Repetition: A two-edged sword
Hands up those of you who were taught your times tables by rote, reciting them over and over again in a dismal sing-song chorus at the prompting of a teacher who pointed them out on a chalked-up blackboard. I certainly was, and to this day I can instantly tell you that seven eights are 56 and eight eights are 64, though I am not sure whether those classroom exercises helped or hindered my subsequent less than average grasp of mathematics.
The human brain soaks up information in two different ways. One is broadly based and calls for an emotional awareness of the wider context, including how other people think. The other is more narrow (learning the times tables is an example) and requires the person to focus on a specific task. Repetition of old facts imprints new information on the memory, to be indexed for future reference.
Turning now to repetition as a way of instilling religious belief in children, I can remember Cheder teachers compelling pupils to recite blessings and prayers repeatedly until they were emblazoned on the child’s mind. This was a joyless undertaking, but it served its purpose. It was also the custom to smear honey on a slate on which the letters of the Hebrew alphabet were written and to reward the child who memorised them with the delectable task of licking the honey off the slate, thereby driving home the message that the holy tongue is indeed sweet.
In many Jewish homes the repetition of prayers from morning to evening, both before and after the performance of everyday domestic routines, helps to build the foundations of religious worship. If these repeated recitals take place in a warm, empathic atmosphere, the child is won over and commitment to the Jewish faith is all but assured. However, if the message is given through the medium of punishment and disapproval, the seeds of ambivalence are planted, to sprout in later life.
Repetition is therefore a two-edged sword. On the one hand it reinforces the learning of facts and stories garnered by others in ancient times and seen as binding on the community. On the other hand it stultifies creative thinking. When the daily routine is crowded with innumerable injunctions to repeat words and actions there is little opportunity for original thinking or individual self-expression.
As with the home, so with the synagogue. I remember the shoulder-sagging boredom which the repeated utterance of meaningless prayers induced in me. Perhaps I inherited something of my father’s ambivalence towards religious worship. He was passionate about the Hebrew language and steeped in Jewish culture (his own father was an ordained rabbi who taught at a Talmud Torah) but he was lukewarm, to say the least, about religious practice, as was my mother, herself the daughter of a devoutly Orthodox Jew. As a family, we fulfilled, in perfunctory fashion, a few of the religious injunctions, but as time went by, my interest and commitment decayed like the dropping of leaves off a tree in autumn and I came to reject words and beliefs which carried no meaning for me, however often they were repeated.
There is a sinister aspect to repetition, too. A lie, if repeated often enough, comes to be accepted as the truth. Demagogues and populists practise this art. They repeatedly shout slogans which rouse emotions and encourage crowd responses which reinforce a particular ideology or belief. Repeated messages of hate pave the way to violence in all its manifestations.
The obverse of this is the repetition of words expressing kindness and wisdom, best captured for me in the well-known quote by the 1st Century BCE rabbi and scholar, Hillel. Asked to define the essence of Jewish law, he replied, “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your neighbour”. I would happily lick the honey off any slate on which these words are inscribed.
