Critical Engagement and Critical Abstention
R.A. Alpert
An unnamed yeshiva’s “scoreboard” of mitzvot, potentially able to be racked up by an hour of serious limmud ha-Torah (2,942,400,000,000 mitzvot before multiplying by the number of chavrutot and doubling that sub-total if in the land of Israel), is the jumping off point of Tzvi Goldstein’s meditation on the respective approaches to what he refers to as Yeshivish/Haredi and Centrist/Modern Orthodox camps. Despite acknowledging what he calls their “video game nature,” the mitzvah-points to be accrued via talmud Torah, by their sheer astronomical numbers, cause Goldstein see them as reflective of the Yeshivish/Haredi worldview—one which, so he says, focuses on Olam ha-Ba, the Next World, over the here and now, and which chooses, with singular purpose and tenacity, to focus on talmud Torah over and above other mitzvot—never mind the secular and profane. Modern Orthodoxy, as Goldstein sees its tenets expressed through the words of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch as well as Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, is, in contrast, about building a Godly world in the here and now; it focuses more on Olam ha-Zeh, or, as Rabbi Hirsch famously put it, on the fact that ikar Shekhinah ba-tahtonim: a priori, it was God’s desire to see this—the physical world of man—turned into a model Torah society wherein His Presence would find its main abode.
Although I am not entirely in agreement with Goldstein’s reference to Rabbi Hirsch’s conception of Torah im derekh eretz as being a synthesis—it is, in fact, a much more holistic worldview—any Hirschian would fully endorse Goldstein’s description of TIDE as a critical one, one wherein the Torah is the arbiter, and through whose lens any given society (the Hirschian definition of derekh eretz) and all of that society’s arts, sciences, and culture is to be appraised. The Torah, as Rabbi Hirsch makes clear numerous times, is there to elevate man and civilization (who have never yet reached the pinnacles of its lofty heights), and is never to be lowered to the depressed state that may currently be in vogue in a given society: that which does not match the yardstick of Torah is to be rejected. Any reevaluation or change of circumstances and views must be “progress to the Torah height, not, however, lowering the Torah to the level of the age, cutting down the towering summit to the sunken grade of our life.”
While Goldstein sees the over-focus on talmud Torah lishmah and Olam ha-Ba as cause for some of the problems faced by the Orthodox world today, I would argue that it is the failure to adopt TIDE’s critical approach that has caused major problems, in both the Yeshivish/Haredi and Modern Orthodox camps. Ramhal is no less revered in the Modern Orthodox world than he is in Yeshivish circles. It is the way that many in both camps relate, or fail to relate, to this world, that causes trouble, not one camp’s alleged prioritization of the World to Come over the current, temporal one.
To personify these two groups, Goldstein conjures up before us two friends—Shlomo, from, perhaps, Teaneck, the M.O. representative; and Shloimie, who now resides in Lakewood, and is the Yeshiva world’s faithful delegate to this symposium. Growing up, Shlomo followed some sports, was on social media, and was not overly devoted to his Torah learning, while Shloimie had access to a talk-and-text phone only, was involved in numerous extra-curricular Torah-learning activities (where, we may assume, he was busy racking up those very mitzvah-points), and went on to post-high school yeshiva and kollel, before eventually and grudgingly seeking some kind of income-generating activity for his growing family.
Our author is very kind to both of these young men—almost, one might say, to the point of naïveté. If Shloimie did not own a kosherized smartphone, his parents or older siblings very likely did; WhatsApp is high up in the Yeshivish ways-to-communicate totem pole. We hear nothing of the de rigeuer gadgets, tech, and clothing brands and styles he was expected to, and gladly did, care about. Shloimie may now dress in black and white, but there is a very good chance that he in fact attended any number of minyanim when off from school attired in Adidas warm-up pants and the coolest sneakers his parents, school, and/or wallet could handle.
In turn, while M.O. Shlomo is described as having always been careful about keeping Shabbat, we hear nothing of his struggles—and perhaps they were a lost cause to begin with—with such issues as kol ishah, nivul peh, being shomer negi’ah, and keeping a modicum of shemirat einayim, when watching movies and TV, listening to the latest music, and having everything available—and sometimes popping up without warning—literally in the palm of one’s hand, on one’s smartphone, lightly filtered or not. Truth be told, many “Shloimies” (categorized as such based on family background and yeshivot being attended) struggle with these issues as well.
Our author has also neglected mention of the boys’ sisters, Shlomit and Shulamis. While they perhaps varied in their seminary, college, and career choices (Shlomit attended Migdal Oz and Stern College, followed by SUNY downstate, while Shulamis attended BJJ, earned her degree through a frum college program and ventured to Touro for grad school), they are surprisingly similar as well. Both make use (one hopes only good use) of the latest tech; both are keenly up on styles and trends; both, unfortunately, and despite a Yeshiva day school or Bais Yaakov background, tend to engage in little textual Torah study past their last seminary or college Judaic studies course. In short, both are very much the products of the modern world.
A critical appraisal of what the wider world has to offer is seldom seen in either segment of the Orthodox world under discussion. Indeed, the Yeshivish/Haredi camp would claim no need of any sort of critical apparatus—it wants no part of the wider world in any case, or so it asserts. It should be noted, however, that the “world” under discussion here, the world which the Yeshivish camp wants out of, is not “this world” as opposed to the next, as Goldstein posits, but the “treif, peritzusdik” outside world, as opposed to the “Torah velt.” One may hear all the stories one wishes of Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa or Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and their ascetic, other (next) worldly, lifestyles—but it is every likelihood that one will be doing so at an Avos uBonim melaveh malka with pizza, or at a Thursday night mishmar with cholent, while trying to avoid getting the cuffs of one’s Italian-made jacket dirty. Prestige, status, connections, know-how, and money (even including the proud non-possession of the last) do not strike one as terribly next-worldly mindsets and values.
Generally speaking, the more practically useful aspects of today’s civilization—technology and science, just to mention a couple—are accepted without much background context or thought by the Yeshivish/Haredi camp. Ironically, though this camp is generally described as Torah-only, many of its members seem intent on bringing all of today’s culture of materialism into its Torah citadel, with only a perfunctory “kashering.” Moreover, precisely because ostensibly “only” Torah is to be permitted entry, every new gadget and luxury, as well as the most ephemeral opinion, must become a part of the Torah world that one is to never leave. Phones and gadgets, luxury brands and luxury lifestyles, all slip in once having donned a kosher varnish. Sometimes, indeed, the varnish is almost invisible. Why everything from toilet-training books to real estate investment guides must be beatified with the descriptives “Torah” or “frum” is less than immediately apparent, and how or why support of MAGA and anti-vaccine ideologies became a Jewish—never mind “torahdik”—mindset will have to be left to later and wiser researchers than this author. A walled city from which one never has occasion to leave may be appealing —one must wonder, however, if the solution is truly to bring everything, lock, stock, and garbage dump, inside its perimeter.
Conversely, too many in the Modern Orthodox world, in practice, seem too busy munching popcorn at the latest movie to be overly critical of the outside world, to begin with. This is not to say that thinkers and writers within the M.O. sphere do not engage critically with the world, and critique and criticize it in good measure, but a TIDE “critical approach” obliges a consequent abstention from anything which has failed the criteria. Much of Modern Orthodoxy seems to have left the citadel for good, to go wandering through an unfenced and unpoliced big wide world outside. On the more innocuous side of things, we are invited by an M.O. congregation to “come watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and elevate your melaveh malka with a ramen bar (pareve)!” On the more worrying side, we are faced with educators and others, all supposedly well-imbued with Torah-knowledge and Torah-views, who seem incapable and unable to pull back from the regnant, liberal positions on such issues as homosexuality and transgenderism, even as these views which they endorse veer towards explicit conflict with halakhah. To put it mildly, this is hardly a critical engagement with the world—this is capitulation, and the Shekhinah can scarcely be expected to look forward to dwelling in such current tahtonim.
TIDE sees no walls, no dichotomy, between Torah and world civilization, yet values each differently, and finds the place and the value for the latter based solely on the dictates and halakhic and moral imperatives of the former. A TIDE civil engineer would recommend replacing our citadel’s walls with, instead, careful fencing around those areas outside which must be avoided. But for all that is acceptable—to use it, use it mindfully, and use it in the context in which it belongs—as derekh eretz, but not as Torah.
This mindfulness and critical approach are what is all too often lacking today, across the board, and no amount of Yeshivish “geschmak” or M.O. ramen melavei malka will substitute.
R.A. Alpert
Washington Heights, New York
This article first appeared in Lehrhaus, 1/31/24, as "Responses To Tzvi Goldstein On Centrist Orthodoxy And Haredi Orthodoxy," and can be accessed at
https://thelehrhaus.com/jewish-thought-history/letter-to-the-editor-responses-to-tzvi-goldstein-on-centrist-orthodoxy-and-haredi-orthodoxy/
