Why the “Torah and Secular Scholarship” Movement Hasn’t Triumphed

When, in 1946, Yeshiva University made Torah u-Madda—Torah and secular scholarship—its official motto, the phrase very much became a slogan for Modern Orthodoxy as a whole. Now, however, some observers have declared the “era of Torah u-Madda” over and see it as no longer the defining principle, or even a defining principle, of any stream of Orthodox Judaism. The rabbi, author, and educator Jack Bieler comments on the failures of Jewish education in this regard:

At the outset, . . . it is important to acknowledge that there are numerous reasons why Torah u-Madda has failed to capture the imaginations of contemporary American Modern Orthodoxy. . . .

Having spent my working life as a religious educator in day schools and synagogues, I tend to view this, and many other issues, both religious and secular, in educational terms. . . . I [primarily] attribute the failure of Torah u-Madda to the inability of Modern Orthodoxy’s key educational institutions, Yeshiva University in particular, to produce, self-consciously, individuals committed to such an outlook who also aspire to leadership and influence in the community’s key institutions, i.e., its synagogues and day schools. . . .

[Furthermore], the structure by which Jewish education is delivered . . . countermands the development of a Torah u-Madda approach. Torah u-Madda is by definition an interdisciplinary approach, whereby elements of Jewish tradition and general studies are brought to bear upon each other. However, over the course of a [typical] school day, not only are English and Tanakh, history and Talmud, Hebrew and French, mathematics and Jewish thought usually presented in splendid isolation from each other, but even subjects within the Judaic-studies and general-studies curricula are rarely allowed to interact within the classroom.

While, occasionally, some teachers may personally be conversant with “both sides of the curriculum,” the need to cover ground in the highly pressurized context of a double-curriculum educational institution usually precludes them from regularly incorporating “outside” ideas and thoughts into the classroom context.

Read more at Book of Doctrines and Opinions

More about: American Judaism, Education, Modern Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy, Religion & Holidays, Yeshiva University

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society