The Commentator

The entire Jewish people owes a debt to Yeshiva University for its role in Jewish history. Perhaps no institution in Diaspora Jewry matches Yeshiva's significance to world Jewry for Jewish education, scholarship, community service, and training of future Jewish leaders. For Orthodox Jews in particular, Yeshiva serves as the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy charting a distinctive synthesis of Torah and western culture not as a compromise with the necessities of modern living but as an affirmative statement of vibrant and creative Jewish living in the modern world. For me, as for countless others, Yeshiva challenged my beliefs, expanded my horizons, and taught me the meaning and responsibilities of Jewish citizenship in the contemporary world.

As an entering freshman arriving in Washington Heights in September, 1967, I was excited - even dazzled - by the prospects of higher education at Yeshiva University. A product of 13 years at the Maimonides Day School in Boston, Massachusetts, I considered myself well prepared to undertake the challenge of advanced study of two very different worlds and to weigh the relationship as well as the degree of conflict between them. Under the tutelage of its founder, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Maimonides proudly defined itself as Modern Orthodox and as being rooted in a quest for excellence in both secular and Judaic studies. Particularly important to me was an East European rosh yeshiva, who, over my junior and senior years of high school, assigned a series of term papers to compare and contrast the accounts of creation in traditional commentaries with the perspectives of modern science, the varying ethical sensitivities of the biblical patriarchs, and, most surprisingly, the Joseph narrative in traditional commentaries with Thomas Mann's epic Joseph and His Brothers. The experience of sustained research and writing on two very different types of source materials both provided a capstone for 13 years of Jewish day school education and a portal to the vision of Torah u-Madda represented by Yeshiva. Indeed, Rabbi Yosef Blau, then associate principal of Maimonides and today Mashgiach Ruchani at Yeshiva, encouraged me to attend Yeshiva and commented that its strength lay in offering diverse avenues for fulfillment such as rabbinics, secular studies, and social activism. He wisely predicted that personally I would focus on excellence in secular studies albeit within the overall atmosphere of Yeshiva as an Orthodox institution.

Indeed, Yeshiva College in the 1960s was an exciting place - known for its intellectual diversity and defining Modern Orthodoxy as open to plural perspectives including those both controversial and challenging. The dominant voices on the faculty in that era were Dr. Yitz Greenberg and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein. Although the differences between them were considerable, they shared a mutual commitment to excellence in both realms. Shortly after my arrival, I was treated to a symposium in Furst Hall, attended by over 500 students, on defining Torah u-Madda for the future. The speakers included, in addition to Dr. Greenberg and Rabbi Lichtenstein, Dr. Charles Liebman (z"l) - rapidly becoming a world-class sociologist of American Jewry, Dr. Emanuel Rackman, Dean of Modern Orthodox rabbis, and Rabbi Yehuda Parnes, then prominent RIETS rosh yeshiva. Rabbi Parnes opposed the emphasis upon secular studies within the dual curriculum and student body claiming that secular studies could be sanctioned only for the limited utilitarian purposes of earning a living - not as a source of values or hashkafa. The other speakers stressed the excitement of engaging alternative perspectives emanating from humanities and social sciences with those of Torah. Dr. Greenberg in particular came under harsh criticism for his openness to biblical criticism, his dialogue with Conservative and Reform rabbis and scholars, and his indebtedness to Christian theologians and thinkers. Yet all acknowledged his right to teach and, for many, his was the most influential voice on the faculty of that era.

In other words, the university and its administration recognized the significance of western culture for both personal and Judaic development. The then undergraduate dean, Dr. Isaac Bacon, greatly valued a liberal arts education for its own sake and consciously sought Modern Orthodox faculty who embodied the ideals of synthesis and constituted role models for students. Moreover, the intellectual tensions on campus so evident in the quest for synthesis underscored Yeshiva's uniqueness and strengths as flagship of Modern Orthodoxy and as intellectual center for training future Jewish leadership.

More generally, courses on the conflict of science and religion, Jewish intellectual history, the challenges of humanism in Western literature, to name a few, all served to challenge deeply rooted convictions and to develop a worldview integrating the traditions of Judaic heritage with the best currents of Western culture. In short, Yeshiva College in the 1960s addressed a series of intellectual challenges while seeking to train students in critical thinking about the meaning of being a Jew in the modern world. The elusive goal of synthesis meant constant struggle to live with the creative tension between Torah and modernity, to search out and research difficult questions, and to acknowledge that simplistic answers provided no substitute for serious hashkafa.

To be sure, the 1960s were by no means trouble free, and in reviewing those years one must avoid the temptation to don rose-colored glasses. Academic departments generally lacked a critical mass of faculty and had to subsist with very few personnel. The double program in itself posed serious challenges to maintaining standards of excellence and demands upon student productivity. All too often, students cut corners claiming the burdens of a double program. Issues of academic freedom were quite real and at times erupted in ugly forms, including assaults on character and personal integrity. Nevertheless, Yeshiva succeeded in opening the portals of intellectual inquiry communicating that Jewish education was about the challenge of wrestling with ideas and that ideological conflict in fact reflected how deeply we cared about the future of Modern Orthodoxy and the Jewish people.

In joining the Yeshiva College faculty in the 1970s, I was eager to continue what I regarded as the critical task of helping to educate and train Modern Orthodox Jews to confront the challenges of western culture. Dr. Norman Lamm, a former professor with whom I had studied Jewish Philosophy and Mysticism, became President of Yeshiva and tendered me my first teaching appointment in Jewish and general history. Nervous at first, I was soon completely hooked on the experience of teaching Yeshiva College students. A long day of classes left me only exhilarated and eager to return for more. Yeshiva's undergraduates were superb and a joy to teach, providing a natural forum to explore Jewish ideas and their intersection with western culture. My conversations with students, participation in campus politics, and my ongoing preparation for classes convinced me that I was blessed with a wonderful opportunity to help shape the Jewish community of the future and to articulate a distinctive vision of what being Jewish meant in the modern world.

Therefore it was with great sadness that, for personal and professional reasons, I ultimately left Yeshiva's faculty and subsequently became a staff officer and spokesman for the American Jewish Committee. Yet upon leaving I noted how several trends at work within Yeshiva and American Orthodoxy could well shape a very different direction from the one with which I identified and from which I had so benefited. For one thing, the voices of the Talmud faculty had become increasingly outspoken and influential. Previously more restrained in their rhetoric, newer and younger roshei yeshiva, by the 1980s, began to define Modern Orthodoxy as at best a necessary accommodation for the purposes of earning a living. This more narrow and isolationist view - one member of the Talmud faculty went so far as to equate Modern Orthodoxy with the "Amalek" of our time - increasingly became a visible if not dominant intellectual voice at Yeshiva. Once marginal voices, critical of the very endeavor of synthesis between Torah and Madda, now became mainstream, or, as one senior colleague put it at one of the last faculty meetings I attended, "we are rapidly becoming a first class yeshiva with a few college courses attached to it."

Secondly, the near-universal practice of a year of study at Israeli yeshivot fundamentally transformed Yeshiva's intellectual culture. To be sure, I saw great value in the one-year post high school experience at an Israeli yeshiva and sent each of my own children to such an institution. However, within Yeshiva, the Israel experience meant limiting college to three years or less. By definition undergraduate course work would be diminished by 25% or more. Moreover, the Israel experience signaled the ascendancy of roshei yeshiva as primary intellectual influence. Symbolically the beit midrash rather than the library became the hub of Yeshiva's academic activity. Encouraging questioning and doubt gave way to a quest for certitude. Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in discussions concerning Middle East politics. I began to wonder aloud about the religious messianism of Gush Emunim and questioned why the late Rabbi Meir Kahane remained a featured speaker on campus long after the rest of the Jewish community had ostracized him and his ugly messages of racism and hatred of Arabs, so chillingly reminiscent of the 1930s Nuremberg legislation.

Lastly, Yeshiva's culture was transformed significantly via the more general drift towards professionalism in higher education. As the cost of tuition rose, students and their parents increasingly were asking what professional skills were they receiving for their money. The traditional answer of the academy had been that learning how to read critically, think coherently, and write effectively were the hallmarks of an educated citizenry and skills necessary for effective communal leadership. This answer, however, now increasingly sounded hollow in a world in which students expected well-paying jobs shortly after graduation. The idea of college as time for individual growth of mind, body, and persona sounded to many as at best a luxury item that needed to give way to learning practical skills like budgeting and balance sheets. Moreover, Yeshiva itself confronted a serious decline in numbers of undergraduates, and its leadership was determined to increase enrollment rates, if necessary by fulfilling student desires for a more practical undergraduate education. Ironically, this emphasis upon professional skills suited quite well the worldview of the roshei yeshiva. They too wished to see their students engaged in gainful employment while Talmud and Torah served as sources of values and ideology. Thus the "learner-earner" replaced the ideal of intellectual synthesis in communal discourse.

What then of the future? Returning to teach for a semester in 1999, I was again overwhelmed by the quality of Yeshiva's undergraduates. Without doubt the best of Yeshiva's students easily match the best of Harvard's. I also witnessed the potential for developing a Jewish leadership that could be solidly anchored in the world of Jewish tradition yet at the same time engaged with the challenges of modern scholarship and culture. Precisely at a time when Jewish communal leaders agonize over the ravages of assimilation and mixed marriage and struggle to secure future Jewish continuity, Modern Orthodoxy in particular can demonstrate both its success stories and its paradigm of integration of two very different yet powerful and attractive cultures.

To do that, however, will require major changes by all concerned. The delicate balance and even tensions between secular and religious need to be expressed and not repressed. Some intellectual conflict is indeed preferable to a non-aggression pact, for the conflict itself demonstrates precisely how passionately we care about these issues. Spokesmen for Modern Orthodoxy need to reassert their vigor, independence, and verve in defining Modern Orthodoxy as paradigm rather than as concession. A quest for synthesis between Torah and Madda necessitates a weltanschauung that has its own compelling strengths and integrity rather than look to leadership on either right or left. University officials need to acknowledge that faculty and courses that embody Modern Orthodox values and ideals are likely to have the most positive impact upon students and university culture generally. Lastly, and perhaps above all, students need to recognize the need for sacrifice and deferred expectations. The college experience cannot be a simple matter of accumulating credits from diverse sources. It needs to be a coherent and sustained program of core requirements, advanced electives, serious reading, and independent research. The demands for such a program will, without question, be quite heavy, but the long term rewards will far outweigh the efforts required.

Dr. Steven Bayme, YC '71, serves as National Director, Contemporary Jewish Life Department, for the American Jewish Committee. Dr. Bayme served as a member of the undergraduate History faculty, in 1975 - 1979.