I once had the opportunity to visit the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland, together with a group of young educators from Latin America. In front of the massive stone monument erected where the gas chamber once stood, one of the group members asked for permission to read a letter she had written in tribute to her grandfather—one of the 850,000 victims murdered in that place. Through tears, the young woman wondered how it was possible that people in nearby cities had continued with their lives as usual, knowing that just a few kilometers from their homes there were forced labor and extermination camps. It was then that I noticed the coat she was wearing to protect herself from the intense Polish cold. What caught my attention was the large, shiny logo printed on the back of the coat, revealing the name of a company that, just the previous week, had been accused of using slave labor in its production lines.

This story reminds me of another one, about the famous Lithuanian Rabbi Israel Salanter. It is told that when he was young, Rabbi Salanter wanted to change the world, but upon realizing that it was too difficult, he decided to try changing his country. When he saw that this, too, was an impossible task, he resolved to focus his efforts on changing his city. Finding himself unable to change his whole city, he decided to try to change his family. When he failed to even change his family, and already advanced in age, he understood that the only thing he truly could change was himself. Then he realized that if he had started by transforming himself, he could have influenced his family. His family could have influenced the city, which in turn could have impacted the country and, through that, perhaps changed the world.

How, then, can we offer educational processes that are truly transformative? How can we avoid cognitive dissonance and find paths that might truly have a positive impact on the life of a community?

One possibility, I believe, is the one that has accompanied us since biblical times, when the great question first echoed from the edges of Eden: ayeka? — Where are you? The ability to reflect on oneself and perceive the impacts of one’s own behavior has never been an easy task. One does not need to be a psychoanalyst to perceive the resistance people show when invited to look into the depths of their soul. And this is nothing new; we need only recall that Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. When faced with ayeka, the founders of humanity chose to hide.

It is from Abraham that we learn the correct and effective posture before this terrifying question about where we are: hineni — here I am. But let’s not be fooled: it is not easy to respond with hineni. In fact, we spend much of our lives — and some people their entire lives — trying to discover where we are, what place we occupy in the world, what the meaning of our existence is. Might it be, then, that a path toward meaningful education is precisely to provide our students with the tools and experiences necessary to confront ayeka?

A successful example of this process can be found in Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who survived the concentration camps and became Chief Rabbi of Israel. According to him, the Jewish question in the face of the Shoah is not “Where was God?” (the complete inversion of ayeka), but rather, “Where was Man?”

Not coincidentally, the second question that arises in the biblical text is: Ayeh Hevel ahikha? — Where is Abel, your brother? It is worth noting the order of the questions: first ayeka, then ayeh ahikha. Pointing fingers can be a tempting escape route from the challenge of self-examination. Had they first looked within, perhaps the lyrical self of Rabbi Salanter would have changed the world, perhaps the young woman at Treblinka would have worn a different coat, and who knows, perhaps Cain would not have murdered Abel. The sage Hillel also understood the progression and connection between these questions when he asked: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” and then, “But if I am (only) for myself, what am I?” (Pirkei Avot). We thus perceive that if, on the one hand, one question must precede the other, on the other hand, we understand that one must inevitably lead to the other. Looking inward must necessarily lead a person to the other. Thus, the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas teaches us about the ethics of otherness, and the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud reminds us that it is in relation to the other that we construct the self. It is worth noting that both Levinas and Freud lived through the horrors of the Nazi occupation.

In times of polarization, it is not easy to work in the field of education while guided by such profound questions as ayeka and ayeh ahikha. As Rabbi Tarfon reminds us: ha-yom katzar ve-ha-melakha merubah— the day is short, and the task is immense. But if it weren’t so, why would we be needed? Faced with the challenges of education, it is we who must answer: hineni, and with that, take responsibility for our brothers.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson, in his book on the ideas of the Lubavitcher Rebbe for a meaningful life, asks what leads someone to choose to become an educator. Jacobson affirms that dealing with students can be quite difficult, and he wonders whether it wouldn’t be more convenient to pursue a more lucrative or personally rewarding career. In response, he says:

If education were just the process of transmitting information, the answer to these questions might be yes. But since education is much more than that, since education is life itself, the reason we must teach is a direct extension of the reason we must live. (...) What gift, what act of love, can be greater than the opportunity to help shape a person for the rest of their life?

I see the coat of Treblinka as a powerful metaphor for the possible failures in our educational process. Taking young people to the other side of the world so they can witness firsthand the horrors of Nazism is undoubtedly a meaningful pedagogical intervention. However, for this intervention—like any other—to be truly effective, it must be accompanied by the ability to ask ayeka and ayeh ahikha. It must be accompanied by the capacity to assume responsibility both intellectually and practically, promoting changes in our field of action that are effective for tikkun olam, to transform this world into a better place.