2008 Woodie Awards
Academic Journalism at Yeshiva
Aryeh (Robert) Klapper
Issue date: 5/16/05 Section: YUdaica
- Page 1 of 1
Toward the end of my freshman year at Yeshiva College, I was "tapped" for Hamevaser, then a journal that appeared about five times a year not counting Purim. Alan Stadtmauer, now principal of Flatbush Yeshiva, came over to me at dinner in the cafeteria and asked me to join, probably at the suggestion of Rabbi Shalom Carmy. I stayed on Hamevaser for the next five years, making many lifelong friends, and consider that association one of the best and most important experiences of my life.
We had no office and no computer when I started, and floppy disks had not been invented. Every article had to be typed from manuscript into the computer at the neighborhood newspaper's office on 181st Street off Fort Washington Avenue, then printed and physically cut and pasted onto layout boards. We were only given access to that computer late at night, so every issue involved multiple all-nighters, complete with trips to the next-door bar to consult with the publisher when we had technical issues. I recall one time, just before Pesach, when we realized after midnight that our otherwise complete next issue had a half page of blank space. After several hours of frantic brainstorming, one staffer found a photo of a recent wedding on the publisher's desk. We cropped out the church and the top of the groom's head, and printed a mazal tov to two friends who had recently married "that left only a quarter page, but we were out of ideas. Around 5 am I was leafing desperately through a book called "How to Draw in Pencil" and found a page of pyramids. We printed "Chag kasher v'sameiach" over it and put the issue to bed.
By my junior year I was literary editor, and able to indulge my then-deep biases against commas and in favor of semicolons. One of our co-editors in chief, however, had equally deep biases against semicolons and in favor of commas. Editing sessions thus became grammatical horse-trading sessions, with the result, I fear, that many sentences went on and on with no punctuation whatever. I became editor in-chief in the middle of my senior year, and kept the position for a year and a half, during which I inserted a diatribe against "amalekommas" into a Purim edition article.
So Hamevaser was fun, and the camaraderie was amazing. But Hamevaser also played a very important role in my own and my friends' religious development. We provided a space in which students could think seriously and publicly about the crisis of Religious Zionism, the relationship between ethics and halakhah, historicism, feminism, chosenness, and a host of other critical issues that were largely ignored or off-limits in MYP. Twenty years later, I still find myself writing and giving shiurim that are expansions of my own and my friend's Hamevaser articles, and I read my friend's current publications and recognize them.
Hamevaser was also a strong positive influence on Yeshiva as a whole. Our investigative journalism and editorials stimulated numerous reforms in MYP, for example the eventual development of the assistant mashgiach positions, and we prevented, mitigated, or exposed significant abuses of rabbinic power within Yeshiva.
Hamevaser developed us as leaders by allowing us to take responsibility for our religious environment and showing us that we could make a difference. Many of my Hamevaser colleagues have founded or been instrumental in the development or invigoration of creative Jewish institutions such as Yeshivat Har Etzion's The Virtual Beit Midrash (VBM), The Avi Chai foundation, Ma'ayan Torah Studies for Women, The Beit Din of America, and The Summer Beit Midrash, at least three are high school principals, and many more are Ramim. Almost all are ongoing contributors to the development of a Torah community that sees itself as obligated to engage all forms of knowledge with integrity and treat all human beings as created b'tzelem Elokim.
Among the life-lessons I take with me from my time on Hamevaser are the necessity of a free press for a moral society and the importance of telling authors that you've read and appreciated their work.
Aryeh (Robert) Klapper, YC '89, BRGS '89, RIETS '94, is Rosh Beit Midrash of the Summer Beit Midrash (www.summerbeitmidrash.org). He is the Orthodox Rabbinic Adviser at The Harvard Hillel, and Talmud Curriculum Chair at Maimonides High School (Brookline, MA). He is currently building the Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer Center for Modern Torah Leadership.
We had no office and no computer when I started, and floppy disks had not been invented. Every article had to be typed from manuscript into the computer at the neighborhood newspaper's office on 181st Street off Fort Washington Avenue, then printed and physically cut and pasted onto layout boards. We were only given access to that computer late at night, so every issue involved multiple all-nighters, complete with trips to the next-door bar to consult with the publisher when we had technical issues. I recall one time, just before Pesach, when we realized after midnight that our otherwise complete next issue had a half page of blank space. After several hours of frantic brainstorming, one staffer found a photo of a recent wedding on the publisher's desk. We cropped out the church and the top of the groom's head, and printed a mazal tov to two friends who had recently married "that left only a quarter page, but we were out of ideas. Around 5 am I was leafing desperately through a book called "How to Draw in Pencil" and found a page of pyramids. We printed "Chag kasher v'sameiach" over it and put the issue to bed.
By my junior year I was literary editor, and able to indulge my then-deep biases against commas and in favor of semicolons. One of our co-editors in chief, however, had equally deep biases against semicolons and in favor of commas. Editing sessions thus became grammatical horse-trading sessions, with the result, I fear, that many sentences went on and on with no punctuation whatever. I became editor in-chief in the middle of my senior year, and kept the position for a year and a half, during which I inserted a diatribe against "amalekommas" into a Purim edition article.
So Hamevaser was fun, and the camaraderie was amazing. But Hamevaser also played a very important role in my own and my friends' religious development. We provided a space in which students could think seriously and publicly about the crisis of Religious Zionism, the relationship between ethics and halakhah, historicism, feminism, chosenness, and a host of other critical issues that were largely ignored or off-limits in MYP. Twenty years later, I still find myself writing and giving shiurim that are expansions of my own and my friend's Hamevaser articles, and I read my friend's current publications and recognize them.
Hamevaser was also a strong positive influence on Yeshiva as a whole. Our investigative journalism and editorials stimulated numerous reforms in MYP, for example the eventual development of the assistant mashgiach positions, and we prevented, mitigated, or exposed significant abuses of rabbinic power within Yeshiva.
Hamevaser developed us as leaders by allowing us to take responsibility for our religious environment and showing us that we could make a difference. Many of my Hamevaser colleagues have founded or been instrumental in the development or invigoration of creative Jewish institutions such as Yeshivat Har Etzion's The Virtual Beit Midrash (VBM), The Avi Chai foundation, Ma'ayan Torah Studies for Women, The Beit Din of America, and The Summer Beit Midrash, at least three are high school principals, and many more are Ramim. Almost all are ongoing contributors to the development of a Torah community that sees itself as obligated to engage all forms of knowledge with integrity and treat all human beings as created b'tzelem Elokim.
Among the life-lessons I take with me from my time on Hamevaser are the necessity of a free press for a moral society and the importance of telling authors that you've read and appreciated their work.
Aryeh (Robert) Klapper, YC '89, BRGS '89, RIETS '94, is Rosh Beit Midrash of the Summer Beit Midrash (www.summerbeitmidrash.org). He is the Orthodox Rabbinic Adviser at The Harvard Hillel, and Talmud Curriculum Chair at Maimonides High School (Brookline, MA). He is currently building the Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer Center for Modern Torah Leadership.