[Avodah] A Modern Orthodox Hedgehog

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Sun Dec 22 10:58:07 PST 2019


On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 9:03pm CST, R Harry Maryles pointed us to
his blog post "Of Hedgehogs and Ideology" at
<http://haemtza.blogspot.com/2019/12/of-hedgehogs-and-ideology.html>
written in response to R Gil Perl's two-part essay on The Lerhaus.

Responding to RHM's blog post:
...
> That said, I do not believe that Modern Orthodoxy should make being an
> or LaGoyim its passion no matter how noble it is. In my view it should be
> defined the way it is traditionally defined as adhering to the ideology
> of Torah U'Madda (TuM).

And skipping ahead to his close for a minute:
> Does that leave Modern Orthodoxy bereft of the hedgehog concept?
> Perhaps. But in my view using a Mitzvah that does not really define what
> we are really about in order to excite passion in us will in my view -
> not work.

I thought of this while responding to a very different conversation
on Facebook. Someone advocated a more meiqil approach to halakhah on
the grounds that the way O is done is scaring people away. I made two
objections: C was only one failed attempt at this approach -- it just
doesn't work. People just don't bother conforming to the lower standard.
The other objection ended with an on-topic one-liner:

You can't save something by redefining it.

But it matters less here. We don't really need to save Mod-O as much as
maximizing the shemiras Torah umitzvos of people who affiliate Mod-O.
So, assuming I thought people would stay with that affiliaiton even as
the movement redefined itself, I wouldn't object.

But personally, the resulting movement wouldn't be for me. As I see it,
halakhah has me prioritize those closer to me ahead of those further --
so immediate family, friends, aniyei iri, etc... and much further down
are non-Jews. The triage doesn't fit making providing Kol Yaaqov to the
community dialog our highest priority.

The other problem is that I already bought into Mussar's adage that
"my ruchnius means concern for my soul and your stomach". (Something the
pre-War chassidishe rebbe who was the rav of the shtielb of my childhood
also regularly said.) When it comes to others, gashmi aid is a higher
priority than moral education. Again, a different triage.

> Rabbi Perl rejects that. He references R' Norman Lamm who - as he points
> out - literally wrote the book on that subject. Rabbi Lamm says that
> TuM is not an ideology but rather pedagogy - a means of `arriving at
> knowledge of the Creator through the avenues of science and the arts'.

> In my view, that is a distinction without a difference. Aren't all
> Orthodox Jewish ideologies ultimately about that?

YU-style Mod-O is indeed Mod Yeshivish. The RIETS morning is no less a
child of Volozhin than Lakewood is.

But it's not true that "all Orthodox Jewish ideologies" are about
"arriving at knowledge of the Creator".

The Rambam would go for that. But chassidishe deveiqus is about having
a relationship with the Borei, not learning about him. Knowing G-d,
rather than knowing *about* G-d.

More on this in a reply REGerstl's email, which became its own thread
about the Rambam's notion of life's purpose.

...
>                   Not only that, but TuM need not be studied only by
> the elite anymore than Torah should. We each do the best we can with
> the capabilities God gave to us to do it.

Perhaps if you stick with *should*, but what's the motivator for learning
mada for the majority of MO Jews? It's not overtly one of the 613, and
the person isn't academic by nature, what's driving that time investment
into secular studies. And where in the entire span of secular studies are
they to choose among if they don't have a personal drive to pick up
academic knowledge?


On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 11:29:25PM +0000, R Anthony Knopf replied to my
post, writing:

> - Your second point seems to assume that movements can't evolve in their
>   point of emphasis. Is that necessarily so? ...

Evolve is different than reinvent.

Theseus's Paradox is a thought experiment about the ship Theseus sailed
in stories recorded by Plutarch. During the course of his travels, say
a sail tore and was replaced. Is it the same ship? Maybe on the next
trip, he replaced the mast. Let's say over the course of his lifetime,
every single plank and board in that ship was replaced. Theseus would
have had continuous use of a ship, at all times it sure seemed like the
same ship, and yet there is nothing in it now that was in the original.
Is it the same ship?

Identity evolves differently than sudden redefinition.

But this is a bit off coarse. We're getting more caught up in whether,
if the Mod-O infrastructure and membership would largely go for a leOr
Goyim ideology, if they would still be Mod-O or not. Which gets more
into the definition of a movement than either issues of right or wrong
or of feasibility.

I really wanted to focus on feasibility. I don't think MO membership
would feel they're on the same ship if this were attempted. And so, it
wouldn't work.

> - Rabbi Perl clearly wasn't assuming that proposing it in a Lehrhaus
>   article would create the change. But it has initiated a conversation.
>   And even if we don't accept his answer, I believe the question is a
>   powerful one and can lead to meaningful reflection and even development
>   in the Modern Orthodox community...

I think the question of ultimate purpose is a critical one, regardless
of who we're talking about.

I recently ran a workshop to help people write life-

>   be achieved without a rabbi's rabbi at the helm but the development of
>   "Neo-Chassidus" within the Modern Orthodox community that you refer
>   to is instructive.

But it manages to do so without leaving Torah uMada. It seems the Brisker
tenor of Mod-Yeshivish a la RYBS is a less deeply held emotional issue.
The feeling that we're staying on the same core idea is still there.

After all, my youth included some very neo-Chassidus like moments at
NCSY kumzeitzin.

> - I am more convinced by your later points about the necessity of finding
>   an idea that is central to our approach to Judaism/life and the
>   difficulty in justifying giving this centrality to non-Jews rather than
>   "aniyei ircha". Indeed, I believe that middot, based on the teachings of
>   Modern Orthodox thinkers and availing itself of the considerable recent
>   academic work in the study of character, would be a more appropriate
>   central concept for the community.

I do to, but...

> - You question whether something requiring so much work could become a
>   popular movement. This is a sobering thought given how much work
>   you have given to the cause over decades...

>                                             But doesn't a life
>   commitment to Talmud Torah take work?

But then, the learning that has become most popular is daf yomi. You
get a feeling of acocmplishment.

It's like the difference between a second hand and an hour hand on
a watch. The second hand is doing 3,600 times the work, but you can
see it working. An hour hand.... Working on middos is slow. There is no
"I finished my first mesechta" or "500 blatt" or whatever. You work and
you work, and eventually you notice the hour hand is pointing to a new
hour when your wife says something about how you've been with the kids
lately. And even that is months or years away from then you started.


Well, now that I have split my dream into two, I can more easily
articulate it. I hope.

A central idea for AishDas is to plant the seed of "a vaad in every
shul", paralleling the spread of daf Yomi. We had other ideas that we
would "get to later", but really the only project we ever invested effort
in was the spread of ve'adim.

My dream was not that you would have a whole movement of people actively
working on their middos. Halevai you could, but as you just noticed,
I don't think the masses are ready for years and years of work before
seeing signficant results. Character change is slow.

Rather, I thought that the existence of those 5-6 people in the va'ad
would have secondary effects on the rest of the shul. All the value we're
supposed to be giving ehrlachkeit would stay in the discussion. We would
be able to see a Yahadus in which how you act on line for the bus is no
less a defining feature of who is "one of us" as is what a person eats.

More recently, really since I was waiting for the editing of my sefer, I
started trying to put another buzzword out there -- Other-Focused Orthodoxy.
Because there has to be exploration on how to get to an ehrlachkeit-centered
rather than frummkeit-centered observance through ways other than hoping
the kind of people AishDas was reaching to would have cultural influence
on the kelal.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 "I hear, then I forget; I see, then I remember;
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   I do, then I understand." - Confucius
Author: Widen Your Tent      "Hearing doesn't compare to seeing." - Mechilta
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    "We will do and we will listen." - Israelites


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