Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th century. Increasingly, his philosophy is studied within the philosophy of education and is becoming an integral part of the field. His philosophical work frequently makes use of terms drawn from education, the word “teaching”, for example, has a particular importance in his writing. He did not, however, develop a full-blown philosophy of education. Philosophers of education who seek to base their work on his philosophy need to extrapolate from his writing in order to apply it to the context of education.
The situation is different when it comes to Jewish education. For over 30 years Levinas served as the director of ENIO (École Normale Israélite Orientale), a Jewish high school and teacher training institution in Paris under the auspices of the Alliance Israelite Orientale. As a Jewish educator and community figure he frequently spoke and wrote about the challenges for Jewish education in his time and place. Most of his writing on Jewish education is to be found in his “Difficult Freedom: essays on Judaism.”
Dr. Michael Gillis, the director of Melton Centre, has for a number of years offered courses on Levinas’s understanding of Jewish education in both the regular Hebrew MA program and the International MA program in Jewish Education.
The fact that Levinas was a practitioner of Jewish education, makes us curious about what kind of an educator and pedagogue he was. To answer this question we turn to the memories of those who were his colleagues and students at ENIO. What we find is a mixture of those who appreciated that they were privileged to have a very special kind of school principal and those who found it more difficult to connect with him.
Levinas was not only the director of ENIO but also a teacher. He taught Talmud and philosophy as well a weekly class on Torah with Rashi’s commentary that was open to the public. What kind of daily interactions did Levinas maintain with his students? What were his pedagogical practices? We can find some answers in the memoirs and testimonies from his former students at ENIO. Many of these can be found in the biography by his student Salomon Malka ("Emmanuel Levinas: His Life and Legacy"), The philosophical implications of these memories have been studied by Ann Chinnery, a Canadian philosopher of education ("Encountering the philosopher as teacher: The pedagogical postures of Emmanuel Levinas”, published in “Teaching and Teacher Education,” 2010).
Levinas and his family lived in the ENIO building. Particularly in the early years, he was responsible not only for academic issues but also for the most simple needs of the students. He had to deal with everything, from logistical problems like a broken shower to more institutional concerns, such as the maintenance of a proper distance between girls and boys at the dorms. He was present at the school for the whole day. In the evenings he sent the students to bed after prayer and then stayed up waiting for the return of those who had gone out. His secretary for 40 years, Thérèse Goldstein, described Levinas, the school director:
... this was someone who lived out his philosophy in his life from day to day. He was concerned with those who had a problem, either a personal one or in relation to the other student. He did everything to help people to get them out of their difficulties.
Levinas and his students at ENIO, unknown year. Photo: AIU archive.
Some of his students felt, however, that as a teacher in the class he was not entirely attentive to his students. Gabriel Cohen, a former student, described Levinas in the classroom, saying that he always “had a monopoly on speaking. He did the talking. If one asked him a question, it would immediately make him uncomfortable…”. Other students complained of Levinas’ roughness, moods, and unpredictable side as he was teaching them in class. Jean Elouk, however, has a very different memory of Levinas:
I had a very peculiar relationship with him, very different from the ones I’ve heard about. I suppose now that it was a challenge at the time, but I let myself talk to him as an equal. Outside the philosophy course, on Saturdays, I would sometimes go on walks with him in the gardens of the ENIO. We’d walk around and chat. About philosophy, phenomenology, psychology..[I]n any case, I can say that it was easy to communicate with him, he welcomed discussion, and contradiction. It was not merely a lecture, one could speak freely.
This beautiful memory adds to the description of the environment Levinas created at ENIO. Mme. Goldstein describes the atmosphere there as one of “exceptional intellectual life… a thirst to learn and a desire to flourish.” Levinas was devoted to the intellectual growth of his students. According to Roger Burggraeve, who was a doctoral student of Levinas, his “pedagogical wager was on intelligence, clarity, and generosity”, even though it took Burggraeve some time to acknowledge this contribution. At first, he was disturbed by Levinas’ tendency to correct and contradict his interpretations and only later realized this aspect of the relationship was one of a student and a rabbi. Levinas himself once described the contribution of his own teacher, the philosopher Edmund Husserl, as “he gave me eyes to see”.
The accounts of Levinas’s time at the ENIO portray a philosopher who took the duties of a teacher with great seriousness. Levinas saw his directorship of ENIO and his educational work as his life mission, as he said once in an interview:
After Auschwitz, I had the impression that in taking on the directorship of the École Normale Isréalite Orientale I was responding to a historical calling. It was my little secret. I am still mindful and proud of it today.
All quotes in this article are taken from the essay “Encountering the philosopher as teacher: The pedagogical postures of Emmanuel Levinas” by Ann Chinnery, Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 1704 -1709.