In his column last week Yonoson Rosenblum sang the praises of Yaakov Rosenblatt’s insightful writing. Although the same column was perhaps a tad too generous to another writer (and a “smiley” emoticon would come in handy right about now) I’d like to add my voice in appreciation of Yaakov’s prose.

I haven’t read all that much of his writing but one essay in particular stands out for broaching an issue in a way that makes readers more likely to be receptive to its critique. In a piece entitled “The Yeshivish Brand” he writes:

There is a term called “yeshivish.” It is a brand that my generation of 40-something Charedi yeshiva educated Kollel-learned individuals took upon itself. It is a brand that we wear with honor. Yeshivish to me means that we have an appreciation of the breadth and depth of Torah. It means that we understand the central role of Torah scholars in life and community. It means that we know when to ask a halachic question and that we look forward to the answer whether or not it will make our lives easier or more difficult. It means that we accept Torah in toto and follow it as a soldier follows his commander not as a free-stylist follows his spirit.

But that term has come to mean other things as well. I say this not with the angry criticism of our antagonists but in recognition of the real-life challenges we face. This term is used by many of the most yeshivish people I know to describe a company organization or entity that is poorly run. It is used to express weakness of organization professionalism and articulation.

That yeshivish girls mostly do not have these weaknesses is proof that the challenges are not part and parcel of our ideology but a result of the culture that exists within and around our schools.

Rosenblatt has done several things here to foster receptivity to his thesis. He accurately describes many of the salient aspects of the community of bnei Torah thereby seeking to assure readers that he is part of and proud of it. He notes that this community itself uses the term “yeshivish” in the way he understands it and acknowledges that this community has antagonists who more often criticize out of anger than out of goodwill.

He goes on to explain why the weaknesses he has identified are given the nature of the yeshivah experience “both logical and explicable.” The essay deserves to be read in full; my purpose here is only to use it as a successful example of how to raise an important topic for intra-communal discussion.

Most importantly Rosenblatt draws an important distinction between ideology and culture one that has important ramifications for the frum community beyond this particular topic. On this note he concludes:

So herein lies the question. I am now the father of teenagers. I respect as much as before the values of yeshivish. But my years in the world have taught me the requisite for organization professionalism and articulate speech to succeed in anything you do.

Can we as a community distill the ideology of yeshivish from the culture of yeshivish and improve the culture while cherishing the ideology? Can we teach our youth respect for time the virtue of wearing a watch and carrying a pen the benefits of driving a car in good shape and the asset of speaking slowly and deliberately without repetition? Or would an attempt to adjust our culture threaten the essential values we hold dear?

If the latter is true I pray that we leave this issue alone and maintain the current state of events without any modification at all. But are we positively sure that we cannot improve?

Were I given the choice I probably would have preferred making the case that orderliness in speech and dress punctuality soft-spokenness and the like are bona fide Torah values that played a central role in the mussar teachings of Kelm rather than appealing to notions of “professionalism” that Rosenblatt himself admits are “superficial [and] fleeting.”

As well the experience of encountering some beyond the yeshivah walls who seize upon this sort of issue to criticize bnei Torah yet seem to be more fundamentally disturbed by the latter’s resolve to remain within the daled amos shel halachah leads me to wonder whether this essay shouldn’t more properly have been circulated within the yeshivah community rather than in the frum Jewish world at large.

Nevertheless an essay like this one apart from the merits of its content provides an instructive paradigm for how to raise and debate issues to respectfully and effectively hear others and be heard by them.

A stiff Jewish Neck

Is there another people that is at once as intellectually brilliant and irrational as the Jews? A couple of centuries’ worth of Jews creating ideologies and movements that benefit everyone else but harm our own people suggests that the answer is no. We seem peerless in our capacity for self-immolation with our irrational thinking and our intense commitment to whatever cause we take up combining to do us in. We cling even unto death to that which we venerate however nonsensical and even after it’s clear that such blind homage is the very source of our doom.
For a textbook example consider the incident several few weeks ago involving Daniel Seidemann a longtime peace activist and founder of far-left NGOs in Jerusalem. Driving home on Shabbos after visiting a friend in the Palestinian village of Sur Bahir he was caught in a traffic jam in the town’s center just as school was letting out. A rock came sailing through his car window striking him in the back of his head and leaving a deep gash that required stitches.
Although this was the third time Seidemann had been stoned in East Jerusalem he remains entirely unfazed. A Palestinian would-be murderer’s rock was apparently no match at all for Seidemann’s stiff Jewish neck. In a text message he sent to friends after the attack he wrote:
I never expected immunity. I oppose violence and staunchly support non-violent resistance but I feel no anger just sad – the same kind of sadness I have felt often when two peoples poison their own and each others’ lives.
I can see my friends and “friends” on the right clucking their tongues their gloating glands swelling. That too is sad. For me this changes nothing. After a day of bed rest I will be back in East Jerusalem. Maybe my first visit to Sur Bahir will be a bit like a near-drowning victim returning to the water. But I will be back and it won’t take weeks.
It’s been a long and difficult day. But all of it was in the Jerusalem I love being the Israeli I love being and with the Palestinians some friends some enemies that no rock can move me to hate.
The Gemara in Sanhedrin 63a teaches that initially Jews knew full well that idolatry was a sham but engaged in such worship anyway for the psychological license it gave them to engage openly in immoral behavior. Having once begun to serve strange gods however Jews became so fiercely attached to them that they would pine for them as a father does for his child.
The Gemara illustrates its point with a tale from the days preceding the first Churban. One Eliyahu Hatzaddik went roaming the streets of Yerushalayim as Jews lay dead and dying. He came upon a young boy lying on a heap of trash his stomach bloated from hunger. He was the last survivor of a family that had numbered 3 000 members.
Eliyahu asked him if he wanted something that would help him live; the youngster responded eagerly in the affirmative. “Then recite after me the first line of the Shema ” said Eliyahu. “Sha!” retorted the child sharply. Whereupon he proceeded to remove an idol from his pocket hugging it lovingly until his swollen belly split open and he fell onto the trash heap dead the icon buried beneath him.
Daniel Seidemann too is a Jewish boy who can be found on the streets of Yerushalayim lovingly hugging the idol of peaceful coexistence unto near-death at the hand of a vicious Palestinian punk as all around him lie the pieces of his “peace ” and its all-too-real victims.