By the Grace of G-d 22nd of Iyar, 5725 Brooklyn, N.Y.

Greeting and Blessing,

This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter.

I must say that I read its contents with considerable surprise; in fact with painful surprise. For it seems to me as an anachronism to still use a Kitzur Chumash to teach Chumash to Jewish children,

As you surely know, the Kitzur Chumash was introduced many years ago in certain circles, at the time when they came out with a sharp rebellion against everything traditional in Jewish life. In the heat of the battle, those rebellious circles did not hesitate even to use such an extreme encroachment upon Jewish tradition, as the Kitzur Chumash constituted. However, that era is happily over, and there is fortunately no longer any conscious attempt to undermine Jewish tradition. Moreover, and this is even more essential, if at the time of the battle mentioned above, even the proponents of the Kitzur Chumash did not envisage the terrible consequences of tampering with the Chumash, it has later become quite evident that children who were brought up by the Kitzur Chumash and in the spirit of that Kitzur, lacked real feeling for the sanctity of the Torah and mitzvos, not only for the so-called “light mitzvos” but even turned away from the fulfillment of some of the most basic and stringent mitzvos, and in extreme cases turned towards complete assimilation.

Even if the connection between the Kitzur Chumash and assimilation would not have been apparent, the results themselves would be sufficient evidence. Actually, the connection is a very logical one. For, as an educator, you surely know that children accept things on their face value. Thus, when a child who knows that there is a big and voluminous Chumash with so many pages and so many verses, and then in his classroom he is given a Kitzur Chumash where whole sections of the Torah were thrown out, and others have been changed around, at the will and whim of this or that so-called educator, and for this or that so-called reason, the child will draw the obvious conclusion that the Chumash could not be Divine and inviolable, for otherwise no teacher or educator would dare tamper with it.

This is why I was surprised, and painfully so, when I read that in your Hebrew school the Kitzur Chumash is still used in certain grades. All the more so in view of the fact that the change to a regular Chumash can be made unobtrusively. For insofar as the children are concerned it is not important what the official reason for the change is, so long as they get the proper instruction from the original Chumash.

It goes without saying that I am not writing all this for the sake of preaching, let alone for the purpose of admonishing a person whom I do not personally know. However, I wish to place every Jew in the chazoko of kashrus, especially a person who holds a responsible position in the education of Jewish children. I need hardly add that every small thing in matters of education is very important, as in the well known analogy of a seed or seedling, where a slight scratch or defect, could assume enormous proportions when the seed or seedling grows into a tree.

In the light of all the above, I earnestly hope that you will read and accept my letter in the spirit that it has been written. For I do not engage in bickering or finding fault, but I rather hope that on giving this matter serious reflection, your own common sense will bring you to the same conclusion that if we really want the Jewish children to cultivate a proper regard for the sanctity of the Torah as G-d given, and its value as being “Our very life and the length of our days,” this could not be accomplished by teaching the child from a mutilated Chumash, or one that has been “cut down to size” by a so-called educator who himself lacked the proper attitude and feeling to the Torah and mitzvos, or was utterly misguided.

May G-d grant that you should have good news to report in all above.

With blessing,

P.S. Needless to say, I am quite familiar with the attempted “justification” by the authors of the Chumash Kitzurim, who claimed that this will facilitate the introduction of the children to a fuller study of the original in higher grades, and the like. But actual experience has shown that the vast majority of those who begin the study of Chumash out of a kitzur do not attain the higher grades and background to study the Torah fully from the original, and it is not on the few and rare exceptions that one can build a proper Chinuch. On the other hand, the mainstay of Jewish education has been the method of teaching Chumash from the original, though here too there were a few exceptions, of course.

As already mentioned before, I do not think it is necessary to elaborate on such an obvious matter, since it is not an issue which has yet to be verified by experience, but it has a long, and unfortunately sad, history before it, which is irrefutable.