2008 Woodie Awards
Diversity at Yeshiva
Joseph M. Lipner
Issue date: 5/16/05 Section: YUdaica
During our Freshman year in 1981, a friend and I explored every rooftop at Yeshiva College. (I can't reveal my friend's name because he's currently a Yeshiva College professor.) How different each of the roofs were from one another! Furst Hall offered nothing but a blank rectangular space covered with loose stones and open to the sky. The high school's roof invited you right up to those Moorish turrets and green-plated domes and to mysterious rusting structures that controlled the building's heat. A visit to the top of Belfer exposed you to dizzying views of the Bronx and Manhattan and dangerous winds that whipped off the Hudson and East Rivers. We also visited the medieval looking tower that rises improbably from a grassy field bordered by Amsterdam Avenue and the ramp exiting the George Washington Bridge. At the top of its rickety spiral staircase, we found a squatter's apartment equipped with cot and clothes-pile and furniture built from cartons. Who would have guessed that three city blocks could be filled with spaces that held so much variety?
So it was with my Yeshiva College classmates. These guys were the most diverse group of people I have ever met. More diverse than my friends' classes at Columbia and Harvard College. More diverse than my class at Harvard Law School. More diverse than the teeming population of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Los Angeles, California, where I later lived, or the businessmen, criminals, jurists, scientists and scholars I have met during the course of my law practice across the United States.
Yes, my classmates were all male, all Jews, almost all white and, with vanishingly few exceptions, religiously observant and Orthodox-identified. But these men were diverse in their spirit and their ideas. They lived out their college lives against the backdrop of Yeshiva's peculiar philosophy of loyalty to Torah and immersion in secular learning, and each one's reaction to that philosophy - as proponent, opponent, or someone who did not give a hoot - threw his personality into sharp relief. I went to school with scholars who labored in Torah day and night and thirsted for better understanding of the coded Aramaic secrets of the Talmud; with profane young men who thought Judaism was nonsense and were biding their time to leave both college and religion; with guys who displayed such deep kindness and spiritual goodness that I would not be surprised if they were among the hidden thirty-six hidden saints on whom the world depends; with intellectuals, both true and pseudo, who reveled in conversation and a sharp exchange of ideas; with idealists who felt sure they would transform the world as soon as they left Washington Heights; with fiery Zionists who argued that we should be building a Hebrew society instead of wasting our time with calculus; with grinds seeking a fast track to law or medicine or accounting; with would-be lovers who searched for women at Stern College and other points across the five boroughs; with men who took pleasure in rock and roll music and midnight drives down the Harlem River Parkway to Shmulka Bernstein's for spare-ribs and egg-rolls; with jokers who kept us laughing; with depressives who kept to themselves; with dreamers, regular guys, and holy men. The differences between the Christian right and the radical left pales in comparison.
Take my time in the Yeshiva College Dramatic Society (YCDS). Since roughly Elizabethan times, the theatre has not been a matter of moral controversy - except at Yeshiva. Some rebbeim, and some classmates who lived for Talmud study, considered my participation in dramatics at best bitul Torah, a waste of time that could be spent studying Torah, and at worst participation in something that smacks of the forbidden. I understood this reaction: even if not quite in opposition to halakha and Jewish values, the theatre does seem challengingly separate from them, and YCDS was the theatre in microcosm, with all its silliness, intrigues, adrenaline and magic. Acting - the height of my career came with the title role in the YCDS production of "Pinocchio" - was a very different experience than learning a blatt of Gemara. In directing the dramatic society, Dr. Anthony Beukas, who spoke respectfully of Yeshiva's rabbis and our religious obligations, also exhibited a real commitment to creating magic on stage. The conversation between these two worlds was exciting and meaningful because it had to do - excuse me for the slightly non-Jewish turn of phrase - with the future of our immortal souls.
My fellow actors are examples of the range of students who attended Yeshiva in the 1980's. One of the guys with whom I acted became a respected and important religious Jewish educator. Another lives as an openly gay man. From the same genetic and religious pool came enormously different lives.
Students' reactions to afternoon classes - Bible studies, which fell somewhere on the border of Torah and college studies, and liberal arts - differed dramatically. My most intense academic and religious learning experience came in the Bible classes taught by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Bernstein, perhaps the most talented teacher and scholar I have ever met. In other schools, biblical scholarship would have come with a generous dose of hostility to traditional religion, but Dr. Bernstein combined intellectual rigor with commitment to Jewish thought and religion. Different students had sharply different reactions, however, to applying modern scholarship to the sacred texts: for example, to studying the similarities and differences between our holiest books and ancient Ugaritic epic poems. Some reacted with hostility. For others, using modern intellectual tools to the bible deepened their religious life. In a less direct way, the reactions of students to such talented teachers as Dr. Joan Haahr and Dr. William Lee in the English department, and Dr. Louis Feldman, in classics, who taught their classes with fierce independent value and rigor, ran the gamut from enthusiasm to muted hostility.
Politics at Yeshiva also implicated issues of spiritual truth, not to mention matters of life and death. While I was at college, Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the JDL, tireless promoter of the expulsion of Arabs from Israel, spoke on campus. I stood with the demonstrators against Rabbi Kahane and held a protest sign that said, "Derakheha darkhei noam" - the Torah's ways are ways of pleasantness. Sometime during the talk, Rabbi Kahane stopped what he was saying, noted my sign, and said: "Am haaretz - ignoramus - let me show you the 'ways of pleasantness' of the Torah," and proceeded to expound on the biblical directive calling for the destruction or expulsion of the seven nations. In contrast to the demonstrators, a classmate of mine with whom I had been in shiur since high school supported Rabbi Kahane at this talk, quite literally, proceeding with him arm-in-arm up to the podium. This same classmate later settled on the West Bank near Nablus. Palestinians murdered him at Joseph's Tomb near the start of the current Palestinian-Israeli war.
The fact that the moral, spiritual and religious stakes were so high at Yeshiva - that any disagreement implicated the next world in addition to the current one - brought out the personalities of all these white, male, Jewish college student with an almost mystical clarity. Many of these friends and colleagues of mine were also - and I say this in the most affectionate and admiring way - crazy. There was an air of whimsy and experimentation at Yeshiva that I have not encountered since. Students did odd and adventurous things - like deciding to visit every rooftop at Yeshiva College, for example - with humor and excitement. It could have been the time of the life, of course, because we were young and had so much energy. But I like to think that the electric charge of energy came not only from our youth but from the differences between Yeshiva College and the mundane workaday world. From the fact that we were involved in a project that was holy.
Mr. Joseph Lipner, YC '85, is a partner at the Los Angeles law firm of Irell & Manella LLP. His practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and appellate law.
So it was with my Yeshiva College classmates. These guys were the most diverse group of people I have ever met. More diverse than my friends' classes at Columbia and Harvard College. More diverse than my class at Harvard Law School. More diverse than the teeming population of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Los Angeles, California, where I later lived, or the businessmen, criminals, jurists, scientists and scholars I have met during the course of my law practice across the United States.
Yes, my classmates were all male, all Jews, almost all white and, with vanishingly few exceptions, religiously observant and Orthodox-identified. But these men were diverse in their spirit and their ideas. They lived out their college lives against the backdrop of Yeshiva's peculiar philosophy of loyalty to Torah and immersion in secular learning, and each one's reaction to that philosophy - as proponent, opponent, or someone who did not give a hoot - threw his personality into sharp relief. I went to school with scholars who labored in Torah day and night and thirsted for better understanding of the coded Aramaic secrets of the Talmud; with profane young men who thought Judaism was nonsense and were biding their time to leave both college and religion; with guys who displayed such deep kindness and spiritual goodness that I would not be surprised if they were among the hidden thirty-six hidden saints on whom the world depends; with intellectuals, both true and pseudo, who reveled in conversation and a sharp exchange of ideas; with idealists who felt sure they would transform the world as soon as they left Washington Heights; with fiery Zionists who argued that we should be building a Hebrew society instead of wasting our time with calculus; with grinds seeking a fast track to law or medicine or accounting; with would-be lovers who searched for women at Stern College and other points across the five boroughs; with men who took pleasure in rock and roll music and midnight drives down the Harlem River Parkway to Shmulka Bernstein's for spare-ribs and egg-rolls; with jokers who kept us laughing; with depressives who kept to themselves; with dreamers, regular guys, and holy men. The differences between the Christian right and the radical left pales in comparison.
Take my time in the Yeshiva College Dramatic Society (YCDS). Since roughly Elizabethan times, the theatre has not been a matter of moral controversy - except at Yeshiva. Some rebbeim, and some classmates who lived for Talmud study, considered my participation in dramatics at best bitul Torah, a waste of time that could be spent studying Torah, and at worst participation in something that smacks of the forbidden. I understood this reaction: even if not quite in opposition to halakha and Jewish values, the theatre does seem challengingly separate from them, and YCDS was the theatre in microcosm, with all its silliness, intrigues, adrenaline and magic. Acting - the height of my career came with the title role in the YCDS production of "Pinocchio" - was a very different experience than learning a blatt of Gemara. In directing the dramatic society, Dr. Anthony Beukas, who spoke respectfully of Yeshiva's rabbis and our religious obligations, also exhibited a real commitment to creating magic on stage. The conversation between these two worlds was exciting and meaningful because it had to do - excuse me for the slightly non-Jewish turn of phrase - with the future of our immortal souls.
My fellow actors are examples of the range of students who attended Yeshiva in the 1980's. One of the guys with whom I acted became a respected and important religious Jewish educator. Another lives as an openly gay man. From the same genetic and religious pool came enormously different lives.
Students' reactions to afternoon classes - Bible studies, which fell somewhere on the border of Torah and college studies, and liberal arts - differed dramatically. My most intense academic and religious learning experience came in the Bible classes taught by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Bernstein, perhaps the most talented teacher and scholar I have ever met. In other schools, biblical scholarship would have come with a generous dose of hostility to traditional religion, but Dr. Bernstein combined intellectual rigor with commitment to Jewish thought and religion. Different students had sharply different reactions, however, to applying modern scholarship to the sacred texts: for example, to studying the similarities and differences between our holiest books and ancient Ugaritic epic poems. Some reacted with hostility. For others, using modern intellectual tools to the bible deepened their religious life. In a less direct way, the reactions of students to such talented teachers as Dr. Joan Haahr and Dr. William Lee in the English department, and Dr. Louis Feldman, in classics, who taught their classes with fierce independent value and rigor, ran the gamut from enthusiasm to muted hostility.
Politics at Yeshiva also implicated issues of spiritual truth, not to mention matters of life and death. While I was at college, Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the JDL, tireless promoter of the expulsion of Arabs from Israel, spoke on campus. I stood with the demonstrators against Rabbi Kahane and held a protest sign that said, "Derakheha darkhei noam" - the Torah's ways are ways of pleasantness. Sometime during the talk, Rabbi Kahane stopped what he was saying, noted my sign, and said: "Am haaretz - ignoramus - let me show you the 'ways of pleasantness' of the Torah," and proceeded to expound on the biblical directive calling for the destruction or expulsion of the seven nations. In contrast to the demonstrators, a classmate of mine with whom I had been in shiur since high school supported Rabbi Kahane at this talk, quite literally, proceeding with him arm-in-arm up to the podium. This same classmate later settled on the West Bank near Nablus. Palestinians murdered him at Joseph's Tomb near the start of the current Palestinian-Israeli war.
The fact that the moral, spiritual and religious stakes were so high at Yeshiva - that any disagreement implicated the next world in addition to the current one - brought out the personalities of all these white, male, Jewish college student with an almost mystical clarity. Many of these friends and colleagues of mine were also - and I say this in the most affectionate and admiring way - crazy. There was an air of whimsy and experimentation at Yeshiva that I have not encountered since. Students did odd and adventurous things - like deciding to visit every rooftop at Yeshiva College, for example - with humor and excitement. It could have been the time of the life, of course, because we were young and had so much energy. But I like to think that the electric charge of energy came not only from our youth but from the differences between Yeshiva College and the mundane workaday world. From the fact that we were involved in a project that was holy.
Mr. Joseph Lipner, YC '85, is a partner at the Los Angeles law firm of Irell & Manella LLP. His practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and appellate law.