Dear Shalom,
Rabbi Michael J. Broyde whom I greatly respect (and frankly blush at the fact that I was his Bar Mitzva teacher decades ago) addresses the issue of claims made without empirical data to back it up. The fact is that I admitted that right at the beginning of my post. Even so, just because one doesn’t have scientific studies to back up what one says, doesn’t mean that he is totally ignorant either. “Ein l’dayan elah ma she’einav ro’ot”.
My post was a response to Professor Yitzchok Levine (whom I also have a great deal of respect for) that implied that many, if not most, of Israeli Post High School Yeshiva graduates (including those that stayed for two years) are not observant today. I found this claim to be impossible, and not even close to the truth; and even though I don’t have a scientific study to back it up, I have a feeling that most people would agree with me (I admittedly don’t have an empirical study to back that up either).
Although this may not be politically correct in academia, but not everything we think, say or write has to have been proven by a scientifically based study to be true. Most of a man’s conclusions and decisions are based on perceptions that he makes without empirical data. Does that mean that they are false? Our lives would be absurd if every observation needed a scientific study before being valid. If we had such a study it would be great, but until then we have to rely on our “sechel hayashar” and our own perceptions.
Another point that I made that Rabbi Broyde takes issue with is my unproven claim that "Kids today are prouder and more desiring of their Judaism than in years past". Again, I can only base this on what I see both here in Israel and when I visit Chutz Laaretz to interview students. When I was in High School there was very little work done on anything “Ruchani” during the School year and surely during the summer vacation. In the last two decades there has been a revolution in this aspect of education. In my day there was no NCSY Kollel, no Kollel in Summer Camps for High School kids and schools gave experiential Judaism very little weight. Today is an entirely different world than 40 years ago when I was in High School. NCSY Kollel is very popular, almost every camp has a Kollel of its own and schools invest time and effort in positive Jewish experiential programming which was almost nonexistent in my day. These programs are paying off dividends which are very evident to anyone who is involved in Post High School Jewish Youth.
Kol Tuv,
David Lebor
Ram, Yeshivat Shaalvim
