observanteen: I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but I feel very passionate about this subject.
You say you don’t want to “enlighten” the kid. Why not? I challenge you to come up with an answer to that question that doesn’t lead directly to either kfira or worse. As I will demonstrate, those seem to be the only alternatives. We have a faith. We worship a God. In fact we worship the God besides Whom there is no other. That is the aleph-beis of basic Judaism. In a sense this aleph-beis is easier than the regular one because it has only thirteen “letters.” Yet it is still not part of our curriculum. How many bochurim in yeshiva can list all 13 ikarim without peeking? How many of them have sung “yigdal” every day of school through 5th grade?
I agree that it isn’t wise to answer questions that were never asked, especially when we’re talking about those questions that don’t have any answers. But neither of us are talking about teaching elementary school students about theodicy and the Kuzari principle. We are talking about teaching the things that are the foundations of what it means to be a Jew and, unlike our reconstructionist brethren, we both know that it doesn’t mean gefilte fish on Friday night. It means that we believe in one God who gave us one Torah. There are a couple details where there might be room to disagree on how much we dwell on the nature of yichud, the issurim of shituf etc, but that much we all hold as the basis of our faith, yet none of this is ever taught in a high school classroom, boys or girls! To quote my rebbi (one of the men I mentioned in my earlier post) “Yankele sings ‘Hashem is here Hashem is there’ when he is 5 years old and he goes the rest of his life with a five-year-old’s understanding of the concept.”
You want to change that situation for the better and I admire you for it tremendously, but please take a look at what you’re saying when you say you want to let a kid plod along his tmimusdig way. You imply one of two things. Either a) teaching him/her yesodei hadas will ruin his/her tmimus or b) it won’t but you have another reason for not wanting to tell him/her.
a) is kfira pure and simple. “a” says that the very foundations of our faith, the most significant of the ikarim cannot withstand any scrutiny at all. In fact, you are saying something even worse. You are saying that they are less than nothing, that someone who accepted Torah beforehand will leave it now that he knows Who he’s doing it for!
b) is worse. B is a chazon ish shiur of avoda zara mit alle “hiddurim”. You know that he will continue to keep Torah umitzvos after he knows about God but you refuse to tell him anyway. Why? Because you don’t want him to know about God. Why don’t you want him to know about God? Because you are deliberately keeping this person from acknowledging his or her Creator for your own selfish purposes. Comparisons can be drawn to either migdal bavel or the calves of Yeravam ben Nevat for different reasons, but I don’t want to get too carried away.
I apologize for the rant and assure you that I speak only from a place of ahavas yisroel. Any harsh words I said come from pain and not personal animosity; I hope you understand.
But I ask you one last time: Why not teach them?