[Avodah] A Modern Orthodox Hedgehog

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Wed Dec 18 14:51:09 PST 2019


On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 05:19:31PM -0500, Sholom Simon via Avodah wrote:
> See
> https://thelehrhaus.com/commentary/a-modern-orthodox-hedgehog-for-a-postmodern-world/

and part 2:
https://thelehrhaus.com/commentary/a-modern-orthodox-hedgehog-for-a-postmodern-world-part-2/

I have a lot of thoughts on the subject.


1.
To start with the banal... The "hedgehog" metaphor isn't just about
finding your company's strength and running with it. It's also about
prioritizing other things out. We use the term all the time at work. We're
not writing our own low-latency networking layer because there are people
who do that full time. Our hedgehog is trading systems; why waste time
doing something ourside that bailiwick -- find the company for whom low
latency networking is their hedgehog. So, to really use the idea here
would mean to leave learning to the yeshivish, davening to chassidim,
go out of kiruv since Chabad does it, and just focus on leOr Goyim. Let
everyone do what they do best, and hire out the other jobs to those who
do each of those jobs best. Yissachar and Zevulun, but on steroids. The
idiom was misused. (Totally irrelevant; it just felt good to get that
off my chest.)


2.
Second, a movement is a group of people who gather around an Ism, not the
other way around. You can't save Mod-O by giving them a different ideal,
even one you feel is related to their current one. That's killing one
movement by creating a new thing to attract its adherents. Nothing too
terrible. After all, the only value in a movement is whether it generates
fealty to Torah umitzvos, not as an end in itself.

You can't just tell people "here's your new ideal now". (Which is
basically the same as RJR's point.) That mod-O crowd would have to buy
into this leOr Goyim Ism for themselves. You can't just propose it in a
Lehrhaus article. Look how many decades of leadership it took RYBS to
put his fingerprint on the Mod-O ideal, and even that was only in the
realm of nuance about what "u" means, and what "mada" does. You expect
to totally redirect the community without having a rabbi's rabbi at the
helm? Then figure out how to fire up a grass roots movement.

Because we are not talking about a "hedgehog", we are talking about what
idea people should put front-and-center in their life's mission statement.

The target here is diaspora Mod-O. This leOr Goyim wouldn't be attractive
to somoene living in a Jewish State. Nor to someone who doesn't believe
in a Torah-and hashkafah with its openness to participating in general
society. But it's not Mod-O's current Ism in any way similar in emphasis
or behavior.


3.
As for Torah uMada... I wrote here a couple of times that I don't think
it speaks well to the masses. First, because RYBS's vision of "mada"
really only appeals to the academically inclined. Second, because his "u"
is dialectical. Not too many people even know what a neo-Kantian means
by dialectic. It's not a synthesis. It is not compartmentalization of two
opposites. It's finding meaning in their interplay, without expecting to
get to resolution. Can the masses do that with Torah uMadda? Or are the
outcome inevitably going to be primarily a population of compromizers and
a population of compartmentalizers? TuM thus has the rare problem that
imperfect following of this ideal is actually worse than not chasing it
at all. Because it gives motive to compromising one's fealty to Torah!

TiDE doesn't have these problems, since DE has more to do with being
a refined human being as defined by being cultured. High culture, not
academic knowledge. And synthesis, not dialetic. The Tzitz Eliezer,
in a festschrift for RSRH, described TiDE as a hylomorphism (a tzurah
vachomer). That derekh eretz is the substance to which a person is
supposed to give Torah's form.

AND, TiDE includes much of what R Gil Perl writes about here. But without
making it the front-and-center. The idea of Yaft Elokim leYefes veYishkon
be'ohalei Sheim is not just that Sheim should benefit from Yefes's yofi,
but that Sheim has the job of being the moral and spiritual voice in
the partnership.

But again, making that aspect of things the centerpiece of the movement
would be something new.


4.
In terms of defensibility... We are given the whole Torah project in order
that we be a "mamlekhes kohanim vegoy qadosh". Hashem introduced maamad
Har Sinai with those words. Arguably the Torah is to the Jews as the Jews
are supposed to be to the world -- the means of obtaining Devar Hashem.

But, aniyei irekha qodmin... How do you make a movement about bringing
Hashem's values to non-Jews that doesn't invest more effort in doing
the same to our fellow Jews? The dialectic (sorry!) between universalism
and Jewish particularlism can't be thrown out the window.

Although, Universalism is in now, Jewish particularism being too close
to the lately much maligned ideal of nationalism.


I am not saying the idea that the Torah can be viewed as a way to make us
a priesthood caste to the rest of the world is false. I am just wondering
if that way of viewing the Torah can possibly attract people well enough
to build a new movement around.

And in fact in much of part II, RGP himself spells out reasons why,
for which his solutions fall flat to my ear.

The Post-Modern era is not one in which the idea of spreading the message
to others is going to win adherents. His answer is to sure to brand on
LeOr Goyim instead of Or laGoyim, to inform rather than to preach. "My
calling is not to convince you of their certitude, but to humbly offer
you a glimpse of their beauty." But it is exactly the kind of subtlety
that would get lost in the translation to a mass movement. One slides
into the other and out of fitting with the times.


5.
OTOH, what is exciting many Mod-O Jews today on a spiritual plane is
what a famous Jewish Action article (somewhat incorrectly) labeled
Neo-Chassidus. A worldview built on the Peiczeza and Nesivos Shalom,
Tanya, Bilvavli and the Chalban. With the music of Carlebach and lots
of epigrams by Rav Nachman.

The opposite direction from reaching out.... Deveiqus. A Me-and-G-d way
of viewing Judaism.

We even have a similar problem in The Mussar Institute. (Whose audience
are "spiritually seeking Jews", primarily from the non-O world.) People
are getting so caught up in middah work, the reaching in, that I have a
personal agenda to focus on the bein adam lachaveiro part of R Yisrael
Salanter's message. Perfection in middos being their maximizing our
ability to be givers (REED), to be nosei be'ol im chaveiro (R Chazkel),
leheitiv im hazulas (R Shimon Shkop), etc...

Selling an Other-Focused Judaism, even one with a universalist spin, may
not be the world's easiest sell.

Myself, I would push an Other-Focused Judaism too, but without the
deemphasis of ahavas Yisrael in favor of ahavas haberios. And, for that
matter, leheitiv im hazulas applies to physical chessed to my wife,
family, friends and neighborhood well before the hatavah of teaching the
world what the Torah has to offer. My spirituality starts with concern
for my stomach and your soul.

If only I knew how to make that message attractive in a world where
products are made popular by putting the word "I" in front of their names.

But that's where my own quest as moved since the days when this list
began. Mussar is a good idea, and one I hadn't given up on. But it never
was a mass movement, and likely something that requires that much work
never could be.

But could in theory be practiced by anyone is a Torah based on the idea
that Hillel's saying that the whole Torah is "de'alakh sani, lechaverkho
lo sa'avid" was means seriously, or that "ve'ahavta lerei'akha kamokha"
is a kelal gadol even after you leave the poster behind when you leave the
2nd grade classroom. A return to the Judaism of aspiring to an ehrlicher
Yid, rather than the emphasis on ritual and personal holiness of frumkeit.

If only I knew how to fight those elements of the zeigeist.

But then, I am not trying to rebuild an already existing movement.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Nearly all men can stand adversity,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   but if you want to test a man's character,
Author: Widen Your Tent      give him power.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                    -Abraham Lincoln


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