SOUL FOOD:

Rabbi Rebecca Yaal Schorr is unwavering in her conviction that the Bible does not belong in our public schools.

In her protest before the Huntington Beach Union High School District board July 22 about a proposed Bible as Literature elective, the associate rabbi of Fountain Valley’s Congregation B’nai Tzedek made many arguments against it.

The Bible used in the classroom, Schorr contended, “would be merely a translation and not the original text.” And the translation in this case would be the King James Version.

When it comes to biblical translation, Schorr told the board, “It is nearly impossible to separate theology from any rendering of the text.” The theology, in the rabbi’s view, is part and parcel of the translation.

She noted how in Jewish tradition the story known to Christians as the “sacrifice of Isaac” is called “the binding of Isaac.”

The first prefigures the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as God’s son; the latter conveys a completely different message for Jews.

Schorr appealed to an Italian proverb, “Traduttore, traditore,” — in English “Translator, you are a traitor,” — to make her point. It would take nothing short of a biblical scholar to navigate “the subtle religious implications” of biblical texts, she said.

To drive her point home, she offered the words of Mark Chancey, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University on the matter of teaching the Bible in public schools constitutionally. Chancey has said, “It takes the wisdom of Solomon to do it.”

Schorr is convinced that “maintaining that fine line between the religious and secular aspects [of teaching the Bible] will be rather improbable.”

She made it clear she did not want to see it put to the test in the Huntington Beach Union High School District, where she herself graduated from Fountain Valley High School.

She viewed the proposed elective as an invitation for the devout — the Christian devout — to proselytize. Speaking with me by phone, she cited her own experiences as a high school student.

As a member of the high school’s choir, she was subjected to excusing herself before performances while the majority of the choir joined hands to pray.

While school staff never led the prayers, she still found the situation coercive.

“[The prayer] was always peer led by one of the students ‘in the name of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ,’ ” she said.

The message to her and other non-Christians, was, she felt, “You don’t actually belong here. We’re letting you be here, but … ”

When she expressed her discomfort she was told, “Well, next time, you can lead the prayer,” which she did not find an appropriate response.

Her fear is that a Bible as Literature elective would go the way of some Bible courses taught in Texas schools.

A study commissioned by the civil liberties group, the Texas Freedom Network, and researched and written by Chancey, found most Bible electives in 25 Texas school districts to promote “only a fundamentalist Protestant” view.

According to Chancey study, classes in only three districts “managed to get it right.”

Those classes are similar to elements of Amy Wilson’s class at Huntington Beach High School, mentioned in last week’s column. Wilson’s class includes required summer Bible reading as background for studies of other literature during the year.

The classes focus on biblical allusions as they appear in the art, music and literature of our Western civilization.

Thayer Warshaw, who very successfully taught and wrote curricula for teaching the Bible in and as literature in public schools wrote an essay titled “Studying the Bible in Public School” for the English Journal in 1964.

In it he addressed the importance of this.

“A knowledge of the Bible is essential to the pupil’s understanding of allusions in literature, in music, in the fine arts, in the news media, in entertainment, and in cultured conversation,” Warshaw wrote.

“Is he to study mythology and Shakespeare, but not the Bible? Is it important for him to learn what it means when a man is called an Adonis or a Romeo, yet unimportant for him to be able to tell a Jonah from a Judas?” he asks. I might add, a doubting Thomas, a patient Job, a Jezebel — among many others — to his list.

And even Schorr agrees.

“We live in a culture … where so much of our expression, whether it be in the arts, you know, music or visual arts or literature, does, of course, find a lot of its imagery rooted in the Bible [so] there needs to be a working understanding of it,” she told me when we spoke.

I respect her concerns but I remain unconvinced by her arguments. Yes, theology may certainly color the translation of a religious text.

And yes, any English-language Bible is “merely a translation.” But the English and American authors who created the works strewn with its allusions for the most part used just that — and most often the King James Version.

So if teaching the Bible as literature is about literacy and not theology, we best employ the biblical text closest to that the authors themselves used. To teach that text as the authors alluded to it requires literary skill, not biblical scholarship.

Such classes are already being taught — apparently with success and without complaint — in the Huntington Beach Union High School District by teachers such as Wilson. The classes simply are not offered to the student body at large.

At Huntington Beach High School where Wilson teaches, the class is offered only to juniors who received a C-plus grade or better in Honors English 2, or an A or B grade in English 2, as well as a teacher recommendation and the acceptance of an admission essay. This comes out to about one-third of all juniors.

A Bible as literature elective would have been unlikely to promote understanding and tolerance of other faiths. That could never have been its goal.

It’s doubtful it would have improved the moral character of students, even if some supporters imagined it might. These were red herrings on both sides of the argument.

What it would have done was enrich more students’ cultural understanding. The best argument I heard against the elective came from parent Rose Molina.

As I wrote last week, she argued that the district could not afford to offer it. But that is not what killed the elective. A turbulence of passions and politics did that.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.