Fear of The Book, and My Path to Academe

Editor’s note: Every day this week, The Scroll will publish a memory relating to an experience in Jewish education, in honor of those wonderful kids in our lives who are heading back to school, back to where it all begins, for better or worse. Today’s column is the last in the series.

I was a bookish lad, reading at an early age. Books, not toys, were my first favorites, and I owe some of my adult bookishness to the Torah. I followed the path of least resistance: I stayed in school because I was in good in school. I went from being the secular equivalent of a yeshiva bother—in suburban Philadelphia public schools and then in college—to becoming a university professor of literature. Had my Conservative Philadelphia shul been more than a holding pen for us junior high school kids preparing for our bar mitzvahs; had there been any serious intellectual activity going on; had I learned to read the scripture closely, or to analyze the Bible, and to study the commentaries, I might have stuck with my religious education. No chance.

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