Orthodox Paradox – A View From The Inside

August 7, 2007 at 5:06 pm | In beliefs, jewish denominations, orthodox | 7 Comments

I had very low expectations for YU’s new (or newly resurrected) student magazine/blog, Kol Hamevaser, but Gilah Kletenik, the editor at Stern, did not disappoint. Despite a lackluster opening (complete with the word ‘masticating’), Kletenik hit a home run when she finally got down to the business of dealing with Noah Feldman. Here’s the very best paragraph I’ve read on this entire controversy:

Modern Orthodox day schools, while espousing a Torah U’Madda way of life, often fail to demonstrate to their students, who live in a secular world, precisely how to embody this principal. It’s only once we abandon the protective dalet amot of the Yeshiva classroom that we realize how ill prepared we are to confront the secular world around us. Ready we may be to rattle off proofs from Maimonides in support of studying the sciences or such blanket Talmudic statements as “chochma bagoyim ta’amin,” we are often left without the tools to effectively interact with non-Orthodox Jews, let alone non-Jews. No doubt this stems from the fact that we have our own schools, camps and youth groups, as such, there is seldom an opportunity for profound interaction with anyone outside of our closed community. This is a show of our intense insularity, which stems from our innate insecurity – an unhealthy, if well-founded sense of insecurity, justified not the least by decisions such as Feldman’s to intermarry.

This is precisely the disconnect I’ve been talking about! Modern Orthodoxy preaches interaction with the modern world from within the high walls of its own ghettos. Science should be studied, but its conclusions should be rejected if they differ from those that we’ve been taught to accept as Torah. Dignity should be afforded to all types of Jews, but that dignity best not extend to sharing our community institutions with them.

Kletenik puts her finger on the problem in the same spot where I’ve placed mine (I can only hope that if our fingers are touching, it’s not derech chiba) – on our lack of confidence. On our fear that if Orthodox Judaism had to compete openly in the marketplace of ideas, it would lose as badly today is it did in Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries, when some 90% of Jews turned away from traditional Judaism

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Many have accused Feldman of fomenting hatred between the orthodox and the non-orthodox world (both Jews and non-Jews) by using the Rabbinic allowance for saving a gentile’s life on shabbos as a paradigmatic modern orthodox legal issue. (And see Rabbi Lamm’s article on the Forward website: http://www.forward.com/articles/11308/). While superficial readers (of all faiths), may read Feldman’s article and reach the conclusion that modern orthodoxy does not value non-jewish life, I don’t think that’s what Feldman was driving at. (Indeed, if Feldman thought that the legal underpinnings of modern orthodoxy rested on such views, I don’t think he would have expressed the degree of caring for the community that he does).

A basic failure of modern orthodoxy — and I say this as someone who grew up in the modern orthodox community and attended its schools and summer camps for 12 years (followed by a year in Israel) — is its inability to staff its educational system with modern orthodox religious teachers. With a few notable exceptions, the majority of rebbeim I had were members of black hat communities who hailed from Chaim Berlin and Mir, not RIETS (in fact, those who were YU musmachim typically taught either the girls or the non-honors boys classes). And their views towards Gentiles — and to non-Orthodox Jews — coincided perfectly with the attitude expressed by the Rabbi in Feldman’s now infamous anecdote. (And the views of some were even worse). In that context, I think that what we should take away from Feldman’s article is that the mixed messages he received were not simply a result of studying both secular and religious traditions, but they were based in the messengers who were transmitting the texts. I too was confronted with this problem: I grew up in a modern orthodox house which valued religious practice and tradition very highly, but similarly was highly tolerant of non-Jews (for may parents, calling Gentiles “goyim” was almost as bad as using the “n-word.”) and was extremely interested in and appreciative of secular culture. My rebbeim — none of whom were modern orthodox, although all of whom were employed in modern orthodox institutions — held diametrically opposed views to my parents. And worse, those rabbis who knew better routinely ignored and refused to condemn those Rabbis when they openly expressed bigoted and hateful words in their classes. This phenomenon (not secular culture), helped turned me away from modern orthdooxy — albeit not to the degree that it sent Feldman packing (my wife is Jewish) — but I can understand where he’s coming from, and I think we have to understand this aspect of his article as well.

Comment by mjfire — August 14, 2007 #

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I strongly agree with your point about non-MO teachers teaching at MO schools. My experiences growing up were the same. I was also left to wonder why these particular Yeshivish rabbis were ’stuck’ teaching at an MO school. Were they perhaps substandard in the eyes of their own community? Or were they the progressive ones?

While I also generally agree with your assessment that Feldman did not have malevolent intentions, I do want to ask you a question that has been posed to me by those who see something more sinister in Feldman’s actions. You, as a fellow who grew up in the MO world, surely know that bringing a non-Jewish date to an MO function is sure to cause a stir, and be viewed as an act of disrespect – as Feldman certainly knew as well. Give this, how can you find no malice in Feldman’s actions? Personally, I thought Feldman was trying to make the point that the community is overly-defensive and self-centered – that the community might bemoan his choice, but it should not view that choice as an insult directed at itself. Is this your take as well, or are you seeing it from a different perspective?

Comment by rejewvenator — August 14, 2007 #

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Perhaps the “Black Hat” Rebbeim in MO schools are there to push their own ideology. How many students today from MO schools have taken a step in the “right” direction and donned a hat themselves?

Interesting how this phenomenon shows itself in the Conservative Jewish world, with many MO Rabbis taking positions as leaders of Conservative Jewish congregations…are they perhaps stuck there or substandard? Or is JTS simply doing as good as job as RIETS?

Comment by anonymous — August 19, 2007 #

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So you’re suggesting an infiltration/kiruv theory? It’s plausible. Rabbi Daniel Mechanic, of Discovery Seminar fame, taught at the HAFTR junior high school prior to ‘making it’. OK, I can accept that. I don’t think it stands in contrast to the idea that these are the more progressive members of their denominations.

I’m not as familiar with the trend in the Conservative movement, or at least not the contemporary phenomenon. It has been a long time since I ran across an Orthodox rabbi at Conservative shul, though of course, that’s not to say they don’t exist.

As for whether JTS is doing as good a job as RIETS, it’s an open questions. Certainly over the past few decades, JTS graduates haven’t been able to lead their congregations to a religious life consonant with JTS values – and often, the religious practice of these rabbis, especially in shabbat and kashrut, have also varied from the JTS norms. That said, RIETS graduates have largely allowed their congregations to slip to the right, so I’d say neither institution has successfully propagated its vision for the movement.

Comment by rejewvenator — August 19, 2007 #

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The black hat rebbeim are in the MO schools primarily for parnasa, and the MO yeshivas hire them because there are really no MO educators left. The black hatters are not more progressive than the rest of their community; just a cross-sample that happens to teach at MO yeshivas. The black hat kiruv project is really the year abroad in Israel, not in the MO yeshivas. The rebbeim in America just lay the groundwork by encouraging students go to Israel where they can be “turned” at the appropriate yeshivas, but this is not very difficult for them to accomplish given that peer pressure is already high enough to compel that choice. This is the real fallacy of MO — it’s so fake that the students willingly go to yeshivas in Israel which they know stand opposed to what their parents do, and where they know that their way of life will be invalidated and replaced with something more “authentic.”

Comment by mjfire — August 20, 2007 #

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The year in Israel is odd. The elite places are the Hesder yeshivas, where students learn from the leading rabbis in the religious Zionist movement. These students don’t really ‘flip out’ so much, in my experience, though they often develop hard-right political ideologies not at all in line with those of their black-hat rebbeim back home.

The places that cater solely to American students tend to be much more black-hat. The non-elite students are shunted to these places, where they undergo the Vulcan mind-meld that produces black hats, soft voices, and a taste for shidduch dating.

Comment by rejewvenator — August 20, 2007 #

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I don’t disagree, but make 2 points: (1) the Hesder yeshivas are not MO, even though they are religious zionist, and I might argue that MO is really a galus, and specifically American phenomenon, not very Israeli; (2) the majority of Americans don’t go to hesder yeshivas.

Comment by mjfire — August 20, 2007 #

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