IJII

Feminism, Orthodoxy, and Spirituality:
My Journey to Wearing a Kippah and Back Again
By Gila Heller
(Gila Heller is a student at Brandeis University.)

In the summer of 2007, I read a book called Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination by Haviva Ner-David, in which Ner-David discusses her struggle to balance Orthodoxy with feminism. She studied privately with Rabbi Aryeh Strikovsky in Israel, and he gave her rabbinic ordination, making her the first female Orthodox rabbi. Ner-David is a very controversial figure in the Orthodox world for her egalitarianism and nontraditional approach to Jewish law and gender roles.
I grew up in a largely Orthodox household, although my mother now identifies as Conservative because of her egalitarian values. I attended Jewish Day School for 12 years, and ever since middle school, I have known that both Orthodoxy and feminism are important to me, but I never thought of the combination as contradictory until I read Life on the Fringes. The book made me realize that I had been viewing Judaism through a very narrow lens, and I felt that I needed to reevaluate my spirituality and figure out what had happened (or perhaps not happened) to allow me to reach the age of 17 without asking myself the kinds of questions Ner-David raised in her book.

I knew that Conservative and Reform women wore tsitsith and tefillin, but it had never occurred to me that an Orthodox woman could or might want to do the same. It wasn't as though I actively believed that Orthodoxy prohibited women from doing such things; I had simply never considered the possibility because I had fallen into the static attitude of "Orthodox women just don't do that." Somehow, without giving the matter any conscious thought, I had decided that certain things were off-limits for me simply because I didn't know any Orthodox women who did them.

After reading the book and realizing this about myself, I felt hypocritical because I am not usually one to accept things at face value. I'm a very curious person and I like learning for the sake of learning, so to discover an entire area of insight that I had completely closed off to myself was highly disturbing, especially since this material related so much to my life.

I began to understand that by growing up in an Orthodox community, I had absorbed a lot of tradition through osmosis rather than book learning, and I needed to start thinking about why I did the things I did. Ner-David had clearly given a great deal of thought to her lifestyle, and I admired her inner strength and passion for Judaism, a passion I realized I had never had and began to want tremendously. But what could I do to gain that passion for myself? The idea of wearing a tallit, tsitsith, or tefillin didn't particularly appeal to me, nor did the idea of committing myself to daven three times a day.

I decided to try wearing a kippah, for no particular reason that I could articulate at the time. I was about to leave for Genesis, a summer program at Brandeis for Jewish teenagers, and I reasoned that Genesis would be a good place to try it out because I didn't know anyone there. Away from the questioning stares of my friends, teachers, and family members who had known me most of my life, I could figure out if this was really the right step for me or not.

At Genesis, I delved into text study and engaged in heated debates with other students whenever the issue of feminism came up, which turned out to be quite often. I remember one time when we were discussing the notion of Orthodox women serving as rabbis. Of course, I had a lot to say about that, and it turned out that like me, most of the other students had also grown up with the attitude that Orthodox women can't be rabbis because it's just "not done." This made me feel a lot better about myself and my initial lack of conscious thought about Orthodox female rabbis, but I also took the opportunity to share what I had learned with everyone else. We ended up having a fascinating dialogue about what the role of a rabbi is in the first place.

As the month went on, I began to feel spiritually alive in a way that I never had before, and I realized why wearing a kippah worked so well for me: unlike tefillin, for instance, which you put on, pray, and take off, a kippah is with you all day. I felt I was finally able to inject Judaism and spirituality into the more mundane aspects of my life, and this excited me greatly.

When I came home, I did have to deal with questions from the people in my community, but I fielded them well, since I believed so strongly in what I was doing. For the most part, everyone was accepting of me even if they didn't necessarily understand my motives, and that was more than enough for me. Besides, despite looking different, I hadn't really changed in a perceptible way. Because this was about spirituality, the difference was on the inside, in the kavana that I had when I performed mitzvoth. My actual level of observance hadn't changed.

As I began to prepare for life after high school, I realized that my options would be quite limited if I chose to do a year of study in Israel. All the seminaries, even the more liberal ones, seemed to me stiflingly antifeminist, and I believed that showing up to any of them with a kippah on my head would result in social isolation and intellectual deprivation. I now regret this judgment on my part; I think, had I explored the individual seminaries to any serious degree, I would have discovered one that could fit my needs. In any case, I eventually found a co-ed, upstart program that seemed like everything I was looking for: intellectual and social stimulation, extracurricular activities, volunteering opportunities, and an emphasis on diversity and personal growth. Unfortunately, this program was canceled at the last minute due to low enrollment, and having already deferred my admission to Brandeis University, I had to find a backup plan.

I ended up on Shalem, the Orthodox track of Young Judaea Year Course. On paper, the program seemed like a good fit for me, but I had heard that Year Coursers were prone to a lot of drinking and partying, and I wondered if there would be anyone else on the program who was as serious and motivated as I was. It was somewhat of a gamble, but I decided to go anyway. How bad could it be? I reasoned. I lost that naïveté pretty quickly once the plane landed and I realized that a large number of students on my program had signed up primarily because the drinking age in Israel is 18.

For reasons partially related to the alcohol issue, I felt Shalem as a program came up short for me spiritually. In a sense, this was good because it forced me to explore Israel and discover my own connection to the country, but of course I wished that spirituality were more accessible to me in the form of like-minded friends. No one on the program seemed quite to fit where I was religiously or emotionally (although one or two came close) and I found myself relying on the program staff when I felt I needed to relate to someone. It was definitely an awkward position.

I also found Israelis' reactions to my kippah alarmingly judgmental. Unlike Americans, who are generally too polite to stare at me or ask questions unless we already know each other, Israelis had no qualms about approaching me, a perfect stranger, to ask rude personal questions about my dress. One man in Tel Aviv said to me in Hebrew, "But the rest of your clothing is so nice; you would look so pretty if you would only take off your kippah!" as if it were nothing more than a fashion statement. A cab driver once refused to take me home because of my kippah. A secular man, bareheaded himself, accused me of violating the Torah. Children laughed at me. I was entirely unprepared for the range and frequency of extreme visceral reactions from Israelis, but I felt strongly that I was not going to sacrifice my spiritual autonomy for the sake of strangers' comfort levels, and in time I learned to laugh off the jeers and insults. I understand that Israelis are simply not used to seeing women wearing kippot, and perhaps many of them didn't mean any harm, but that didn't make the situation any easier for me to deal with at the time.

Ironically, I endured a lot of negative reactions from people about my kippah last year and have only decided to stop wearing it now that I'm at Brandeis, in an environment where everyone has been very accepting of it. I've been thinking about taking it off for a few months, ever since winter break. Just like when I started wearing it, it started with a kind of self-realization that troubled me. The subject came up at the Shabbat table of some family friends, when my mother expressed the concern that I might have difficulty finding a husband, since Orthodox men might look at me and think I'm Reform. Notwithstanding the fact that I don't want to get married just yet, I said that I wouldn't be interested in anyone who would make that kind of assumption about me just based on my appearance. Someone at the table pointed out that it would be a perfectly reasonable assumption to make, since most women who wear kippot are not Orthodox.
Then he asked me why I couldn't take off my kippah when I did start dating seriously, and I said instinctively, "Because I'm afraid of what would happen." That really gave me pause. We discussed it a little longer and then dropped the subject, but I kept thinking about what I had said almost unconsciously. Was I really afraid that my spirituality would drop away along with my kippah? Had I become too reliant upon the kippah? Why was I treating it as some kind of magic charm? It had always been meant to encourage emotions and motivations that were already present in me, not do all the work of relating to God on its own. Yes, it definitely helped me to have a tangible object as a constant reminder of God, but taken too far, it could become, God forbid, a symbol of idolatry.

Once I began to give this idea serious thought, I realized that there was another issue I had somehow overlooked. Maybe I wore the kippah for personal reasons, but despite my intentions, it did make a public statement. I had already encountered many different reactions to my kippah, from shocked to horrified to empowered to curious, and although I tried not to let others' opinions bother me, I had never considered the effect that my kippah had on other people. That is, while I may have learned to live with attracting all kinds of attention, I had not asked myself how it affected the way in which other people related to me. Up until this point, it's been very easy to pick me out of a crowd. People generally remember my name because it's crocheted into my kippot (thanks to my mother) and I imagine that when people are talking about me to someone who doesn't know me very well, they say, "You know who she is, that girl with the kippah?" I don't know why, but over the course of two and a half years, it never occurred to me that I might not want to be known as "that girl with the kippah." It's taken a while, but I've discovered that my kippah is not only a distraction for me, but it's a distraction for other people, too. I'd really like to be known for my personality, not for the way I dress, and I think that meeting people will be easier now that the first, or tenth, or twenty-fifth question they ask me will not be "Sooo, I was wondering...".

I'm grateful for the way the last few years of my life have turned out, and I know that wearing a kippah has done a lot for me spiritually, but I've decided that it's time to move on to other things. Life is about continuous growth, and I feel like, in a sense, I've come full circle from that summer at Genesis. I like to think of it as a loop in a spiral, so that I'm further ahead of where I was, but I need to let go of this so I can continue to grow even more. It was the right thing to do at that point in my life, but it's no longer working for me because I'm not the same person at 20 as I was at 17. I'll find something else to keep me going, and I'm no longer afraid of what will happen because I understand that all the changes I went through in the past few years are inside of me, not the kippah.

The Ethical Impulse in Kabbalah
by Noah Leavitt
(Noah Leavitt is a student in the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School.)

  Recent years have
witnessed a growing interest in Jewish mysticism in all quarters of the Jewish
community. Works such as the Mei Hashiloach by Mordechai Yosef Leiner and
the writings of Rav Tzadok HaCohen have become especially popular in certain
modern Orthodox circles. Yet for much of the last 200 years Jewish philosophy
has exhibited a decidedly anti-mystical bent. This is especially true of modern
Orthodox theology. Thinkers such as the Joseph B. Soloveitchik (hereafter the
Rav) and Eliezer Berkovits took pains to distinguish their views from mystical
ones and polemicized against mysticism. This paralleled a larger trend in 19^th
and 20^th century philosophy which until the advent of post-modernism
prioritized rationalism above all else.

            This
attitude is made especially clear in the Rav’s work And From There Shall You
Seek. Here in his work describing role of dvekut, cleaving to God,
the Rav clearly distinguished his conception of dvekut from that of the
mystic.

Because the
mystic denied man’s full selfhood, they made light of    a way in which the religious aspect of the
Supreme Primeval Will is fulfilled. They did not understand the ethical nature
of religion. Inner ecstatic experiences are everything for the mystics and all
else pales into insignificance. Man’s outward behavior and actions make no
difference. Therefore they also disparaged the value of people’s cleaving to
one another in the social realm. For the mystic social life is nothing but a
waste of time. They exalted the state of seclusion. In their view, separating
oneself from the community leads to introspection; this strips consciousness of
its multitude of contents and shrinks it to a simple point, a point which is
the link between God and man. In this way, they failed to grasp the place of
living history in which is embodied culture, the product of man’s spirit, since
society both bears and is borne by the historical chain of events. Negating
society thus entails negating the historical process.

The crux of the Rav’s critique of
mysticism is its lack of concern for man’s ethical behavior. He is obviously
concerned that were modern Judaism to become identified with the tenets of
mysticism it would lead people to think that Judaism focused on one’s internal
religious experience above else and perhaps even more dangerously would allow
Jews to use religion as an excuse for removing themselves from issues of
ethical concern in this world. However, in making this point the Rav seems to
have ignored an important genre of Jewish mysticism the Kabbalistic- Mussar
literature that first emerged in the 16^th century in Safed. These
works view man’s ethical action as an essential precondition to any mystical
experience. Incorporating these works in the corpus of modern Orthodox
literature would have the doubly important impact of providing a religious path
that is both spiritually and ethically sensitive and demonstrates the spiritual
dimension inherent in ethical behavior.

            The
genre of Kabbalistic-Mussar literature first appeared in the 16^th
century amongst the great quantities of Kabbalistic literature that were then
appearing in Safed. It arose as a result of the beliefs and lifestyle
cultivated by the Kabbalistic fellowships of Safed. In contrast to Spanish
Kabbalah which was rooted in secrecy these works represent a clear attempt to
spread the popularity and influence of Kabbalah.  Earlier mystical-ethical literature, that
emerged out of the Judaic-Sufi tradition, such as Chovot HaLevavot by
Bahya Ibn Paquda and the Hamaspik le’Ovdei Hashem by Avraham ben
HaRambam clearly influenced the writers of these works as they sought to
incorporate Kabbalah into religious guide manuals. Yet the overwhelming
influence under which these works were written was Cordoverian Kabbalah.

One of the most popular of these works, Tomer Devorah, was written by
Moshe Cordovero (the Ramak) himself. Two others, Sefer Charedim and Reishit
Chochmah, which may be the most popular of these having gone through more
than 20 printings and several popular abridgements, were written by two
students of the Ramak. Another popular work written of this time was Shaarei
Kedusah by Chaim Vital. Though Vital is most famous for being the foremost
student of Isaac Luria Shaarei Kedushah is one of his latest works and
is clearly influenced by pre-Lurianic Kabbalah especially that of the Ramak.
Cordoverian Kabbalah provided the theological underpinnings for much of the school
of Kabbalistic- Mussar literature.

            Unlike
Isaac Luria, Moshe Cordovero was a not a great theological innovator. Instead
Cordoverian Kabbalah draws from pre-existing sources and presents Kabbalah as a
tight coherent philosophy. The Zohar is the central text in Cordoverian
Kabbalah and the Ramak wrote in an important commentary on the Zohar, entitled Ohr
Yakar. His most important work is Pardes Rimomim which provides a
comprehensive overview of his thinking, which brings together the theosophy of
the Zohar with elements of ecstatic Kabbalah.

Zoharic Kabbalah provides a complete picture of God based on the sefirot.
Godliness flows into this world through a complex system of emanations known as
sefirot. The sefirot are keter, chochmah, binah, chesed,
gevurah, tiferet, netzach, hod, yesod, and malchut.
Keter is the first step in this process of emanation, while the sefirah
of malchut is the most distant from essence of God and closest to this world.

The understanding of the nature of
God which the Zohar provided was viewed by the Kabbalists as indispensable
knowledge to one who wished to worship God properly.

Alongside the Zohar, Cordovero drew from the teachings of Abraham Abulafia who
was one of the main thinkers of ecstatic Kabbalah. Ecstatic Kabbalah emphasized
the direction connection between man and God. The emphasis on communion and
meditation were important elements of Cordoverian Kabbalah despite the fact
that they were minor considerations in Zoharic Kabbalah. Out of this synthesis
the genre of Kabbalistic-Mussar literature emerged. This literature is full
with the language of the Zohar, yet its primary concern: how man can build an
unmitigated relationship with God is that of ecstatic Kabbalah.

              The earliest work in Kabbalistic-Mussar
literature to appear is Tomer Devorah, which was written by Moshe
Cordovero. In a manner that typifies the synthesis of various traditions within
Cordovero’s thinking in Tomer Devorah he uses the sefirot as a
means to achieve dvekut. According to Cordovero man can imitate the
essential aspects of each of the sefirot and thereby cling to God
through a process of imitatio dei. 

            Cordovero
describes several elements within each sefirah that man must strive to
emulate.

A person’s thoughts should emulate
the thought process of keter. Just as the chochmah of keter
never stops thinking good thoughts, and, because it is absolute compassion it
allows no evil to enter, severity and harshness having no place there, so, too,
should a person’s thoughts be void of anything unseemly. And just as chochmah
of keter is the secret of the Primal Torah, where all the secrets of
Torah are contained, so, too, should a person’s mind contain nothing other than
Torah thoughts, meditation on the greatness of God and His acts of kindness and
benevolence, and so forth.

In describing the “chochmah of
keter” Cordovero is describing the thoughts of God. Man should imitate
God’s thoughts both in terms of the manner in which he considers others and in
his focus on Torah. When man meditates on the greatness of God or the secrets
of Torah he is connected to God because he is imitating him. Man can cling to
God by making his mind like God’s mind.

            Man
can imitate God’s nature not only at the intellectual level but also in the
realm of physical action.

            Now, the attribute of chochmah
Above has two aspects:

The higher aspect
faces keter and does not face downwards; rather it

receives from
above. The lower aspect faces downwards, overseeing the

other sefirot,
to which the attribute of chochmah extends.

Likewise, a person should have two
aspects: The first aspect

should be
communion in solitude with his Creator in order to increase and

perfect his chochmah;
the second should be to teach others the chochmah

with which the
Holy One, Blessed Be He, has endowed him.

From the sefirah of chochmah
a person learns that one must not just be focused on his connection to God. It
is also his duty to teach others the knowledge that God has granted him. In
behaving in a Godlike manner one connects to God. “This is a comprehensive
system by which man can always bind himself to holiness, with the Crown of the Shechinah
never departing from his head.”

In
Cordorvero’s view ethical action is the pathway for connecting to God at the
deepest levels.

            In
many ways Reishit Chochmah by Eliyahu da Vidas is a greatly expanded
version of Tomer Devorah. Da Vidas explains how through a number of
character traits such as love and fear a person can cling to God. In the
section dealing with humility, da Vidas makes the importance of ethical
behavior especially clear.

We see many times that we call out
the thirteen attributes of mercy and yet we are not answered. The Gaonim said
this is because it is not enough to simply wrap oneself in a tallit and
pray. Rather one must do the thirteen attributes of mercy that God taught to
Moses that he is merciful and gracious and just as God is merciful so to you
must be merciful and this is true of all the attributes.

Da Vidas makes it clear that one
can not simply wrap themselves in their tallit and call out to God in
prayer. Rather a person must also act Godlike if they hope to have their prayer
answered. For Da Vidas, like Cordovero, imitating God’s attributes is crucial
for connecting to God.  

            Another
of Moshe Cordovero’s students, Eliezer Azikri, emphasized the importance of
ethical action in a very different way. Azikri may be best known as the author
of the poem Yedid Nefesh but he also authored a work called Sefer
Charedim. In the work he identifies mitzvoth found in the Torah and
connects them to various parts of the body. However many of the mitzvoth he
identifies are not the ones that normally come to mind.

                        One
must uproot from their soul the attribute of hardening one’s heart. As

                        one
is commanded (Deturonomy 15:7) “…you shall not close your hand”

from giving charity. According to
this it is possible that he will give and harden his heart against the poor,
therefore one is commanded not to harden one’s heart and to give mercifully.

Azikri identifies a number mitzvoth
that go beyond the normal list of physical actions one is obligated to perform.
He believes man is also commanded to orient his character and personality in
certain ways as in the case cited above, it is not enough simply to give
charity rather God has commanded that it be given without any sense of
bitterness. According to Azikri to truly connect to God a person has to align
both his physical actions and emotional state with God’s will.  

            Another
popular work to emerge from this period, Shaarei Kedushah, was not
written by a student of Cordovero’s. The author, Chaim Vital, is one of the
most renowned students of Isaac Luria and is responsible for transmitting and
spreading most of Luria’s teachings. However, in Shaarei Kedushah Vital
appears to have been far more influenced by earlier Kabbalists than by the
teachings of Luria. Vital views ethical behavior as an essential prerequisite
for achieving dvekut.

The [lower soul] is reliant on
charateric traits, good and bad. They are the chair, foundation, and root for
the higher intellectual soul which is dependent on the 613 mitzvoth…Truthfully,
they are an essential prerequisite for fulfilling or undermining the 613
mitzvoth.

According to Vital perfecting one’s
character is crucial if one hopes to properly fulfill the mitzvoth and without
ethical behavior one certainly can not reach the even higher level of dvekut.
In Vital’s system ethical behavior does not lead to dvekut in and of
itself as it does in the case of Tomer Devorah and Reishit Chochmah.
Nor does he raise ethical behavior to the level of mitzvah as is done in Sefer
Charedim. Vital maintains a separation between ethical behavior and dvekut,
however, even in this is system ethical behavior is an indispensable elements
of a person’s spiritual life.

            These
works demonstrate that a focus on spirituality does not have to come at the
expense of a focus on the ethical as the passage from Rav Soloveitchik would
suggest. For hundreds of years these works had a profound impact on  many later thinkers as well as on ordinary
Jews, but since the nineteenth century many have turned away from these texts
because of their mystical nature. Today it is important to bring these works
back into the cannon of modern Orthodoxy as they offer a path that is both
ethically aware and spiritually focused.  

[2] Dan, Joseph. Jewish Mysticism and Jewish Ethics. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986. Print. Pg. 85

[6] Cordovero, Moses. The Palm Tree of Devorah. Trans. Moshe Miller. Southfield, MI: Targum Press, 1993. Print.Pg. 52

Judaism: To Thine Own Self Be True!
Baruch Pelta
Baruch Pelta is a senior at Touro College South.

In the Winter 2010 issue of Conversations, Rabbi Jeremy Rosen describes his own fascinating background as a self-described nonconformist. Nearing his conclusion, he writes of various issues he has with Hareidi Orthodoxy, as well as his optimistic hope for a rejuvenated Modern Orthodoxy. Still, he opines:
...the fact is that the Hareidi world for all its abuses, misuses, and hypocrisies does contain the fastest growing core of Torah-committed Jews, devoted to study to an extent never before seen. And I sometimes wonder why it is that now that I, so far to the left of virtually all their theological and social positions, still consider myself more loyal to that world than any other. And I hazard the suggestion that maybe the times require it. Perhaps the pressures of a secular, self-indulgent, material world are so strong and pervasive that the only way for the mass of Jews to survive religiously is through this inward looking self-protective enclavism. Maybe this is a time of Hora'at Shaah leMigdar Milta. But even so, this does not mean each individual has to follow this path. The individual must remain true to himself or herself.

According to Rabbi Rosen, although] all Jews should not be Hareidi, that insular ethos with its positive and sociologically implemented emphasis on the study of Torah may very well currently represent the best path for the masses to follow in order to counter the negative aspects of modernity; this is so despite many sociological and ideological bones of contention Rabbi Rosen has with the Hareidi world. I find this view to be compelling, but I still disagree with it.

For all intents and purposes, the argument seems correct. Passionate and zealous religious fundamentalism in general is flourishing-and the Jewish world is no exception. I dispute the argument mainly on a theological basis. Historical revisionism regarding rabbis as well as their positions, pseudoscience, the attribution of paranormal powers to rabbis, and an ethically problematic approach toward the outside world are all important aspects that have received approval by various Gedolim. Because of the fact that the Hareidi community's raison d'être is the ideal of being mevatel daas to these Gedolim, whatever the rabbis say is automatically accepted as legitimate, if not completely valid (the few exceptions to this rule are so few and far between as to be of almost no sociological consequence in their society). I am concerned for those who are raised in such an environment or begin exploring it out of curiosity, only to later discover beliefs that are based on false edifices. However, it could very well be that the success in inspiring a zealous passion for rabbinic scholarship overweighs my concern for the disaffected. I am concerned not as much by how many people may become dissuaded by false edifices as by the very reality that the edifices themselves are unsound. It must be remembered that the "Torah-committed Jews" Rabbi Rosen refers to are committed to a theology that requires belief that the irrational is rational. The modern Jew deserves a Judaism that is open to historiography and science and thus is truly in the spirit of searching for truths.

Still, while I have made a case for not being Hareidi, I have not addressed Rabbi Rosen's main argument. Rabbi Rosen posits that despite the many issues with the Hareidi world, "perhaps the pressures of a secular, self-indulgent, material world are so strong and pervasive that the only way for the mass of Jews to survive religiously is through this inward looking self-protective enclavism." I believe that such a view lacks the proper nuance. Various communities even in the Hareidi world itself interact in differing degrees with the secular world with respective successes. On one end of the spectrum are those who view any secular education whatsoever as treif, while on the other end there are those who receive fine college educations often during or immediately after their yeshiva studies and then go on to join the secular workforce. Considering this, it is apparent that American Judaism need not withdraw into Kiryas Yoel or New Square in order to survive and thrive. The question of interaction with the secular world and secular ideas is one of degree. Yet, Rabbi Rosen is certainly correct insofar as the various heterogeneous elements of the Hareidi world have instilled a powerful and passionate religious worldview in constituents. So, what can Modern Orthodoxy do in order to be similarly successful in this regard while staying true to its own ideals?
I recall a conversation I once had with the son of a rabbi of a sizable Modern Orthodox synagogue who was attending a Hareidi yeshiva. In our conversation, he questioned the legitimacy of his father as an Orthodox rabbi. After all, his rosh yeshiva had a mesorah from a gadol hador; his father, on the other hand, was a student of the late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who had deviated from the mesorah of his ancestors. I asked the fellow if he had ever heard of a general concept that Daas Torah is a modern notion or the concept that secular studies are to be pursued de jure as a corollary to rabbinic studies in modern times. Both ideas were completely foreign to him. I later had the opportunity to have an extended conversation with the father and discovered him to be well-read in scholarship pertaining to Orthodoxy.

I am a ba'al teshuva (in the most colloquial sense of that term), whose experience with Orthodox communities has mostly been outside of the New York area. Most of the Orthodox people I have met, with whatever sociological camps (i.e. Modern or Hareidi) and age groups they may fall into, generally seem to see Modern Orthodoxy as nothing more than a religious society compromising its integrity by incorporating as many of Western civilization's popular mores and trends as possible while remaining nominally Orthodox. In general, the names of Rabbis Joseph Lookstein, Emmanuel Rackman, and Walter Wurzburger are unknown. Rather, it is the names of Rabbis Aharon Kotler, Yitzhak Hutner, and Yaakov Kamenetsky that command attention and admiration. I should note that I am not suggesting parity between all of the above mentioned figures in any matter, but rather I am positing that Orthodox society internationally is by and large unaware of the names to say nothing of the thought of important historical Modern Orthodox thinkers. Because of this, whenever a Modern Orthodox rabbi engages in an action or pens a thought which others may regard as controversial, it is judged by a very large population of Orthodox Jews from a distinctly Hareidi perspective. Without being aware of Modern Orthodox thought, I do not believe it is possible to live a proper Modern Orthodox life. This situation needs to be remedied through education. If a school or a congregational rabbi is unable to provide it, perhaps extra classes at a synagogue handled by an informed layperson would be tenable. Torah in Motion, an educational organization in Toronto, hosts international video conferences by Modern Orthodox rabbis and professors on Jewish history and thought on an ongoing basis with a particularly popular class given by Professor Marc Shapiro. Considering that the classes now cost money, it can be concluded there is definitely a thirst for understanding Judaism from a Modern Orthodox perspective.

The potential role of laypeople in general has been grossly neglected. For example, as a general rule, I believe it is a duty for Orthodox Jewish professors to be engaged in exploring and explaining the dynamic between their respective fields and Judaism. To understand Jewish thought in light of scholarship provides a more intellectually satisfying portrait of Judaism than that which Jewish apologists promulgate.
That being said, we should not be elitists, but populists. It should be clear that openly compromising clear halakhic standards is not a communal option (and if it is, then that is another problem which needs to remedied through education), but the community should be willing to work with beginners on their level. The outstanding success of some Hareidi community kollels at adult education classes and havrutas for beginners testifies to the success of such a policy.

In general, I think we should not be afraid to learn from Hareidi successes. A large amount of learned ba'alei teshuva and formerly apathetic laypeople were inspired and awed by charismatic Hareidi rabbis. I have also known quite a few Jewish youth who, dissuaded by rabbis in their communities, became indifferent to Judaism only to give it "one more shot" at a post-high school yeshiva and are now aspiring to either sit in kollel as long as possible or become Jewish educators. While I have made some specific suggestions for creating a Modern Orthodox future, I think that even as much as we may disagree with our Hareidi coreligionists, there might be some more lessons to be learned from how the educational efforts of their community.

I have written this essay not as a paradigmatic Modern Orthodox rabbi or educator, but as a student with some thoughts and observations. I believe that while the Modern Orthodox suffer from a number of sociological issues, the ideology itself has a proper dedication to a sophisticated search for truth as opposed to superficial apologetics. It is admittedly harder in some ways to establish a proper balance between rabbinic studies and secular studies than to simply reject the latter as pernicious, but I posit that appropriately exploring that tension leads-in my humble opinion-to a more intellectually satisfying and thus more spiritual result.

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