I come from what can probably be described as a left-of-center black-hat background. My elementary school was similar, although perhaps more solidly black hat, but also kind of centrist until recent years. Now it seems like they're pretty much to the right (although according to the literature they always send me their secular ed at least aspires to be good. But the literature is filled with pictures of everyone prostrating themselves before visiting extremist gedolim too). They were always considered a feeder school for some excellent yeshivish mesivtas.
I went to a name brand mesivta that I decline to name. I suppose it is pretty centrist for a yeshivish yeshiva. Bachurim are allowed to go to college at night, much to the present roshei yeshivos' chagrin. Apparently the founding rosh yeshiva allowed it and there's just no way for them to stop it. But if you went, you definitely couldn't have been considered one of the top guys. And when I was in twelfth grade our mashgiach gave us a schmuess where he read from a famou letter by R. Baruch Ber (to the unnamed young R. Shimon Schwab) forbidding college, full stop. The implication was clear. But I did go to college anyway when I was at that yeshiva.
I was always interested in history and hashkafa. I read a lot. I would discover books in my parents house, things like 'Rejoice O Youth' by R. Avigdor Miller (a sort of modern day yeshivish Kuzari, if you haven't read it). 'This Is My God' by Herman Wouk, which I love. I also read books like 'The Indestructible Jews' by historian Max I. Diament, my first brush with an apikorshise view of Jewish history, so to speak. That confused me, but I could compartmentalize, the same way I could read about "millions of years ago" and evolution and dismiss it as obviously untrue yet read it as if it was. I would say that in high school I was a bit more clued in than the average bachur, but not substantially more so.
When I was in college I took a couple of Judaic studies classes. One was given by a fairly prominent Jewish academic. Needless to say it was pretty radical for me to be sitting in a college learning Rambam with girls (and the odd guy from Nigeria). The professor glibly asked once if we knew what the "theme" of a certain book in Nach was. If we knew what the difference between Yirmiyahu and Yeshayahu was. Don't make me laugh, you know? I knew a shev shmaytza, but Jeremiah? That realization bothered me. Why was I, nearly twenty and with a decade and a half of yeshiva education, so ignorant?
So I began to read more. I cultivated an interest in R. Aryeh Kaplan and his Torah u-madda without the name approach. I discovered R. Samson Rafael Hirsch. You mean there is a mainstream, unapologetic position that Torah and culture ought to proudly coexist? I actually read the Hertz Chumash (believe it or not, it wasn't until I heard Nosson Scherman describe it as "heroic" that I thought it might be worth looking at). I read R. Aryeh Kaplan's 'The Living Torah' translation and was absolutely floored by its bibliography, or the idea of it.
Basically I gradually came to hold a sort of Torah U'Madda view, without knowing it, and without having shaken of my prejudices against it. After leaving the yeshiva I learnt for several more years in a different yeshiva, more open in some ways because it had a more diverse student body. The mashgiach there gave a schmuess once about how Torah U'Madda is wrong since anything with "Torah AND" is krum. Kindly explain why "torah and" is worse than "torah with", I should have asked. But I didn't, since I kind of agreed with him then.
It took a while before I could realize that, you know, the fact that the Jastrow dictionary is in widespread use in yeshivos means something and was actually a victory of the haskalah, in fact. That all sorts of non-Jewish and non-frum sources are and were regularly used to illuminate Torah by all sorts of impeccable Torah personalities--these mean something. It means that there is value and truth apart from a very narrow, ideological confine.
I remember once telling a certain distinguished rosh yeshiva (a "godol" in the making, by any reckoning) what I thought was a nice peshat in the Akeda. It went something like this. Hashem commanded Avraham to sacrifice Yitzhak, but an angel had him desist. Who was the angel? None other than Avraham's yetzer ha-tov!
Who said this vort? Alan Dershowitz's nine-year old daughter, as recounted in his book 'The Genesis of Justice'. I also told this rosh yeshiva another vort that I read in that book. Why did Adam listen to Eve? True, Eve had a smoothe-tongued serpant seducing her. But Adam only had Eve. Why would he have listened to her and not God? Answered Dershowitz, Adam wasn't convinced by her. But he knew that she would be exiled from the gan, and he knew his place was with her, so he ate. Very romantic.
Well, this RY absolutely loved these two peshats. I didn't tell him where I got them from, I pretended to forget. That was a test I devised for myself, to see if the injunction to accept the truth from wherever it comes is true. Had I told him the source? Its possible he'd have done a 180. But to me it was a satisfactory proof that you can find a shtik Toyrah in surprising places.
It took a long time to shed earlier prejudices. I am almost scandalized now how I first felt when I discovered Nehama Leibowitz. I liked what I was reading but I felt a visceral reaction to it simply because she was a woman -- and I considered myself to be a feminist, at least in the sense that women should not have their opportunities hampered and should be paid equal wages and so forth. Yet, there I was not being able to digest Torah being taught by a woman. Even though I knew that women taught Torah to women and never would have thought that what they were teaching wasn't real. But the idea of a man learning Torah from a woman -- that just didn't make sense to me. My reaction was emotional and without any solid basis. There was a whole world I had no clue about.
I felt the same way when the whole Making of a Godol thing was brewing. Imagine my shock to learn that not only had R. Yaakov read Anna Karenina (as had I -- booooring) but he was apparently shocked that the bachurim in Torah V'Daas hadn't. And these are just two minor examples of many, many more shocks.
Frankly, when you open up your eyes and realize the edifice of ignorance that has been constructed you have no choice but to investigate further. And my experience has obviously not unique by any stretch.
I went to a name brand mesivta that I decline to name. I suppose it is pretty centrist for a yeshivish yeshiva. Bachurim are allowed to go to college at night, much to the present roshei yeshivos' chagrin. Apparently the founding rosh yeshiva allowed it and there's just no way for them to stop it. But if you went, you definitely couldn't have been considered one of the top guys. And when I was in twelfth grade our mashgiach gave us a schmuess where he read from a famou letter by R. Baruch Ber (to the unnamed young R. Shimon Schwab) forbidding college, full stop. The implication was clear. But I did go to college anyway when I was at that yeshiva.
I was always interested in history and hashkafa. I read a lot. I would discover books in my parents house, things like 'Rejoice O Youth' by R. Avigdor Miller (a sort of modern day yeshivish Kuzari, if you haven't read it). 'This Is My God' by Herman Wouk, which I love. I also read books like 'The Indestructible Jews' by historian Max I. Diament, my first brush with an apikorshise view of Jewish history, so to speak. That confused me, but I could compartmentalize, the same way I could read about "millions of years ago" and evolution and dismiss it as obviously untrue yet read it as if it was. I would say that in high school I was a bit more clued in than the average bachur, but not substantially more so.
When I was in college I took a couple of Judaic studies classes. One was given by a fairly prominent Jewish academic. Needless to say it was pretty radical for me to be sitting in a college learning Rambam with girls (and the odd guy from Nigeria). The professor glibly asked once if we knew what the "theme" of a certain book in Nach was. If we knew what the difference between Yirmiyahu and Yeshayahu was. Don't make me laugh, you know? I knew a shev shmaytza, but Jeremiah? That realization bothered me. Why was I, nearly twenty and with a decade and a half of yeshiva education, so ignorant?
So I began to read more. I cultivated an interest in R. Aryeh Kaplan and his Torah u-madda without the name approach. I discovered R. Samson Rafael Hirsch. You mean there is a mainstream, unapologetic position that Torah and culture ought to proudly coexist? I actually read the Hertz Chumash (believe it or not, it wasn't until I heard Nosson Scherman describe it as "heroic" that I thought it might be worth looking at). I read R. Aryeh Kaplan's 'The Living Torah' translation and was absolutely floored by its bibliography, or the idea of it.
Basically I gradually came to hold a sort of Torah U'Madda view, without knowing it, and without having shaken of my prejudices against it. After leaving the yeshiva I learnt for several more years in a different yeshiva, more open in some ways because it had a more diverse student body. The mashgiach there gave a schmuess once about how Torah U'Madda is wrong since anything with "Torah AND" is krum. Kindly explain why "torah and" is worse than "torah with", I should have asked. But I didn't, since I kind of agreed with him then.
It took a while before I could realize that, you know, the fact that the Jastrow dictionary is in widespread use in yeshivos means something and was actually a victory of the haskalah, in fact. That all sorts of non-Jewish and non-frum sources are and were regularly used to illuminate Torah by all sorts of impeccable Torah personalities--these mean something. It means that there is value and truth apart from a very narrow, ideological confine.
I remember once telling a certain distinguished rosh yeshiva (a "godol" in the making, by any reckoning) what I thought was a nice peshat in the Akeda. It went something like this. Hashem commanded Avraham to sacrifice Yitzhak, but an angel had him desist. Who was the angel? None other than Avraham's yetzer ha-tov!
Who said this vort? Alan Dershowitz's nine-year old daughter, as recounted in his book 'The Genesis of Justice'. I also told this rosh yeshiva another vort that I read in that book. Why did Adam listen to Eve? True, Eve had a smoothe-tongued serpant seducing her. But Adam only had Eve. Why would he have listened to her and not God? Answered Dershowitz, Adam wasn't convinced by her. But he knew that she would be exiled from the gan, and he knew his place was with her, so he ate. Very romantic.
Well, this RY absolutely loved these two peshats. I didn't tell him where I got them from, I pretended to forget. That was a test I devised for myself, to see if the injunction to accept the truth from wherever it comes is true. Had I told him the source? Its possible he'd have done a 180. But to me it was a satisfactory proof that you can find a shtik Toyrah in surprising places.
It took a long time to shed earlier prejudices. I am almost scandalized now how I first felt when I discovered Nehama Leibowitz. I liked what I was reading but I felt a visceral reaction to it simply because she was a woman -- and I considered myself to be a feminist, at least in the sense that women should not have their opportunities hampered and should be paid equal wages and so forth. Yet, there I was not being able to digest Torah being taught by a woman. Even though I knew that women taught Torah to women and never would have thought that what they were teaching wasn't real. But the idea of a man learning Torah from a woman -- that just didn't make sense to me. My reaction was emotional and without any solid basis. There was a whole world I had no clue about.
I felt the same way when the whole Making of a Godol thing was brewing. Imagine my shock to learn that not only had R. Yaakov read Anna Karenina (as had I -- booooring) but he was apparently shocked that the bachurim in Torah V'Daas hadn't. And these are just two minor examples of many, many more shocks.
Frankly, when you open up your eyes and realize the edifice of ignorance that has been constructed you have no choice but to investigate further. And my experience has obviously not unique by any stretch.
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