Now What – Considered Response to the Pew Report (Part Two)
With sincere apologies to those who loyally read these pages in search of something new or inspiring, I offer none of those here. Some of the suggestions that follow have been made before; some are boilerplate. Nonetheless, cobbling together a few ideas about what can or should be done by frum Jews in the wake of the Pew Report might help more inspired people launch some other ideas. Here are five, in addition to Thou Shalt Not Be Triumphal with which I closed out Part One.
1) Don’t Starve the Goose If any single element accounts for the deep division between the success of Orthodoxy and the failure of non-Orthodoxy in all its varieties, it is education. (Even Rabbi Wolpe, whom I criticized in the earlier post, takes it for granted that a vivified Conservative Jewry would require a commitment to serious education.) We are all aware of the fault lines within our educational system. We cannot afford, however, not to recognize that on the whole, Torah education is a phenomenal success. Our family life, our elevated repopulation rate would mean little without a system to produce young people loyal to the Torah and its lifestyle.
Alas, both the system and our demographic strength are under sustained attack. The culprit is high tuition. In some places (Los Angeles is one of them), segments of the community are not only thinking what used to be unthinkable, but acting on those thoughts. Providing each and every child with a Torah education has been a sine qua non of Orthodox life in these last decades. Friends don’t allow friends to send their children to public schools.
They are starting to. One shul in LA has even begun an afternoon Talmud Torah-type program for Orthodox kids attending public schools – despite the fact that there are still people alive who can speak of after-school programs as the Jewish House of Horrors. (Can we anticipate a new set of Woody Allen movies?) We should appreciate the dilemma of the rov who had to make the tough decision about whether to offer such a program – thereby making it more attractive for others to pull their kids from day schools – or not – thereby sentencing over one hundred children (!!!) to no Jewish education at all. It is a dilemma that no community should face.
According to many anecdotal reports, the cost of tuition seems to be putting a damper on our birth rate, even in the more yeshivish parts of the community. People will yell, scream and froth at the mouth at the suggestion that this may be true – but many responsible people I know believe it to be true. Through the roof tuition levels are proving to be as deadly to us as the Pill is to others. Not being able to figure out any way bederech hateva that they will be able to afford the cost of educating another child, they are simply not having one.
I don’t have any new, exciting proposals. I can beg, however, for another hearing about an older proposal: effective, structured use of charitable funds. We need rabbonim who will go even beyond the gingerly-offered, voluntary commitment that the Baltimore community asked for. Rabbonim with real authority in their kehilos (admittedly, not so many) can come up with rules of the kehilah, as was common for hundreds of years. Their ought to be rules whereby membership includes a protocol on giving; 50% of all tzedaka stays in the local community; of that 50%, at least half must be earmarked for primary and secondary education.
The Torah education of our children is the goose that laid the golden eggs of our success. We have to pamper it, rather than slowly pluck out its feathers.
2) Provide Answers Before the doors close forever on Diaspora Jews, there are many who still can be reached. We need to encourage the wonderful cadre of Torah men and women who devote their lives to kiruv. We have to help them redouble their efforts.
The Pew Report, however, is not going to bring the heterodox communities closer to us, or us to them. To the contrary, the word is out that the Jewish community has become two Judaisms: one of the Orthodox, and one of everyone else. Large numbers of Jews have been carefully taught to mock and reject everything about Orthodoxy. Many can be won over simply by providing a level of warmth and belonging that is not so available outside of Orthodoxy. Chabad has shown remarkable success in winning back families the rest of us have abandoned to the trajectory of assimilation, especially outside our major population centers.
There are others who cannot be reached by warmth and belonging alone. Too many people have been taught now for decades that everything about Orthodoxy stands upon assumptions that are “unacceptable,” or “proven” to be false, c”v. They need to be shown that the non-Orthodox emperor not only has no tzitzis, but has no clothes. What has been “proven” by biblical criticism archeology and the like is nothing more than a house of cards. The value of the “proofs” has been steadily inflated by denominations marked by enervated emunah.
There is no “proof,” c”v, to those claims. We need people who can declare that, from positions of strength. But that does not mean that there are no challenges. There are, and the claims of the kofrim need to be met with alternative explanations, rather than blank stares.
For the most part, we found those claims to be irrelevant to our own community, which by and large is loyal enough to the Torah it loves to give it the benefit of the doubt. If we hope to somehow invite Jews from the other movements to explore traditional Judaism, we are going to have to address the challenges. We do not have to win on a TKO in the first round, but we have to mount a credible and aggressive enough fight that we last in the ring. To use the felicitous title of Rabbi Leib Kelemen’s book of a generation ago, we need at least to give those who wish to become more observant “permission to believe.” There are new (really not new at all – just more talked about today) challenges that have become commonplace in the minds of non-Orthodox Jews. We need to find responsible Bnei Torah to rise to the challenges. In the process, we will also help bring back many of our own who have been wounded by the glib assumptions of those who reject both the Oral and Written Torah – and by the veritable silence of the Torah community in responding.
3) Defining the Message Every few years, we notice a shift in the areas that interest unaffiliated Jews, and that can therefore be used programmatically to get Jews involved with the community. Decades ago, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust could be used; they have been a turn-off for quite a while. Identification with Israel used to work; today, so many young people do not have anything near the commitment to the Jewish state that their predecessors did. The stability of the Jewish nuclear family is still effective – but more and more people are deferring any thought of marriage and family.
We have arrived at a place where some unaffiliated Jews still possess vague feelings about loyalty to their Jewishness, but need to be shown that there is some value to mankind in the survival and continuation of the Jewish people. Showing what this small band has contributed to mankind won’t do the trick. Whatever we’ve given the world is past history. Why are we still needed and relevant? What do we do for an encore? Can we provide a rationale for Jewish exceptionalism that doesn’t sound like racism? (It is interesting that non-frum Israeli society is currently also going through a process of defining core Jewish values, for similar reasons.)
Thinking this way is a bit of a challenge to us halachic Jews who need no more reason than that the Ribbono Shel Olam said so! With a bit of effort, it can be done, and will need to be done to reach people who are defensive about Jews being “different.” (I’ve assembled a list of gifts that Jews still need to transmit to the world. It is the basis of one of my regular lectures on the speaking trail. I don’t want to spoil the fun of throwing the question to our readers at a future date, to see what values we can put together as a group.)
4) Coopting Social Engagement So Reform-style tikkun olam just isn’t powerful enough to create loyal Jews. We knew that all along. But we didn’t take note of all the young people who were drawn to it, even if it wasn’t sufficient to hold them in the community. We ignored the appeal of social responsibility to young people. (Exactly the same phenomenon has been observed in church groups around the country. To keep the younger generation, churches had to move in the direction of social responsibility in their activities and in their message.) This is a mistake that we need to rectify, and it will take some fresh and different thinking on our part. At least for many of us, there is nothing inherently wrong at all with worrying about issues that face the entire American or human communities, and finding a Jewish way to make a direct, participatory contribution to their solution. To the heterodox movement, this is often where it begins and ends; it would be very different for us. Learning to work as part of the larger community rather than as people standing outside of it might do much good in addressing other problems we face. והמבין יבין
5) Taking the Wheel My final suggestion has nothing to do with kiruv, but does follow from the Pew findings. The “other Judaism” is going the way of the dodo bird. If a viable Jewish community is going to remain in the US (personally, I dream of aliyah for myself and my children), the functions that were previously attended to by non-Orthodox Jews are going to have to be taken over by us. That means greater involvement in political action, general philanthropy, and the maintenance of key community institutions. Counting yarmulkes at AIPAC shows that at least there, the Orthodox have been quietly filling up the void left by the growing apathy of others.
Achieving this might be an enormous problem. Our mosdos ha-chinuch have grown more monolithic, and more insular. They make greater demands on our kids’ time. This means fewer opportunities to learn about, and often less exposure to role models of, community responsibility and involvement – on any level.
I believe that the obstacles here are surmountable. The great leaders – famous and unsung – who built the community in the past did not possess a selfless gene. They were inspired and taught by others. We could be doing the same, filling in for what yeshivos and life experience have not provided. We need to develop an Orthodox Wexner-like program, in which young people with talent are selected for their ability, and then brought into contact with people who can open their minds, transmit values, and teach skills. Unlike Wexner which banks on the ego-boost for participation, we would probably have to offer some more tangible incentives as well. It would be a prudent investment in the future.
I now throw the conversation open to our readers. I hope that at least one of them will keep tabs on the responses, culling new ideas from the general comments, so that after a while we might publish a summary of New Ideas.
“According to many anecdotal reports, the cost of tuition seems to be putting a damper on our birth rate”
I believe that has been true for decades.
“One shul in LA has even begun an afternoon Talmud Torah-type program for Orthodox kids attending public schools”
I approve-sadly it has become accepted belief if one is not going to a day school one can’t be accepted as as Orthodox Jew. Many Talmud Torahs 40-50 years ago ceased to exist for financial reasons. They were used in general by those with lower incomes than those who went to day schools-schuls had to support them, machers of schuls did not use them and thus had little desire to support the big expense involved.
The side effects of day schools are usually ignored two classes of people are left outside of our camp-those who can’t afford it and those children who don’t have the academic ability for a dual language program. Combined a substantial amount.
If I recall correctly the Pew Report lists Modern Orthodox Judaism as the group with the highest household income-very likely due to the costs required to be a MO Jew tuition for day schools. If one can’t afford sadly generally one is not welcomed.
Although I agree with much of this post, I strongly disagree with the following: “Large numbers of Jews have been carefully taught to mock and reject everything about Orthodoxy. Many can be won over simply by providing a level of warmth and belonging that is not so available outside of Orthodoxy. Chabad has shown remarkable success in winning back families the rest of us have abandoned to the trajectory of assimilation, especially outside our major population centers.”
I’m not a researcher, so I can only speak from my own experience. I grew up Reform, in a basically secular home in which Judaism was considered a source of pride. Orthodoxy was not mocked, either at home or at “Temple.” Based on my experience, I think the frum community tends to grossly magnify the extent to which Orthodoxy is mocked and rejected. I’m sorry to say that this particular web site is no exception. How many supposedly anti-Orthodox articles from the Forward are dissected in this space? It seems like a lot to me. To read this web site, one could be truly appalled at the way Orthodox Judaism is mocked out there in the world. But there’s one thing – does anyone actually read the Forward? The only time I think I have ever read it is once or twice, after reading something in Cross Currents about some anti-Orthodox article in the Forward, to check out the source of all the fuss. I think I have met one or two people in my whole life that owned up to being regular readers of the Forward. Maybe the rest are embarassed to admit it. But I think my initial reaction is closer to the truth – I think there is a strong tendency in the frum world to over-emphasize, by a very large degree, the extent to which non-Orthodox Jews are influenced by anti-Orthodox articles in the media – particularly with respect to the younger generations, which I think are simply apathetic to Orthodoxy much more than they have been turned off to it by negative propaganda.
Again speaking only for myself – but I have a feeling I’m not the only one that feels this way – I can say that I entered Orthodox Judaism as a chozer b’tshuva with every desire to embrace Orthodox Judaism intellectually and in every other way. What led me to do an about face was not outside propaganda of any kind. It was factors entirely within the Orthodox world, specically the Israeli Orthodox world, primarily but not limited to (i) the ban on Rabbi Slifkin’s books, which led me on my own to seek out a find answers to issues that had never particularly bothered me before, and to seriously question ideas I had previously accepted – the ban led to this reaction, let me emphasize, not the books themselves; (ii) my disgust at the gross overreaction of the haredi world in Israel to negative political developments, both now and in the past, an overreaction that I observed mostly by direct observation, not by the outside world’s mirroring of the haredi reaction; (iii) what I consider a distortion of values in much of the Orthodox world, where tzniut is emphasized to a degree that I believe is not only excessive but harmful, whereas honest dealings, particularly in relation to the state, do not seem to be taken as seriously as I would think they should be.
Obviously there is much more to be said about all of these topics and many more, but my main point is that if Orthodox Jews wish to reach out to non-Orthodox Jews, I believe they need to (i) correct what I feel are some false assumptions about why most Jews are not Orthodox; (ii) look inward as well as outward, because as they teach you in lifeguard courses, you can’t save the drowning swimmer if you yourself are being pulled under. That might seem like an exaggeration, but when respected rabbis state that Jews that wear a certain kind of kippa or vote for a certain candidate are Amelekim, and when books that provide this generation with good, well-researched, well though-out answers to difficult questions are banned and labelled kefira by rabbis that never read them and know little or nothing of the science behind the issues these books are addressing, and rabbis who privately know better are afraid to state their optinions publicly – well, let me just say that Jewish warmth, chicken soup, and clever arguments against the most speculative elements of biblical criticism may be enough to draw in chozrei b’tshuva, but eventually the ba’al tshuva will confront the real Orthodox world, which is more than just chicken soup and happy Shabbos singing.
To conclude on a positive note, I believe the this article makes a very important point that I think deserves the attention of all Jewish educators that may be qualified to address it: “We have arrived at a place where some unaffiliated Jews still possess vague feelings about loyalty to their Jewishness, but need to be shown that there is some value to mankind in the survival and continuation of the Jewish people. Showing what this small band has contributed to mankind won’t do the trick. Whatever we’ve given the world is past history. Why are we still needed and relevant? What do we do for an encore? Can we provide a rationale for Jewish exceptionalism that doesn’t sound like racism? (It is interesting that non-frum Israeli society is currently also going through a process of defining core Jewish values, for similar reasons.)
Maybe this is a related problem:
Periodically, the mass media highlight major arrests and trials of Orthodox-looking Jews, some prominent in our communities. A reader already not too keen on the Orthodox, because of upbringing or whatever, would take these as additional reasons not to engage with us. Can we become better collectively at keeping our communal house in order?
R’ Alderstein,
I agree with the overall sentiment expressed here but I don’t really understand why you emphasize the importance of debunking the so-called proofs against Orthodoxy. I’m pretty sure (anecdotally) that what prevents most people from becoming frum or what causes so many to leave is the absence of proof for Orthodoxy, or worse, the clumsy attempts by so many representatives of Orthodoxy to furnish such proof.
We’re asking people to change their lives in a very fundamental way, one that will change what they eat, how they spend their free time, how they relate to the outside world, whom they date, how they view the role of Man in the universe etc. The problem is not that someone is proving that Orthodoxy is wrong. The problem is that you need to prove that Orthodoxy is right. And let’s face it, most of us understand that this simply can’t be done and that anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding himself.
[YA – In decades of interacting with people, I have encountered perhaps a handful who asked for proof. Convicted atheists usually don’t show up at my Shabbos table (with some notable exceptions). I don’t have a formula for proving that G-d exists. The people whom I have met, by and large, had a G-d concept. The question was only what to do with it. (Most of those I know believe because of a consilience of arguments, none of which is dispositive in and of itself, but taken together with others, puts belief over the bar that each person sets up for him/herself as satisfactory. Personally, one of the most important factors is the experiential – the Zohar that the Shalah cites in several places that Hashem placed an ohr demehemnusa/ a light of belief in every mitzvah. IOW, Hashem validates Himself to those people who agree to meet Him at the interface between the human and the Divine: the performance of mitzvos.)
OTOH, I have met lots of people who believed and practiced, and then began doubting because of certain intellectual challenges that often were met with responses that ranged from the inadequate to the insulting to the downright stupid. I do not believe that they account for the majority of people who opt out, but I do believe that most in the yeshiva world underestimate their numbers.
Yet another truism must be considered. It is difficult, if not impossible, to separate emotional need from expressed conviction. People find fault with what they want to fault. Often, they are unaware of this themselves. Unlike others, I do not believe that every skeptic is motivated by a need to lighten the load of mitzvos from upon him. But it is true of some. One of the most famous left-wing Orthodox educators in the country – himself a person of towering intellect – told me that in all his years in education, he never encountered a single adolescent who OTD’d because of intellectual issues. The real reason was always emotional, even if the kid expressed something else.
Bottom line: life is complicated. But my vote is still to provide answers to the detractors, rather than search for proofs that don’t hold up to scrutiny.]
Rabbi Adlerstein,
Thank you for giving constructive ideas about how we, the Orthodox community, can find solutions.
I believe number 3 & 5 are extremely important in attempting to give our non-Orthodox brothers and sisters a different view of who we are and what we value.
I suggest that free copies of Orthodox newspapers like:
Mishpacha, Five Towns Jewish Times, Jewish Star,
Jewish Press, HaModia, Flatbush Jewish Journal, Binah,
etc, be mass-mailed to non-Orthodox Jews across the USA.
This would provide alternatives to the Orthodox-bashing
Jewish newspapers they usually read.
It would also give them a peek into the Orthodox way
of life and the Orthodox way of thinking, both in a
non-threatening way.
Excellent observations. I would add to #2 that we need to find a way to get past the politics barrier. The vast majority of non-Orthodox Jews in the US are liberal Democrats, and that’s not going to change. They don’t see Orthodoxy as a choice because it doesn’t fit in with their political ideology (due to differences in gender roles, the identification of religiosity with conservative politics, etc.) We need to make a compelling case for why a liberal Jew should become Orthodox, while still remaining liberal politically. For example, progressives love multiculturalism and hate the idea that a rich culture would disappear due to assimilation to the American cultural mainstream. Arguably, the only way for American Jews to avoid this happening to themselves is to become Orthodox!
#4 is long overdue. There are so many ways in which Orthodox Jews could, and should, be a light to the nations through practical activism. For example, the Noahide law to establish courts, and Yisro’s advice to establish a more rational governance structure, among other sources such as the ban on bribery, could potentially inspire an Orthodox movement to establish a functional and non-corrupt administrative and justice system where it is most lacking — such as in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that are already receiving Israeli aid. Much of South Asia and Africa remains illiterate, dooming millions to poverty — but this could be remedied relatively quickly if the countries’ tax authorities were well-organized enough to raise the required funds and the educational authorities were sufficiently ambitious in setting up the infrastructure for providing universal education. Orthodox Jews in such places as the IRS and IDF could be well-placed to spearhead such efforts.
Baruch Gitlin, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I would also say that the victimization you see in the orthodox world is, I believe, directly related to the mainstreaming of paranoia that frum people have co-opted from right wing media (specifically talk radio).
Shaya, you assume that the people in power in those countries want an honest legal system, or at least will not violently oppose one. May I ask why? It isn’t that they don’t know what to do – they are the ones benefiting from the current, corrupt system.
Tikkun Olam is a good idea, but it is best to do it closer to home. You can get by with a lot less spending, and work with a society where you understand how to do good. Maybe offer tutoring in English and math to children who need it?
I agree with everything you wrote. To my mind, we face many challenges and we need to have much more leadership that is not afraid to deal with issues. 1. There is incontrovertable evidence that human beings lived on this planet long before the chronology of the chumash taken literally. The evidence is so overwhelming that to deny it is purely “cognitive dissonance”. If as Rabbi Chaim Dov Keller once told me ,you can’t defend emes with sheker, meaning that doubting the literal belief that the world is 5,700 years old (which is so ludicrous as to be beyond incredible) is apikorsus, then how can anyone expect orthodoxy to deal with reality. We can’t perpetuate a religion on literalness of the creation story. You can write all the articles you want against certain scholars at Chovevai,but they are trying to come to terms with a seemingly impossible conundrum, how to be a believing orthodox Jew and not ignore all of the evidence of antiquity. It is so much easier to take the attitude that “they can say it but we can’t” that Rav Elyashiv told Rabbi Aharon Feldman at the height of the Slivkin affair. Belief,even firm belief, even antagonism to those who dare not believe doesn’t make something true.
If we cannot figure out how to deal with this, we are limiting orthodoxy to those who say “don’t bother me with facts , my mind is made up.’ and that is not a long term recipe for success.
The second and equally vital issue is how to reconcile equality for women with rules that make many of them feel they are second class. They aren’t convinced by your articles because they don’t agree. Is there a place in orthodoxy for educated and accomplished females who are seeking greater ways to express their orthodoxy while not stifling their identity. If we don’t deal with these two issues honestly, we are limiting whom we can include in Klal Yisroel.
“At least for many of us, there is nothing inherently wrong at all with worrying about issues that face the entire American or human communities, and finding a Jewish way to make a direct, participatory contribution to their solution.”
In the time of the neviim, such a statement would be unthinkable. Nothing inherently wrong? I thought this was the whole foundation of Judaism.
Thank you; the implication of increased Orthodox responsibility for broader communal functions is the key point that has been missing from each of the dozens of of Pew responses I have read or heard over the past weeks.
For those of us in all but the largest and most insular Orthodox communities, this has major ramifications in how we must allocate our (already limited) time and resources. In my community the Federation funds and supports (through largely non-Orthodox donations and volunteers) many institutions to the benefit of the Orthodox minority — kashrut supervision, the mikvah, day schools (in a major way), the kollel’s youth and college programs, and the JCC (frequently used as a venue by Orthodox institutions and housing the City’s kosher eatery/caterer and offering gender-separate swimming). They are also working on a shabbat/kashrut-friendly elder care facility, and involved in politicking and advocacy for eruv zoning, government funding issues, Israel, and other issues of major concern to the Orthododox. This is on top of generally valuable activities such as Jewish family services, immigrant assistance, and holocaust and antisemitism education.
Other organizations such as Bnei Brith, the Chevra Kadisha, Hadassa WIZO are similarly primarily operated with funds and volunteers from outside the Orthodox community and yet our community and the causes we value see major benefits from their activities.
As a growing-slowly-if-any Orthodoxy becomes a larger share of a shrinking pie we will find ourselves having to take funding and (volunteer) staffing of all of these functions to meet our own needs. Possible perhaps (and perhaps fileable under ‘4. Coopting Social Engagement’) but in direct conflict with the resources required to prop up the day schools.
Z wrote:
“For those of us in all but the largest and most insular Orthodox communities, this has major ramifications in how we must allocate our (already limited) time and resources. In my community the Federation funds and supports (through largely non-Orthodox donations and volunteers) many institutions to the benefit of the Orthodox minority — kashrut supervision, the mikvah, day schools (in a major way), the kollel’s youth and college programs, and the JCC (frequently used as a venue by Orthodox institutions and housing the City’s kosher eatery/caterer and offering gender-separate swimming). They are also working on a shabbat/kashrut-friendly elder care facility, and involved in politicking and advocacy for eruv zoning, government funding issues, Israel, and other issues of major concern to the Orthododox”
Please identify one such out of town community that is the recipient of such funds. I think that readers of Cross Currents know that one of the heads of NIRC sat on the board of the Baltimore Federation, which provided a mutually beneficial relationship and enabled the Federation world to understand the POV of the Yeshiva without being encumbered by urban myths and stereotypes.
The above article is excellent-but even within those who are active in iiruv, there is much disagreement as to who should benefit from kiruv. I personally think that adolescents , college students, post graduates and the millenial generation need to be shown the profundity, depth, Kedusha and Taharah of a life dedicated to Torah and Mitzvos in simple unadulterated contrast in a non judgmental manner to the decadent world that is projected in the “mainstream media” .
The absurdly high cost of a solid Jewish education would radically change for their better if the government would get completely out of the education business, instead allowing the free market to determine the quality and cost of education. This applies equally as well to education in general, both for Jews and gentiles.
As for what could make the average American Jew more interested in their Jewish roots, that may be a tough one, since each of us are bombarded with endless choices in our open and free society. There is no replacement for getting a good Jewish education in one’s formative, growing-up years, but getting Jewish parents to realize that, is a task for which I have no solution.
Steve Brizel. Since you mentioned it, let me clarify in case anyone isn’t clear. Rabbi Herman Neuberger was highly respected by the leaders of the Baltimore Federation because he was wise and understood that in order to have a seat at the table, you have to participate in more than your immediate parochiol intersts. He was involved in all areas of the communal agenda. Sitting on a committee or community relations council with rabbis of the varous temples who were there representing their constituancies . This was never the same as participating in a Board of Rabbis, which was a religious body,which the gedolim forbade. One reason so much has been accomplished over the years is that he was a very wise man and he earned the respect of the entire spectrum of the communal leadership. Today, in Baltimore, the Chairman of the Board of the Federation Tzvi friedman is an alumnus of the yeshiva and the Head of the Campaign is Yehudah Neuberger, his grandson. Alumni of the yeshiva are “players’ at every level of the communal organs. This took years to happen and it is all based on the legacy of Rabbi Neuberger. I once was asked by the head of the Baltimore Jewish Council to do something and I told him that though Rabbi Neuberger is not here, I know what he would have told me and I cannot do what you ask. He told me that he often has the same thought and he is not orthodox. If you are wise and you lay the groundwork carefully, you can accomplish .
What do we need? 1) More serious in-reach. Show some care about kids on the fringe and kids with unpopular questions. Take them seriously and love them more. Educators should learn the Piaseczner’s Chovas HaTalmidim and make the talmid a partner in learning instead of trying to lead them by the nose. 2) Along with that, both in outreach and in-reach, goes the abandonment of “my way or the highway”. There are 70 faces of Torah. That allows for a lot of flavors of different brands of chassidus, mussar, Rav Hirsch, Rav Kook, Brisk, Gra, etc. We need a catalogue of these different paths for the use of both insiders and outsiders to know what their options are. Deprecating the others as not real Yiddishkeit is poisonous to the souls of all sorts of people. 3) The future of Am Yisrael is in Eretz Yisrael. The MO way of life is not viable in the long run and maybe not even in the short run. The people who can’t pay the tuition shouldn’t be fed afternoon Talmud Torah, they should be aided in making aliya. The crunch is coming much faster than we all realize. The economy in EY is a lot healthier than in the US, and the Jews are eventually going to be blamed.
Tuition IS birth control. Not maybe!
Even if it isn’t thought of that way – a working mom is overwhelmed by the thought of another baby. Is it the projected yeshiva tuition cost stopping her from another pregnancy? No. Is it the job that is preventing her from having another child? Yes.
But if not for yeshiva tuition, she could afford either more household help or to stay home — in which case, yes, she would have another baby.
So yes, it is the yeshiva tuition that is stopping her.
I know tons of people who are open about this – from black hat families. The women just can’t do it. They can’t shop for food, clean, cook, work, go to the siddur party, take a child to buy shoes, drive carpool, talk to their husbands, take in their sheital, fold the laundry, nurse the baby…they just can’t do it. Talk to frum working mothers.
In my mother’s generation, there were NO women who worked and had large (6 or more kids) families – or if there were, they were the rare exceptions. Now I have friends who are expected to be superwomen. This is ruining shalom bayis (between spouses and children) and creating all sorts of stress.
You know how many women – yeshivish women – never daven? They simply don’t have ten minutes a day. They can’t cut out taking a shower, commuting to work, carpool, nursing a baby, sending their boss an email – so they slave away – for a Creator they don’t have ten minutes to think about.
while education and avodat hashem has greatly improved over the past 30 years in the frum community, the rest of the Jewish cummunity continues to assimilate. Its time we look out for the greater Jewish community and not just ourselves. We need to start following chabads model and making our communities a place where Jews of all backgrounds can feel comfortable
“According to many anecdotal reports, the cost of tuition seems to be putting a damper on our birth rate, even in the more yeshivish parts of the community. People will yell, scream and froth at the mouth at the suggestion that this may be true – but many responsible people I know believe it to be true. Through the roof tuition levels are proving to be as deadly to us as the Pill is to others. Not being able to figure out any way bederech hateva that they will be able to afford the cost of educating another child, they are simply not having one.”
It is not just the costs of tuition. It is Medical Insurance, rising Healthcare costs, Housing, Clothing, Camps and all other needs of raising a child. 50% of 50% is not going to solve the problem. Furthermore, it is a disgrace that Rabbeim and Teachers are not even paid a livable wage. Practically every institution expects its Rabbeim and Teachers to be on government assistance programs and then shnurer money for Yom Tov and Chasunahs.
On the birth control point. I don’t claim to know the answer to this question and I hope that I am not wrong for posting it, but who says that they are wrong? If one cannot afford another child “b’derech hatevah” is it so simple that he should have one? Often, those that advise against taking birth control will not explain how the receiver of the “psak” is supposed to function financially. Often the only recourse for such families is to apply for government aid and live off the public weal. Is that correct? Furthermore, all to often living off government programs leads to nisyonos of ehrlichkeit that many are not strong enough to pass. Is it wrong to have this discussion once and for all?
[It is still too new (and horrible) a question to expect many people to speak about publicly, rather than to one couple at a time, behind closed doors. R. Hershel Schachter has been an exception. He has gone on record saying some of the things you said above. And his colleague at YU, R. Mordechai Willig, has said that he disagrees!]
Dear Crazy,
If someone can’t afford a baby, I guess they can’t have one.
But it is sad when parents truly would love another baby and have a lot of love to give a child and another Jew could be born…but for lack of yeshiva tuition, they can’t.
Yes, health care costs, and so do braces, and dresses, beds, toys, and food. But I know many middle class Jewish families who would be well-off financially if not for yeshiva tuition. Perhaps we should stop funding kiruv organizations – which do some good making a few frum and expose many to mitzvot – in order to help already-frum families give birth to and raise frum Jews? Perhaps we should stop funding Holocaust museums? Perhaps we as a community – the entire Jewish community – could stop wasting money on seminaries in Israel, fancy weddings, etc. so we could fund our day schools?
Rabbi Adlerstein – Your response to YS, above, misses the mark. In the first instance, he spoke about the need to prove orthodoxy, and you responded about atheism and proving God’s existence. But this has nothing to do with YS’s comment. The existence of God and the validity of orthodoxy are two very different things.
You also cite someone who says he never met a single adolosecent who went OTD for intellectual reasons. I don’t know if he’s emphasizng the word “adolescent” for some reason, but regardless, the reality is that not just a few but a great many go off, precisely for intelectual reasons. I understand you read these comments, and respond to some, but perhaps you missed this discussion on a previous thread. Someone there linked to someone with intellectual problems. Last week I saw an interview of someone who grew up in a chassidishe home in Monsey, who is now the adminstrator of a Facebook page for OTDers, with about 800 members. [I need not tell you that for everyone who joins such a club, there are at least a dozen who dont, probably much more. And there is more than one such Page.] He describes how his life began changing when he first visted the Library, and realized things he once took for granted are no longer obvious.
Afer having written the above, I went back and read your respnse to YS, and see that you seem to acknowledge this reality, but hedge it by claiming [unfoundedly, IMO] that such intellecutal problems also have roots in emotions, or that the questions are limited to people who were raised observant, rather than completely unaffiliated Jews. But that only makes the problem worse! This facile defense mechanism, that intellectual problems with orthodoxy somehow stopped in the 19th century, is in part the reason why the problem has festered. Because we convince ourselves the problem is only one of emotions, and close our eyes to the hard intellectual problems underpinning orthodox practices. My own suggestion, as stated earlier, is that we concentrate on affirming the fundamentals of orthodoxy, but quietly concede some of the more shakier positions. [Indeed, this has always the traditional way, from dropping the opposition to Hebrew, to darshening in the vernacular, and so forth.] I’m aware of the slipperly slope problems. But unlike certain others, I’m also aware that the huge numbers of people slipping away because of intellectual problems is already a fact on the ground, and somehow has to be addressed.
If I’ve misunderstood your words, please clarify.
[YA – I don’t know if you’ve misunderstood my words, largely b/c I’m not sure at all that I understand yours! The easiest response might just be to outline what I believe:
1) I believe that there are more people out there with serious intellectual issues than we own up to. The problem will get worse, not better, as every curious kid or adult has access to arguments that seem/purport to (and, in some cases, succeed to) devastate every answer and defense he has gotten from an ill-prepared rebbi.
2) A corollary of this is that areas of challenge which we ignored for decades have become the genie that escaped the bottle, not to be pushed back again.
3) That said, it is and will always be difficult to tease apart different parts of human motivation. There are indeed people who say they struggle with intellectual problems who really are struggling with the relationship they had with their father. Or a dozen other issues. Some of those people don’t even realize that it is emotional need that is driving them, rather than the questions.
4) I don’t think any conclusions can be drawn from the numbers of dropouts from chassidishe communities. Au contraire, I don’t believe that too many of them are struggling with J, E, P and D. I believe what others have written here and elsewhere. The narrower the community, the more onerous the demands, the fewer outlets for creativity and individuality, the greater the chances of people dropping out. I’m not convinced at all that intellectual challenges are part of it.
5) You are correct that providing someone with confidence in G-d’s existence is not the same as providing confidence in the truth of Orthodoxy. But for many people, once the former ceases to be an issue, the latter becomes a piece of cake. (Again, many – but not all.) Many intuitively want to be part of the community, and just need to get over the largest hurdles. Even dropouts (many of whom return) have fond memories of the positive aspects of Yiddishkeit they remember, and realize that the heterodox movements are an arid wasteland. If they can make peace with the Ribbono Shel Olam with Whom they are angry, they will come back to His territory, not to the now-proven defunct ersatz alternatives.
6) There is huge potential in some of these last points, like the emotional component in decision making, and the positive memories that even many dropouts retain. That is the potential to reach many people through love, caring, concern, community. Chabad does it every day. Some of those people they reach are very bright. They remain oblivious to the intellectual challenges, because they like what they have sufficiently to simply tune out to them. We do indeed need to take the intellectual challenges more seriously than we have, but we should not lose sight of all that still must be done through these other means.]
Please identify one such out of town community that is the recipient of such funds.
I speak from a Canadian perspective (and very-out-of-town Calgary in particular).
Re: Baruch Gitlin
Baruch, when the Slifkin event and the attacks on the Haredi way of life started happening and you began to have negative thoughts about them, did you speak to a Rav about these questions? I spoke to several and came to realize the these issues are just not shayach to me and my relationship with H”KBH.
I also became frum as an adult. Before I became frum, I attended a reform temple. Almost every week the Rabbi would make negative statements about the Orthodox from the Bimah on Friday nights, especially in regards to the lack of recognition of reform rabbis in Israel. He would urge people to vote in the World Jewish Congress elections to increase the reform jewish representation.
Hindy Frishman, how can you conflate the unjustifiable expenses of lavish weddings with girls attending seminary in Israel? There is a popular misconception that a year in seminary is an unnecessary expense, one in which girls fritter away their time eating, sleeping, and shopping. On the contrary, I believe that seminary can be one of the most spiritually powerful opportunities that young women will ever have, no less so than a year spent immersed in yeshiva is for young men, the key difference being that beyond 2-3 years post-high school, there are very few programs for [FFB] women. I’m not talking about girls needing to learn that they are chayav to marry kollel boys; rather, learning basic yesodos of what our purpose here on earth is, and how to fulfill our roles as Jewish women, not to mention developing a deep and abiding love for Eretz Yisrael that for many is a gateway to eventual aliyah. Unfortunately, this does not happen for many high school students in chutz la’aretz, due to a variety of factors: too many teenage distractions, conflict with parents/lack of independence, immaturity, cynicism, a culture that stands in diametric opposition to a genuine Torah way of living, etc. As a high school teacher, I can tell you that it is often with great relief that we send girls off to seminary–once they’ve gotten through that doorway,at least there they have a fighting chance.
Perhaps there are other ways of lowering tuition costs and paying a livable wage to Rabbeim without demanding that other organizations cease to exist or give up large amounts of their funding. Here are some ideas.
1) Increase productivity. Have classes structured in a way where Rabbeim who teach in the morning can also teach in the afternoon. Perhaps two schools can share in the salary of one Rebbi. Have him teach Gemara in the morning in Yeshiva and Navi in the afternoon in the Bais Yaakov.
2) Increase the use of technology. A High School Navi, Halacha, or Chumash Shiur can probably be given effectively via Skype or Taped video with an in room proctor. This method is used in distance education courses. Such an arrangement would be cost effective and enable Rabbeim to add to their meager salaries by giving more classes in more venues. (A Rebbi can give a morning shiur in Miami and then when he is finished teaching give the same shiur in LA.
3) Create a Partnership between schools and local business that are willing to hire Rabbeim to work part time in the afternoon. The Rebbi’s salary would be split between school and business and would be higher than what he is getting paid now.
To solve the tuition crisis there must be a mix of various fixes. Perhaps these ideas above can help.
The elephant in the tuition costs room, IMHO, is productivity gains (or lack thereof). Two hundred years ago nearly everybody was desperately poor by our standards. Since then, many professions have made huge strides in productivity. Those strides caused a vastly increased standard of living. Teachers haven’t. We have the same teacher:student ratio we did back then. But schools can’t offer teachers the same standard of living teachers had two hundred years ago, nobody would want to do the job.
Nintendo can create a video game once and have kids all over the place glued to a screen, learning how to stamp on turtles and avoid Mario-eating plants. Can we do the same with more useful skills?
Thank you for the clarification, RA. That was helpful. You make good points. I would seriously question point #3 though. If we wish to claim one’s intellectual problems are rooted in emotional problems, we can also claim the opposite. And making this claim is tantamount to theorizing that Dawkins and Darwin were faithful beleivers, but only wrote what they did because they disliked their mothers. All we have is what people tell us. And since for the first time in history individuals have the ability to easily broadcast their beleifs publicly, we are finding out there a lot more non-beleivers than we once thought. [True, it is not necessarily because of J, E, P and D, the old-fashioned way of saying “Biblical studies.” But its out there more than you seem to think. The Internet has totally transformed the world of less than 20 years ago. The young kids in Borsalinos in shul are unaware of it, of course. It’s all the young Jews you dont see at all that we’re talking about.
Gee, L, you are issuing a very serious indictment of Torah high school education for girls, aren’t you? That can’t be very encouraging to the very parents who are busting their guts trying to pay for that education. Not to mention the horrific implication that frum mothers cannot by themselves provide “basic yesodos of what our purpose here on earth is, and how to fulfill our roles as Jewish women.”
One could argue that the pressure to send girls to EY (especially in families where there are a few girls close in age), is contributing to the angst Hindy Frishman is expressing. Are there no US seminaries where the same yesodos can be conveyed?
Perhaps there are other ways of lowering tuition costs and paying a livable wage to Rabbeim
Note that increased productivity of teachers is certainly desirable and would have the effect of lowering tuition costs and increasing the wages of those teaching. This requires that each teacher teach more students. However, by definition it would result in fewer teaching positions available which means that a larger percentage of the Torah world would need to find (and prepare themselves for) gainful employment outside of chinuch.
At an extreme imagine that all dayschool mechanchim were replaced by a handful of Skyped superstars broadcasting to classrooms across the country. That would leave 5000+ mechanchim unemployed or relegated to low-wage proctors (best-case, a proctor would supervise twice as many children at the same pay as today — which would still leave 2500 newly unemployed).
“There are indeed people who say they struggle with intellectual problems who really are struggling with the relationship they had with their father.”
Both could be true simultaneously. A person could have a relationship issue, but still be annoyed if his philosophy professor or Gemara rebbe says a “krum sevara”. But take away the emotional component and cognitive dissonance could be dealt with better; thus, “there is huge potential in… the emotional component in decision making”.
“Au contraire, I don’t believe that too many of them are struggling with J, E, P and D.”
This makes sense, but some questions are intuitive. Nach is avoided in some circles not because of J, E, P and D but because of intuitive questions(interestingly, I recently saw a sefer on Navi with the haskama of the Divrei Yoel of Satmar). R. Moshe Benovitz pointed out in his interview with Steve Savitsky a similar thing regarding the interface of Navi and certain kiruv arguments for Mesorah(14:00 in mp3).
Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman of Bar-Ilan distinguishes between leaving observance and closing down the intellect(Kol Hamevaser 12/09),
“I have noticed that we are paying a big price for not addressing the challenges that are raised. That price is this – I see that people, later in life, begin to ask questions. People in college do not ask questions; I have never seen a student in college who went off the derekh because he took a Hebrew Bible class and there was suddenly P and Wellhausen. What does happen is that people grow up and they begin to become aware of the complexity of many things and
they learn about biblical studies and have never heard anything about it in yeshivah or day school, and they sense that the whole religious ma’arekhet(framework) is like an ostrich with its head in the sand. Now, here is the main point that I have come to realize only recently: even in cases where adults do become exposed to some of the complexities in Bible studies, very few people go off the derekh. But what I see more and more is that there are many people running around with questions who do not know how to deal with them because no one ever talks or writes about these issues.
And so what happens is that you get people – lots of them – who have questions that really bother them. What happens to these people is that when they are challenged to choose between their intellectual honesty and their Yiddishkayt, they choose to maintain their Yiddishkayt and simply close down all intellectual engagement with their Judaism. What happens to them religiously is that they go to shul and send their kids to day school and everything looks fine, but inside they are not fine, and the burning esh ha-Torah (fire of Torah) inside never gets rekindled. This is the cost that we pay.
…And if you monitor the problem in terms of how many people are leaving the derekh because of this, then you can think that we do not have a problem. But
if you measure the problem in terms of the level of intensity of people in our tsibbur(community), then I would claim that we have a large number of people who have lost a sense of passion because somewhere inside they are bothered by these questions and are convinced that we have nothing to say about these issues.”
Z – True, greater productivity will result in less Chinuch jobs available. However, this too can be a blessing in disguise and help create areal benefit because with less jobs available more people will have to train to join the workforce. This will then result in more working families and less need for extreme tuition reductions that often are given to “klei kodesh” families. This will help spread tuition costs more evenly among a larger base.
SA: That would leave 5000+ mechanchim unemployed or relegated to low-wage proctors (best-case, a proctor would supervise twice as many children at the same pay as today — which would still leave 2500 newly unemployed).
That’s a very real concern, but I think the way to address it is to provide training so these people can find lucrative employment elsewhere. That both decreases the ‘burden’ (and I apologize for the term; I mean it only in the economic sense) on the community while increasing the community’s aggregate resources.
Obviously much easier to write in a blog comment than to implement.
Shades of Gray – Just a thought. Is it possible to rekindle the “aish hatorah” and passion for yideshkeit in other ways. Perhaps there are areas and ways that can help compensate for the lack of geshmak that comes from uninspiring and inadequate intellectual answers to pressing questions. Perhaps a sense of focus and mission akin to a the worldview and mission espoused by Rav Hirsch in his writings can inspire passion in some. A rebbe’s tisch, a chassidishe davening, and other “spirtual” highs can perhaps light the fire of yiddeshkeit for others, and a geshmake svora, learning bchavrusah on a daily basis can invograte others. This will not answer the intellectual challenges but it might help inspire those that have anyway decided to “close down their intellectual engagement” with the challenges of the day.
“cognitive dissonance ‘ is the price everyone pays tryng to reconcile reconciling an exposition of facts that simply do not comply with the way religious beliefs are taught. The solution is to understand that there are many ways to understand the Torah and “these and those are the words of the Living G-d”. Tragically, we live in a climate of intellectual intollerance that drives away anyone who will not accept something just because “I say so”. The Slifkin affair was a turhing point in my life and I will never look at those who condemned him and ostracized him and forbade his books with the same feelings as before. Yet, they run the world many of us live in. The only solution to remaining frum is cognitive dissonance and that is a shame. I totally agree with Shades of Grey”.
“Is it possible to rekindle the “aish hatorah” and passion for yideshkeit in other ways”
I agree. R. Moshe Weinberger’s article, “Just One Thing is Missing: The Soul”, which has a title based on the “Aish Kodesh”(passion), doesn’t mention anything about refuting bible critics, although he does refer to intellectual aspects of Judaism too(“It makes no difference if one place prefers a Litvishe G-d and the other a Chassidishe G-d. Open and frank discussions about faith and doubt must be encouraged – not feared and stymied.”).
R. Berman is of the opinion that academic issues should be introduced by frum teachers to students to avoid the situation he described. I assume he would agree that it depends on the person and community. R. Adlerstein wrote of the need for “responsible Bnei Torah to rise to the challenges”. R. Berman describes the benefits and challenges in attempting to write his book(I didn’t read the book; the full Kol Hamevaser interview is available online),
“So I like to think that my articles and books are kosher, in that they contain no heretical ideas about the Torah, but at times I have had people who are rosham ve-rubbam be-tokh olamah shel Torah (overwhelmingly within the world of Torah) who read some of my academic work and say it is kind of cold, that the discourse is just a different discourse. It is out of practical necessity, because you have to publish in accepted forums…
On Chabad.org, there is someone who is crazy about my book, and people write him emunah questions: “Don’t Bible critics say this and that?” The fact that he can say that there is this book published by Oxford University Press becomes a vehicle for keiruv, because now I have currency. If someone who is not a ma’amin (believer) comes and asks me how I know the claims of the book, I can respond that I have a doctorate in Bible and I published in Oxford University Press and they are discussing it at SBL. That might not make me right, but it does mean you cannot dismiss me as easily as you could an amateur, either. And this is important when we are speaking about having credibility with people who are not frum. But that is a sacrifice; I do not write the way I feel, because I have to write academically. It is not the tokhen (content), though–it is the mode of discourse.”
There’s an “easy” solution to the difficulty of paying high tuition (and all the other US social costs): aliyah. Never has it been easier. If giving your child a real Jewish education is truly a priority then you may well have to leave extended family, friends, even a secure job, behind, and move here. Here you’ll be able to live the gashmiyus-ly simpler lifestyle that should be your aspiration but unfortunately is unlikely to be so in the US where wealth and comfort are worshipped.
As for intellectual questions, they are nothing new in our generation. I recently saw a parable attributed to a Rishon which describes someone struggling to reconcile hardships in life with a belief in the goodness of the Creator. There have always been and always will be questions otherwise where’s the free choice? But i have yet to find someone who has a real connection to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, who is so troubled by questions that he leaves the frum world. Avraham Avinu had (unanswered) questions. So did Moshe Rabbeinu. To all the commenters so bothered about the opposition to Slifkin’s books, i ask you: What’s that got to do with you and your relationship with Hashem?
Today it’s each man for his own, meaning that the age of reliance on a powerful charismatic leader to vitalize your connection to Hashem is over. You have to do it yourself and yes, it’s hard.
For those still on the outside, they will come in if they are ready to give up the glitter of the shtusim they still think they are enjoying. There’s nothing left out there but most people prefer to drug themselves up (in all sorts of ways) so they won’t notice. Millions spent in kiruv can’t make someone give up a lifestyle based on hedonism. They have to want to change, and once they do, they don’t need some “kiruv expert” to do it.