Chiddush in Our “Beis Medrash”
By Yaakov Rosenblatt
Hewed by Hashem into the essence of man is the need – the unmistakable and existential need – to add something to the experiences, choices, and lifestyle of the generation before it.
The most dynamic generation is often the first one. In the simple but telltale example of a shul, the most committed generation is the one that founded it, seconded by the one that set it in a new direction or that moved it to the new Jewish neighborhood. Those generations will sacrifice the most for the shul, donate the most to it, and be most spirited by its success.
When a generation does not add, amend, create, or redefine its purpose in some way, major or minor, it is a generation on edge, quickly becoming a generation of sarcasm, cynicism and negativity.
Human nature runs through time and place and it is worthwhile to try and understand how the need for change expresses itself in our world, the yeshiva world.
First Generation
My great-grandfather, a Poilisher yid [Polish Jew] moved to the United States in 1910. He changed. He was different than the generation before him. While just as frum, he changed his socio-economic status entirely. His forebears lived in dire poverty in Galitzianer [Northeastern Poland] villages. But in the summer of 1910 he boarded a ship in Bremen, Germany and decided to change his world. In America, he opened a kosher beef business and dabbled in real estate. He made money and lost money, and sent his children to yeshivas. He lived most of his life in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.
Second Generation
My grandfather, Max, was his oldest son. He was distinct from his father, too. He was the first generation American. He spoke English without an accent. He liked American food, watched American movies, and listened to American music. Notwithstanding his lack of formal education, he lived the American dream, giving his own children the benefit of a Jewish and secular education and seeing them buy their own homes – something he never did. To him, becoming an American Orthodox Jew, clean shaven and smartly dressed, was a major step forward. It was what shaped his identity.
Third Generation
My father’s generation added something, too. He was part of the first generation of “Bnei Torah”. His parents were shitbel yidden, practitioners of rudimentary Yiddishkeit. They saw work as primary and Torah study as secondary, and did not relate to Gedolim [Torah leaders] as we do.
My father learned in Kollel for a couple of years, went to Brooklyn College at night and became a public school teacher. He and my mother had and raised 11 frum children. His generation – through their tenacity, dedication and large families – built the wonderful mosdos that we take for granted in Flatbush, Monsey and Far Rockaway.
Fourth Generation
My generation (35 yrs) added something, too. Our Torah education, with college off the agenda, was more intense than that of our parents. Our internal intensity received external expression in our black velvet yarmulkes, tzitzis out, payos behind the ears, white shirts and dark pants (and sharp ties and Borsalinos on Shabbos). We saw the creation of the frum press which gave our commitment security. We looked to the Gedolim of Eretz Yisroel for psak din [rulings in Jewish law] and more and more for Hashkafa [Jewish philosophy]. Gemachim [Free loan funds], while founded conceptually by the generation before us, were brought to a new level by our generation. A 1985 Lakewood Gemach directory and a 2005 Lakewood Gemach directory say it all.
We ‘sat and learned’ longer after marriage than the generation before us. My own wife worked in a New Jersey Day School while I learned in Lakewood for three years, and we then moved to an out of town Kollel where I remained for another five years.
My father’s generation saw their large families as a major accomplishment and defining characteristic of their achievement, but my generation sees having as many children as we can as a given (it is interesting to note that many of my friends from families with 10+ children are on track to having 6 or 7, and those from smaller families are often on track for 10+ children.)
Many in my generation see remaining in kollel or klei kodesh [religious work] for their entire lives as their chiddush [addition] to the last generation. Economics of the 60’s didn’t allow it. But today, real estate profits and generous government programs allow for more klei kodesh careers than ever before. An average family size of six creates a new teaching position for every four families (24 kids). Adding positions in administration, fundraising, kashrus, rabbanus, kiruv, and safrus, a klei kodesh position is created by just three frum families paying their bills on time.
My generation wants to live better than the klei-kodesh-for-life of the last generation. While our learning may be at a higher level, we don’t want to live in a low-ceiling basement apartment to do so. Of my contemporaries (that are second and third generation Americans), those most willing to sacrifice are children of baalei teshuva and middle class balebatim who did not experience physical sacrifice growing up. Sacrifice is easier for them because sacrifice is new.
Fifth Generation
But what about our children, the next generation? What will they add? Now somewhere between ages 5 months and 15 years, they will have the same existential need to change, add, contribute, and affect as we have had.
Will their learning be more intense than ours? Perhaps, but how much more intense will it be? They won’t learn more “Reb Chaims” than we did, they can only begin to learn them younger. They may also learn more diverse miktzo’os [subjects] at a younger age than we did. But how distinct an achievement will that be? Will it be enough to give them a sense of ownership, a sense of change, a sense that they matter? Chazel say ain beis medrash b’lo chiddush [there is no House of Study without novel thoughts]. Where there is no chiddush and nothing meaningful to contribute there is cynicism: cynicism of one’s leaders, cynicism of oneself and cynicism of those who dare to find a niche and create chiddush. What can we do to make sure they will not be led in that direction?
Will they sit and learn for more years? It is hard to believe so. Large family size makes it difficult for even the wealthiest to support their married children and with massive immigration from Mexico, government programs will be on the decline.
Will they create more gemachim? They will. But will they be qualitatively different than what we have today? Enough to throw their arms around it and say they achieved it, as a generation?
Will they be more medakdek [precise] in Halacha? My generation is very, very medakdek.
Not having something to add, not having self-realized potential and feeling limited leads to grinding negativity. People begin to gain their identity from a group, not from what they have achieved personally. And that leads to finding flaws in those who stand out and pulling them down to the lowest common denominator of the group. Which takes away the desire and courage to initiate. It is human nature and true in every society.
So how will the next generation turn? Will it become more insular and shut out anything not Jewish at all, including all secular studies? Undoubtedly, some will choose that and it will be their chiddush.
Will it learn fewer years in kollel, falling back onto the instinct of man to provide for his family, going to work younger as do many Chassidim? Without doubt, some will and that will be their chiddush.
Will it become “Eretz Yisroel-only”, looking to the gedolim of Eretz Yisroel for every halacha and hashkafa [law and philosophical position], not paying any attention at all to the American Gedolim? Some will and that will be their difference.
Will it be more focused on Kiruv Rechokim and see it as their chiddush? Some will and that will be their contribution.
The next generation will do all of the above. Some will focus inward, striving for new levels in gadlus [spiritual greatness]. Some will look outward, looking to add more secular knowledge. And some will be cynical.
But the need for direction and change also creates an historic opportunity. The farmer that wants his son to remain on the family farm does not demand that his son do so. He remarks, time and time again, how he wishes he could have purchased 1000 acres adjacent to their farm, and then creates an opportunity for his son to buy them and expand the farm tenfold. He gives a vision to the son within the structure he sets forth and then lets the son take ownership of it and develop the method and strategy of its implementation.
That will take showing the next generation that there are significant things we have not achieved that they can. What are they?
Yaakov Rosenblatt, formerly a member of the Dallal Kollel, now served as Associate Director of NCSY-Dallas, Director of Jewish Student Union-Dallas, and runs his own business. He is the author of Maharal: Emerging Patterns (Feldheim, 2001)
Many in my generation see remaining in kollel or klei kodesh [religious work] for their entire lives as their chiddush [addition] to the last generation. Economics of the 60’s didn’t allow it. But today, real estate profits and generous government programs allow for more klei kodesh careers than ever before. An average family size of six creates a new teaching position for every four families (24 kids). Adding positions in administration, fundraising, kashrus, rabbanus, kiruv, and safrus, a klei kodesh position is created by just three frum families paying their bills on time.
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It is my fervent hope that the natural order of the world be suspended and that your childrens’ generation experience continued hashgacha (divine intervention)to allow this to occur.
It might be worthwhile to go to http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/VYT67features.htm to see R’ Steinman’s thoughts on the standard of living required to hope to accomplish this.
One analyst I heard stated (bderech hateva ) that the accomplishments you listed were economically made feasible by borrowing from the prior generation and mortgaging the future generation. I think he was somewhat correct but also ignored the subsidization by those outside the system (e.g. government grants, fundraising from outside the community). May Hkb”h continue to provide for this outside generosity.
KT
their parents generation , pushed by the Hard Right of israeli Haredism, wishes to Lakewoodize all of American Orthodoxy— hoping to duplicate the unyielding loyalty to dogmatic stringency.
their teachers tell them that a life of less than 168 hr of Tora / wk is in someway a failure, and Mammon is evil.
the question is will the dire Israeli poverty be duplicated in the US? all the assumptions, from family size to kollel life to chessed etc depend on a strong middle class and entrepenurial class on one end, and a strong Lechatchila Welfare ideology that would have been unthinkable a generation before – a yid living on the dole as a modus operandi? chas vshalom. now, it is a wedding present….
The dominant ideological theme in charedi society is subservience to the doctrine of “yeridas ha’doros”. Therefore by definition there is little to innovate because anything that can be created now is inferior to what existed before. If that is so then the obvious question is: why bother? The only direction to go is back towards the past.
You’re essentially asking, what do we want the next generation to accomplish. Isn’t that putting the trailer before the pickup*? This question requires first an estimate of the future, of the challenges that the next generation will face and the opportunities they will have.
* As a fellow Texan, I feel entitled to use this idiom.
Here are a few trends that I think are relevant:
1. Aging gentile population, due to declining birth rates. Alternatively, a gentile population with a larger percent of immigrants.
2. Diminishing Jewish Heterodox population, due to declining birth rates and intermarriage.
Therefore:
3. More Orthodox Jews, as a percent of the general population and the Jewish population.
4. As you said, less government programs to fund education. The governmnet is heavily in debt, and it will be pressured to fund medical care for the elderly.
5. Unless the US absorbs a huge number of immigrants, less real estate gains. Real estate gains are typically a result of population expansion.
Therefore:
6. Probably less money to fund religious activities.
Yaakov Rosenblatt: …a klei kodesh position is created by just three
Yaakov Rosenblatt: frum families paying their bills on time).
If we assume that almost all frum Jews who work are married with children, this means that a sixth of the working frum are klei kodesh. I might be wrong, but this sounds high.
I think that the next frum generation’s chiddush is likely to be one or both of these options:
A. Find ways to do more with less, so as to have less klei kodesh doing the work of the community.
B. Willing accept poverty, in relative terms to their gentile and heterodox contemporaries, as the cost of a thriving Jewish community. I think this is the choice of the Israeli Charedi community.
While I often think I am shoteh (= stupid), I have no reason to think I have nevuah (= prophecy). I’d love to be proven wrong.
“real estate profits and generous government programs allow for more klei kodesh careers than ever before”
– not familar. what are these government programs and how do they allow klei kodesh careers?
The next generation-IMO, one should look back at Eastern Europe and the 19th and early 20th Centuries to see what happened to what happened-Haskalah, Communism and secular Zionism all made huge inroads within Eastern European Jewry despite the fact that Torah learning reached its then unparalleled zenith in quality of learning in Volozhin, Brisk, Kovna, Grodna and elsewhere. Today, the challenges are not ideological but rather finding a way to engage even those who are at risk in Torah, Avodah and Gmilus Chasadim and/or those who are at best apathetic about these goals-despite their hashkafa.
While some may accept poverty, others may see that as an unacceptable risk for their children because grinding poverty was one of the reasons why European Jewry sought intellectual and other answers other than allegiance to the Torah world. The notion that yeshivah ketanas, BYs and day schools exist solely for the development of the next generation of Kolleleit or Gdolim as opposed to imparting Jewish literacy and observance and creating Bnei Torah and Bnos Torah who work is an issue that warrants discussion and not banishment from our communities and media.
>Will their learning be more intense than ours? Perhaps, but how much more intense will it be? They won’t learn more “Reb Chaims” than we did, they can only begin to learn them younger.
Maybe they’ll return to mikra or halakhah le-ma’ase and will learn just as intensely, if not more.
My point is that we can’t view only one paradigm as learning with intensity. How did they learn intensely before Reb Chaim?
I’m glad to hear that the present generation has perfected Judaism. Perhaps the next generation can be misaken (correct) this generation’s narcissism.
I’m with Easterner on this one. When my father broke his leg, my mother went back to work to support us, because she would rather have died than go on Welfare. Since when did it become perfectly acceptable in the Jewish community for whole lifestyles to be based on perfectly able-bodied people living for years on end on hand-outs from the government?
In my generation, being a college graduate was a chiddush. In my son’s, it’s a necessity. My husband is a college accounting instructor, and he can tell you for a fact that his students are desparately seeking college degrees because it’s becoming increasing difficult to get a job that pays enough to support a family without one. I fear that, after two generations of parents without a college education, the Chareidi community will find its institutions suffering massive financial failure because there won’t be enough people making a decent living to keep the community’s organizations alive. I would hate to see a situation in which the last person to leave the bet midrash would have to turn off the lights *permanently* because no one could afford to pay even the electric bills, much less the rent. Im ein kemach, ein torah.
And what about the impact of diminishing income on marriage? Is there any truth to the rumor that young ladies are already having difficulty with shidduchim (finding marital matches) because their fathers can’t afford to support prospective sons-in-laws’ plans to spend a few years in kollel?
“We looked to the Gedolim of Eretz Yisroel for psak din [rulings in Jewish law] and more and more for Hashkafa [Jewish philosophy].” I confess to being puzzled as to what the point is in supporting all these wonderful learning opportunities in the local community if one is not interested in what any of the local scholars has to say.