Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a longstanding Manchester-based rabbi and Jewish communal leader. He founded and leads the Whitefield Community Kollel and serves as International Liaison for the Coalition for Jewish Values.
Some years ago, while sightseeing in the picturesque English market town of Oakham, in Rutland, I came across something that stopped me in my tracks. There, on the exterior of an old school building, were words carved in Hebrew. I was astonished. Hebrew lettering, prominently displayed in an English country town, dating back more than four centuries!
The building was the original Oakham School, founded in 1584. Across its façade ran the words Schola Latina Graeca Hebraica — School of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Above the entrance were two verses from the Hebrew Bible.
The first, from Proverbs, declares: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” The second, from Psalms, reads: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.”
Here was an English school building dating from the reign of Elizabeth I, some seventy years before Jews were permitted to resettle openly in England, proclaiming an educational philosophy grounded in the Hebrew Bible.
Four centuries later, those inscriptions offer an illuminating perspective on Kemi Badenoch’s call for a renewed culture of excellence.
What does it take to create such a culture? Is excellence primarily about recognising exceptional talent and rewarding achievement? Or does it depend upon something more fundamental: the habits, expectations and moral commitments which a society cultivates across generations?
In her newly published statement of Conservative principles, The Right Way, Kemi Badenoch argues that Britain’s prosperity and stability cannot simply be taken for granted. Wealth must be created before it can be distributed; freedom requires responsibility; and good intentions are no substitute for achievement. Her challenge goes beyond economic policy. For excellence cannot be sustained by incentives and rewards alone. It depends upon the character and discipline of the people who pursue it.
Jewish thought offers a distinctive perspective. A genuine culture of excellence requires three things: the discipline of sustained effort, the formation of character, and an understanding that achievement carries responsibilities towards others.
The first is captured by a Hebrew word: ameylut — toil, sustained and purposeful effort.
In traditional Jewish education, ameylut baTorah, toiling in Torah study, is not merely a means of acquiring knowledge. It is itself an ideal.
The biblical instruction, “If you walk in My statutes”, is interpreted by the classical commentator Rashi as an injunction to toil in the study of Torah. Not merely to learn. To toil.
In a traditional Jewish study hall, two students may spend hours debating a single passage of the Talmud, challenging arguments, revisiting difficulties and refining their understanding. The struggle is not an unfortunate obstacle to learning. It is part of learning itself.
The Talmud encapsulates this in a memorable maxim: Yagata u’matzata, ta’amin — “If someone tells you, ‘I have toiled and succeeded’, believe him.”
But the Talmud immediately introduces an important qualification. This assurance applies to the pursuit of Torah knowledge. In commerce, effort alone cannot guarantee success; circumstances beyond our control also play their part.
It is a profound distinction. We may not control the material rewards of our efforts, but we remain responsible for the effort itself. Excellence cannot always be measured by the outcome.
This distinction matters. A naturally brilliant student may master a subject with ease, while another struggles for weeks to understand the same material. Both may achieve the same result, yet the second student’s perseverance may be every bit as admirable as the first student’s intellectual gifts.
Talent is a gift. Effort is a responsibility.
A culture of excellence must therefore celebrate accomplishment without overlooking the discipline that makes accomplishment possible.
There is an interesting historical connection between this Jewish understanding of achievement and an earlier generation of Conservative thinking.
During Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, the then Chief Rabbi, Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, became an influential voice in the national discussion about moral values. He was also a formative influence upon me during my early years in the rabbinate. In 1990, I had the privilege of welcoming him to Manchester to inaugurate the Whitefield Community Kollel, devoted to the tradition of intensive, lifelong Jewish learning.
At his retirement dinner in February 1991, Thatcher acknowledged the profound influence his thinking had exercised upon her.
She recalled their first meeting, when she was Secretary of State for Education. Jakobovits told her that she was really the Minister of Defence. After the family, he believed, education was the principal means by which a nation preserved its strength and character.
It was a reminder that the strength of a nation rests not only upon its economic resources or military capabilities, but upon the moral and educational foundations which sustain both.
Thatcher recognised that the educational aspirations, work ethic and sense of responsibility which had helped Jewish communities flourish were not simply individual virtues. They were elements of a moral culture, sustained through families, schools and communities.
That is a lesson of considerable relevance today. Governments can establish educational standards and create incentives for enterprise. But the habits of perseverance, intellectual curiosity and personal responsibility upon which excellence depends cannot simply be legislated into existence. They must be taught, practised and transmitted.
Which brings us to the second foundation of excellence: character.
There is a danger in celebrating excellence without first deciding how excellence should be measured.
The ancient Jewish sages anticipated precisely this question. They asked: Who is wise? Who is strong? Who is wealthy? Who deserves honour? Their answers are striking.
The wise person learns from everyone. The strong person masters his own impulses. The wealthy person is content with his portion. The person worthy of honour honours others.
Here is not a rejection of excellence, but a radical redefinition of it.
Wisdom is measured not simply by what one knows, but by one’s willingness to learn. Strength includes mastery of oneself. Wealth does not guarantee contentment, and honour is earned by honouring others.
These teachings challenge a society which risks confusing excellence with status, wealth or public recognition.
Jewish thought holds together two principles which contemporary political discussion sometimes treats as competing.
Every human being possesses inherent dignity, regardless of talent, wealth or achievement. Yet every person is also called upon to develop the abilities and opportunities with which they have been endowed.
Equality of human worth does not require uniformity of achievement.
Nor does the pursuit of excellence justify indifference towards those who struggle. The Talmud’s distinction between intellectual toil and material success should caution us against imagining that wealth necessarily demonstrates virtue, or poverty a lack of effort. This leads to the third foundation: responsibility.
In Jewish thought, accomplishment is never simply a private possession. The scholar has a duty to teach. The wealthy have obligations towards those in need. Those exercising authority must do so with justice and humility.
Achievement brings responsibilities proportionate to the opportunities and abilities one has been given.
Britain certainly needs outstanding scientists, entrepreneurs, teachers and businesses. But it also needs excellent parents, carers, neighbours and citizens. Much of the work upon which a healthy society depends is neither financially rewarded nor publicly celebrated.
And here we return to the Hebrew inscriptions which so unexpectedly caught my eye in Oakham.
“Train up a child in the way he should go.” Excellence begins with education — not simply the acquisition of knowledge, but the formation of habits, character and aspiration.
“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.” The Hebrew word for labour, amal, is the very root of ameylut, the Jewish ideal of sustained and purposeful toil.
The two verses belong together. One teaches us how to develop human potential. The other reminds us that human effort, indispensable though it is, must rest upon foundations of moral purpose.
Here lies the enduring significance of the conversation between Thatcher and Jakobovits, and a challenge for the renewed debate Badenoch has opened.
Britain needs to encourage ambition, reward achievement and celebrate distinction. But it must also cultivate the discipline that produces excellence, the character that restrains its misuse and the responsibility that directs it towards the common good.
More than four centuries after those Hebrew words were carved into the stone of an English school, their message has lost none of its relevance.