowledge. They clearly wanted us to keep the tradition, but they allowed us to make our own choices. For that, I will always be grateful.

Eventually, I became a Berkeley Professor. That life would not have been possible without the modern education my mother was denied and my parents allowed me to pursue. The encyclopedia on my childhood shelf did not order me to become secular. It gave me something better: the chance to think.

Every child deserves that chance.