What does “Betzelem Elokim” mean?
Betzelem Elokim, also transliterated as b’tzelem Elokim, means “in the image of Gd,” and refers to how each of us is made in the image of Gd. Or as Charlotte Mason would say, “Children are born persons.” We are born complete, whole people, not blank slates or jars to be filled. We are born exactly who we are; it just takes time to discover the unfolding of that person and personality. Does that mean nurture has no place? Of course not. But we do have innate personality traits. As the parents of a baby, you also have probably spent a ridiculous amount of time asking yourself, “so what does this mean? Is she crying because she’s genuinely upset by something or does she just not like transitions and will settle down in a minute or two?” (Or so I’ve been asking myself the last several weeks as my second daughter leaves behind the newborn stage.)
What does “Ima” mean and how is it pronounced?
Ima means Mommy in Hebrew. That’s what I’m called in our house. It’s pronounced ee-muh. Long e, emphasis on the first syllable.
Why do you write “Gd”?
Habit? Tradition? Religious Jews have traditionally avoided writing the word “God” so as to avoid desecrating the name of Gd, as mentioned in the Ten Commandments. We’re very careful with the name of Gd, particularly erasing it. So if you didn’t write it out to begin with, you can’t erase it. Most people writing in English have traditionally written “G-d” but ain’t no one in this house got time to type dashes, especially on a phone. So I began writing Gd and it stuck. But really, the caution is a fence around the real rule, which is to avoid writing the ineffable name of Gd in Hebrew – the four letter name many Christians pronounce as Jehovah (a mispronunciation according to Jewish tradition, yet we also have a tradition that no one can know what’s a mispronunciation since we don’t know a correct one).
Do I judge you for writing “God”? No, of course not. At bottom, I probably write it that way to differentiate that I’m speaking about my Jewish interpretation of Gd. When I write “God,” I’m usually using it to refer to a Christian perspective of God, since that’s my milieu as an American. I would write “god” or “gods” to write about deities of history. It’s not that I refuse to write the word God; I just write it that way to refer to a specific view of Him, also influenced by tradition and community practice.
What’s your angle?
I’m an American orthodox Jew, and that’s how I approach Charlotte Mason (and life I suppose). But I affiliate generally with the “secular” Charlotte Mason approach and add in Jewish topics as needed/desired. The CM world seems divided into Christian and “everyone else” combined under the term “secular.” In this case, “secular” doesn’t refer to only atheists and agnostics. Many of the “secular” folks are just people from a different religion and even some Christians who feel like their kind of Christianity doesn’t mesh with what’s presented online for whatever reason. Personally, I grew up in an atheist home in the Bible Belt, and I converted to Judaism starting as a freshman in college. That was a long time ago now. I tend to affiliate closely and sympathetically with the secular/non-religious community because of my upbringing and life experiences as an outsider to the predominant Christian majority in America.
What about evolution?
I will teach it, and will use mainstream secular science curricula. Young earth creationism is a uniquely Christian phenomenon. It’s not really a Jewish thing. There are some groups of ultra-orthodox Jews who believe the world is less than 6,000 years old, but that’s really not the mainstream view. (And now even that view is being reconciled with mainstream science in the work of authors like Dr. Gerald Shroeder, a former MIT physicist and orthodox Jew.) Overall, Judaism doesn’t see much tension between religion and science, and this isn’t really a question that comes up. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom) says: science tells you what is; religion tells you what it means. Science can not tell you what something means. It’s purely descriptive, not prescriptive. (The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning)
Do lots of Jews homeschool?
No, not to my knowledge, but more should consider it. Especially those who would otherwise send to private day schools, which can cost $10-25k per year unless you get scholarship aid. Personally, I believe day school tuition and student loan debt will combine to cripple my generation of young families for decades to come and seriously imperil our retirement prospects (I have seen what an impoverished old age/disablement looks like up close and too many of us are heading there). There’s no shortage of bitterness and disillusionment out there. Homeschooling, even just a few years, can lighten that load (along with all the other benefits of homeschooling).
I suspect there are plenty of people who “homeschool” pre-school, but they may just think of it as “not doing preschool.” Back in the old days, they called preschool at home just “being home.” There seems to be an active Jewish homeschool community in Los Angeles and Baltimore, but that’s all second-hand knowledge to me. I only know a handful of people homeschooling, and almost all those kids are preschool. I think many people (myself included) see a big difference between not doing preschool and actively homeschooling a school-aged child. People won’t bother you too much about preschool, and we feel less pressure on ourselves as teachers too. Things get a lot more complicated once people start asking about kindergarten. But surprisingly, it’s complicated now. I’m constantly asked where my 2 year old is going this year because this is the year when most of the kids in my community enter “school.” Working parents need these options, and for a variety of reasons, I’m one of the few people home for now. Will I stay home? I don’t know. I didn’t choose to be home, and staying home was never on my radar until I was home. It’s a good thing I enjoy it (most of the time).
Isn’t a Charlotte Mason education inherently a Christian one? / There’s no such thing as secular/non-Christian Charlotte Mason.
A lot of people would disagree with you there. The Secular Charlotte Mason Homeschoolers Facebook group has over 2,750 people. But in all seriousness, I think CM herself would not limit her work to believing Christians (as opposed to cultural Christians), nor did she limit her work to them while she was alive. (And some maintain that only some denominations of self-labeled Christianity are compatible with her philosophy, which is a different discussion.)
Yes, Ms. Mason was an intensely devout Christian, and her works reflect her honest piety (I have no suspicion she wrote for show – I believe everything she said was absolutely true for her). But did she speak poorly about non-Christians? No. Though her words were very progressive at her time, even progressive today, her statements can feel a bit backhanded to a non-Christian person. She thought one of the hardest challenges Christian parents face is when their kid asks, “but why are non-Christians also good people?” Because so many non-Christians are good people! She even said that many non-Christians are often better people than those who claim to be Christians.
Did she ban non-Christians from her schools? No. In fact, a self-labeled-religious Jewish woman was considered Ms. Mason’s “right hand man,” so to speak. (She called herself a “liberal Jew” in one source I know of, and I’ve seen others quote that she did claim to be actively religious – “liberal Jew” means someone who is not orthodox, not related to politics). Henrietta (Netta) Franklin was the Secretary of the PNEU system (the organization that disseminated Ms. Mason’s ideas), and Secretary was the effective leader of the organization. She also created the Mother’s Education Course, which was a course designed for PNEU mothers’ self-improvement and development in the CM philosophy. Alongside Elsie Kitching, Netta Franklin was quite often the implementor of Ms. Mason’s work. And her child attended the PUS schools. I don’t know whether they altered the religious subjects for her daughter, but the fact that she was not prohibited from attending the schools because she was not a Christian speaks volumes about whether Ms. Mason herself thought there was universal value in her educational philosophy or whether it was limited to certain forms of Christianity compatible with her own.
And that’s the crux of the matter. Would Ms. Mason have felt that her philosophy only worked for Christians? That no one else in the world would benefit? That the Sikhs and Hindus who lived alongside her many British Christian followers in India couldn’t implement the same ideas in their own home, perhaps even using their own religious ideas? Maybe she wouldn’t like it, I don’t know. But I don’t think she’d say it can’t be done and wouldn’t be the best education available for those children. I don’t think she would discourage them or denigrate them, even if she wished they would become Christians. She would probably hope that her system of education (and exposure to missionaries) would eventually lead to their conversion to Christianity, but I don’t think she would hesitate for them to use her work in the meantime. (Again, this would be considered a pretty back-handed comment to non-Christians. Don’t say this to us.)
Can you be a Charlotte Mason “purist” and not think that a Christian perspective is required? In my opinion, yes. But you know what they say about opinions.