2008 Woodie Awards
YUnite? I'll Tell You Why
Zev Eleff
Issue date: 10/8/07 Section: Editorials
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In the weeks preceding the September 2004 ban on Rabbi Natan Slifkin's books, several prominent rabbis within the haredi community were assured that two students studying in a Monsey yeshiva had been so victimized by the author's books, that they left the yeshiva and have since gone off the derekh. As it turned out, one student had already left the yeshiva before Rabbi Slifkin's first book, Seasons of Life was printed in 2000. The other student did in fact read Slifkin's books, enjoyed them thoroughly, and eventually, for a number of reasons, transferred to Yeshiva College.
There is no doubt that we do not reciprocate this kind of abusive behavior. We are fully aware of the impossibility of, say, studying Baba Bathra without Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman's Kobetz Shiurim, a virulent opponent of YU's long before there were co-ed Torah Tours. Similarly, we can ill afford to discard Rabbi Eliezer Shach's writings on Rambam, and none of us are willing to remove every volume of the Hazon Ish from the Main Beit Midrash just because he was haredi - which he certainly was. In a word, our intellectual honesty prevents us from the same narrow-mindedness others use to pit us against them.
But we need not be apologetic, either.
Nobody suggests that we ship students to Princeton or Yale to publicly solve complex integrals, so why, as has been done in the past, should we send our students to Lakewood to prove that we know how to learn? Instead, send Rabbi Matisyahu Solomon the most recent edition of Beit Yitzchak and hope he has the time to get through half of the 838 pages of Hebrew Torah articles written by past, current and even future Yeshiva students.
While YU will always be able to raise itself on the shoulders of its superstar students in the fields of Torah and of Madda, the general needs of an evolving student body must be addressed. It is true that most YU students share similar backgrounds and comparable high school educations. The vast majority of YU students study in Israel, a trend that has no doubt profoundly shaped Jewish education. However, depending on their yeshivot, whether they elected for a shana bet, whether they had girlfriends after Elul Zman and how many times their parents visited, students are liable to return from Israel differently. Consequently, our dilemma is more abstract, one that requires consideration of the broad educational and social goals of the University.
There is no doubt that we do not reciprocate this kind of abusive behavior. We are fully aware of the impossibility of, say, studying Baba Bathra without Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman's Kobetz Shiurim, a virulent opponent of YU's long before there were co-ed Torah Tours. Similarly, we can ill afford to discard Rabbi Eliezer Shach's writings on Rambam, and none of us are willing to remove every volume of the Hazon Ish from the Main Beit Midrash just because he was haredi - which he certainly was. In a word, our intellectual honesty prevents us from the same narrow-mindedness others use to pit us against them.
But we need not be apologetic, either.
Nobody suggests that we ship students to Princeton or Yale to publicly solve complex integrals, so why, as has been done in the past, should we send our students to Lakewood to prove that we know how to learn? Instead, send Rabbi Matisyahu Solomon the most recent edition of Beit Yitzchak and hope he has the time to get through half of the 838 pages of Hebrew Torah articles written by past, current and even future Yeshiva students.
While YU will always be able to raise itself on the shoulders of its superstar students in the fields of Torah and of Madda, the general needs of an evolving student body must be addressed. It is true that most YU students share similar backgrounds and comparable high school educations. The vast majority of YU students study in Israel, a trend that has no doubt profoundly shaped Jewish education. However, depending on their yeshivot, whether they elected for a shana bet, whether they had girlfriends after Elul Zman and how many times their parents visited, students are liable to return from Israel differently. Consequently, our dilemma is more abstract, one that requires consideration of the broad educational and social goals of the University.
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