Prof. Eliezer Schweid passed away on the 18th of January 2022, and many stories about him appeared on media. His former students wrote their memories down, and others shared Schweid's contribution to their teaching. Dr. Ariel Seri-Levi, a scholar of Jewish Thought at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Shalom Hartman Institute, was one of them; he wrote in his Facebook profile (in Hebrew) a beautiful remembrance of Schweid. We were touched by his words and decided to translate the text to English and share it with our Alumni and friends:
I did not really understand A.D. Gordon. This seemed evident from the cautious notes between the generous remarks that Prof. Eliezer Schweid wrote in his handwriting on the margins of the essay I submitted to him. It was submitted in the summer of 2012; Schweid was 83 years old. We were four students in the course which took place at his home. I was studying his course while working as a high school teacher for Jewish thought. Schweid spoke like a good old reference book. His sentences were long and complex but bright and spectacularly constructed. It was not only his virtuosity, proficiency, and breadth of horizons; it was always obvious that things came straight from his heart. He was not only a great lecturer; he was an attentive and patient teacher and a humble and kind man. If I am not confused, that year was my first year as a full-time teacher at the Jerusalem High School of the Arts. I had the privilege of teaching the "Crisis of Faith in Modern Times" unit in the Department of Jewish Thought. We studied Schweid's founding article “Judaism as a Culture.” I always had a chutzpa, so I dared to ask Schweid if he would agree to come and meet my four students. Schweid set only one condition: he would not come for a lecture; he had already written the things which can be read, after all. But, he offered to come to talk; he said he would be happy if the students would prepare questions they had after reading his article. Then, Schweid arrived and did the unbelievable thing for the students. He came out of the textbook, where he was presented as a “thinker” and a primary source. Instead of staying a part of the study material—somewhere between Spinoza and Brenner or Ahad Ha'am and Bialik—he appeared in the high school class as an actual human, in flesh and face. He spoke in a loud, enthusiastic voice, and also smiled, and even drank a glass of tea, as you can see in the picture.
Beyond these beautiful experiences of the great privilege I have had, I think that Schweid's main contribution was not only that he taught secular Jews that they are no less Jewish than any other Jew. Nor that he gave us, the teachers, a language for teaching Judaism in public education and made the great ideas of Jewish thought accessible for us. These are great things. But I think for a moment of something that Schweid gave me, as a so-called “religious liberal Jew” (and yes, we hate to define ourselves like that, what an annoying definition, “religious liberal,” and we indeed hate to define ourselves in general, that's a big part of our identity). A religious liberal Jew who got caught up in the whole story of academic Jewish Studies and Jewish education.
This idea of Judaism as a culture gave us a place. We, the religious education graduates, longed for the Torah and did not find our place as students of yeshivas and teachers in religious educations. Because of Schweid's ideas of Judaism as a culture, we could study and teach and find our place as teachers of Judaism without being threatened or threatening. Learning and teaching Jewish culture out of a deep commitment and complete freedom—not just freedom for students, that is obvious—but freedom for ourselves. Air. Space. Thank you for that as well, Professor Schweid.
Dr. Ariel Seri-Levi is a scholar of Jewish Thought at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Shalom Hartman Institute. He worked for many years in the field of Jewish Education, both as an educator and as a teachers training and development supervisor. He is the author of several Jewish studies textbooks and a former weekly columnist for Haaretz.