What God is � or also isn't
A Jewish Waldorf teacher's view
by Samuel Ichmann
We've heard the accusation of 'anti-Semitism
in Waldorf schools', but how does a Waldorf teacher with Jewish roots
experience this? After decades of experience he concludes that merely citing
anthroposophical tenets is far from sufficient if we are to avoid the pitfalls
of discrimination. Though there may be no anti-Jewish attitudes as such,
clich�-ridden ideas about Judaism � whether as the product of traditional
Christianity or of dogmatically over-interpreting Steiner � have also surfaced
in Waldorf schools.
To talk about being a Jew in Germany opens up a
minefield! It immediately sets snares and pitfalls: of nostalgic
sentimentality, suppressed dialogue, the black hole of our response to the
cruelty Germans practiced on Jews, the resignation felt about the Shoah's
destruction of hopes that German and Jewish culture might reunite. And, above
all, the enormous awkwardness this theme awakens. But beyond all the traps and
difficulties it is still a subject waiting for an answer. As a Jew living in
Germany, in fact, I have also come to sense that here � and perhaps only here �
we have reached such a zero point, such a tabula rasa, that a new beginning
might actually be possible. The shock of the unimaginable, perhaps, has created
a space where we might, and in fact must approach this subject in a quite new
and different way. The stigmata of disaster in the body of Germany's history
means that every straying from such a path leads straight to scandal. Could
what is reported from contemporary Hungary ever happen here now � where in a
football match in the Budapest stadium involving a club that Jews have
supported as long as any one can remember, hooligans on the other side started
chanting: 'Die, Jewish scum'? Or does such a thing only not happen in Germany
because there isn't actually a football team supported by Jews, and because the
majority of Germans have never even seen a 'real live Jew'?
A Jew in the Waldorf school
And then what about this for a theme � being a Jewish teacher in a Waldorf
school somewhere in Germany! Is anyone interested? Do the roots of someone
working in education matter, and what kinds of belief and mentality he has
developed as a result of his own upbringing and education? Isn't this kind of
education, at least, something that stresses the humanity of human beings? Isn't
it a pedagogy that lives in the perception of a dynamic spiritual core in every
child? And anyway, don't its impulses merge seamlessly with the central truth
of all humanity's religious traditions? Isn't the Waldorf school, as a place
where striving people can meet, independent of race, nation and religious or
scientific persuasion - analogous with the basic principle which Steiner wished
for members of the Anthroposophical Society? Isn't this true for teachers as
well as pupils and parents?
No doubt. Except that we do not live in a non-historical vacuum of general
principles, but in the concrete reality of actual situations, and accrued,
often unpondered mentalities. Our ideals may be coherent and united, but life
does not always look quite the same. Which is a good thing, for if this kind of
education was a ready-packaged article it could not be what it is: ongoing task
and living development.
What started me writing this?
This article had a specific impetus, the continual onslaught of accusations
about racism in Steiner's works and in Waldorf education. Recently rumors have
surfaced of anti-Semitic discrimination said to have occurred in Waldorf
schools � an explosive theme, at least in German-speaking countries. These rumors
seem to have no basis in reality. But even if some individual teacher did go
off the rails in this sense, one could not necessarily draw any conclusions about
the general views of a whole pedagogical movement. It is clear that racism and
anti-Semitism are completely at odds with ethical foundations on which
anthroposophical pedagogy rests. Anthroposophy is therefore almost inevitably
exposed to slander, as a result of people's hazy perception of its different
and demanding nature. It tries to awaken spiritual responsibility, which
sometimes unleashes subconscious reactions. Naturally the best way to test its
usefulness and validity would be through conscious and considered scrutiny, but
opponents seldom pursue this path. Thus it can stimulate irrational hatred. In
this respect, by the way, Anthroposophy and Judaism share the same peculiar destiny.
Of course we must rebuff unsustainable and distorted portrayals. I absolutely
support those who, following insinuations recently broadcast on German
television, reacted swiftly, energetically and intelligently. Yet there are
also internal perspectives that can easily be overlooked; and it may be of some
interest to hear what a Jew has to say who has been a Waldorf teacher in
Germany for many years. Such a person could contribute two things, as it were
from the sidelines of such debate. First he could show how Jewishness is
sometimes perceived, could point out some very German symptoms but also some
which seem to be induced by a particularly anthroposophical response. Let me
stress at the outset that this has nothing whatever to do either with the
nature of Germans or that of anthroposophy as such, but ultimately with the
fact that people are people, and that this is a very difficult theme. Secondly
he could try to show how in a Waldorf teacher � a German-speaking, Central
European Jew � spiritual motifs from Judaism and anthroposophy meet, in a way
that has become important for him on his pedagogical path. This is really, for
me, the point of this article. The circumstances I describe were the immediate
stimulus for me to further explore my own spiritual understanding, and my need
was to share something of this, not to accuse or polemicise. Becoming aware of
areas of unclarity in our relationship to anthroposophy, however, ought also to
be a useful task. The aphoristic and anecdotal notes contained in what follows
are certainly subjective. They do not by any means represent all that I might
say on the subject of Waldorf education, anthroposophy and Judaism, nor are
they in any way conclusive or final. They represent only one aspect of my
personal biographical experiences � though certainly not an unimportant one.
'But you won't force that down
everyone's throats, will you?'
I sit in a restaurant not far from an East European capital, opposite a fairly
prominent German colleague, whom I hold in high regard. A training project for
Waldorf education that is running here, which we are both teaching in, has
brought us together. The food is excellent and we take the opportunity to get
to know each other better. The conversation is open and friendly: we tell each
other about our life and experience, exchange personal stories. At some point
or other I 'out' myself as Jew. My colleague looks at me a little uncertainly
and says: ' But you won't force that down everyone's throats will you?' I do
not know what to reply. Does he mean something like 'insist on telling
everyone'? Is that what I have just done � unwarily, or even with Jewish
chutzpa? I examine myself. No, I do not have the tendency to 'embarrass' people
by making them classify me immediately as a Jew. On the other hand I do not
have the slightest inclination, either, to keep it a secret. Why should I? Jews
who keep quiet about their Jewishness may have their own personal reasons (or
complexes), but this was never something I wanted to do. I have always taken
the opportunity of informing my colleagues about this aspect of my origins
whenever it seemed natural and sensible to do so, as I did in this long
conversation on a gentle summer's evening, far away from Germany. So I'm at a
loss for words now, and the colleague opposite also says nothing for a minute,
then adds the following question: 'But you are a Christian surely?' This is
somewhat unexpected. What does he mean by this? He knows, after all, that I am
a dedicated Waldorf teacher, well acquainted for years with the foundations of
anthroposophy. They are my daily bread if I am serious about my profession. How
could I have elbowed out the important motifs of Christology? I have also just
been telling him about my involvement in religion teaching. Or was he not
listening properly? What answer does he want from me? Should I tell him of
intimate experiences which every pupil on a spiritual path is careful to keep
to himself? I hesitate for a fairly long moment. If I don't like keeping quiet
about my Jewishness, this applies even more so to my conviction about Jesus of
Nazareth as Messiah. Does he mean this question when he uses the word
'Christian'? I am not a Christian in the traditional sense: I have never left
the Jewish community in which I grew up, nor have I ever joined a Christian
church. But he, as an anthroposophist and Waldorf teacher will surely not care about
that, or even expect otherwise!
I reply to his question with a thoughtful 'Yes'. I don't need to unsettle him
surely? Later, on the way to my lodgings, I think about it all again and have
mixed feelings. Perhaps I should have unsettled him! Wouldn't it have shown
more presence of mind to answer with Kierkegaard's great phrase: 'One cannot be
a Christian, only become one'?
I tell this anecdote because it highlights a deep problem. Apart from all
over-hasty labels, identifications, 'isms' and ideologies, what do people
really know about the way Jews look at the world? What do they know of the
feeling of opposition, often only resonating in unspoken, subconscious realms,
to having any kind of idolatry forced on one? Of the one and a half centuries
of reservation about a Christianity which, through many of its representatives
as well as many of the forms of worship and doctrine it assumed, could not, and
was not permitted to answer Jewish needs; of the inner strength and warmth
which it draws from the spirituality of its traditions, and which it is a
strange blindness to want to deprive it of � for only by being so deprived was
a Jew allowed, until late in the twentieth century, to be accepted as a
Christian; of the impossibility of regarding as obsolete, superfluous and
redundant things of the most intimate, personal, profound meaning which one
drank in, as it were, at one's mother's breast � because, once 'Christ had
appeared', all this was apparently no longer valid!
I don't really want to plunge into theological debate at this point, but one
thing is certain: Christians who ponder their outlook and roots are very aware
nowadays that to deny Judaism is to undermine their own origins. But it is this
same misguided tradition of denial, reaching far back to the first centuries of
the post-Christian era, and extending into our own recent past, that has
sometimes worked its way into people's (mis)conceptions of anthroposophy and
Waldorf education. But this rests on the projection of what I believe are
wholly false interpretations onto Steiner's Christology, on the continued
circulation of theological prejudices that were at least partly overcome after
the second world war, though not necessarily in our circles.
Don't read 'engraved in
stone', read 'freedom'
I look back on myself in my early years as a Waldorf teacher � almost thirty
years ago � sitting in the college meeting of a south German Waldorf school,
where I completed my apprenticeship. I look back with much gratitude, also to
the dear colleague of mine whom I am about to quote. I met him again a few
years ago, and thanked him for the many helpful personal conversations we had. A
very modest person, who never said anything without reflecting on it first, and
never adopted a 'holy-holy' attitude. The words he spoke which I am about to
cite were, therefore, no doubt ones of genuine conviction which he, a
scientist, drew from the general mood that then still held sway in Waldorf
education as a relic from the pre-war years: 'Judaism,' he said, 'is purely a religion
of laws. Even today a strictly orthodox Jewish doctor would still be forbidden
from healing someone on the Sabbath who was near death.' We had been talking
about Jesus' healings on the Sabbath as described in the Gospels. I must stress
that there wasn't the slightest nuance of disdain or even anti-Semitism in his
words or his attitude. He simply put it forward as a fact of cultural history. And
was not contradicted. Not even by me. In my own defence I can say that I, very
young, and sitting there between tried and tested, long-serving authorities,
was firstly distressed, for I had never heard such a thing before, and it
seemed to me to be diametrically opposed to the Jewish ethos of 'He who saves a
single person, saves the whole world'. Secondly, I had grown up in a religious
but not an orthodox context, and was not very knowledgeable on questions of
halacha, or interpretation of the ritual laws. Thirdly the discussion had moved
on to another point before I had come to inner focus again. Nevertheless, this
and other similar situations were a stimulus for me to broaden and deepen my
knowledge of Judaism. In brief, the statement above about not saving someone on
the Sabbath is false. A doctor is actually obliged by religious laws to try to
help a sick person close to death, on the Sabbath or otherwise. But even the
more general assertion that the Jewish religion is one based only on laws,
turns out on closer inspection to be rather inaccurate. I am not disputing that
there are fossilized forms of religious observance. But the real sense of the mitzvoth
� an untranslatable word that is often rendered as 'duties' � is linked with
one of the deepest spiritual attitudes to the world that we know in all
religious history: the consecration of every action, even the slightest and
smallest - in other words, deed as prayer. In Hassidism this tendency blossomed
in great and undogmatic fashion. The essence of mitzvoth enters a
class-teacher's activity each day if he teaches with moral intuition and
imagination. There is also a wonderful Talmudic phrase that belongs here, that
bursts from within the confines of purely legalistic understanding which people
like to foist on Judaism. It arises through a kind of play on words, which has
a fairly important role in traditional Bible interpretation. Because the Hebrew
script has consonants only, a word in the Torah can receive various different
meanings according to the vowels one gives it. The passage in Exodus to which I
am referring relates to the law tablets, in which the so-called Ten Commandments
(actually the 'ten words') were engraved. The sentence goes: Al tigra harut ela
herut, which in translation is: 'Don't read "engraved in stone", read
"freedom".' I recommend this as meditation for those who wish to
ponder the spirit of the Torah; and perhaps for others as well � it might prove
a useful approach, for instance, to interpreting the Waldorf curriculum. Or for
'reading' another human being, for thinking deeply about a child's nature and
trying to conjure up his past and future development before our inner eyes.
Jewish caricature
I cannot continue my account without speaking of the Oberufer 'Three Kings
Play' that is often performed in Waldorf schools. As people may know, unlike
the other two Oberufer plays � the Paradise and the Shepherds plays - the
clergy had a hand in creating this highly dramatic piece of folk theatre, and
it is perhaps for this reason that the priests and high priests were given the
general gloss of 'Jews'. Was this an attempt to hide the fact that every
cleric, even a Christian one, can sometimes act more as a hindrance to, than
mediator of good? Or was it a straightforward reference to the Jews as
'God-murderers'? Whatever the truth, I would like to describe the impression
made on me the first time I saw the Three Kings Play. This was at the
Uhlandsh�he Waldorf School in Stuttgart, in 1973. I stress the date because I
assume that things have changed since then, and that the play is no longer
directed there in the same way. I was attending the Stuttgart Waldorf
teacher-training course at the time, and we students were invited to see the
plays. The play struck me as a powerful and remarkable piece of theatre, with
an intense inwardness which greatly appealed to me, and which I gladly involved
myself in � and then the 'Jews' appeared all of a sudden. They wore East
European orthodox Jewish costume � broad-rimmed, black hats, caftans, beards
and long side-locks � and twitched, pitter-pattered about, spoke in a hasty,
fidgety jargon, and finally fell over backwards together off their bench. This
was, by the way, quite a theatrical achievement, for the teachers were not
professional actors. One can imagine the uproarious laughter of a hall-full of
children of all ages. But I was deeply troubled. Over-sensitive reaction from
someone who still bore the wounds that a collective memory retained from
centuries of persecution and denigration? Or quite simply the fact that my
great grandfather on my mother's side, Israel Schuchner, used to wear such a
costume; and that he was a quiet, pious man devoted to prayer and study of the
Torah, who had the good fortune to die a natural death shortly before the Nazis
arrived in the East European town where he lived? (My great grandmother, Perl
Rochel, was transported to Auschwitz at over eighty, together with some of her
children and grandchildren. None of them returned.) But perhaps my distress was
also connected with everyone's unexpressed awkwardness about such things.
At the school where I first taught as a Waldorf teacher, I was asked to join
the 'Three Kings company' barely a year later. The director, someone for whom I
had and still have the greatest respect, and who sadly died far too young, was
a Waldorf teacher of the 'old guard', son of a teacher on the very first college
of teachers of 1919. He knew of my Jewish origins and thought I might, for that
very reason, be able to bring an authentic quality to the gestures! At the time
I was astonished at this German naivety, and am still astonished today. Luckily
the costumes at this school were quite different from the ones in Stuttgart �
very original, stylized priest costumes, without the faintest resemblance to
village Jews of eastern and central Europe. I also noticed that for these
characters the term 'high priests' gradually replaced the designation 'Jews';
and I remember a colleague asking the striking question in a college meeting
whether, after what the Germans had done to the Jews, one ought still to
perform this play at all. It is only in retrospect that I realize that in the
early seventies the process of working through recent German history had really
only just begun. However I did not accept the role offered me (taking another
instead).
What God is � or also isn't
I would like to relate one further symptomatic tale. We are now no longer in
southern Germany but in the North. Here a fresh wind blows, people are more
tolerant, more open and have more distance from things than in the South. I
have returned to Germany after a longish time working in another European
country � in the 'Hoyerswerda' year, in fact, when neo-Nazis were setting
houses and people on fire � and my homecoming is not altogether encouraging. A
few more gray hairs, a few less illusions, but by no means burned out. We,
teachers of non-denominational religion lessons, are sitting in the school
library together with a Christian Community priest. We are studying a theme
from Christology. The invited priest takes part in the discussion, contributing
very clear formulations.
As things unfold the north-German priest � a cultivated figure, very well
educated and doubtless profoundly knowledgeable about esoteric themes � says
with powerful conviction and in a tone of forceful pronouncement: 'Jahve is not
the Father God!' He is by the way unaware of my Jewish ancestry. This
contemplative meeting is not the right place for an argument, and I am not much
interested, anyway, in hammering out questions of religious dogma. I know of
Steiner's great teachings of cosmology and divine hierarchy, and of the specific
perspectives derived from occult research, and regard it as an important task
to integrate these with my knowledge and understanding. Various studies of my
own have also brought me some familiarity with patriarchal and scholastic
fields, as well as with some basic aspects of church council and heretic
history, with their disputes over dogma. The question of the trinity has
occupied me for a long time � not only as an academic, historical question, but
also a living one, and naturally too in relation to Steiner's pedagogical
anthropology which refers to a trinity within man and the world. I try to
connect with experiences and insights such as those evoked by the 1923/24
Foundation Stone meditation, seeking to avoid speculations in which the
intellect assumes it 'knows what's what' as far as divinity is concerned.
'Jahve is not the Father God'! I go home, and this 'is not' refuses to let go
of me. Not the content but the way it was put, not the question but the
apodictic 'thus it is' is what troubles me somehow. I naturally respect the
fact that a priest preaches � that's his job after all. Maybe he doesn't have
to do it everywhere, all the time, but we all have our human failings. Yet what
am I meant to make of this 'is not'? I want to find out what it is that bothers
me about it. Is it really the way it was said, or perhaps the content after
all? I decide to make full use of the school library where this discussion took
place over the next few days, for it contains a complete edition of Rudolf
Steiner's works. With the aid of an index and reference volume I examine every
passage I can find in which Steiner said anything about the being of Jahveh. Naturally
I cannot cite chapter and verse here, but as I read it becomes very clear to me
that it is impossible to derive an ultimate 'is' or 'is not' from the dynamic,
descriptive depiction characteristic of Steiner. He approaches this, as many
other questions, from the most varied perspectives; and the student only
arrives at a fuller understanding, beyond Steiner's actual text, by combining
these perspectives! But maybe this is my Jewish mentality coming to the fore
again � 'Don't read 'engraved in stone', read 'freedom'! - that does not wish
to pigeonhole the spiritual and divine in the form of dogma and parroted
phrases fixed by decree and made obligatory for believers. Rabbinical Judaism,
after all, contains the principle of mahloqet � or 'multiplicity of voices' �
in which different, conflicting teachings can stand alongside one another
without being resolved. Perhaps the multiplicity of perspectives in Rudolf
Steiner's work is also a kind of spiritual-scientific mahloqet?
Then something else of great importance also enters my reflections. I imagine
someone going to a pious Jew and trying to explain to him that the divinity to
which he prays daily is not the Father at all, the Creator, the Ground of
creation, Sustainer of the world, but 'only' � well, whatever you like. He
would shake his head at best � and rightly so. Who are we to fiddle around with
the great traditions from outside, or to come along with our two cents worth of
academic learning? Thinking one knows better than others does not, as far as I
am aware, belong to the virtues which Steiner recommended to those striving for
knowledge.
A Jewish prayer book lies before me. Morning-, afternoon-, evening prayers: all
imbued with the most solemn, sublime formulations, symbols and metaphors, which
direct the praying person to ponder ultimate, absolute things; and all
penetrated by the name of the Father. In the Pessach-Haggadah stand phrases
which render any reductionism to 'merely' hierarchical aspects impossible,
though the latter do not, of course, have to be excluded. Even intertrinitarian
differentiations, however important these may be in other contexts, have no
place here, since they come, as one says in Jewish tradition, from 'Greek', not
Hebrew thought. And this 'Hebrew' thinking, if you don't mind me saying so, has
nothing to do with what people sometimes dismiss as 'superceded', 'abstract'
and 'monotheistic'. 'Greek' thinking, from Dionysus the Areopagite to Vladimir
Soloviev, has its own inimitable flavor, its grandeur, beauty and deep truth. But
why should it be the only kind to approach Christ? A religion can after all
only be understood from within, however difficult such a phenomenological
methodology may be in practice. If I try to understand Buddhism through the
views of Thomas Aquinas I have failed before I begin. And the reverse is also
true of course. In Christianity, naturally, people have got used to regarding
Judaism as a mere preparatory stage, just as Judaism has come to see
Christianity as a kind of apostasy. Nowadays, I believe, it is high time to
overcome such habits of thought. Let me quote another passage from the
Haggadah:
I led you out of Egypt,
no angel
and no seraph
and no messenger.
I myself and no other.
Franz Rosenzweig, the great Jewish religious philosopher, articulated his
understanding of the Messiah through this 'I myself and no other', and was the
same man who once, in referring to the Jews' awaiting of the Messiah and the
New Testament teaching of Christ's second coming, asked the enigmatic question
whether, if these events should occur, they would not be one and the same!
The breath of learning
children
I remember in my student days how a French Christian Community priest once
embraced me joyfully and told me how great was his love and reverence for
Judaism. This heartfelt warmth was surely genuine. I once gave him a volume of
Martin Buber's 'Tales of the Hassidim', and he later told me this was something
all priests should read, and had been of great help to him in his work. A few
years ago I also learned that Rudolf Steiner advised a young man who came to
him to ask whether he should become a priest, to study the book of Baal Schem
Tov, the semi-legendary, eighteenth-century founder of the Hassidic movement.
The question I have is whether this book might not be a very good resource for
preparing for the 'holy' profession of teacher, as Rudolf Steiner saw it. It is
increasingly hard to find access to impulses of thought and feeling which
stress the religious quality of Waldorf education. In my opinion this is not
only because of the compromises which in our movement have sometimes been internalized,
far more than necessary, in people's life of feeling, and which stifle the
spontaneity of our pedagogy; but because our desert wanderings doubtless have a
purpose: to ignite an inner fire, one fed through the meeting of individuals. The
deeper purpose of meeting is to practice attentiveness and devotion towards the
being and potential of another, to the child made in the image of God who has
been entrusted to me.
If I ponder � and I would like to conclude with this � the central task of
education, particularly in our day and age, I think of that 'learning to
breath' to which Rudolf Steiner gives such emphatic importance at the beginning
of his 'Study of Man'. Are we really serious about this? Are we not frequently
so out-of-breath ourselves in our daily rush that, while we understand this
theoretically, and can relate all kinds of ideas to it, we do not in fact
manage to make it real? Do we not need to daily recreate and revitalize our
awareness of this in the most mundane of everyday situations? How strangely
familiar and at the same time newly expressed for us is that Talmudic phrase,
which seems to have an inner relation to the underlying pedagogical and
therapeutic motifs of Waldorf education, and which is nevertheless coined in
inimitable 'Hebraic' manner: The world rests on the breath of learning
children.
This article originally appear in Info3, a German language anthroposophical print publication.
