It’s a safe bet most people don’t think the fate of Judaism will be decided in the universities. When people are in the mood to talk about “the fate of Judaism,” they are usually thinking about the future of the Israel: Will Israel survive? Or about Jewish education at the elementary or high school level: How can we get more Judaism into our children’s education?
But the universities are more important than we think—so important they may well turn out to be the arena where the fate of Judaism in our time is ultimately decided.
To understand why, consider two facts. First, there’s no institution in the modern world so closely associated with the discovery and dissemination of truth as the university. Most of the time, for most educated people, what counts as the truth—what is considered debatable, what is considered a legitimate opinion, and what is considered just out of bounds for any educated person to think—is worked out at the universities. This is true for natural science: If the physicists decide that 95 percent of the universe is made up of “dark matter” and “dark energy” that can’t be detected by any of our instruments, then for most people, that’s just the way it is.[1] And if the paleontologists say the dinosaurs were actually warm-blooded and hopped around like lizards, we toss the old dinosaur books we grew up with (whose illustrations were incomparably better) and read to our kids from the new ones.[2]
But the universities are also the arbiters of legitimate educated opinion in other disciplines, well beyond natural science: What university historians write today in academic journals is what will be in our children’s schoolbooks tomorrow. And what academic philosophers, political theorists, religion scholars and law professors presently see as the range of acceptable opinion on whether its worth reading the Bible; or the legitimacy of the state of Israel; or on whether something is or is not a universal human right; or on whether it is moral or even prudent to observe this or that aspect of Jewish law—all this will be replicated with scary precision by newsmen and novelists, politicians and high school principals within thirty years, sometimes even fifteen.
Please don’t read me as saying that the universities are about brainwashing. I don’t think anything of the kind. Most professors I know try hard to include a range of opinions in their courses, and are personally invested in helping students learn to think independently.
The problem isn’t the professors. It’s human nature: The reason we so value “out of the box” thinking is because we almost always think in the box. This doesn’t mean that if Professor Jones is a Kantian, then all his students will just parrot what he says and come out little chocolate-soldier Kantians. They won’t. But it does mean that if ethics courses are presented as an argument between Kantians and virtue ethicists, then just about every student will place themselves somewhere in the debate between Kantians and virtue ethicists. After years of heatedly taking sides in classroom debates of this kind, writing papers and staying up in dorms defending one view or the other, and even coming up with new variations on these theories, both the students and their professors come out certain they’ve learned to “think independently”.
But just try to telling one of these students a few years later that what they studied in college was a narrow view of the subject, and that there are other, maybe preferable, ways of answering moral questions—and you’ll run into a wall of discomfort and hesitation as this college graduate wrestles with the question of whether there’s any good reason to continue the conversation. Often enough, you get downright contempt, even hostility: After all, who are you to be saying their view of ethics is narrow? They studied the subject at Yale (or wherever) with one of the top ethicists in the world! And the same will be the case for pretty much any subject professors take seriously.
I don’t like any of this, but it’s still a fact: When our children go away to college, they enter an institution whose incomparable prestige is entirely banked on its status as the pretty much unrivaled source for what is true and false, and what is legitimately debatable, in modern society. For most college graduates, finding legitimacy in viewpoints that weren’t legitimate at the university is going to be rough riding, probably for the rest of their lives.
The second fact is this: There’s probably half a million Jewish students in universities at any given moment. Virtually anyone who will go on to be an important Jewish leader—in government, business or the professions, in education or scholarship, art or science, and even in the rabbinate—will spend a number of years in this environment. What happens at university is, in the great majority of cases, what will set their way of thinking about things at least straight through until midlife crisis or the death of one of their parents—and probably, as I say, for the rest of their lives.
This makes the university the single most important arena for educating Jews and acculturating them into adult society. This makes the university the single most important institution in the Jewish educational system—and this is true whether we like it or not.
Of course, some Jewish circles invest a great deal in alternative educational frameworks. There are yeshivas and seminaries, and some still think the community rabbi or the day school can teach them (or at least their children) a thing or two. But we shouldn’t lie to ourselves on this point. On any subject on which the rabbi or the Jewish high school is openly at odds with what is considered acceptable opinion at the universities, the Jews’ views lose. The percentage of college-educated Jewish kids who will ever seriously consider holding an opinion on any subject that is outside the range of what was considered legitimate opinion at university (or at least expressing it beyond a small circle of friends) is approaching zero.
So what we have here is something more than a little surreal. The university is the single most important institution in the Jewish educational system. Almost everywhere, Jews send their children off to university to have what will mostly likely be the defining intellectual experience of their lives. But on the whole, Jews give almost no thought to the question of whether this experience is constructed in a way that’s even remotely appropriate for educating young Jews—or, for that matter, for educating Christians or others who might think the Jewish heritage might once have had something significant to say to mankind.
Now I don’t mean to say that no Jews are thinking about the universities at all. In the last generation, there’s been a dawning awareness of the power and importance of the universities, at least in the American Jewish community. Birthright Israel, the proliferation of kosher kitchens, Hillels, and Chabad houses, and of course the growth of Jewish Studies programs—all of these are indications of a growing concern over “what’s happening on the campuses”. And when done right, they each contribute something significant by opening the university to Jewish experiences of different kinds.[3]
But in an important sense, these efforts are only addressing the periphery of the issue. The Jewish programs we are talking about are first and foremost about cultivating certain feelings: The sense of homecoming that a first trip to Israel can invoke; or that extraordinary moment on Friday night at the kosher kitchen when one of the kids says kiddush and everyone catches a breath of freedom. But the university, remember, operates on a completely different playing field: It’s ability to set the bounds of legitimate opinion on just about any subject grows out of the presumption that what professors know how to do better than anyone else is how get the truth straight.
Neither the Hillel, nor Birthright, nor even the Chabad house, are all that interested in what the professors are researching or even in what they’re teaching their students (so long as it isn’t overt anti-Semitism). That’s just not what these organizations do. Mostly, they’re in the business of inspiring certain feelings. They leave the business of getting at the truth to the professors.
There’s nothing new in this arrangement. The German theologian Schleiermacher, one of the principal figures behind the establishment of the modern research university, was already calling for exactly this division of labor between the professorate and the ministry in 1799. Schleiermacher, who had seen the Bible demolished as legitimate source of ideas by Spinoza and Kant, argued that this was no big deal, because religion had never been about trying to find out the truth about anything anyway. Religion, he said, is about nothing other than cultivating the right kind of feelings. As he put it:
[F]eelings are exclusively the elements of religion…. Wherefore it follows that ideas and principles are all foreign to religion…. If ideas and principles are to be anything, they must belong to knowledge, which is a different compartment of life from religion.[4]
Schleiermacher’s announcement that religion would no longer seek to play any role in mankind’s search for truth was immensely influential in the universities. It guaranteed that the professors could develop the new research university as a kind of shrine to achievements of the Greeks (who were interested in truth), while pretty much anything pointing to the possibility that the Jews had once possessed “ideas and principles” worthy of our attention was quietly elided.[5]
In other words, it’s precisely this division of labor—in which the Jewish organizations concentrate on cultivating Jewish feeling, while leaving the serious pursuit of truth to the professors—that has brought us to where we are today, which is a world in which the Hebrew Bible and Judaism are considered basically irrelevant.
So all these Jewish programs that are today still following Schleiermacher’s lead by trying to cultivate Jewish feeling—well, I know they’re doing a lot of good, and I pray for their success. But in an important sense, all the great work they’re doing is still just skirmishing on the sidelines. They’ve yet to join battle on the central issue, which is what the whole question of the universities is really about: Whether the universities, which are modern society’s engines for the discovery of truth, can be changed so as to accommodate the ideas and texts of Judaism as a legitimate source for potentially true “ideas and principles”.
This is the issue. And so long as we don’t get serious about this issue, we are going to have next to no impact on the ideas being taught in what is—whether we like it or not—the most important institution in the Jewish educational system.
What would it be like to get serious about the standing of Judaism at the universities? For starters, it would mean asking questions like—
Who created the modern university and why? What are the main academic disciplines that have an impact on the ideas taught at universities? Which academic disciplines most deeply affect the way we think about the Hebrew Bible, Judaism, the Jewish role in the story of the West, and Israel? What’s the range of academically legitimate opinion regarding the Hebrew Bible, Judaism, the Jewish role in the story of the West, and Israel? and does the range of opinion being offered really make sense? And, to cut to the chase: Is a university or college education, as currently constituted, really something that is appropriate for educating Jews? Or, for that matter, for educating non-Jews on subjects touching on Judaism? And if not, what could be done about it?
There’s obviously more to be said here. But for now, I’ll leave you with this: Maybe the time has finally come for Jews to start thinking seriously about the universities. Maybe the time has finally come to end this business of just sending our kids off to college without taking any real interest in what kind of an education they’re getting there, on the assumption that the Hillel and the Jewish Studies program have got the situation under control. They don’t have the situation under control, and they won’t without a lot more help from the rest of us.
But the good news, as I said in my last letter, is that there’s been a pretty dramatic change of atmosphere at the universities, just in the last generation. Never in the last two centuries has there been an openness to what the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish sources have to say such as there is in the universities today.
How are we going to respond to this hour of grace?
We have our work cut out for us.
Furthermore, the institutions on campus do tend to attract students based on feelings and emotions. Very little effort is expounded upon teaching meaningful, substantional Judaism. More effort is placed on "feel-good" activities and events. Much is needed to be done. In my opinion, education is the answer, not emotional outreach. We need to have serious educational speakers and presentations that prove to be as legitimate as the professors. I believe that by having speakers and educators who attended universities of prestige themselves, or know how to speak to "educated" college students, change might be seen.
Let’s say that if Picasso or the whole French impressionist movement was found to be made of devil worshipers who ate human flesh, there would be no French art faculties in our Universities. Similarly, if it was Found that Walt Whitman and other poets were anti American, they would not have their stature or today’s acclaim.
The colorful mixtures of intertwined cultures that used to fill out our world at one point no longer exists.
Taliban tribes burn anything that is not in their version of fundamental Islam; Christians who lived side by side with Muslim for centuries have no place in the west bank or Gaza anymore.
And Black hat religious Jews throw stones at other Jews who don’t share or obey their rules.
Today, the bible is seen as belonging to a radical affiliation more than a generally inspiring text.
If we want to see the Bible flourish, we have to stop behaving as if we are its only keepers and anybody who touches it has to wash in the Mikveh first.
Look – in contrast to the Dead-See (Kumran) scrolls and their shared interest in the world academies.
Because they are not possessed by hard liners of either sect, they enjoy the world’s interest for over 5 decades.
Only a strong and confident culture can accommodate another’s point of view.
The Muslim who conquered half of Europe, in the 7 century, saved all of the writings of the Greek and Romans in libraries that the Christians have been burning in their weak dark ages.
Alternately, a weak culture, like the Christianity of today, can afford to study the bible and weaken their already weakened support and constitution.
For a Muslim of today, the bible is a dirty book as is a Christian book to a religious Jew.
No wonder the bible had lost its luster, in a world of intolerance and low self esteem among its cultures.
Though sports stars are known to be criminals, their popularity has not dimmed, and the entire Hollywood culture has spawned people with dysfunctional families and immoral behavior who are still idolized and admired by most of the Western public. There is disinterest in the Bible because it demands a moral code, and objectified right and wrong, and the people aren't interested in hearing that approach
> But the universities are more important than we think-so important
> they may well turn out to be the arena where the fate of Judaism in
> our time is ultimately decided.
Not true.
The fate of Judaism will always be decided at Jewish institutions such as the ones you mentioned. There is no way non-Jewish institutions could ever provide the proper direction for Judaism, and if their influence is so overwhelming that they would affect the fate of the Jews, let alone Judaism, we have probably already lost. But that is not the case.
The fate of Judaism is ultimately decided by a very small group of rabbis, and their decisions are promulgated outward by their followers. Take away the followers though and that fate will *still* be decided by the rabbis and their deciples. Eventually more followers will come along and start promulgating outwards again. This is basically what happened after the Shoah, but the precedent is with Moshe Rabeinu. Hashem said He was willing to destroy the entire nation and leave just Moshe. Presumably this would have been a huge setback but it was not an impossibility, because the only person that was really not replaceable was Moshe. Everyone else was replaceable, even all of them at once were replaceable.
The closer that one gets to that inner circle of the top rabbis the less replaceable one is and the more important one is to "deciding the fate of Judaism". Those Jews at the universities (and elsewhere) who are progressively farther away from that inner circle are therefore progressively farther away from deciding the fate of Judaism, and that is all the more true for non-Jews.
Again though, I know we agree that it is certainly our job to bring Jews closer
to the real heart of Judaism, and to influence non-Jews as well. Being on
the offensive in academia, as you have been for so many years now, can only help do that.
I also wanted to bring to your attention a recent article in Newsweek, about an ongoing debate at Harvard University, on this very topic. I found it fascinating, and relevant since Michigan is also lacking a defined religion department, or concentration.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233413
University students, as you state, are eager to evaluate arguments respecting the increased importance of religious thought as the basis for human activity. And such evaluation is likely to have an effect in their later development with respect to choices in the social realm, an effect which will also impact scientific endeavor. The Greeks are known for their search for truth, while deliberations about ethical choice or virtue is traced to the Hebrews and early Christians. For example, how interesting that ancient Egyptian art displayed in museums,as well as the pyramids, are corporeal things, relics like medallions and pottery, but the Hebrew contribution is almost entirely in the realm of ideas, as revealed by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The essay would be more persuasive if you gave examples of books addressed to a university educated audience that argue your point about religious thought generally and Judaism in particular. Zvi Kolitz's "Survival For What?", addresses our concern but is polemical. The relation of western democracy, particularly the formation of the US, to the Hebrew Bible is also addressed by David Gelernter in "Americanism" but is not sufficiently scholarly and detailed. Not to exclude novels, perhaps there is a Jewish equivalent to Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" in his description of the function of Christianity in the maintenance of social stability. In any case, we need examples to help us support your contention.
An example of the growing concern of the questions you raise is the forthcoming publication in the US of the Review of Jewish Books, intended to be a type of New York Review of Books. Professor Shlomo Avineri of Hebrew University is a board member.
By way of background, among my different activities, I have founded with Cantor Ari Klein an outreach organization in New York, Kol HaNeshamah. We are both Orthodox and have put together services that are halakhic (mechitza), yet engage people both intellectually and spiritually. The hot kiddush that follows servcies doesn't hurt either ! I reference this because we strive to achieve a balance between head and heart, the keva and the kavanna. The intellectual approach works for some, the kiruv approach works for others. To me the best approach is to integrate the two. How to do that in a place dedicating to the deconstructing of ideas, "myths", previous held beliefs? Indeed that is a very difficult challenge.
On the one hand, it certainly is true that religion at many secular universities is often scoffed upon - although one would hope not in religion departments. This is a problem for any believer from any religion who sends a child to a secular university, not just Jews. However, it should be noted that, aside from Brandeis and YU, Judaism often gets fair play davka at Catholic universities. The U.S. Catholic bishops, particularly, have done yeomen work over the past 30 + years in legitimizing Judaism.
A particularly disturbing phenomenon is the assimilated nature of many Jewish faculty members. This gives a certain anti-Jewish (and anti-Israel) bent to their teaching, and is very troublesome for Jewish students looking for affirmation or, at least, acceptance of their religion.
Judaism and all it contains is taught very haphazardly over the university system. Everything depends on who is teaching it, what is their training, and what is their level of respect for the material. By and large, the membership of the Association for Jewish Studies is very dedicated to the right things.
Although affective education is certainly praiseworthy vis-a-vis Jewish students, Hillel and even Chabad often engage in bringing real knowledge to the Jewish student - whether through guest lectures or courses/study sessions they make available.
Perhaps a greater risk to the Jewish student than the challenge of non-traditional or anti-traditional perspectives, is the availability and attraction of non-Jews as potential mates, whether temporary or permanent.
Despite my comments, your main thesis is intact.
Seems to me that Shalem College needs to offer a great education that includes a "bonus" Jewish element. The make-or-break part will be the ability to offer a liberal arts education that is at par or superior to great universities, even before you get to the Jewish element. The Jewish part is icing on the cake.
If the Jewish part is not the icing, but the cake, then you are asking students/parents to choose between the secular and Jewish elements. That's not a great position to be in. You don't want to be perceived as forcing such a choice because you will be writing off most of the students you want to attract -- the ones who want both. Shalem College will obviously do a better job than the competition on the Jewish side; the harder part to prove is that the secular element will be excellent.
Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe your target audience is students/parents who care most about the Jewish side and that it's ok for secular side to be passable. There are people like that too, I'm sure. But it seems like a smaller group, and that you will get them in any case even if you are selling the best of both secular and Jewish education and the synergy between them.
It should go without saying that I mean to be constructive here. I believe in the importance and potential of Shalem College and wish very much for it to succeed -- I hope you take these comments in that light.
But I also think that your article has relevance for my work as a chaplain in an academic, teaching hospital. For me it has been a constant struggle to impress upon our residents and attending physicians the legitimacy of faith and religion to the healing process. Faith is seen as occupying the realm of “feeling” which is not relevant to that healing process, because it is not evidence based. Only those interventions that are evidence based are legitimate. I have also sensed that “discomfort” you write about when I question some of the basic principles of modern medical ethics such as patient autonomy. Again religion should only deal with feelings and should not necessarily enter into the realm of ideas.
However, as you write, there may be some hope because at the very least providing for the religious practices and spiritual needs of the patients and staff is a required and honored task in the American hospital system.
Your articles are a breath of fresh air amid what you call the "out of the box" thinking that I experience in university on a daily basis.
You are right on target when you say that the legitimacy of Judaism and Jewish ideas will be fought for and determined on the college/university campus. Thanks so much for what you write and think. I love reading your stuff!!!!!! Keep it coming!
The most sensitive of my students recognize that they're being taught a form of "museum" Judaism in which the focus is on the dead, cold past of our religion, and nothing on the vibrancy and life found in current praxis. Hundreds of pages are assigned on the "history" of Judaism, the tragedies of the past (whether the Shoah, the Cossacks, the Inquisition, etc.) and on the splits within groups. I've actually had to spend some time at my Shabbos table - to which we invite 20 or more students each week - trying to "deal with" these kinds of issues.
There are few professors who even see Judaism as anything more than carcass for dissection; it feels like an uphill battle in many ways.
I am glad that you raised it, and look forward to hearing what other contributors think can be done.