When are the arts a value,

and not a compromised tool of educators?

1.     When the arts are allowed to speak in their own language.

2.     When experience is allowed to be a verb, not just a noun.

3   When 'self-expression' incorporates a broad pluralistic societal definition of 'self'.

4a.         When questions are more important than answers.

b.  When impossible, uncomfortable, unanswerable questions are even better.

c.  When the arts take us further, beyond, and fulfil their secular-religious potential.

1. When the arts are allowed room to speak in their own language.

By their nature, the arts speak a multi-dimensional language. Education tends to speak in one thin line of prose. Educators will often compromise the arts by rushing to translate them into prose. A song, for example, will too often be presented as a poem: a text on a page.

The words to Etti Ankori's hit song "Millions" read as a searing political poem about the gaps between rich and poor. "And there are millions like me rolling around the streets - mortal folk/ With no money - not worth a dime/Today it’s me/tomorrow it’s you/No money  - not worth a dime."

It is only in listening to the gentle half-reggae rhythms of the song itself, or even watching the video clip as this beautiful woman rides around the streets of Israel on the back of a wagon smiling and strumming her guitar, that we can appreciate how the song is far more than just its words. It is complex, self-contradictory, full of rage and love. Like life.  (Rory Mcleod - UK folk hero - would always introduce every one of his most seething furious protest songs with: "This is a love song")

2.         When experience is allowed to be a verb, not just a noun.

An experience, in particular an artistic experience which tends to be far more concentrated, far more intense than a less mediated experience, should be allowed to resonate.

Poor educators tend to rush to put their hand on the bell, to still the ring, and then to place the note on a familiar scale. The educator who understands that experience is a verb, will allow space and time for the experience to echo within its audience, will allow for hundreds of interpretations to swell and flood and alter themselves. It may be this was what was intended when we used to go to 'art appreciation classes'.

There are forms of 'debriefing' that do not reduce every piece of Israeli art into a current affairs document. There are ways of timetabling itineraries so that post-show discussions can take place after the shock, or the horror, or the confusions that have been stirred up have had time to settle.

3          When 'self-expression' incorporates a broad pluralistic societal definition of 'self'.

There is nothing wrong with 'self-expression'. There is only a problem with what people sometimes mean by 'self'. When 'self' indicates a confused, introspective, blinkered understanding of 'self', then the arts as a tool for 'self-expression' are worthless if not dangerous. But if the 'self' is understood to be a social construct, a meeting place between my consciousness, my family, my history, and my society - then self-expression has huge educational value. This kind of self-expression would greatly benefit from a multi-dimensional language of expression, such as the arts.

4a.       When questions are more important than answers

Questions that can be answered through logic, or negotiation, are appropriate to politics, or mathematics. When education looks to artists to create works that ask these kinds of questions, it will receive very very dull art.

Questions whose answers cannot be found through politics or mathematics, these are the appropriate questions for the arts to ask. As soon as educators decide which unanswerable questions they are looking to ignite in their students, they will find their search for valuable arts relatively simple.

But this value will inevitably be compromised if the educators expect the arts to suggest answers to these insoluble questions. As soon as the arts are used to persuade their audience of answers to questions that logic and politics cannot resolve, then they will have become a tool of propaganda. Only educators who do not fear their students' answers will successfully avoid turning the arts into an engaging propaganda device.

4b        When impossible, uncomfortable, unanswerable questions are even better.

The value of the arts comes to the fore when it asks us questions we didn't know we had been asking. When it asks questions we find it difficult to admit even exist. The arts should ideally challenge us to go further and deeper - even to where it is dark and uncomfortable.

I once performed my show "About The Oranges" to a mixed group of senior Jewish educators and Rabbis for Human Rights. In the discussion following one of the participants said, "I'm looking at that banner you have at the back of the stage. It's a classic Israeli flag, with words encouraging people to make aliya. But on the stage in front of that message you're presenting us with a picture of the pain and the suffering involved in living the classic Zionist dream. In short," he summed up accurately, "you're asking a question here. It's a question about the price of Zionism and aliya. And personally," he smiled quietly but without embarrassment, "I'm not sure that's a question I would know how to answer. I don't know whether that's the kind of question I'd be comfortable with, if it arose with my students."

It would seem that many educators these days are comfortable with the idea that their role is to stimulate questions. But perhaps only those questions for which they themselves have answers. Sometimes it has felt that the greatest opponents of my show in the educational world have been olim living in Jerusalem. This might be because of all places, Jerusalem and its surroundings have paid the highest price of this latest Intifada. Living in Jerusalem, one is far more likely to meet people who have lost loved ones, and one is far more likely to fear for one's own safety and that of one's children. Given this daily reality, there are perhaps certain core questions that one's heart asks oneself every moment of the day, but that one's head is desperate not to hear. Was it worth it? whispers the heart. Maybe this was all a terrible mistake? weeps the soul.

It may be that the value of the arts lies in its ability to give voice to the questions our hearts are asking, but that we have not been able to hear.[1]

4c        When the arts take us further, beyond, and fulfil their secular-religious potential.

Prof. Mike Rosenak was once teaching about Mordecai Kaplan, and spent over two hours advocating for Kaplan's philosophy. At the end of his presentation, he was asked how his own philosophy differed from that of Kaplan. Mike said that Kaplan viewed religion as a solution to a set of problems. Kaplan's approach had been to assess what problem the religion had tried to solve, and then to look for more contemporary or effective ways of addressing these same problems. "Where I differ from Kaplan," concluded Mike, "is that I believe that sometimes life presents problems for which there are no solutions. I believe that religion's main role is to enable us to live with problems for which there are no solutions."

I would suggest that great art can and should do the same. Great art should address problems for which there are no solutions (what the more dry academics would call 'the human condition'). For when we touch the depth of loss, love, pain, through the genius of a great artist, it may be that the art itself will allow us to live on, bringing us to understand that although there is loss, and unrequited love, and pain in the world, there are beautiful uplifting or inspiring ways of addressing these problems that enable us to live with them. This would be the arts' secular-religious potential.

Jonathan Safran Foer's new novel, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close", touching on 9/11, the bombing of Dresden, and beyond - this would be an excellent recent example of such secular-religious art.

Robbie Gringras, April 2005