The Seattle Kollel-Case Study in Unintended Consequences
By David J.
Balint
Kollels have
sprouted across the Jewish world, including
Often they are sponsored by a particular Yeshiva. Sometimes a local Orthodox
community establishes a kollel hoping to promote outreach and to supplement
income of rabbis needed to teach in the local day schools not in need of full
time rabbinic teachers. This is the case in
More rarely, such as in
the local community actually recruits highly qualified Zionistic young rabbis
to revitalize and strengthen modern Orthodox, centrist institutions. The
following represents a synopsis of the issues facing the Seattle Orthodox
community since it invited a kollel into its midst in 1991.
The Seattle Kollel
has become an important organization within the fabric of the
Jewish community. It has achieved remarkable success. It has done this despite
organizational neglect on the part of the community as a whole which has
deprived the Kollel staff of needed guidance in recent years. The consequence
has been that there have been some unfortunate and unnecessary negative effects
of the Kollel.
It is clear
that, through the efforts of the Kollel rabbis and volunteers, some people have
been brought into more serious observance of halakhic Judaism. However,
although there is tremendous diversity within Orthodoxy, this diversity is not
represented within the Kollel faculty. Members of the Kollel come from a
variety of yeshivot but none of these yeshivot can be characterized as modern
or centrist Orthodox. In addition, some of the Kollel faculty members have no
advanced secular education. It seems that those who have attended college or
university did so before beginning their study of Judaism. This background
suggests that we can expect the Kollel faculty to unanimously present a model
of Orthodoxy that is not consistent with the modern or centrist model of our
synagogues and established schools.
This has had a
powerful impact on our community. Some of the families and individuals who
support the Kollel have received the bulk of their Jewish education either
directly through the Kollel faculty or through programs endorsed by the Kollel.
These supporters mean well. They came to the Kollel desiring to learn more
about Torah Judaism and willing to make a commitment to serious observance.
However, rather than receiving instruction in a model of Orthodoxy that
reflects the diversity of views and includes the views that have traditionally
formed the norm in our community, these eager students have been exposed to a
limited and rather specific perspective on Orthodox Judaism. This perspective
tends to the exclusionary, meaning that they believe and teach that their way
of observance is the only way. It looks for authority not within the local
rabbinate but rather to haredi authorities outside
who are not themselves familiar with
We should not
have been surprised that the promotion of this perspective undermined support
for our existing institutions and respect for the Rabbis of our synagogues.
From the perspective on Orthodoxy to which these new families have been
exposed, modern or centrist Orthodoxy represents a compromise. To the extent
that our institutions and rabbinic leaders identify with modern or centrist
Orthodoxy, they too are viewed as having compromised their commitment to
halakha.
A comment is
warranted about personalities. Most of the rabbis who have staffed the Kollel
have pleasant personalities, are friendly, inviting and sincere. However,
social skills should not be confused with outlook. These individuals do not for
the most part acknowledge the legitimacy of the modern or centrist Orthodox
perspective. This means that essentially their worldview differs from that
represented by our pre-existing community institutions.
The Seattle
Kollel was founded in 1991. When it was proposed resistance arose. Aware of
what frequently occurred in other communities where kollels functioned, the
fear was that the Kollel would become an independent source of halakhic
authority, and would not support the existing educational and other community
institutions. The propounders solemnly promised that the kollel would be a true
community kollel. It would accomplish this by various means. There would be a
governing board from a broad spectrum of the Orthodox community. They promised
never to establish or support any organization that would compete with the
existing community structure. The rabbis to be hired would be from diverse
backgrounds. It was specifically promised that rabbis retained for the Kollel
would send their children to the existing Orthodox schools, the Seattle Hebrew
Academy (SHA) and the Northwest Yeshiva High School (NYHS). It was on the basis
of their word that potential opposition dissipated.
To summarize,
the Kollel was proposed as an institution that would supplement, not supplant,
the existing community organizations.
After the
first few years most of initial members of the Kollel moved on. Beginning in
1995 and continuing through 1996 a number of community meetings were convened
by the Kollel lay leadership to discuss the future of the organization. Fierce
opposition had arisen because nearly every one of the foundational promises had
been violated and misled donors were threatening to withdraw support. During
these meetings the Kollel leadership made a number of representations regarding
the mission of the Kollel and its relationship to our community’s other
organizations. The impetus for these meetings was concerns expressed at that
time that the Kollel rabbis that had been retained were not centrist and this
might result in community dissension. Kollel participants in those meetings
included some of the same people involved in the Kollel today. These promises
were memorialized in a letter to the entire orthodox community in August 1995.
This letter was accompanied by a new draft mission statement. This new draft
assigned to the Kollel a dual mission: (1) to serve individuals in the
community and (2) to serve Jewish institutions and schools. The mission
statement continues with a list of four specific objectives that the Kollel
would pursue in working with other community organizations. Perhaps the most
important statement was in the cover letter that accompanied these minutes. The
letter explained that the purpose of the dialogue in which the Kollel was then
engaged was to determine “how the Kollel can become a point of convergence
for the community schools and synagogues.”
The promise
was made that the Kollel faculty will be sensitive and accepting of community
philosophy and standards. This was perhaps the single issue most discussed at
community meetings during the reorganization process. The Kollel distributed
minutes from a meeting held on
might assure that the Kollel’s direction and perspective would remain
consistent with the community’s “centrist philosophy”. This discussion ended
with an assurance that the Kollel “was in favor of an eclectic Kollel which
would hire rabbis with a variety of backgrounds and from different yeshivot.”
This promise was initially implemented--and there were some staff changes--but
has since been abandoned.
To summarize:
During its reorganization the Kollel leadership re-committed to work in
partnership with and to support our existing institutions. It would promote a
“centrist philosophy” consistent with our community’s standards. This would
include the selection of staff rabbis who derived from a variety of backgrounds
and not only haredi yeshivot. It would maintain open and ongoing communications
with the leadership of our synagogues and schools. The Kollel would put in
place an effective and responsible system of lay governance. Based on these
representations, the Kollel secured the support of the community and its
leadership.
The
community’s first serious taste of the kind of religious dissension we had
hoped to avoid was via a haredi rabbi who was hired to lead the
in the late 1990s. He was originally hired as a teacher in the SHA. When the
headmaster position opened, a group of his supporters, whom he had carefully
cultivated, promoted him to the head position. He immediately began a campaign
to move SHA away from its centrist Orthodox roots. Long-standing teachers who
did not share his perspective were systematically harassed and demeaned. Some
were eliminated and replaced by faculty members whose views were more
consistent with the new headmaster’s. The Kollel rabbis were silent during
these moves and many of their acolytes supported the haredi takeover.
Another impact
of haredi takeover emerged when a group of Sephardic parents and community
leaders tried to encourage the headmaster to allow SHA’s tradition of support
of Sephardic ritual and culture to continue. These parents and leaders did not
feel that they were heard. The result was the formation of a new school, the
students, mostly Sephardic.
The most
disastrous outcome of the takeover efforts and the lack of governance that
accompanied them was that many of SHA’s most committed families and supporters
were alienated and withdrew their children and funds from the school. These
families and supporters watched with dismay as he attempted to purge the
faculty of moderate teachers and replace them with his own loyalists and he
attempted to conform the curriculum to his fundamentalist view of Orthodox
Judaism. For example, he tried to forbid the mention of dinosaurs, evolution or
any other content that he felt contradicted his interpretation of Genesis.
Eventually, as
more and more parents and financial supporters became aware of the nature of
these takeover efforts they abandoned or threatened to abandon the school.
Thankfully he was fired in the midst of the 1998-1999 school year and his board
of directors was forced to resign after a community vote of no confidence.
The scars of
this episode still have not yet fully healed. Many of the most ardent
supporters of the attempted haredi coup are some of the same people involved in
the current efforts to create non-centrist schools and are key supporters of
the Kollel, including its ‘president.’
Ideologues
simply have no internal brakes on their desires to transform their communities
into images of themselves. After all, in the words of the Blues Brothers, they
are ‘on a mission from God.’
The community
did not sufficiently learn the lesson of the dangers of religious dissension
because we neglected to pay attention to the governance and staffing of the
Kollel which was growing in strength and in numbers of rabbinic staff. Despite
the original promise of community oversight, reaffirmed after community
‘dialogue’ in August 1995, the Seattle Kollel quickly drew away from a board of
directors’ management style. In reality it is governed by the Rosh Kollel,
along with a very few insiders and some of the other Kollel rabbis themselves.
In other words, the Kollel is being run by its employees with only a very few
lay people.
There have
been no community meetings to elect or select a board of directors since the
reorganization meetings in mid 1995. There have been no recent board meetings.
There are no minutes of meetings showing discussions and decisions of vital
issues of programming or staffing.
The result of
this failure to learn from past experience began to emerge with the initiative
to establish a single-gender woman’s high school. This initiative resulted in
the opening of Sharei Bina in the fall of 2006. This initiative was engineered
by the Kollel leadership and the creation of the school was made possible
through the efforts of these same individuals. Four students were enrolled only
one of whom was of high school age.
Why was there
objection to the Kollel’s involvement in the establishment of Sharei Bina?
There are two related issues. First, the process by which this program was
established was inappropriate as discussed below. Second, this new school
competed for limited resources and a small pool of students with our
established high school--NYHS. The
has been successful in graduating students highly proficient in religious
subjects and secular, college prep courses. In encouraging and creating this
new school the Kollel leadership pursued a path that it felt best served its
ideological preferences. But no consideration was given to the potentially
negative impact on the Orthodox community in its entirety. The deep involvement
of the Kollel is in flagrant disregard of the promises made to the community in
1991 and again in 1995.
The organizers
of Sharei Bina indicated to the community that they had a pledge through Torah
Umesorah of $60,000 per year for three years as seed money to start the new
school. The Rosh Kollel arranged for this seed money. The Rosh Kollel also
acknowledged that he had worked for at least two years on forming this new high
school prior to its commencement in August 2006.
The process by
which this school was initiated is disturbing. This program impacts our entire
community. Yet, the Orthodox lay community and its rabbinic leadership were
excluded from the decision making process. In working to establish a new
single-gender high school for girls, there was no consultation with the three
community congregational Rabbis. Furthermore, questions and concerns raised by
the general Orthodox community have been ignored or dismissed.
A local Jewish
foundation, the Samis Foundation, offered to hire a professional organization
to do a needs/feasibility study for this new school at a cost of approximately
$15,000. This study would determine the costs of creating and sustaining a new
program and assessing the likely enrollment in such a program. Samis offered to
pay 1/3rd as did the NYHS. The organizers of the girls’ school
refused. This showed that the organizers really didn’t care for a real study of
needs or of the financial impact of their project on the community. They went
full steam ahead regardless.
Separate
facilities for boys and girls is mostly a false issue. ‘Separate gender’ is a
code word for a whole host of curriculum changes which are antithetical to
serious secular learning and college preparation, that are restrictive of girls
Jewish education, and that are ambivalent toward the State of Israel. In the
beginning these trends will not be easily apparent but one need only look
around the country to verify that this is generally true. The Sharei Bina
failed after one year. None of the four girls then attended the NYHS.
The second new
school to open in our community in the fall of 2006 was the Torah Day School of
Seattle (
was deeply involved in the formation of this new school.
directly competes with SHA for students and community funds. The Kollel
leadership gave its support to this project without consent of the community’s
rabbis. As in the situation for the Sharei Bina, there was neither a formal
needs assessment nor any effort to evaluate its potential impact on the
existing educational institutions. How many students are there at
that would not have been sent to the SHA or the Chabad school? A small handful.
During its
formation, one of
spokespersons and one of its founding board members was the president of the
Kollel. While serving as Kollel president he has helped to organize both new
schools and was actively fund raising for them. His efforts included approaches
to Torah Umesorah for funding. The Rosh Kollel’s rabbinic father, not a
resident of
advisor to the formation of
Efforts were
made by the
threatening to establish a new day school. It became apparent during intensive
mediation that no amount of accommodations would satisfy the demands of the
mostly Kollel families. The ultimate demands would have destroyed the inclusive
nature of the SHA. The SHA and the NYHS strive to provide a quality Jewish and
secular education for every Jewish child based on halakhic standards. These
community schools are confident that their programs orient and prepare their
students for life as Torah-true Jews and educated members of society. The
demands made by the Kollel families were exclusionary to such a degree that
significant numbers of families would have felt unwelcome.
The Kollel’s
faculty and followers abandoned the SHA. Their children form the core and the
majority of the
Kollel rabbis all elected to send their children to the new school. The message
this sends loud and clear to the community is that the
is not sufficiently observant.
It is
acknowledged that there is no formal relationship between
and the Kollel. However, the three key members of the Kollel’s leadership are
either founders or involved in the new school. Kollel faculty has enrolled
their children in
The Kollel has
played another more subtle role in the establishment of
It is noted above that many of the Kollel’s students have little formal Torah
education beyond the instruction they have received from Kollel faculty. In
choosing a school for their children, these Kollel students must rely on the
guidance and instruction received from the Kollel faculty and by the example of
their teachers. It can be expected that many families that have received their
education through the Kollel will follow the example of Kollel faculty and enroll
their children in
occurred.
primary constituency is the Kollel staff and their students. In its inaugural
year,
in preschool through grade 5. Of the 27 students enrolled in grades 1-5, at
least 17, or 2/3rds of the students, are children of Kollel rabbis or their
students.
Some possible
rationales for creating new schools have been advanced. The main
rationalization has been that every community has various constituencies. If in
our community these various groups cannot join together in a single school, why
not encourage the establishment of separate programs? Won’t this allow each
group to achieve its individual educational goals without the compromises in a
single school serving a wider spectrum of perspectives?
First, this
consideration does not lend legitimacy to the actions of the Kollel leadership.
The Kollel was established and then reorganized with the commitment that it
would work with and support the existing schools. This commitment should have
precluded the Kollel’s involvement in the formation or support of these
programs.
Second, the
Kollel’s program has directly contributed to creating an environment in which
various constituencies cannot coexist. Rather than demonstrating ongoing
support for our schools and their centrist modern Orthodox perspective, the
Kollel promotes and to great extent has introduced to our community an
alternative perspective that is inconsistent with centrist, modern Orthodoxy.
The Kollel faculty removed their children en-masse from SHA. No Kollel rabbi
has ever enrolled a child in NYHS. Would we expect any current Kollel rabbi to
consider enrolling his child in a modern, centrist Orthodox high school (even
one that is single-gender)?
The creation
of new schools further promotes the process of bifurcation in the community.
Each school must promote itself. Each may have its own constituency but there
will always be an overlap between these constituencies. The schools compete for
students in the overlap. Each school must differentiate itself from its
competitors. This process exacerbates differences. One common school brings us
together and encourages us to respect and work with one another. These new
schools place focus on our differences, push us further apart, and promote
“Balkanization”. (see the recruiting note below)
Third, even if
in the best of all worlds our children would better be served by competing
schools, we must acknowledge the constraints of reality. The more schools we
create in our community, the further we stretch our resources. As we stretch
these resources, we lower the standard of services in all of our schools. The
best case is that we create waste through duplication of facilities and
services and we lower the quality of education received by our children. The
worst case is that our schools become financially unstable.
We can already
see that our resources are being redistributed. Those families and individuals
whose names appear on published lists of supporters and organizers of the new
schools are generally not donors to
To a large extent, the Kollel rabbis and those brought into observance by the
commendable efforts of the Kollel have disappeared or failed to appear on the
donor rolls of the NYHS. [Comparable information for the SHA has not been
provided but one can expect that there is little overlap between those
contributing to the Kollel and those contributing to SHA—at least for those new
to
observant Judaism]. Rather than our entire community contributing to the
support of a few excellent schools, we are dividing resources among a growing
number of more specialized schools.
A recruiting
note: There are some who have asked why not just let the haredim establish
their own schools as they have now done? Why, it is asked, not just let them
have their own schools for their own kids? The question is naïve. Both schools
have tried and are trying to recruit beyond their own Kollel families. The
recruiting is inherently divisive. What can (and do) they say? They must
distinguish their programs, staff and educational approach from those of the
SHA and NYHS. Can they say they have a nicer facility, a better science
program, a more complete English or math program, a broader range of extra-curricular
activities or electives? Can they tout a more highly esteemed college
preparatory program? Can they match the fact that the NYHS has been rated by
the
as the best (or second best) high school in the State of
for the last several years in a row? Can they say their Jewish learning is
better? Clearly not. Despite dressing up their language in public and in print,
it all comes down to one factor: the representation that the new schools are
more “religiously correct”. This can be stated in the positive—we are more
traditional. Or this can be stated in the negative—the SHA and NYHS are
religiously flawed. However stated, the message is the same and the result is
to import into our community different, separate divisions of observant Jews.
Note a common
argument for both the
Bina schools. The proposition championed is that these schools just serve the
needs of a growing community. However, the only ‘growing community’ being
served is mostly the families of the Kollel rabbis themselves!
If one looks
at the list of financial supporters of the two new schools, there is another
striking fact. They are all (with rare exception) products of or heavily
influenced by the Kollel since it has been here. Many of them are people who
have come to observance through the efforts of the Kollel. While this is
commendable, the Kollel rabbis have not seen fit to inculcate commitment and
respect for the existing institutions, the SHA, the NYHS, the synagogues and other
preexisting institutions.
The Kollel
does not have a functioning board. There is no effective lay body in place to
monitor its finances. Also, because of its lack of transparency, it is
difficult to know the details of the Kollel’s funding in order to gauge its
financial impact on the community. However, Federal tax returns reveal that the
Kollel’s annual budget in just under $1M.
Since the
serves largely the Kollel families, as discussed above, the growing substantial
need for community resources to support it should be considered another direct
cost of the Kollel in
There have
been detailed suggestions made to the Rosh Kollel, the other Kollel rabbis and
supporters for reform. All have been rebuffed and ignored.
In many ways
our
been truly wonderful. Until recently we could have taught the general Jewish
world some important lessons. People from the Orthodox community have been
active in the Jewish Federation and donors to it. Several of our members have
remained active in wider Jewish concerns. We have generally been accepting (and
certainly not judgmental) about those who are not as observant. Perhaps we
benefit from the large Sephardic community here which has a long history of
tolerance for its members who are not Shabbat observant or don’t keep strictly
kosher.
It has
historically been considered a strong plus that our two community schools, SHA
and NYHS, have had as an important goal that they attempt to reach every Jewish
child possible no matter what the religious level of their families (as long as
halakhic standards of in-school behavior are understood). To hear the term
‘community school’ used as a derogatory label is a strong indicator of how we
are beginning to be affected by those who do not share this vision. These two
community schools have the confidence that Torah, properly taught, will embed
itself into the minds and hearts of its students without the need to brainwash
them and without the need to imbue them with fear of those Jews less observant and
without the need to create fear of the non-Jewish world.
It is
important for the community to be realistic about the sources of the recent and
ever increasing divisions. It is to our credit that we are naïve and want to
think only the best of people, especially if those people have pleasant
personalities. Advantage should not be taken of our innocence. There is
strength in knowledge because only with knowledge and open eyes can the proper
decisions be made.
The Kollel is
not the institution that its founders promoted to the community originally and
then again in 1995. It does not promote diversity of perspectives in the
Orthodox community. Certainly, it does not represent or support the modern or
centrist Orthodox perspective. Its leadership is not representative of the
Orthodox community. It does not operate under the governance of an active and
effective board. Its mission is no longer to support or partner with existing
schools and synagogues. Instead, it is a catalyst and proponent of new schools
that compete with existing programs. These changes did not occur with the
concurrence of the community that originally agreed to the formation of the
Seattle Kollel. These changes were not proposed to the community; they were not
the result of community discussion.
The Seattle
Kollel has become embedded into the framework of the Jewish community in the
Northwest. It can achieve more of its potential if it can be encouraged to
return to its roots as a community Kollel governed by the community and
responsive to it. It is not too late to achieve this goal and to avoid creating
the Orthodox religious divisions and bitterness so apparent in much of the rest
of the observant world. It all depends on the community shouldering its
responsibility to help in the governance and guidance of the Kollel.
Postscript: A
longer version of this summary labeled ‘Community Impact Statement/Kollel’ took
over a year to research and write and is available upon request. The Seattle
Kollel rabbis and key supporters were provided with drafts prior to publication
and were earnestly requested to correct any errors.
(David Balint
is a community activist and attorney in
He has served as president and on the boards of various Jewish institutions. He
was on the founding board in 1974 of the
and has been on its board since. He is working on two book projects, the
philosophical questions raised in the book of Job and “Maimonidean Moments”,the
wisdom of Rambam organized in accordance with the weekly perashiot.)
