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.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.