Responding to students' hashkafa questions

Dear Shalom:

Over the course of the last few years, this site has been chosen by several serious contributors to highlight a number of very significant “deficiencies” of the contemporary Modern Orthodox educational enterprise.

Among other recent concerns, I am referring to (1) the “theological” issue of the “absence” of any understanding of and relationship to God; (2) the “intellectual/cognitive” issue of the “absence” of even a rudimentary knowledge of the fundamentals of what Torah comprises, of Jewish History, and of Zionism; and (3) the “spiritual” issue of the discomfiture and difficulty experienced with “Tefila.”

With all humility, I would like, in this vein, to describe another issue that is endemic in these very same institutions. My concern is with a “hashkafic” matter of huge import.

Since making Aliyah with my wife a little over ten years ago (B”H), I have had the good fortune of teaching at a Yeshiva and, then, at a Seminary in Yerushalayim. During this time, I have had the opportunity to engage students from all of the major “Modern Orthodox” schools, both in the Greater New York Metropolitan area and from across the USA, Canada and England. In my experience, the issue I will describe knows no geographic or socio-economic bounds.

I think the best way to define this issue would be to relate a brief exchange that took place between me and a student during a recent “chavruta”: We were discussing the Torah’s treatment of some aspects of marriage and divorce and I happened to mention that the Halacha is that if a husband and wife get divorced, and the woman marries another man and then divorces him, she cannot remarry her first husband. My student’s reaction was: “That is very arbitrary.”

For me, this kind of comment triggers simultaneous bells and whistles and alarms at 120 decibels and above! I took off my glasses in a very slow and deliberate manner, and said softly: “We gotta talk! If you have little or no knowledge of the subject, don’t you think that Hashem deserves the benefit of the doubt?”

In my experience, this response is one of several that is proffered by students who have minimal or superficial or zero knowledge of a particular subject AND, in addition, the subject seemingly offends their 21st-century sense of equality, justice, human rights, women’s rights, animal rights, “toilet” rights, and all other “rights.”

Other sagacious responses of this ilk that I have heard over the years are: (1) “That makes no sense!” (2) “That is so unfair!” and (3) “How did the Rabbis know…maybe they got it wrong!”

It is my expectation that, after 12 years of formal Jewish education, a student would have internalized the notion that the Divine nature of Torah, by definition, validates its content and that to argue that something in the Torah “seems arbitrary” or “doesn’t make sense” is not only foolish, but it is presumptuous, pretentious, and embarrassing.

It seems to me that, instead of “it makes no sense,” students should have been taught to say (and think) “I don’t understand it” or, at least, “It makes no sense to me.” Perhaps instead of “It is so unfair,” we could be treated to an occasional "It is so unfortunate!”

Quite likely, this will just be the prelude to the equally serious and equally objectionable assertion: How can we be really sure that the Rabbis got it right.”

Clearly, these two points have to be dealt with separately - each with its respective appropriate tools, analysis and discussions.

Is it possible that this kind of question was not raised during the course of the students’ academic careers? What is more likely is that the questions were raised and not answered (not in class when actually posed or afterward in some other venue). Chaval!

Is it possible that I (and my colleagues here) just happen to develop the kind of relationships with our students that allows them to feel comfortable broaching these difficult areas? Is it possible that the programs in Israel are more informal and less test-oriented and, therefore, allow the students to feel freer to experiment? Both of these are possible, but they cannot be used to justify anything. They only further the assertion that the system is broken. These discussions can’t wait until the student is18 or 19.Chaval!

How are we sending these young people out into the world of secular universities and colleges without even a basic understanding of the underpinnings of their faith? Chaval!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2017 09:25PM by mlb.