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Shmuley and Rick in a Public Discussion
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Monday, August 10, 2009

Modern-Orthodox Alternatives to Reactionary Judaism

This past Shabbat a parking lot in Jerusalem that recently opened on the holy day drew a large demonstration of approximately 500 Haredi demonstrators just across the road from where I was staying. One of the people caught in the demonstrations was a secular Israeli friend who drove to see me with his wife and small children. They called his wife a shikseh. Little did they realize that this former student of mine from Oxford gave up very lucrative opportunities to make aliyah and contributes mightily to the Jewish state. I was not surprised, therefore, when some of the eight Israeli soldiers who were embedded in the Mayanot-Birthright group that I am leading in Israel voiced their distaste for Judaism and hostility to orthodox Jews, which does not excuse their prejudice but sure helps to explain it. Haredi Jews who call a Jewish mother a shikseh in the presence of her two tender children are religious frauds, a disgrace to themselves, and an abomination to Judaism.

Which is why I am increasingly turning to the sophistication of modern orthodoxy as an alternative to the increasingly reactionary nature of right-wing orthodoxy. This coming year I will have three children studying at Yeshiva University in New York. The institution is a miracle, a place of academic learning of world reputation committed to Jewish life, observance, and influence. So why do so many orthodox Jewish students not even consider Yeshiva University, preferring instead their mainstream counterparts?

To be sure, I have always been a Jewish universalist, utterly opposed to Jewish insularity. We Jews ought to be immersed in the currents of the world, spreading our values and influencing the culture. But that cannot happen if we do not first internalize an impregnable and impassioned Jewish identity which, in-turn, only comes about through total immersion in a Jewish environment in formative years. In essence, to be a universalist you must begin as a provincial. No doctor gets qualified as a physician without going to medical school. No lawyer without law school. And no man or woman who plans to impact the world as a Jew can do so quite as effectively as when obtaining a top education in a holistic Jewish environment.

I am blessed to serve as a Rabbi both Jews and non-Jews, spreading Jewish values to a world at twilight. But I could never do what I do had I not first had many years of the far more insular immersion in Jewish academies of higher education, in my case Chabad Yeshiva, where I soaked in Jewish pride and Jewish learning.

My children will choose their own paths in life. But I wish for them to not only remain observant and committed to serve as Ambassadors of their people. And that’s why I send them to Yeshiva University, to obtain a Jewish education and identity that is uncompromisingly Torah-based, yet sophisticated and forward-looking.

So why do so many bright, committed, even orthodox Jewish students reject places like YU and pursue the allure of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton instead? The majority would argue that the Ivy League is second to none. But every University is only as good as the students who attend, and it becomes a circular argument. If the top Jewish students did not immediately dismiss a Jewish institution of higher learning, it too would be in the very highest ranks as well. And Yeshiva University is widely respected as a first-rate University in any event.

I suspect there is something else at work., and it constitutes, arguably, the foremost failing that we Jews have been guilty of since the first glimmers of our peoplehood, that is, the unending search for non-Jewish legitimacy. Simply put, going to a place like YU, while highly impressive to potential employers, is not as impressive within our own community.

And whatever issues we have with our own identity, they are curiously compounded when it comes to academic life. Sigmund Freud famously told his Jewish psychoanalytic disciples in Vienna that he had to make Carl Jung his successor less psychoanalysis be dismissed as ‘a Jewish science.’ Einstein may have helped to establish the Hebrew University in Palestine. But he resisted all entreaties to leave the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton and teach in Jerusalem instead.

I remember a strange conversation that took place between me and Yitzchak Rabin, of blessed memory, a year before his tragic death. I had travelled to Israel to book him as a speaker for our Oxford L’Chaim Society. When I conveyed the invitation, he asked me who was inviting him, the mainstream Oxford students, or the Jewish students? It was a question that I had not been asked by the countless non-Jewish luminaries who were honored to be my speakers, from Mikhail Gorbachev to Professor Stephen Hawking to Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

The Jewish community subdivides, in general, to three camps. There is the assimilated-secular, the insular-observant, and the modern-committed. The vast majority of those halakhic Jews who comprise the third camp call themselves ‘modern-orthodox,’ Jews who live and thrive in secular society. But the only way the model can work is if it is grounded not only in Jewish commitment, but especially in Jewish self-respect, Jewish self-esteem, and Jewish pride.

When I was the Rabbi at Oxford there were many modern-orthodox American students who were passionately observant. Yet, a great many took off their Yarmulkes after just a few weeks at the University. They felt marked, they felt different. What was the big deal of removing an identifying symbol just as long as they kept kosher, came to Shule, and studied Torah? But they were wrong. Without and identifying symbol of pride, their observance inevitably waned. What they discovered is that for all their love of Judaism, they were not yet fully formed. Their Jewish heart beat passionately, but their Jewish spine was still rickety. A not insubstantial number went on to become world-famous in their fields, but are no longer involved in Jewish life. Had these students simply been given a few more years in a Jewish environment, they would have been ready to go out into the world without being compromised by it.

 

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is in Israel for Mayanot-Birthright, leading 50 young American Jews in their first trip to Israel. His upcoming book, “The Blessing of Enough,” will be published on September 8th. http://www.shmuley.com

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