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Jewish World Review Nov. 6, 2008 / 8 Mar-Cheshvan 5769 Six out of ten isn't bad, is it? By Rabbi Yonason Goldson
How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism
Predictably, we came away with countless vignettes and anecdotes, of which many are amusing, astonishing, or literally unbelievable in the retelling. Nevertheless, in a year filled with culture shock, frustration, elation, inspiring successes, and soul-wrenching failures, one forty-minute class still stands out in sharp relief against all the rest.
It wasn't even my own class. I was substituting for my wife, covering a class she had been lamenting since the first day of school: a dozen tenth-grade girls, every last one of them not merely indifferent but openly hostile to Judaism, to education, and to life in general. Moreover, they spoke almost no English, and had little interest in learning.
I entered the classroom to a chorus of scowls. On the far left side of the room was Dora, the only one of the bunch who spoke passable English. Her boyfriend, she said, was studying to be a rabbi. Dora knew everything.
In the center of the room was Andrea: sassy, arrogant, flirtatious, exuding attitude in buckets. Her look dared me to try to teach her anything.
I took one look at the semi-circle of lost souls and wondered what my chances were of getting anything across to them. But I had already planned my attack. I turned without a word and wrote across the chalkboard: It's okay to steal as long as you don't hurt anyone.
It took about five minutes until everyone in the room understood what I had written. Having finally broken the language barrier, I asked the class: Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
I wasn't sure what to expect. A class full of secular Americans might object from a nebulous, ill-defined sense of right and wrong. But given the culture of amorality that permeated countries behind the former Iron Curtain, it was quite possible these girls wouldn't object at all. If so, I could always raise the ante by advocating premeditated murder.
But they made it easy for me. Surprisingly, it was Andrea who took the lead. "No," she said with great conviction. "It's wrong."
"Why?" I asked.
Her answer startled and delighted me. "It's in the Ten Commandments."
"Oh," I said, my eyes widening. "You believe in the Ten Commandments?"
"Of course," she said without flinching.
"All of them?" I asked.
This time she hesitated. "No," she finally said. "Not all of them."
"Well, which ones do you believe in?"
As it turned out, the class could only identify two of the ten, so I wrote out the list on the board. "Okay," I said to the girls who, despite themselves, were becoming engaged. "Which ones do you agree with?"
After some debate, the class came to a consensus on six of the ten: the prohibitions against idolatry, murder, theft, adultery, and swearing falsely, and the commandment to honor one's parents. I wrote a large check mark to the left of each of their choices.
"On these six you all agree?" I asked, and they all nodded. "You're all willing to follow these?" They nodded again. "And the others?" I asked. They shook their heads with equal certitude.
"Well then," I said, turning back to the board. "If you choose those six, then I'm going to choose these six." With neither rhyme nor reason, I ticked off a check to the right of a different set of six. "These are the commandments that I am willing to follow."
I might as well have set off a bomb. Almost every girl in the room began shouting as if I had committed the worst form of heresy.
"Why are you so upset?" I asked in my most innocent voice. "You picked which six you agree to follow. Why can't I pick which six I agree to follow?"
Again it was Andrea who protested: "But you're a rabbi!"
"I don't understand," I replied. "Only rabbis have to keep the Ten Commandments?"
She looked momentarily confused, then recovered. "Yes," she said confidently.
"Why?"
This time her expression of confusion lingered before she changed tack. "But look at which ones you left off your list. What about Sabbath? What about murder?" She was becoming quite emotional, and the rest of the class with her.
"You got to pick your six," I said calmly. "I get to pick my six."
We went back and forth a few times, the girls insisting that they were justified in choosing their six commandments while my selection of six was somehow a betrayal of all that was sacred. They seemed to take it personally that I refused to accept all ten commandments, and they grew increasingly agitated as I smiled pleasantly and kept repeating that if they had the right to choose which commandments they could keep then I had the right to choose mine as well.
"So what's the answer?" Dora finally demanded.
"What was the question?" I asked politely. She looked back at me as if she might explode. When the girl next to her literally clawed the desktop with her fingernails, I finally gave in a bit. "You're free to make up your own rules," I explained. "But if you do, then you have no right to argue with anyone else whose rules contradict yours."
The bell rang. "Thank you, ladies," I said. "It's been a pleasure teaching you."
"But wait!" cried Dora. "You didn't teach us anything."
I smiled on my way out. Of course I had taught them something. I had given them their first lesson in the fallacy of moral relativism, although the term had not yet become popular. Was it too much to hope that any of them might someday appreciate what it was I had taught them?
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Comment by clicking here. JWR contributor Rabbi Yonason Goldson teaches at Block Yeshiva High School in St. Louis, MO, where he also writes and lectures. Visit him at http://torahideals.wordpress.com .
© 2008, Rabbi Yonason Goldson
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