I was twenty-seven when I first read the story about the Hasidic rabbi who told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. A woman asked him, "But why ON our hears instead of IN them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your harts break, the holy words will fall inside."
From the prologue to "The Scent of Water" by Naomi Zacharias

Indeed, very beautiful.

Are you sure that shul comes from the same root as school? Greek and Latin are not semitic languages as Hebrew is. I have serious doubts.

I only add that Reform, Conservative, and now even certain Orthodox Jewish synagogues (such as Shira Hadashah in Jerusalem) count women as part of the minyan (10 people).

Pagaophilus:
Though the yiddish "shul" is not an ancient word, and thus definitely not the basis of my argument for a long history of a central cultural value of learning within Judaism, the fact that modern Jews use "shul" as one of their labels for the synagogue illustrates the more modern result of a long tradition of learning. This word usage is related to my argument, not the central feature of it. The central feature is the idea of study of Torah and other sources of wisdom by the Jews, its value for them and the fact that this is the main way to get answers from God.

Atalefman:
Thank you for pointing that out about the minyan. I'd like to point out that these various groups (Reform, Conservative, etc.) of Jews ( which are roughly the Jewish equivalent of denominations) are all Ashkenazic Jews, which are those largely from the Babylonian exile era who migrated north into Europe. These are the Jews we are most familiar with in America. The Sephardic Jews, those who spread out in the time of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and ended up in Mediterranean countries are all still Orthodox. So when we talk about "Jews" and "Judaism" we are often talking about specific groups of Jews we are more familiar with (and in America usually Reformed Ashkenazic Jews) rather than Judaism as a whole which is incredibly diverse. Another challenge is that with Judaism, in contrast to Christianity, you can be a cultural Jew rather than a religious Jew (and even these terms "cultural" and "religious" are not perfectly accurate when trying to describe the situation).

You are quite right Elaine. What I think is interesting is that history and community is so ingrained within Judaism that even many Jews who are secular and/or atheist still practice some of the traditions that would likely be seen by outsiders as religious ceremonies. This may be similar to the fact that many ex-Adventists still eat veggie meat and are likely to argue that Sunday is the wrong day to worship even if they don't really believe in God anymore. Some religious practices become such a part of life that even when the religious beliefs are gone, parts of the tradition are still there. But Jews are more likely to continue the practices because they still identify strongly with their people, particularly their suffering.

Thanks Atalefman.

I didn't know I would end up needing to defend my presentation of Judaism having a strong tradition of learning and so just basically assumed it and moved on in this short article. But I guess I can provide a few sources here.

In research of the topic I looked at quite a few sources since I also recently wrote a paper for a class on Jewish Life and Thought on what Adventists could learn from the Jewish about learning. The resource I found the most helpful was Wilson, Marvin R. Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1989. In this book Marvin Wilson provides a chapter titled "A Life of Learning: The Heart of Jewish Heritage," pages 278-315. It traces the central place of study from the times of the Hebrew Bible. I also highly recommend the rest of this book since I found it helpful and also because it has become a classic of sorts for Christians to understand their Hebrew roots.

Though that is the best overview/intro, a few more resources that could be referred to are: Backenroth, Ofra, Shira D. Epstein, and Helena Miller. "Bringing the Text to Life and into Our Lives: Jewish Education and the Arts." Religious Education 101, no. 4 (2006): 467-480.
Heaton, E. W. The School Tradition of the Old Testament: The Bampton Lectures for 1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Insecurity of Freedom; Essays on Human Existence. New York: Schocken Books, 1972.
Neusner, Jacob. "Fifty Years of Jewish Learning: What Has Changed and What Difference Does It Make?" Review of Rabbinic Judaism 14, no. 1 (2011): 1-10.
Slesinger, Zalmen. "Education for Jewish Identity and Jewish Continuity in the Open Society." Judaism 28, no. 2 (1979): 225.
Weissler, Chava. ""Art Is Spirituality!": Practice, Play, and Experiential Learning in the Jewish Renewal Movement." Material Religion 3, no. 3 (2007): 354-379.
Werblowsky, Raphael, ed. Study or Action? Torah in Jewish Life. Edited by Lilly Edelman, Jewish Heritage Reader. New York: Taplinger, 1965.

If you'd rather not go to the work of reading hard-copy sources, here is a section of the Museum of Prague's website on Jewish education - http://www.jewishmuseum.cz/en/avice7.htm

Very thoughtful piece, Landon! Liked this line especially: "As humans we share the same questions and could experience greater unity if we made those shared questions the defining mark of our communities. When we try to move from shared questions to shared answers, disagreement flourishes and unity fails." Seems to me you've hit the central point. We do argue, but because the purpose is determining orthodoxy, it tends to divide rather than unite. If I understand you correctly, in Jewish argument it's not a zero-sum game, where if I'm right, you're wrong. There's humility before God's infinity.

That said, I believe there are groups of Jews who are just as rock-headed and divided as we Christians are.

I haven't heard the name Schnabel since I was a child in North Dakota. There was a Schnabel family in the Seibold home church, which was called the New Home church, between Sykeston and Woodworth.

Loren

My wife's response, when I first took her to ND, was "Is there anyone in the state who isn't related to you?" There's a strong possibility that we are related in some way, because the German-Russian immigrants (which is the group I come from, and most likely the Schnabels do, too) tended to group together, and if they weren't related when they settled there, the scarcity of families to pick mates from meant they would be eventually. I don't remember your father, but I think I remember a girl about my age, named Linda, perhaps? This is a long, long time ago.

Loren

It's fun to see people trace their Adventist relationships! When I saw the name Schnabel, I thought of the great pianist, Artur Schnabel.

Having engaged in so many "arguments" where people are trying to prove they are right and everyone who disagrees is wrong, I appreciate this model for Jewish study.

I am considering starting a new Sabbath School class where we can study a religious/spiritual book and discuss it by sharing our insights, without having to force them on each other. This article will help!

Greystone, thank you for your comment and questions.

I believe the reason many Adventists are trying to get a Hebrew understanding of things is to construct a biblical worldview. Note that it is Hebrew thought, not Jewish thought. The focus is upon a worldview based upon the Old Testament rather than Plato and Aristotle. We have deconstructed much of the Greek thought (especially dualism) that came into the church at large over time and created belief in such things as the immortality of the soul and hell. There are many other Greek ideas that came into the church, since it was Greek philosophy that prevailed when the church was growing fastest. In the beginning, so many people were coming into brand new churches that many of their old ideas stayed with them. This is happening in Adventism today, such is the case of Adventist conversion in largely Catholic countries, such as Poland and those of South America. People are converting to Adventism, but keeping many of their Catholic framework. Thus they have an elevated view of the role of the pastor and see them as having some sort of special spiritual gifting that lay people don't have. Therefore ordination, and other "sacraments," are viewed in a very Catholic way. It is then no surprise that Adventists from those countries don't want women to be ordained, or for young children to receive communion.

Now, as for the idea of learning in community, it is basically only Protestants that think they can go off on their own and learn about God. The Hebrew world was more collective than our individualistic Western culture. They did things together, as was illustrated by whole families being baptized. They learned together and they decided together (unfortunately, there were probably times when one or a few asserted dominating control over the rest of the family). I am not saying that deciding everything together is the ideal, I just want to point out that Jews worship differently than Adventists. They have a greater sense of community as a global people group. They are more actively involved in religious services which are far more interactive than the spectator sport often put on in churches. There is more discussion, and there is more serious scholarly thought by more people in the community. They live out the idea of steel sharpening steel. This is illustrated in Chaim Potok's classic books, The Chosen and The Promise, in which the main characters might be seen as "nerds" by American culture at large. Their aspirations are for learning, and this is a major aspect of the friendship that develops in The Chosen between boys from two separate Jewish traditions (the main character is Reformed with a professor father I believe, while the other is Hasidic and his father is a rabbi). Though they are very different in some ways, a love of learning is a large part of what brings them together.

If you would like to learn more about Hebrew thought and how it should inform our Christianity, I highly recommend "Our Father Abraham" by Marvin Wilson. It talks about the Hebrew roots of Christianity and how anti-antisemitism eventually played a significant role in the development of Christian tradition - especially in regards to the rejection of the Sabbath and Torah in general. It also includes a section, which starts on page 185, about the individual versus the community and how we have gone wrong in our understanding of "church" which is the body of Christ.

Wilson says on page 187 of Our Father Abraham that "most Jewish prayer employs the plural 'we,' not the singular 'I.' Prayer expresses the 'cry of the whole community.' One of the best-known biblical prayers expresses this communal factor in its opening words: 'Our Father in heaven' (Matt. 6:9). In the words of an old Hasidic saying, 'A prayer which is not spoken in the name of all Israel is no prayer at all.'"