In the movie "Fiddler on the Roof," the villagers of the Jewish enclave Anatevka, which is being overrun by Orthodox Christians, strive to maintain the traditions of their forebears, which have shaped their lives and given meaning to their society. But the new culture is too aggressive, too sophisticated to be ignored or resisted by the ingrained traditions of Anatevka. In the end, the existence of the Jews is "balanced as precariously as a fiddler on the roof."

I am grateful to the conference organizers for suggesting the word "glimpse" in the title of this talk, because I have to admit at the outset that I do not have a vision of a fully formed new feminism rising like Botticelli’s Venus in all her glory from the sea. But that word "glimpse" got me thinking about the story of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy. Moses, as you know, never did enter the promised land. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, however, he "glimpsed it from afar." And that glimpse was so satisfying that he died happy.

Graham Greene's The Comedians is surely the most famous novel set in contemporary Haiti. The book, published in 1965, introduced the English-speaking world to the methods of governance of président-a-vie Francois Duvalier. Following the novel's publication, both Greene and his book were banned in Haiti. Papa Doc was furious with the expose, certainly, but he was also vexed by the ethnographic detail of the novel. Trained as an anthropologist, the dictator knew that careful observers like Greene are always more difficult to discredit. Duvalier did his best, however, going so far as to produce a glossy bilingual pamphlet, Graham Greene Demasque, which depicted the writer as "unbalanced, sadistic, perverted ... the shame of proud and noble England." Although Greene would later term this assessment "the greatest honor I've yet received," Duvalier was not joking. The Comedians, travelers to Haiti were warned, was a book that even the luggage-rifling thugs at the airport could recognize.

Myths. "Jesuit education" is a familiar couplet like "Roman Empire" or "Viennese waltz." Most people associate Jesuits with education, although not all they have heard about this association is so. From time to time, for instance, a journalist or a student writing a term paper will call the switchboard of a Jesuit school to ask what Jesuit source contains the remark that goes something like this: "Let us have the education of children until they are seven, and you may have them thereafter."

No reference can be given, however, because that legendary saying is not just spurious but is the exact opposite of what actually was said in the first draft of the famous Jesuit plan for schools, the Ratio Studiorum. The six veteran teachers who in 1586 wrote the Latin essays making up that draft recommended that no boy be admitted to a Jesuit school before he is seven. Children less than that age, it explained, are troublesome and need nannies, not schoolmasters: "Molestissimi et nutricibus potius indigent quam ludimagistris."

The second draft of the Ratio in 1591 was equally cool toward the kindergarten bunch. Beginning students, it said, must not be so young that they fuss about trifles (nor so old that they upset class discipline), and they must have learned to read and write correctly. Otherwise, the sight of their compositions will turn their teacher's stomach. Nevertheless, besides the myths, there is also a reality.

Origins. The third and final draft of the Ratio Studiorum was promulgated in 1599 by Claudio Acquaviva, who in 1581 had been elected the fifth General of the Society of Jesus, an office he held until his death 34 years later.