The Commentator

 Do the approaches and justifications that Modern Orthodoxy uses for secular studies and intellectual pursuits apply equally to popular culture?   

Well, you don’t have to be a Torah U’madda person to see the value of leisure and relaxation.  We see this concept first through Shaul Hamelech asking Dovid to play the kinor, which is translated as a harp.  A lot has been said explaining why Shaul needed a harp to be played for him.  Many people say he had psychological problems, that he needed the chance to escape, but you could learn a simpler pshat that everyone needs a respite from the pressures of life.  We do have the concept of resting, and taking a break.  If you want to look at it from a mussar point of view, it should be no different then sleeping or reading, which a ben Torah does to strengthen himself, to be a better eved Hashem.  We don’t praise the nazir, he has to bring a korban chatat.  Rav Kook had a beautiful exposition on it where he explained that the Torah allows for all individuals, it doesn’t encourage everyone to be a nazir, but if a person has that need, it gives him the advice to be a nazir.  Rav Kook gave that advice to Rav Dovid Cohen, his talmid muvhak, who was a nazir olam in a certain sense, because he felt he needed it.

Most of us are not like the Nazir, we live a normal life, and what we have to do as human beings ultimately is to strengthen the avodat Hashem which is the bedrock of life.  With that in mind, forgetting about Torah U’madda, a Lakewood boy and a Satmar chassid also go occasionally to a baseball game.  The question when it comes to popular culture is, what can we take and what can’t we take?  Here, there can obviously be hashkafic differences.  We all know there’s a famous picture of the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe and 7th Lubavitcher Rebbe playing a game of chess together.  If you read the memoir literature of the Litvish yeshivas, and even Making of a Gadol by Rav Nosson Kaminetzky, you will see that gedolei Yisroel play chess. You can say “what are they playing chess for?” but this was a respite from learning.  But notice that they were always thinking.  Their type of respite was thinking.

You talk about popular culture, I was just in America, but while I was gone there was a big explosion here in Israel. Certain elements assured a concert where there was totally separate seating. So you see that these elements look at a concert of gedolei zamrei chassidut as decadent Western culture.  Others viewed it as a kiddush Hashem, we can have our concerts and give people a chance to sing and dance.  And believe me, to be happy is a mitzvah, plain and simple.  Mitzvah gedolah lihiyot b’simcha tamid, to quote Rav Nachman Breslav.  And if you know modern psychology, a happier person is much healthier and able to function better, and achieve more.  So others viewed it as a beautiful thing.  You see there can be machloket.

Obviously, I’m not in favor of western culture on the lowest level with the rock stars and the sex and the drugs, but look at Matisyahu.  One of my grandsons is a fan of Matisyahu. I don’t understand a word of what he sings, so my grandson who was born here in Israel explains his English to me.  He tells me it’s Jamaican English.  You can take Matisyahu and listen to him and say it doesn’t speak to me, but he brings others closer to yiddishkeit.  To each his own; I can’t force what I view as my escape on someone else.  But I certainly will honor and respect the gedolei Torah who are experts in music, who listen to classical music, who can explain the greatness of the symphonies, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.  This is all healthy as part of the service of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That has nothing to do with Torah u’madda.

Can one gain mussar or moral instruction from sports, and if so, how?

There’s no question that athletes become models, and there’s a lot to learn from a good athlete.  Hopefully we can learn about fair play. From Joe DiMaggio, I don’t have to tell you how much mussar you can learn from a guy that always hustled.  Halevai, we should daven, l’havdil, with the same feeling that he went to the ballpark every day.  He was always running around on the field.  He was asked in the late 1940’s, why are you running, what do you have to prove, you’re already well-known?  He answered “there may be a kid who’s never seen me before, and he should know that I always hustle.”  There’s a lot of bad in athletics. You see these guys are arrested for dog fighting, the drugs, the women, what happened with Rodriguez.  This is ma’asim shebechol yom with the breakdown of society.  Marriage is not sacred, a woman has become nothing more than an object, there’s no concept of love or subjectivity.  Of course, a person has to differentiate.  On the other hand, we shouldn’t be naïve. A yeshiva boy who goes to a ballgame knows he’s basically looking at non-Jews who are poor role models. He’s going for the sport. Shawn Green may be born Jewish, but he’s not yet the gadol hador.

It’s my feeling, and I spoke about this recently, that baseball has such a hold on our youth davka because it’s slow-moving and you can think. In other words, there’s inside basketball and inside football and inside baseball.  It’s beneath the surface.  What play are you going to use?  In other sports it’s quick; you don’t play a role in it. But in baseball, left-hander, right-hander, pull the infield in, push the outfield back, give up the run, worry about the bunt, go for the double play, the squeeze, should he steal, what do you do, put him in scoring position, hit away.  There’s so much involved that you have time to think. To me, if you have that Talmudic mind, it’s one of the reasons you like baseball.

I also want to state something else- that one of the most inspiring figures I’ve seen in my life was Jackie Robinson. There, you have enough mussar.  Leaving alone the fact that he had a beautiful marriage, and his wife should live and be well, but what the man did to break the color barrier, to go against all odds, to be maledicted and not respond.  You talk about Branch Rickey who never went to the ballpark on Sunday.  He promised his mother, who was a pious Christian, some sect of Protestant, and to them it was, pardon the term, apikorsut to go to the ballpark on Sunday.  So he never went.  There’s so much you can develop and learn from all that.  From that point of view, you do have what to learn.  And it’s no different than the Gemara.  The Gemara in Kiddushin talks about kibbud av v’em and says our greatest role models are gentiles who wouldn’t wake up their fathers to get precious stones or the Para Adumah.  Whatever was involved, they wouldn’t wake up their fathers. So you see the Gemara didn’t hesitate to use gentiles as examples. So baruch Hashem we have role models, and a good rebbe can do a lot from baseball, or all sports.

Now, it may all be shtuyot, someone can be cynical and sarcastic.  But, when all is said and done, I would say that over the years my knowledge of baseball made hundreds of kids into bnei Torah. You ask me how?  I don’t say this applies to the kollel, because they’re older and they’re established. But you have no idea the effect it has on younger students when the rebbe knows baseball. You can ask them 20 or 30 years later and they’ll say “Rebbe you changed my life when you talked about Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.” Why? Because a kid comes into a rebbe’s shiur, and the rebbe knows how to learn a little, and beseder, he’s a yarei shamayim, and he’s living Torah.  In the kid’s mind, who can be like the rebbe?  He’s from a different generation. Suddenly the rebbe opens his mouth to talk baseball and he’s one of the kids. Now he can teach Torah.

Do you believe there has been a shift in the way today’s modern Orthodox students consume and relate to American culture compared to previous generations of students?

There’s no question that there’s been a swing to the right. In my day everyone went to Broadway shows. This brings up the whole question of kol isha, which is not germane to our discussion now, but there’s no question people went to Broadway shows. The more erudite among us went to operas. I can tell you I have friends that are musmachim of the Yeshiva who until today will travel to Italy to catch an opera. I don’t understand it, but they love opera. Of course we’re talking about respectable Broadway shows, not ones with nudity etc, but certainly we had no difficulty going to a show like Fiddler on the Roof.  Today I get the sha’ala whether one can go to Fiddler on the Roof because of kol isha. I don’t want to get into the halakhic aspects, but you can justify it. We know that gedolei Yisrael went to opera in Berlin, and that is a fact. There’s no question there is a swing to the right.  I don’t believe today that YU guys are running to Broadway shows or operas.  I would like to believe that today the guys are bigger matmidim than they were in our time, which may or may not be the reality

Also I have to say something else which I think is very important. When we were growing up we had no Torah recreation.  You know what songs we sang? Baruch Elokeinu shebaranu lichvodo… v’karev pezureinu… Today, baruch Hashem, you have Chassidic singers.  What began with Shlomo Carlebach and Modzitz in the mid 50s is a total revolution today.  So you don’t have to go hear rappers and shmappers and hear curse words and maledictions, you have beautiful songs in our world.  That too has borrowed from a lot of the general culture; we have rappers of divrei Torah, of divrei mussar, of divrei chassidut. It’s fascinating, the shifting gears here. 

You’re right, gears have shifted to the right, which is part of Orthodoxy today, and you have to recognize it. Most of my students wear a black hat and a uniform.  Alright, I am not part of that world, but I understand their world.  To me it’s a compliment that I don’t need that to be frum. They need the chassidut, the identity, the inner connection.  Baruch Hashem.  If that’s what keeps you frum, I’m in favor of wearing two black hats!  Frumkeit to me is more important than anything.  Baruch hashem, I come from a different generation.

How did the European Rabbonim and Roshei Yeshiva who immigrated to America in the first half of the 20th century and afterwards, view and react to the American culture they were exposed to? 

The European crowd came in, and they were overwhelmed.  How do you think you would feel if you were plucked up from America and placed in Russia?  Not even communist Russia, but the Russia of today.  The cultural change is overwhelming.  If you do it willingly, then you at least know what you’re getting into.  These people were plucked up, running away from Hitler.  They came to America not out of choice, but out of coercion.  So I can’t say they integrated, but they were aware. In other words, even Rav Yeruchom Gorelick knew there was baseball and baseball was here to stay, and there was culture. Alright, Rav Yeruchom could be cynical, but the reality was reality. That they were never part of it goes without saying.

The Rav was a different story.  The Rav came to America in 1932 out of his own free will and volition. He wasn’t running away yet.  Now, the Rav always had an interest in music, he and Rav Hutner liked opera already from Berlin.  Rav Hutner already knew about music, perhaps more so than the Rav.  The Rav’s interest in baseball was not so much his own interest, but the reality that in order to speak with his own grandchildren, he had to know baseball.

One story is documented with eye witnesses, and this is the story many have spoken about. At one point, his Twersky grandchildren are learning in Brisk in Yerushalayim, and you can date it by when the Red Sox won the pennant.  I think it was 73’, 74’, the early 70’s.  Those were difficult years in Israel, so I’m totally out of baseball in those years, we’re lucky to be alive; it’s the Yom Kippur war and right after. So the Red Sox won the pennant, and the Rav sends a telegram to his grandchildren in Brisk, “We Won! We Won! – Zaide.”

So I would say he integrated on the American scene, he knew about television, he watched television, he knew about popular culture.  At times he quoted from popular culture in his lectures, but not in the shiurim.  It’s interesting that in the shiurim he was completely a Rosh Yeshiva, but on Saturday nights in Boston, on Tuesday when he commented on divrei Aggadah in Moriah at the end of the shiur, or on Sunday morning in Boston at the chevreh Shas, you saw that the man knew what was going on. Did he partake? I don’t believe as far as I know that he went to ballgames, or movies. He did occasionally watch television, and he loved westerns.  That’s a fact.  He would lose himself in a western, and the family would not bother him.  That was his escape.  So that’s the answer. We have to differentiate between saying that the Rav knew who Elvis Pressley was and that he appreciated him.  I’m positive that he knew who Elvis Pressley was.  Did he know that Elvis Pressley was once a shabbos goy?  That I don’t know.  Did he ever go to hear Elvis Pressley?  Absolutely not. 

From a Torah perspective, what are the most significant differences between American popular culture and Israeli popular culture? Does the fact that Israeli culture is in Hebrew and produced by Jewish people living in a Jewish society change the way we should approach it?

You raise a wonderful question, and the truth is that the Israeli secular culture that you’re referring to is unfortunately no different than the American culture. A general in the Israeli Army, Yakov Amidror, got into a lot of trouble by calling the average Israeli today a goy dover ivrit, a Hebrew speaking gentile.  I used a different term, anusim hafuchim, inverted marranos. I mean someone who is a proud Israeli on the outside, but on the inside has no Jewish values. All he knows is democracy, humanism and universalism.  These are beautiful values, but they are not Torat Hashem temima, not Shabbat and kashrut, and taharat mishpacha, and the uniqueness of the Jewish people, and Jewish survival and Eretz Yisrael, and akeidat Yitzchak, and malchut and Mashiach Tzidkeinu.  There’s nothing there. 

You do have to give credit to the Torah element here, and the world that I come from which is not afraid of the big world, what you would call the Torah U’madda world. They organized a school a number of years ago called Maale Film School.  We’re turning out movie producers who are bnei Torah, who can put out sensitive films about Torah, about issues that are facing us, without hatred, without enmity, without lack of understanding.  We have here a whole culture of singers that are becoming popular; unfortunately, they just put that concert into cherem.  You have endless ba’alei teshuva from the world of music and entertainment.

But in general, the people setting the tone in the public thoroughfare today are Jews who are three or four generations removed from any understanding of what Torah is about. They go to secular schools, they have values, but their values are totally Western.  So these kids grow up without anything, so when you talk about popular culture, the culture here is no different than America, outside of the fact that here it’s in Hebrew.  They curse in Hebrew, they parade around in Hebrew.  Understand, it’s absolutely no different.  The Israeli cultural scene is no different than America. And this leads me to baseball.  If everything in Israel apes America, why can’t we get off the floor with the IBL (Israel Baseball League)?  I look forward to the day when we stop aping American culture with nudity, with sex, with obscenities.  Israelis should stop aping the negative aspects of American culture, and take our baseball devotion. And then we can start giving mussar through baseball.

Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet is a Rosh Yeshiva in the Jerusalem RIETS Kollel. 

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