A Taste of Limmud

Written by Dr. Helena Miller Wednesday, 26 October 2005

Taste of Limmud

My Favourite Text:

A king once owned a large, beautiful, pure diamond of which he was justly proud, for it had no equal anywhere. One day, the diamond accidentally sustained a deep scratch. The king called in the most skilled diamond cutters and offered them a great reward if they could remove the imperfection from his treasured jewel. But none could repair the blemish. The king was sorely distressed.

After some time a gifted jeweller came to the king and promised to make the rare diamond even more beautiful than it had been before the mishap. The king was impressed by his confidence and entrusted his precious stone to his care. And the man kept his word.

With superb artistry, he engraved a lovely rosebud around the imperfection and he used the scratch to make the stem.

The Dubner Maggid (Jacob b. Wolf Kranz 1741-1804)
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I was teaching nine year olds. In the classroom next to mine was the “special class”. This was the group of educationally and behaviourally challenged young people who were unable to cope in the main school. The teacher of that class, a Welsh woman of fierce and vociferous temper, loved those children. She appreciated their humour, celebrated their achievements and marvelled at their successes, however small. She took those difficult and scarred children and found the beauty in them. She taught me to look at people as individuals who are all capable of shining. She showed me that the point was not to make that “special class” like the rest of the school, but to find in each one of those children their own unique and precious quality.

Many years later, I always think of that teacher and her class whenever I read this text. It not only speaks to me about how we must see the “rosebud” in every person, but it also speaks to me about creativity and imagination, optimism and perseverance.

John Dewey, one of the most influential educationists of the 20th Century, understood that to tap into creativity and imagination is to become able to break with what is supposedly fixed. It is to see beyond what the imaginer has called normal or sensible and to develop new orders in experience. Dewey saw, for example, that imagination and creativity is the gateway through which meanings derived from past experiences find their way into the present; it involves a risk; “it is a venture into the unknown, for it assimilates the present to the past” (1934, p272). In my text above, the most skilled artists could not deal with the scratch on the diamond. It took a jeweller who could think creatively and could use his imagination to look at the task in a different way. How often, in our lives, are we unable to move on because we cannot see new perspectives? As we begin a New Year, perhaps we should think more creatively about solving the problems and challenges with which we are faced.

This text also speaks to me of optimism and perseverance. How easy it would have been for the king to have given up trying to repair his diamond. How familiar it would have been for the jeweller to have stared at the diamond, drawn in a deep breath and shaken his head. But they didn’t. Both the king and the jeweller responded to their challenge in a positive and life-affirming way. The jeweller didn’t see a problem; he saw an opportunity. We can choose how we approach our lives. Are we optimists or pessimists? Is our glass half full, or half empty? Can we make the best of what life brings us, or do we bemoan what is past?

Finally, to return to my class of nine year olds. I used to tell them this text as a story. With a few embellishments and props, it makes a great tale. But as the years went on, I realised that whilst this text has all the elements of a fairy tale, it is also a lesson for how we could approach life: be positive, use the gift of imagination and creativity that we all have and appreciate the unique qualities in each individual.

Dr. Helena Miller
7th October 2005