Questioning The Educational Paradigm In Chinuch

As many of you know, I have three children -- Walter, George and Wilma. Walter is finishing up his junior year in high school and will be starting his senior year in the fall.

Walter is a highly intelligent teen. He analyzes situations, asks penetrating questions and is fully capable of thinking matters through on his own. He has the uncanny ability to tell when people are giving him sincere answers to his questions and when people are just "blowing smoke" at him to shut him up.

However, for all that, he is still a teenager, with the maturity of a teenager. Like many teens, he does not always understand the long-range implications of things. He does not always see how life experience gives his parents and elders an advantage* in life with regard to the grander picture. And he does not always understand why he needs to study things that aren't immediately relevant to his life.

One particular area of angst for him is Gemara. Walter is a "cut to the chase" kind of person. If you can give him a good reason for something, he can understand it and accept it (even if he doesn't particularly agree with it). He can understand, for example, the need to learn halacha, since it's relevant to him in that it informs him of the laws that govern his life as a Jew. But Gemara, on the other hand, doesn't interest him all that much. At this point in his life, it doesn't really matter all that much to him how Rava and Abaye argue out what the final law is going to be. Just tell him what the final answer is and leave it at that. The fact that the Gemara is in a foreign language written and paginated in a format that makes it very difficult for beginners to master doesn't help matters.

Truth to tell, I can understand his frustration because I felt the same way at his age. At his age, I too often complained that the Gemara wasn't organized more like the Shulchan Aruch, with chapters and law numbers that are very easy to find and tell you, in a very practical and final way, what the halacha is. I, too, was confounded by the language, the arcane rules (what's a binyan av again?) and the maddening lack of any indication on the page when a new topic begins or picks up on a topic that was dropped from the discussion three pages ago. The fact that not one of the rabbeim in my high school made any effort to engage me in Gemara didn't help matters**.

Of course, I'm much older now. I like to think that I'm a bit wiser as well. I have a better appreciation for Gemara than I did when I was sixteen and seventeen. But that's probably of little comfort to Walter at this stage of his life. In addition, I have to wonder how many other kids there are out there like Walter (and myself when I was that age) who wouldn't mind learning halacha but just aren't all that gung-ho about Gemara. I would guess (based on purely anecdotal evidence from other kids Walter's age) that the answer is quite a few.

In most Yeshivos, Gemara is taught beginning in the fifth grade, when a boy is about ten years old. By sixth grade, it is the major Judaic course of study, with students spending hours per day on the topic. This is usually done without any sort of "Introduction to Talmud" mini-course where the structure and methodology of the Gemara is explained. Usually it's taught by simply "jumping right in" to the first line.

Sometimes I wonder (and, admittedly I have no way to prove this) if things would be better if the system were changed. The Mishna in Avos gives us guidelines about when to introduce new topics in chinuch. The Mishna there says that at age five children should begin learning to read Tanach, at ten learn Mishna and at fifteen learn Gemara. The point that's being made, I believe, is that children should not be rushed into topics ahead of time. Perhaps we should have our kids spend five years learning Tanach primarily before advancing to Mishna. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to spend five years learning Mishna before jumping in Gemara. There are probably several advantages to this approach:

• Our kids would probably have a better understanding of Tanach. Heck, they might even finish most of it in the five years.
• Our kids would have a better understanding of Mishna.
• When our kids finally do advance on to Gemara, they will be a bit older, wiser and more intellectually and emotionally capable of handling Gemara.

Of course, if a student is showing exceptional ability and is able to handle more advanced forms of study (for his age) he should be encouraged to do so. But that's not everyone. Not every 10 year old is an illuy (genius). The vast majority would stick to the 5-10-15 model (which is roughly equivalent in the United States to first, sixth and tenth grades).

But that's not quite what's happening. Nowadays, our boys start learning Chumash in first grade (some schools even start in preschool!). By third grade they're starting Mishna. They start Gemara during the fifth grade and, from the sixth grade onward, spend upwards of 60% of the Limudei Kodesh (Judaic Studies) portion of the day on it. The result is that kids come away with a substandard knowledge of Chumash and Mishna.

Other topics barely make it to the radar screen at all. Halacha is often taught on an ad-hoc basis. Navi is barely taught and, when it is, it is often limited to the early "historical" books -- Joshua and Samuel. Kings is barely taught. I have yet to hear of a right-wing yeshiva high school that teaches any of the true "prophetical" books -- Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel or the Twelve "Minor" Prophets. I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that outside of their Bar Mitzvah Haftorah or following the weekly haftorah in shul (do teens do that?), well over 90% of yeshiva high school graduates have never even cracked open a copy of Isaiah or an Ezekiel. Jewish Philosiphy? Forget about it. History? Maybe in some more left-leaning schools, but certainly not amongst the yeshivish. Hebrew language? Puh-leeeeez.

To be honest, I wonder if we're doing our sons a disservice with the existing educational model. They may (not will -- may) come away from high school knowing a fair amount of Gemara and Rishonim, but how much Judaism do they know? Does your average high schooler understand who Isaiah was and what he was prophesying about? They all know that Elijah was a great prophet, but do they understand why? Do they know anything about him other than the fact that he's still alive and something about a confrontation on Mt. Carmel?

Or, an even better question -- does the average high schooler even come away knowing how to learn Gemara well?

I'm curious why we have abandoned the educational paradigm as outlined in the Mishna. I've heard people say that it's a matter of "one-upmanship" among the schools to be "more frum" by starting Gemara earlier than the other schools. I'm not convinced that that's entirely true. Were it completely true, I'm sure we'd be hearing of yeshivos that claim to be teaching*** Gemara in the third grade. But if that's not the reason, there must be another -- and I'm very curious as to why those who put great stock in the words of Chazal chose to abandon their model of chinuch.

The Wolf


* Although, of course, by no means does that make us *always* right -- just more likely to be so.

** That's not to say it's all their fault, of course. A good share of the blame does lie with me -- but they have their share as well.

*** But not actually teaching, of course, since your average eight year old is not really capable of learning Gemara.

MK Gafni on Poverty: Going To Work Solves Nothing; That's All Nonsense

A rather incredible article appeared on the Dei'ah veDibur site this week entitled Bank of Israel: Entering Workforce Does Not Ensure Escape from Poverty. The article tries to make the case that, for chareidim in Israel, leaving welfare is a bad thing and that families that do leave welfare do not end up better off financially.

The article quotes MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni (the Knesset Finance Committee Chairman) who states:

"The country is lying to its citizens. Once again it has been shown that leaving the ranks of welfare recipients and joining the job market does not change the situation and people who work very hard for their living are unable to make ends meet."

He also goes on to say (emphasis mine):

"Emerging from the cycle of poverty requires an ability to get accepted to one of the positions that brings in tens and hundreds of thousands of shekels per month. Going to work solves nothing; that's all nonsense. In the State of Israel, today someone who wants to get out of the cycle of poverty has to network with the elites and the power centers just to get a decent salary that will really enable him to make a respectable living."

In other words, according to Rabbi Gafni, working is worthless. We're all better off just increasing welfare payments to people so that they can sustain themselves. I don't know if his comment that you need "tens and hundreds of thousands of shekels" of shekels per month to get out of poverty is accurate (it sounds high to me), but let's say, for the moment, that he's correct (given chareidi family sizes). Assuming a shekel is worth about a quarter (it's actually a bit more right now), that's the equivalent of saying that you need "twenty five hundreds to twenty five thousands dollars per month" to escape poverty. Of course, jobs paying twenty five grand a month are scarce... I don't have one, nor do the vast majority of people in the U.S. But what Rabbi Gafni is missing (or, IMHO, purposely avoiding) is that people on welfare, when they enter the workforce, generally start by talking entry-level jobs that are meant for unskilled workers. As their skills and experience increase, workers will be able to begin commanding higher salaries. When I started working, I was earning very, very little. However, now that I've been working for quite a few years and have invested in some training and education, I now command a much higher salary. Had I said, twenty years ago, that it doesn't pay to work because I can't get my present salary, I would have been an idiot. Very few people get to start at the top... most of us have to work our way up through the ranks, just like everyone else. That means you "pay your dues" by working for a while at low wages and then, with hard work, experience and a bit of Siyata D'Shmaya (Divine Providence), you will begin to earn better wages.

Of course, all this is predicated on one assumption -- that the person is employable and has job skills that he can bring to the market. Rabbi Gafni makes the following observation concerning the ability to earn a salary (again, emphasis mine):

"The problem is especially acute in the chareidi public. The state does not recognize the years of yeshiva and seminary study as it recognizes the years of study of its secular citizens. As a result both husband and wife who work earn paltry salaries, and are unable to extract the family from the cycle of poverty. On the other hand there are people earning as much as an entire neighborhood."

And here, Rabbi Gafni has the solution to the problem staring him in the face and he willfully chooses to ignore it. The problem, very simply, is education. When people are not educated with any skills (other than being a rebbe/teacher), there is little chance that they will be able to command a "good salary" when they enter the workforce. In order to command a "good salary," a worker has to be able to show that s/he will add at least that much value to the enterprise and have skills that differentiate him/herself from the other people seeking employment. Almost anyone off the street can answer a phone or man a cash register -- and so those jobs pay very little. On the other hand, since not everyone can hold the job of a skilled worker (be it computer programmer, plumber, doctor, etc.), people in those professions earn more.

In the ultimate of ironies, Rabbi Gafni even brings an example of a high earner and, instead of recognizing why the person has a high salary, he engages in petty envy. He states (once more, emphasis mine):

"We considered the possibility of setting up a ministerial committee to discuss the inconceivable wage gaps that exist in this country. We need a far-reaching change and a totally new attitude. There are enormous class gaps in this country that will turn into an existential social problem. The salary the CEO of Bank Mizrachi receives is enough to sustain a whole street in Bnei Brak. These class disparities have led to very difficult situations throughout history in all places, and it is imperative that the government comes to its senses on time."

I don't know who the CEO of Bank Mizrachi is, and I certainly don't know his salary or whether or not it can really sustain a street in Bnei Brak. But I do know this: he probably holds an MBA and/or an advanced degree in finance. He probably didn't walk in off the street on his first day of work and say "I want to be the CEO." He probably spent years working at less prestigious jobs, building up his experience. He probably put in a lot of hours over the years and earned the respect of his peers in the banking industry. He probably spent quite a bit of time networking professionally. In other words, the CEO of Bank Mizrachi earns a large salary because he has worked himself up to that point, not because it was magically given to him.

Rabbi Gafni looks at the CEO of Bank Mizrachi and purposely ignores the very reason for his success. Instead of crediting his education, skill and hard work, he says that you have to "network with the elites and the power centers" to get a decent job. As if anyone could get a CEO job (or any job that requires skills) just simply by knowing an "elite" or someone in a "power center." He purposely (IMHO) ignores the importance of education and job skills and says that it's better to simply sit back, give up on any chance for developing job skills and get a welfare check from the government.

I find it utterly ironic that Rabbi Gafni is complaining about poverty in the chareidi community when it's attitudes like his that are the chief reason for it. When school systems are purposely designed NOT to teach any job skills and the society is set up to actively discourage getting an education that will lead to such skills, there can be little doubt that the outcome will be continued poverty. In short, Rabbi Gafni is like someone who ensures that there are no firefighters and then complains when his house burns down and no one was there to put out the fire.

The Wolf

What An Interesting Concept... An Open Minded School

Eeees and I have an 8th grader, who, for blogging purposes, is named George. As you can imagine, we've been looking at various high schools for George. Usually, George accompanied us to these open houses so that he could see what the school was like, but there was one open house to which we did not take him. Sadly, George was sick that day.

As it turned out, Eeees and I were somewhat impressed with what we saw that day. We were a bit sad that George missed the open house as it seemed like the type of school that would be just right for him.

Fortunately, the school held a "Spend the Day" program this past week for potential incoming students. And so, I drove George to the school for Shacharis that morning. Since I was in the neighborhood, I also stuck around for davening as well.

While I watched the students enter the shul and get ready for davening, I noticed something very interesting -- the lack of uniformity among the kids. Some wore hats and jackets with white shirts. Others wore hats or jackets. Some didn't wear either. Some kids had the big black velvet yarmulkes. Some had leather yarmulkes. Some had knitted. One kid had the large knitted cap that some sephardim wear. While all the boys wore button-down shirts, some wore white, while other wore colored shirts. Some even had stripes (sometimes of numerous colors).

I found it very interesting that this school is willing to accept (and seemingly embraces) kids from a wide variety of derachim (paths). In addition, it seems that they are willing to let each kid be who he is and not try to force him into a mold that he might not be comfortable with.

Quite refreshing to see. I think we might have a winner here.*

The Wolf

*Not for that reason alone, of course... but the seeming open-mindedness was a nice surprise.

A Small Note on Mandatory Minimum Tuitions

If you read my blog, you'll find that every now and again, I go back to my high school days and complain about it.

The fact of the matter is that I was miserable in high school. My hashkafah was entirely different than that of the yeshiva I went to. I did not believe, as my high school did, that there was value only in learning Torah and nothing else. I actually had interests that did not fall squarely in the Beis HaMidrash. I knew that many of the myths that the rabbeim spouted about non-Jews (or non-frum Jews) were downright silly and false. I did not fit the mold of a typical student. I was not the best learner -- in fact, it could be safely said that I was a rotten learner -- and not one rebbi in high school made an effort to try and help. And yes, in the end, my rosh yeshiva acted dishonorably in trying to renege on a deal that he made with me to allow me to graduate on time.

But despite all that, there is one thing that needs to be said -- I went to that high school for four years for free. My mother spent the majority of those four years in the hospital either having or recovering from numerous back surgeries. She had no income to speak of during those years. I still don't know how she managed to pay the rent* or put food on the table during those years - but she somehow found a way. And yet, no matter how much "trouble" I was at the school (I was only troublesome because I didn't fit the mold, not because I was truly troublesome), they never (to my knowledge) sent a letter asking my mother for money or threatening to not allow me back because she did not (and could not) pay tuition.

I'm often left to wonder what would have happened to me if I were forced to go to public school becuase my mother could not pay tuition. Would I still be observant today? Would I have an interest in learning Torah today? Truth to tell, I can't say. In some respects, my high school nearly destroyed my faith in Judaism - and the conflict between the more fundamentalist attitude in the school and my more "modern" attitudes is a conflict that has greatly shaped who I am today. I don't think this blog would exist, for example, if I went to a school like YU which would have been more in-line with my hashkafah. In addition, I could safely say that most of the four years that I spent there were wasted as far as Torah learning goes. I did not really begin learning until I went to yeshiva after high school. In that respect, my high school experience was a vast negative influence on my life.

And yet, would I have gone to yeshiva post-high-school had I not been in a yeshiva during high school? Would I have maintained my level of observence if I were in a public high school with a tutor (I don't know how it would have been paid for) after school? I don't know and, in truth, I don't know if I ever can know.

So, what is the point of all of this remeniscing about the past?

There is a lot of talk around the blogosphere about the fact that minimum tuitions are needed to keep our yeshivos afloat. There has to be the idea that every parent has to commit to a certain financial obligation if yeshivos are going to be able to continue operating. On an intellectual level, I understand the need for this. And yet, even though I understand the need, I cannot, in good conciense, support the idea, simply because I was allowed a free ride for four years in high school (and, I should point out, in a small high school with fewer than fifty students). How could I be a hypocrite and demand that parents pay a minimum amount *regardless of circumstances* when such a policy did not apply to me?

The Wolf


* It should be pointed out that my mother's landlords were the nicest, kindest people you could hope to meet. For the nearly twenty five years that she lived in their house, they did not raise the rent on her -- even though they knew they could have gotten a much higher paying customer.

Is A Yeshiva Education Really Worth The Money?

Sometimes I truly wonder.

Mayer Fertig, over at the Jewish Star has an article about families that are either considering or have already enrolled their children in public school due to the costs involved with a yeshiva education. For years some of these families have scrimped and saved and foregone certain pleasures for the ideal of sending their kids to a yeshiva. And now, with the current economic climate, it seems that some are just no longer able to do so.

An excerpt:

After years of talk about a tuition crisis, many families that scrimped and sacrificed to send children to yeshiva in the past have hit a financial wall.

“Many children will end up in public school as a result of all this,” said Rabbi Shneur Wolowik, director of Chabad of the Five Towns. He says he is inundated with calls for help from parents who simply have run out of options.

“Parents have to choose between having a home foreclosed on or having a Jewish education. It’s a very tough decision,” he acknowledged.

An email he received this week from a woman in the Five Towns outlined her situation: “They have two children, she’s pregnant with a third, they’ve all but canceled the babysitter, have two old cars and a very simple home. She said it’s either tuition or their home and they can’t be homeless. She did the numbers with me and, unfortunately, she’s right.”

The children are now registered in public school.

It must be very disheartening to have to make the choice between a yeshiva education and paying the mortgage.

However, as a consumer of yeshiva education for many years (both as a student and then as a parent), I sometimes wonder if sending our kids to a yeshiva (in it's current incarnation) is really worth it.

I think we have to ask ourselves -- what are we getting for our money when we pay tuition? Most people would answer in one or more of the following categories:

1. Secular education

2. Judaic education (including the positive influence of rabbeim)

3. Removal from the public school environment and/or immersion in the yeshiva environment.

That being said, I think we have to evaluate how well the yeshivos accomplish these tasks.

I think we can agree that in most cases, a secular education in a yeshiva will not equal an academic education in public school. Yes, I am well aware that there are a few academically superior yeshivos out there and I'm also aware that there are a number of public schools that are not offering the education level they should. But pound-for-pound, I'd have to venture that the average level of secular learning in a yeshiva is lower than in a public school.

Keep in mind, however, that that's not necessarily a bad thing. While some parents will choose a yeshiva based on it's secular academic program, the reality is that of the three reasons to send to yeshiva that I mentioned above, this one comes into play the least. That is because a yeshiva, by it's nature cannot offer in a three or four hour period what a public school offers in a six or eight hour period. But that's fine -- the main focus of a yeshiva (IMHO anyway) should be on Judaic studies anyway; which brings us to our second reason.

We send our kids to yeshiva to receive a Torah education. That is certainly an admirable goal and a valid reason. No matter what our kids do in life -- whether they learn in kollel, become doctors, lawyers, santitation workers or whatever -- we want them to be Shomrei Torah U'Mitzvos and, to do that, you have to have some level of Jewish education.

However, I feel that, for a long time, many yeshivos have been missing the goal here too. Yeshivos compete with each other to see who can be the "frummest" or learn the most dafim of gemara in a year. But in reality, this only benefits the elite few that can really take advantage of it. For example, when I was in 7th grade, we learned the first perek of Kiddushin -- 40 pages of gemara over the course of the year. However, for those of us (like myself) who really were not up to that extra learning, the whole year was largely a waste. Maybe one kid in the class was really capable of maintaining the pace and *really* understanding it. The rest of us simply went along as best we could. Did the yeshiva really accomplish the task of teaching me to learn gemara that year? No -- and it affected me throughout the rest of my elementary and high school years. And while this happened quite a while ago, I'm fairly certain that it still happens today. Ask yourself this question: of the twelfth graders who graduated from yeshivos this past June, how many really know how to learn gemara? My guess is the minority - perhaps the vast minority. If that's the case, perhaps less time should be spent in high school on rishonim and more time on basic gemara.

The third reason that most people send their kids to yeshiva is because they don't want them in a public school environment (or, perhaps because they specifically want them in a yeshiva environment). Is a yeshiva really environment better than a public school environment? Well, I suppose it does have it's advanteges:

1. Violent crime in yeshivos is virtually nonexistent. While crime in the public schools is certainly down, it's not as low as in yeshivos.

2. The chances of your son/daughter meeting and being attracted to someone who is not Jewish is virtually nonexistant in a yeshiva setting.

3. There is likely to be little peer pressure to eat nonkosher foods or do things on Shabbos that are otherwise prohibited.

But beyond that, yeshivos are not the "holy and safe havens" that they are often made out to be. We've all seen that child molestors can operate in the yeshiva system for years -- in public schools, they wouldn't have contact with kids after the first allegation. Drugs are available in our schools. If you send your kids to school to shield them from the influences of television or movies, you are bound for failure. Even sexual innocence can no longer be guaranteed in yeshivos. A few years ago, a classmate of mine informed me that when we were in high school together, there was a dirty magazine or two hidden in the dorm bathroom -- something that I was not aware of at the time -- and this was in a *very* right-wing yeshiva. I'm sure the same thing happens today (except that today it's no longer magazines -- the medium may have changed, but not the message). Heck, one kid (not mine) told me that in his class, kids have been known to experiment sexually with each other!

So, while I suppose there are some advantages to keeping a kid in a yeshiva environment (as deliniated above), it's not quite the panacea that people expect it to be.

All this being said, I sometimes wonder if a yeshiva is really worth all the money that is spent on it.

The Wolf

(NB: Yes, my kids are enrolled in yeshiva for next year.)

Rejected!

For a long time, I've felt that there is a significant problem to the way that Orthodox Judaism is practiced today. That problem is that we worry far too much about what other people will think rather than what actually counts.

The point was driven home to me yesterday as I was reading a post written by a father who was trying to get his son with Down's Syndrome into kindergarten in a school in Jerusalem.

The father met with the principal of the school. All seemed to go well and the parents were invited back for a subsequent meeting with the rebbe and an administrator. Discussions centered around how to integrate the child (and his "shadow") into the classroom. The child is a high-functioning child and the teacher seemed confident that he could successfully teach the young child.

Alas, it all fell apart when someone higher up put the kibosh on his enrollment. Was it because they were afraid the child wouldn't be able to fit in? Was it because they were afraid for his safety or the safety of the other kids?

No -- it was because they were afraid of the yeshiva's reputation. They were afraid of what people would think of the yeshiva if they saw a child with Down's in the classroom.

This is just so wrong on so many levels, that I just don't know where to begin. But let's start with the question raised -- what would people think?

I don't know about any of you, but I can only wonder at who would be so small-minded as to think any less of a yeshiva that would include a Down's Syndrome child (assuming, of course, that the child can truly fit into the class*). I thought we moved beyond the times when kids with disabilities were locked away and hidden from view and were considered embarrassments. I thought that we in the Orthodox Jewish world have finally come to realize that even children with disabilities such as Down's can be given a Torah education (up to his or her own capabilities, of course). We have developed programs to help and educate children with disabilities and to allow them to mainstream whenever possible. It's really a shame to see that there are still some people in the frum community who would see it as an embarrassment to be associated with a school that has a child with Down's.

Of course, there's also the idea that school has a mission -- to teach. I would think that if a school could successfully teach (and mainstream) a child with Down's it would be a major coup for the school. I would think that the school would look at this as an opportunity to prove that a Torah education is accessible to all and that they are so good, that they could even help mainstream a child with Down's. But the school chose to discard this opportunity as well.

I can't help but wonder what will be next. Will schools start giving IQ tests** and not accepting those who don't score over 115 for fear of being labeled as a "school for dummies?" Will they start turning away kids with wheelchairs or missing fingers for fear of developing a reputation for taking in "different kids?" Or are our schools to become places where only "perfect" kids are able to attend?

I know it's little consolation to them, but I think that perhaps the parents of this child with Down's were lucky to dodge a bullet. I'm not so sure that I'd want to enroll my kids in a school where the value system is reputation before things that are really important.

The Wolf




* The father, in fact, made the point that if his son couldn't fit in, he'd withdraw him from the school, but that didn't seem to make a difference.

** To be distinguished from an achievement or skill test which, IMHO, is perfectly acceptable.

Why Are You Even Bothering With Med School Then?

From Chabadtalk:

I'm engaged in the study of medicine and in modern medical textbooks there is very little (if any) restraint in what pictures they post of people and body parts. Ranging from very explicit diagrams, to real-life pictures of private organs, both living and otherwise, to pictures of cadavers etc...

I know the Rebbe opposed using cadavers for medical study but beyond that I'm not sure

My feeling is these pictures are not appropriate, but firstly it's very hard to avoid when studying the reproductive system etc.

OK, let's get one thing straight... I'm not a doctor (Psychotoddler, are you out there?), but I would be *highly* surprised to find that there exists any medical school in the United States that does not require a basic anatomy course which involves studying all parts of the human anatomy -- male and female. Furthermore, I would think that anyone who is intelligent enough to qualify for medical school would have known this going in.

If this is really a problem for you, then you shouldn't be studying medicine.

(Can you imagine what the state of medicine would be like if doctors could only study anatomy from pictures of *clothed* subjects? Can you imagine a gynecologist whose first look at a woman's vagina comes from his/her first patient?)

The Wolf

A Step In The Right Direction

Ynet is reporting that a new college for Chareidi women will be opening in Netanya next year. The college will offer courses in accounting, bookkeeping, tax consultation and other subjects.

Personally, I think this is a step in the right direction. Someone in the Chareidi community is realizing that not every woman can be a schoolteacher or a secretary and that if the Hareidi community is to have any chance of surviving in it's present form, education opportunities for women need to be expanded. This is in sharp contrast to earlier times when, only a few short years ago, education opportunities were being taken away from women.

It will be interesting to see what (if any) opposition springs up to this college, how successful it will be and what (if any) effects it will have on the chareidi community at large.

In any event, expanding educational opportunities is usually a good thing and, as such, I'm happy to see that the chareidi community is taking a step in the right direction.

The Wolf

(As an aside, I find it funny that the picture that Ynet put up for this article is so clearly not a chareidi woman.)

The Importance of a Good Education

Over at the CoffeeRoom, some of the folks were having an interesting discussion concerning the merits of getting a secular education. Most of the people there seem to believe that getting a secular education (at least through the high school level) is a good thing. As is usual in these types of conversations, some one puts forth the fact that there are those who have managed to succeed without an education. One poster put it this way:

there have been many successful people who have droped [sic] out of school

My response to this was:

I think that I would ask for a definition of the word "many" in this context.

Nonetheless, yes, there are people who have been successful despite dropping out of school - but those people are the (exceedingly rare) exceptions and not the rule.

Sure enough, someone pulled out a small list of people who did well despite dropping out from school. The list they provided was Albert Einstein, The Wright Brothers, Billy Joel, Tom Cruise "and a ton more."

Well, right off the bat, we can eliminate Einstein. While he may have dropped out at one point, he did end up earning a PhD from the University of Zurich. We can, in theory, also eliminate Cruise who did graduate from high school, but we'll discuss him a bit later.

The Wright Brothers did not complete high school -- that is a fact. Nonetheless, they lived in an age when completing high school was more luxury than necessity. Many people in the 1880s and 1890s did not complete high school; they were often forced to go looking for work to help out the family. That reality, however, does not exist today. You really can't use The Wright Brothers as a comparison. Were they alive as teenagers today, you can bet your bottom dollar that they would complete their high school education.

Billy Joel and Tom Cruise have a fairly unique quality -- they have been blessed with very unique talents. Not any shlub off the street can walk into a studio and open a $100M movie based on name recognition alone. Not any shlub can announce a concert at Shea Stadium and sell out the tickets 45 minutes after they go on sale. The fact is that these people (like many professional athletes) have such unique skills that they don't need an advanced education to make a ton of money. But the fact of the matter is that the reason they can make so much money is because their skills are exceedingly rare. You can't tell the average kid "it's okay to drop out of high school like Celebrity X," because the average kid doesn't have the God-given unique talents that Celebrity X has.

That being said, let's talk about what the more typical kid might find. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here are the usual median weekly earnings of people in the US by education for Q3 2008:

Less Than High School: 471
High School Diploma: 618
Some College Education: 725
Bachelor's Degree: 1020
Bachelor's Degree or more: 1131
Advanced Degree: 1333

I have data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics going back to 2000 (email me if you want them, or you can get them from here), and the relationship between education and salary always holds. The more education the average person has, the more they earn.

Is it possible for a person with little or no education to strike it rich? Absolutely. But in just about every case, you'll find that the person either has an incredibly rare and valuable skill or is incredibly lucky (and won the lottery). For the other 99.99999% of the population, you need an education. In other words, you can't look at the exception and posit it as the rule.

It should be noted that an interesting development seems to be occurring in the chareidi world. The Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday that chareidim want to go to college. Many, however, cannot go to college because they lack the necessary skills that they would have learned in elementary and high school. However, I wonder if this isn't the beginning of a change in chareidi society towards seeing the value of a decent secular education as necessary to get by in day-to-day life. Even if these particular chareidim can never go to college, you can bet that they will see to it that their kids don't follow the same path that they did, and that their kids *will* get a decent high school education, even if they have to go through "back channels" to get it for them.

The Wolf

UPDATE (1:20 pm): The person who posted the original comment came back with this response, which I hereby dub "the stupidest quote of the day:"

i hold that statistics dont affect us yidden.

The Wolf

Teaching Kids To Use The Internet Responsibly.

G (over at SerandEz) brings up a very interesting interview that Horizons Magazine had with Rabbi Yaacov Haber, the national director for education at the OU. In the interview, Rabbi Haber talks about some aspects of the state of Jewish education today. He champions (as I long have) the idea of education over banning. Here's his take on the matter:

The internet has proven to be capable of a great amount of damage to Jews of all ages. However, it is important to remember that the internet is a reality. There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when it will be impossible to pay a bill, bank, make a phone call or even turn on a light in your house without using the Internet. Instead of forbidding the Internet and non-kosher cell phones, it would seem to be more prudent to teach students how to interact with the Internet responsibly. If we were to forbid everything that we can use the wrong way we must include cars, mp3 players, and for that matter---women! We have to be very careful with internet technology---but forbidding it is not the answer in the long term.

The timing of this article is rather serendipitous for me. It was just this past week that Walter signed up for his first Facebook account. Eeees and I, as parents, allowed him the account, but with some restrictions. He knows that we are watching. He had to add Eeees and I as "friends." We can see what he posts on other people's walls and what they post on his wall. And, conversely, he can see how we use Facebook. Both Eeees and I are on Facebook (if you know who I am, feel free to send a friend request) and we both use it responsibly. We keep in touch with family, friends (both old and new) and classmates around the world. And this is how we hope he will use it. Sure we can give lectures about how it's to be used (and yes, we will be giving some instruction on responsible use), but more importantly, as we do in many other areas of life, we're hoping to teach by example. We realize that by acting responsibly ourselves, we deliver the strongest message that we can on the responsible use of technology.

Does that mean that it's impossible for something to go wrong? Of course not. There is always the possibility that something could go wrong in every aspect of life. Every time someone gets out of bed in the morning, there is some element of risk. But we can't live our lives by lying in bed all the time. We take the risks associated with going out of our houses each morning because we realize that the potential benefit of doing so (whether it's to go to work, school, the ballgame, etc.) exceeds the potential risk. The same applies to technology. As Rabbi Haber points out, there is going to come a time, in the not too distant future, where technology will be required to function in today's society. If we don't train our kids to use it responsibly we face one of three possibilities, none of them appealing:

1. We ban it outright. They accept the ban and choose to live life without the Internet. They are then marginalized by society. They will find it nearly impossible to go to college, get a decent job and function in daily life. In short, they will be marginalized in society.

2. We don't educate our kids and let them do as they will. Then they'll surely run into some of the seedier sides of the Internet and not be prepared to handle them.

3. We ban it outright. The kids don't accept it and sneak Internet usage behind our backs. Or, when they finally become adults and are no longer under our direct supervision, they move out and access the Internet in their own homes. Then scenario #2 (above) plays out.

Unless you're planning your children's adult lives (something no parent, IMHO, should do) and deciding that they should live a marginalized life (think of the Amish), the only responsible choice is to provide education on responsible internet usage. To do otherwise is akin to allowing your kid to using any other tool without basic training. You wouldn't allow your kid to use a circular saw without watching over him and making sure he knows the rules. The same applies here.

The Wolf

(Note: There were other parts of the interview that interested me as well. I think there may be another post in the future on this interview.)

Yeshivos Have A Duty To Teach Secular Studies To Our Kids

Rabbi Horowitz has a new article in Mishpacha Magazine touting the value of secular education in our community. While most yeshivos in the United States offer a program of secular studies, the attitude in many of them is that secular studies are a waste of time and not important. The kids pick up on this idea to the extent that when the school administration pays lip service to the importance of secular studies, the kids know it's a joke and, for the most part, learn next to nothing over the course of twelve years. In many schools, I'm positive that yeshivos would completely abandon secular studies in a heartbeat if they could get away with it.

Of course, if secular studies were something that could be easily dispensed with in today's society, then it might not be such a tragedy.* However, in today's society, in order to make yourself attractive to employers, you simply have to have certain skills, chief among them being a decent command of the English language, mathematics and basic computer skills. If you do not have those basic skills, you are going to find your options on the job market are very limited. Limited job options lead to limited pay and a greater likelihood that even when you are fully employed, you may still find yourself near or below the poverty line. And while being near or below the poverty line is bad for anyone, for an Orthodox Jews, it's far worse -- just imagine trying to pay yeshiva tuition for multiple kids on a salary of under $30,000.**

A significant part of the problem, in my estimation, comes from the fact that work, itself, is discouraged and looked down upon. Who cares if basic skills are needed for the job market if you never intend on looking for a job to begin with? I've commented in the past on how the very idea of working for a living is denigrated in our yeshivos (sometimes to the point where working fathers are denigrated in front of their children). So, since working for a living is deemed "unworthy" for a ben torah and life skills such as English, math, etc. are needed only for that purpose, the kids very quickly get the idea that the English classes are unimportant.

On top of this, you have to add the fact that computer skills are needed in today's environment as well. However, the hysteria over the (very real) dangers of the internet have caused some schools to shy away from computer studies at all -- even in an off-line environment. I don't have any definite examples, but it would not surprise me to find schools that restrict comptuer use, even off-line, in people's homes. As a result, some kids may try to enter the workforce without the slightest idea of what a word processor or a spreadsheet is. In fact, Rabbi Horowitz makes that point in this article:

A close friend of mine owns a business in an area with a large charedi population and is always looking to provide avrechim with jobs. His ‘entrance exam’ is rather simple. He gives prospective applicants a pad and paper and asks them to write two paragraphs in English expressing the reasons they would like to land a job in his company, and then to turn on a computer and type those lines. His thinking is that if an applicant cannot perform those two tasks, they are useless to him in his business.

That's it. Turn on the computer and write two paragraphs in English about why you want the job. Lest you think that this is not a difficult task, Rabbi Horowitz tells us about the results:

Suffice it to say that this would probably be my last column in Mishpacha if I shared with you the percentage of applicants he turns away because they cannot do that.

Unfortunately, the "learning only" model of the Jewish community is on the verge of bursting. Thousands upon thousands of people are learning and not working, and the signs have been apparent for a while now that this is a situation that cannot be sustained indefinitely. At some point, many of those people currently sitting in kollel are going to have to go to work. The real tragedy isn't the fact that they have to go to work (although, from a religious point of view, that is bad). The real tragedy is that many people are being thrown into the job market with few or no marketable skills. They've been told by their yeshivos (either explicitly or implictly) that obtaining job skills is a waste of time, and now they are paying the price for listening to authority figures they trusted.

People need to understand that yeshivos today are not the same as they were back in the shtetl. Yeshivos today need to serve a dual purpose. The first and foremost purpose is to teach Torah and instill Torah values in our children.*** But the second purpose is to provide a basic secular education for our children, to enable them to be able to enter the job market or puruse higher education when and if they choose (or are forced) to do so. If a yeshiva does not provide this basic education (and make sure that the students are sufficiently motivated to acquire these skills) then they are condemning the vast majority of them to a lifetime of poverty and struggle. And that, in my estimation, is probably a greater spiritual danger to them than anything they might encounter in a book, magazine, blog or college course.

The Wolf


* I, personally, believe that secular knowledge does has value in and of itself, but that can certainly be put up for debate.

** Poverty level for a family of 6 in 2008 is $28,400 in the contiguous 48 states.

*** When we went looking for an elementary school for Walter many years ago, there was one school that seemed good and seemed to fit us in a number of areas. However, for the younger grades, they had secular studies in the morning and Judaic studies in the afternoon. It was purely a scheduling matter, not a statement on the relative importance of the subjects. Nonetheless, we felt that it was important that Walter understand that Judaic studies were more important, and so we did not send him to that school for fear that the schedule would inadvertently send him the wrong message.

Orthodox Jews and Ferengi: Two Of A Kind?

Eeees and I have spent the last two years or so watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (IMHO, by far the best-written of the five Star Trek incarnations) on our Netflilx subscription. We started with the beginning of the series and have now finished season six. If you get a chance to watch the series from start to finish, I highly recommend it.

In the series, there is an alien race known as the Ferengi (Quark, the most well-known Ferengi to Star Trek fans, is pictured at right). The Ferengi are a race that are pretty much interested in one thing and one thing only -- making profit. Their entire culture is built around it. Their "bible" is called the Rules of Acquisition. (Rule #1: Once you have their money, you never give it back.) The favorite game of Ferengis is Tongo, a game where you try to financially outmaneuver the other players. The Ferengi ruler lives in the Tower of Commerce, which is a part of the Sacred Marketplace. If one has been a good Ferengi in life, then you go to the Divine Treasury in the afterlife.

There is, however, another side to Ferengi culture - the complete disenfranchisement of females (Ferengis are always referred to as "males" and "females;" never as "men" or "women."). Females are not allowed to wear clothes, are required to stay at home, are forbidden to work, enter business or earn profit, and are expected to be the servants of the house. In fact, they are expected to pre-chew the tube grubs (a common Ferengi food) for the males in the household. Needless to say, no females are ever involved in Ferengi government.

Over the course of the series, this slowly begins to change, when the Ferengi leader is influenced by a female who actually has a brain and business acumen (Quark's mother, incidentally). He begins to realize that the Ferengi are completely failing to utilize half of their potential workforce and human capital. Females, he discovers, can sometimes be just as capable as males of making good business deals, earning profit and running a household. Influenced by Quark's mother, he begins making reforms in the Ferengi government.

Some have tried to point out that the portrayal of the Ferengi in Star Trek is antisemitic. In his book, The Religions of Star Trek, Ross S. Kramer writes that the Ferengi "almost seem a parody of traditional Judaism." He argues that the emphasis on greed and the oversized facial features (ears for Ferengi) are negative stereotypes for Jews. While I don't think that the Star Trek creators were being antisemitic with the portrayal of Jews, I do think that there is something to be said about some of the commonalities between the Ferengi and some segments of Orthodox Judaism.

I think you can easily equate the Ferengi obsession with profit and business with the the obsession in some Orthodox communities with learning Torah*. The Ferengi's entire existence is built around commerce and profit. It occupies their every waking moment. Earning as much profit as possible is the ultimate goal in life. It's what a proper Ferengi male should be doing with his time. Any activity that does not earn profit is considered a waste of time.

The same could be said for some communities in the Orthodox Jewish world. Their entire existence is built around learning Torah. It occupies their every waking moment. Learning as much Torah as possible is the ultimate goal in life. It's what the proper Jewish male should be doing with his time. Any activity that does not involve learning Torah is considered a waste of time.

Another interesting correlation between the two cultures is the exclusion of females from the very activity that is considered the most important and vital in the community. Ferengi females are forbidden to earn profit under any circumstances. They cannot participate in business, they cannot talk to strange males, and are relegated to being the caregivers to children. A female who earns profit is subject to extensive penalties from the ruling authorities.

Interestingly, similar things happen with women in some Orthodox Jewish communities. They are excluded from learning Torah, the one thing that matters most in the community. They are strictly limited in which books they can learn, and, in some cases, cannot learn from books at all. In conversing with a woman online once, I found out that when she went to a Satmar school as a child, they were forbidden to use any sefarim (books) to learn from. Not even a chumash (Bible) was allowed. When I asked her if this was still the situation in her school today, she affirmed that it was**. The girls learn from photocopied sheets that the teachers and/or administrators create. The result was that when I was discussing a point with her, she made an assertion that I didn't agree with. When I asked her to back up her assertion with some proof text, she quoted an Avraham Fried song as her proof. When I pointed out to her that Avraham Fried lyrics can hardly be shown to be a proof of anything, she responded that it was all she had, because Satmar girls are forbidden to learn from texts. Any educational system that results in a person being unable to come up with a better proof text than an Avraham Fried lyric is just utterly sad.

Even among those communities that do allow girls to learn from books, there are very few that allow girls to learn Torah SheB'Al Peh (defined as Mishnah, Gemara and their commentaries). In most schools they are limited to Chumash, Navi (with the result being that they know Navi far better than most yeshiva boys), basic hashkafah and halacha (I don't know if they learn halacha from standard texts or in the "recycled" form of summary sheets and the like). However, for the most part, they never learn the reasoning behind the halachos that govern their lives and how they evolved to their modern form. Very often it becomes just a set of dry instructions (do this, don't do that, do this...). The classic arguments that are behind those dry lists, however, are closed off to them. In short, they can't participate in what is the very raison d'etre of the community.

Hmmm... kind of makes me wonder if some of the creators of the Ferengi were Orthodox Jews after all.

The Wolf

* I am not condemning this obsession.
** I don't know if this applied only to her school or to all Satmar schools. However, considering the fact that she told me that this rule (of girls being forbidden to learn from sefarim) came from the Satmar Rebbe, I'd guess that it applied to the majority, if not all Satmar girls' schools.

UPDATE (5/12/2009): I just came across a web page that links to this post. On the page, the author makes the claim that I am stating that the creators of the Ferengi in Star Trek meant the race as a "slam" against Orthodox Jews. That is not the case. I am merely pointing out some commonalities between the two cultures. My apologies if that is not clear.

The Wolf

Frozen In Time

The world is a changing placing. The changes are happening very rapidly and will continue to increase at an ever-increasing rate. Let me give you an example:

If you took someone from 3000 years ago and suddenly dropped him in 1708 (300 years ago), he would find that the world has not changed all that much. Sure, there were some social changes and technological advances between the two time periods, but after an initial adjustment period, the person could easily fit in. If he was a farmer in his original time, he may have to learn to use some new tools and some new techniques, but he'd probably be able to catch on pretty quickly, resume his work and could probably (after an initial culture shock period) blend into society.

However, if you took someone from 300 years ago and placed him thirty years ago (1978), he'd find the world a vastly different place. Far more advances occurred in the 270 years he skipped than in the 2700 years the previous time traveler skipped. A person from 300 years ago would have been completely lost thirty years ago. Just about any marketable skill he would have had in 1708 would be obsolete. He would suffer from far more technological displacement than the person who jumped 2700 years. The period of culture shock would also be much longer... perhaps even lasting the rest of his life.

Now, take someone who died thirty years ago, grab him right before he dies and bring him to today. He's skipped thirty years. I don't think I can honestly say that the world has changed as much in the last thirty years as it has in the previous three hundred, but it has changed considerably. With few exceptions, any marketable skills that he had back in 1978 are obsolete. The culture of the world is so different that I think he might find it unrecognizable. Remember -- this person didn't live through the last thirty years, taking its changes in gradual steps like you and I did... he just "jumped" those years. Just about everything that we do, from the way we communicate, to the way we eat, the way we do our jobs, the way we travel, the way we're entertained... all of it has been completely revolutionized in the last thirty years. Our time traveler would also suffer from severe culture shock as well. Most of the ideas and notions that he had about society have radically changed over the last thirty years. For example, a race such as Hilary vs. Obama would have been unheard of in his time.

So, society is changing... at an ever-increasing pace - and to compete in today's society, you have to keep up. Back in the "old days," you could train to become an accountant, work as an accountant for thirty years, and find that the job hadn't essentially changed. Yeah, you may have swapped your slide-rule for a calculator or an adding machine; but still, not much had changed. You could happily keep plugging away at your job for years on end without the need to increase your skill set. There are, no doubt, many other occupations that fit the same profile.

Today, however, you need to keep updating your skills to succeed in most occupations. As more jobs become technology-oriented, we need to stay "with the times" in terms of technology to keep up. I'm a database developer/administrator. I first learned the skills for this job about ten years ago. However, the software that I learned on (Microsoft SQL Server 6.5) is completely obsolete and outdated. If I had to go out and find a job today, I'd be hard pressed to do so if my skill set was limited to version 6.5 -- that was three versions ago (with a new due out later this year). Even non-technical jobs, such as a secretary, have to keep up with the times. Secretaries now have to be at least minimally familiar with email, word processing and spreadsheets. Perhaps ten years ago a secretary could get by without these skills, but today they'd be at a severe disadvantage in the workplace. Many professional occupations require some form of continuing education (formal or informal) after leaving school.

OK, now that I’ve bored you for almost 700 words on technology and the need for change, what does this have to do with Orthodox Judaism?

As you might all be aware, there was a decree last year in Israel severely curtailing post-high school educational opportunities for women. Women were essentially forbidden from continuing their teaching education beyond a certain point and those that had finished it found themselves discriminated against in the education marketplace.

In light of the fact that these women are the main breadwinners of the community (because their husbands spend all day learning), this decree came as a tremendous blow to the potential earnings and career opportunities of these women. By severely capping the education and training that women can receive, you are likewise capping the potential earnings that they can tap into. Because these women are the main wage-earners, this affects the entire community, often relegating major sections of it to low incomes for life.

This matter has now been brought to a head again with a new decree this week. As reported by Rafi, Rav Elyashiv (along with others) have decided that an Israeli girls school could not call itself a Bais Ya’akov if it offered training for the Bagrut exams. By exerting pressure on Bais Ya’akov schools to drop Bagrut training, they will once again be curtailing educational opportunities for women – the main earners in the community. In fact, as reported by Bluke, the very reason for the decree is specifically because if the girl completes her Bagrut exams, she may want to enroll in a university or get a job with a good salary in the secular world.

I understand (even if I don’t agree with) the reasoning behind the decree. The reason is to preserve insularity. Most Hareidim don’t want outside influences creeping into their communities and by preventing women from getting an education or advancing too far in their careers, they hope to preserve that insularity.

The problem is that such a strategy would certainly have worked 3000 years ago. It even worked pretty well three hundred years ago. It might have even had a chance thirty years ago. But not today.

Three hundred years ago, a girl could have become a baker without any need of formal education and would never have needed to see the outside world. Thirty years ago, she could become a secretary with no need to update her skills right out of high school and spent the next twenty years answering phones, taking dictation and typing in an office. But the world we live in today, for better or for worse, is not the same world as 3000, three hundred or thirty years ago. It’s a rapidly changing market place where you have to keep updating your skills or fall behind in the marketplace. In order to compete for employment opportunities, you have to be willing and able to adapt, to learn new skills and, most importantly, be willing to contact the world outside of your own daled amos. You can’t have policies that are frozen in time, because the world is not frozen in time. If you’re going to place the burden of earning a livelihood on someone, then you have to allow them to (within the limits of halacha, of course) be able to compete in the marketplace for jobs. If not, all you’re doing is setting up obstacles and dooming those earners to failure.

Instead of banning education for girls, what needs to be done is to set up education opportunities for them to pick up skills that will allow them to compete in the marketplace. And, of course, you have to *allow* them to compete in the first place. If you’re going to only allow people to compete for a small subset of jobs (teachers in Bais Ya’akovs, secretaries in women’s offices, etc.), then you are severely restricting their ability to earn a living for their families, forcing more families into poverty.

The policy of complete isolation may have been a wise one in the past, but it’s one whose day has come and gone. Such policies cannot be frozen in time, or else they (and possibly the communities that use them) run the risk of becoming obsolete.

The Wolf

Dr. Yitzchok Levine Speaks About the State of Secular Studies In Our Yeshivos

Dr. Yitzchok Levine recently spoke at the Talmud Torah of Flatbush on the topic of secular studies in our yeshivos. The title of the lecture is "Why Can't Yankel Read, Write and Do Arithmetic?" I was not at the lecture, but it can be heard online here. A question and answer session followed. I *highly* recommend that anyone who cares about the state of secular studies in our yeshivos listen to the lecture.

In his lecture, Dr. Levine observes something that we all know... that our boys' yeshivos (in Brooklyn, anyway) don't train children in the basic life skills that they need. Fractions, percents and basic math are unknown by a good percentage of bochrim "graduating" from the eighth grade. When he asked one high school student whom he was tutoring what a third plus a half was, the student answered two fifths (he simply added the numerators and the denominators). He could not tell Dr. Levine how many inches were in a foot, how many ounces in a pound or how many feet in a yard. And what's worse, many of these students don't even *care* that they don't know these basic facts. They approach math with a "what do I need this for" attitude?

Heaven forbid you try to teach something like algebra, geometry or trigonometry, subjects that don't have practical applications at an immediate glance -- that's viewed as a complete waste of time. Dr. Levine mentions that when he encounters this attitude, he brings out the Vilna Gaon's sefer Ayil Meshulash, a treatise on geometry and trigonometry. This, he says, usually holds the student for about a week until they respond to him by telling him that either (a) the Vilna Gaon wrote it in the bathroom (showing that the student has no idea what types of bathrooms the Vilna Gaon had in his day) or that he wrote it before he was Bar Mitzvah (and hence there was no bittul Torah). Needless to say, neither objection is factual.

Part of the problem, unfortunately, is that the secular studies department is being undermined by the Rabbeim in the yeshivos themselves. In one case, Dr. Levine tells the story of an acquaintance of his who was a teacher in a yeshiva. The boys in the yeshiva gave him a terrible time. However, the straw that broke the camel's back and which prompted him to finally quit, was that he found out that the eighth grade Rebbi was advising the kids not to attend secular studies in high school. When one boy asked the Rebbi how he would support himself in life, the Rebbi answered that he's going to marry a wealthy girl.

I personally, can back up some of what Dr. Levine says. I, personally, have seen secular studies denigrated by rabbeim as being unimportant and unnecessary. When I was in high school, the rosh yeshiva would, on occasion, pay lip service to the idea that secular studies are important, but we all knew that he was lying through his teeth and that he didn't really believe a word he said. It was well understood that he and all of his staff would get rid of the secular studies in an instant if they could and that they viewed it only as a necessary evil dictated by the state. Sometimes, the rabbeim would state this openly, other times in hints and attitude. But it was well known in the school where the secular studies department stood. And, of course, this attitude was passed on from the rabbeim to the students. I once asked a friend of mine how he would earn a living when he grew up he said "nu, I'll open a store." Opening a store is nice, I suppose, but I'm fairly certain that you still need basic math and life skills to operate a store.

Of course, no one in my yeshiva ever thought of entering the sciences. That's because science, in many black-hat yeshivos is equated with things like evolution which fall outside the pale of traditional Jewish thought. Of course, by not studying science, they were completely closing themselves off from any possibility of a professional career, such as law, medicine or the like, since any undergraduate degree is going to require some basic science courses. Unfortunately, however, the idea exists in much of the yeshivish world that scientists are either (a) engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide the truth of God's existence or (b) are dumber than potted plants and can't even recognize the basic evidence that the Torah is true. Because of these attitudes, the sciences (and all secular studies by extension) are relegated to the garbage heap of knowledge. However, Dr. Levine brings an interesting quote from an article by R. Shimon Schwab, in his essay "The Jews in Galus: How High A Profile." R. Schwab said:

If all the nations of the world (and it is a tendency today to think this way) are depraved foolish and wicked, it is no distinction to be better than those who are depraved, foolish and wicked. That is no basis for praise to the Ribbono Shel Olam. By the same token, gratitude for being given the Torah cannot be meaningful if all non-Torah science is nonsense, if all secular knowledge is without value. What glory is ascribed to Torah knowledge if it's distinction is simply that it is superior to nonsense. To the contrary, Chazal have told us that there is chochma, wisdom, amongst the nations. As a matter of fact, upon seeing a wise non-Jew one pronounces a blessing, praising God for having given of His knowledge to a creature of flesh and blood. But all their knowledge, all their sciences and all their wisdom shrinks into absolute nothingness before the majesty of one kutzo shel yud, one small stroke of the sacred Torah.

Indeed, as Dr. Levine points out, it must be made clear to our students that Torah study is the most important function of a yeshiva. When Walter was entering first grade, there was one yeshiva that we were somewhat impressed with. We ended up not sending him there for a few reasons but my main objection was this: For the first year or two the secular studies would be taught in the morning and the limudei kodesh in the afternoon. This was done strictly for scheduling reasons -- from a practical point of view, I couldn't argue with it. But I felt uncomfortable with this approach -- I feel that the raison d'etre of a yeshiva is to teach our kids Torah. No matter what my sons and daughter will do in life, they will first and foremost be Jews and have to live according to the Torah. It doesn't matter whether they go on to learn full-time, work full-time or find some happy medium in the middle -- regardless of what they do and where they go in life, they have to know that they are Jews and have to know the Torah. As such, I felt it extremely important that a yeshiva have Torah studies first in the morning, sending the message to my kids that their Torah studies are more important than their secular studies.

That doesn't mean, of course, that I think secular studies are unimportant. Anyone who has spent any time reading my blog knows my feelings regarding the acquisition of secular knowledge. In fact, when we were looking for a high school for Walter, we wanted a place that had an excellent Torah studies program AND an excellent secular studies program. We wanted a place that would prepare him for learning after high school at the beis midrash level AND prepare him for college, should he choose to go. Sadly, there was no place that we found in Brooklyn that met those requirements -- and as such, he has a *long* commute to school every day and back. He's not happy about the commute, but he loves the school. He's happy that he's found a place where he can flourish in both departments. And, he's in an environment, where the Rabbeim are not undermining the secular studies department. He's in an environment where the Rabbeim understand and appreciate the value of a good well-rounded education.

So, what can we do to change this situation that exists in our schools? I don't know. I wish I did. Dr. Levine gives some interesting suggestions in his lecture (again, I highly recommend that you listen to it). But I think the main thing we can do is to try to make students realize that there is value in a good education and that we have to make sure that they get the message that knowing the sciences, math, history, etc. help one to be able to learn Torah better.

The Wolf

P.S. Dr. Levine's publications, writings and lectures can be found on his web site.

What Is Happening To Us?

There have been several news stories over the past few months (and general trends that are observable over the last few years) that have me wondering where we are going as a people.

Of course, everyone knows about the violence on the buses in Israel. Last year, Miriam Shear was beaten on a bus for refusing to leave a seat that she was legally entitled to keep. This year, we have another story of a woman who was beaten for not leaving a seat (I don't know if this was a "mehadrin" [separate seating] bus for not, but even if it was, there is no excuse for beating someone up over this anyway), and an Israeli soldier was beaten for coming to her aid.

We have stories of vigilantes who go around destroying clothing they find offensive and torching people's businesses for selling items that they find offensive.

We have stories about ever-more extreme steps being taken to separate the sexes to the point where concerts are banned even when they have separate sex seating. We take away almost every opportunity for adult singles to meet each other and then we complain that there is a "shidduch crisis." In some circles, adult singles aren't even allowed to meet until the prospective date is vetted out for every possible detail from the truly legitimate avenues of inquiry to the downright silly questions of tablecloths and loafers versus laces.

We have stories where boys are told to extort large sums of money from their future fathers-in-law, even when they can't afford it, because the yeshiva's prestige is more important than the father-in-law's finances and shalom bayis.

Whereas once we were a people proud to be educated in all areas of endeavor, we now seek to become a people who shun all knowledge outside the daled amos (four cubits) of Torah. Women's education programs were banned in Israel (where, in Chareidi circles, women are the main breadwinners of the household) and those who already completed the program have found themselves blacklisted from employment in their chosen field of teaching. Instead of recognizing that there are matters that can be disputed within Judaism, we now seek to outright ban anyone who doesn't toe the official party line.

We've become a people who are so afraid of anything that isn't 100% Jewish in origin that we seek to ban pizza shops or mobile restaurants who dare to operate in our neighborhoods.

We've fostered an environment where not only is it not acceptable to simply "stay out of trouble," but we've defined "trouble" as not actively learning Torah at any given moment. Sporting activities, day trips and the like are now ruled out in many communities because the boys should be learning Torah and not wasting their time with recreation. My Rav recently refelcted on the fact that when he was a boy, there were Saturday night "fun programs" of sports and the like to keep boys out of trouble; now it's all learning programs, when, in fact, young boys (for the most part) are not really capable of keeping up such a schedule. In his words "they should be playing, not learning."

We've set up a society where everyone scrupulously follows all the rules, not because they want to, or because they think the rules are correct; but because they know that if they don't, it will be held against their children when it comes time for shidduchim. Everyone struggles to keep up with the chumra (stringency) -of-the-month club so that they shouldn't seem like second rate Jews.

We've created an environment where people are no longer trusted to be able to police and think for themselves. Cell phones with text messaging has been ruled assur (forbidden) because people might use it to contact others of the opposite gender. Schools have tried to institute policies where parents cannot have Internet access in their house on pain of expulsion on the pretense that they are protecting the children (which, if it were truly the case, then they should just ban the children's use of the Internet). I'm kind of surprised that no one has tried to say that it's forbidden to sleep in the same house with one's wife when she's a niddah.

We have set up a world where "work" has become a dirty word. For thousands of years, from the time of the entry into Eretz Yisroel until recently, the vast majority of our people earned their living while learning part-time, while the truly exceptional scholars among us were supported by the community in full-time learning. Now, it seems that everyone is *expected* to learn full-time and that people who work because they have to either face an economic reality or because they have the maturity to recognize that they aren't capable of full-time learning are looked down on and discriminated against in shidduchim.

We have a community that judges you more by the material that your yarmulke is composed of than the contents of your neshama (soul) and where the material that your skirt is made out of is more determinant of your observance than how well you actually observe the mitzvos (commandments).

With all this currently happening in our midst right now, I shudder to think at where we'll be in twenty to thirty years if nothing changes.

We need to stop leaning always to the right and return to a centrist position. In the sea, a ship that lists too far to the right or the left will eventually sink. Only a ship that is even and upright can survive the voyage. If we don't, the challenges we face in the next generation will be far worse than those we face now. The "teens-at-risk" and "adults-at-risk" situations didn't happen in a vacuum -- they came about at least partly because people have found that Orthodox Judaism has gone so far to the right that they no longer have a place in it. The further we go to the right, the larger these problems will become as more and more people will feel alienated in their own religion.

The Wolf

Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum: Kids Need To Have Fun

Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum wrote an article which appeared in The Yeshiva World today. In it, he decries how it has become standard operating procedure to ban anything that is remotely fun. Concerts, trips, sports and other youth activities which are, in varying degrees, banned in our communities, should be allowed and encouraged in a kosher environment. He correctly points out that kids need an outlet for their energies (aside from learning) and that if one removes all such outlets, kids will find other outlets... and they will be far worse. If you don't allow kids to participate in sports or cultural activities and the like, then they will be gathering in pool halls in the Catskills. Or, as he succinctly puts it:

When sports and concerts are forbidden, and all forms of kosher entertainment are off limits, we are asking for trouble. If our kids can’t find a place to vent their energy within a kosher environment, then they will find it elsewhere.

Amen.

In his article, he gives examples of times that he organized youth activities and met with resistance. In one case, he tried to have the boys in his Pirchei organization put on a play based on the book Family Aguilar. When people tried to have the play banned, the matter ended up being escalated to R. Moshe Feinstein. Instead of issuing a ban, R. Moshe gave it his blessing.

In another example, he arranged for a two-day trip to Washington at low cost for boys. The trip was going to be taken on the two days that the yeshivos gave off for Channukah. One Rosh Yeshiva wrote R. Teitelbaum a nasty letter accusing him of encouraging bittul Torah. Fortunately, R. Teitelbaum was able to fend him off.

It's very interesting that the difference between R. Teitelbaum's point of view and the point of view of others in our community is brought to my attention right now. Walter just began high school this week and it looks like he's going to have a great time there. He's encouraged about the learning programs, the secular education and the extracurricular activities. Indeed, when we went looking for a school, we purposely went looking for a place that had all three of these elements -- we wanted a school that had a great learning program that would keep him challenged and interested; we wanted a school with a quality secular studies department that would show him the possibilities that exist in our world, and a school that had supervised extracurricular activities for him to be able to channel his creative energies. I purposely didn't want to send him to a high school such as that I went to: where the learning was boring and uninteresting, where the secular studies were a joke, and the word "extracurricular" didn't exist because the school day went from 7:30 in the morning to 9:30 at night every day without variation; where the word "trip" didn't exist and the word "activity" might as well have been in Mongolian. In my old school, if it didn't involve learning, it shouldn't be done (although I suppose they did allow for some recreation -- boys were allowed to play basketball during recess). In looking for the type of school for Walter that recognizes that kids are kids and need kosher extracurricular activities, I find that I have explicitly rejected the opinions of the "banners" and embraced the opinion of R. Teitelbaum.

I can only be thankful that there are rabbis out there, like Rabbi Teitelbaum, who have not forgotten what it is to be a kid and to need an outlet for youthful energies.

The Wolf

Does Secular Knowledge Cause People To Lose Their Faith?

Well, the answer to that is, it depends.

There is a fascinating interview in the current issue of Biblical Archeology Review. Editor Herschel Shanks interviewed four people who have done extensive work in archeology and/or biblical scholarship:

• Bart Ehrman, a popular BAS lecturer who lost his faith
  
• James Strange, archaeologist and Baptist minister
• Lawrence Shiffman, Dead Sea Scroll scholar, Orthodox Jew
• William Dever, archaeologist, former evangelical preacher, lost his faith, became a Reform Jew and is now an athiest

In the course of the interview, it emerges that Ehrman and Dever had very strict, literal interpretations of the Bible. As Ehrman put it:

I have a fundamentalist background. I had a very high view of Scripture as the inerrant word of God, no mistakes of any kind—geographical or historical. No contradictions. Inviolate.

My scholarship early on as a graduate student showed me that in fact these views about the Bible were wrong. I started finding contradictions and finding other discrepancies and started finding problems with the Bible. What that ended up doing for me was showing me that the basis of my faith, which at that time was the Bible, was problematic. So I shifted from being an evangelical Christian to becoming a fairly mainline liberal Protestant Christian.

In the end, when he was confronted with questions of theodicy, he lost his faith entirely.

Dever had a similar literalist background. He states (bolding mine):

I was ordained a minister at 17, put myself through undergraduate school and on through divinity school, through Harvard, then a congregation. I have 13 years’ experience as a parish minister and two theological degrees. For me, it was this typical Protestant conundrum: It’s all true or none of it is true. My sainted mother once said to me, If I can’t believe that the whale swallowed Jonah, I can’t believe any of it.

After his graduation, he moved to Israel and worked there for many years. When confronted with contradictions and contrary evidence, his faith was destroyed.

On the other hand, Strange and Schiffman don't hold to literalist views. Schiffman goes on to state relate an even which underscores his non-literalism:

A guy came to interview me recently for some TV program about Adam and Eve. So I said that the story of Adam and Eve is like a microcosm of human relations between a man and a woman, about people and God, and about good and evil. After about five minutes, the guy turns off the recorder and says “I don’t understand. Everybody else I interviewed is talking about—Where is Eden? Was there really one human being in the beginning?” I said that is not what this is about. There are major challenges to the Bible if you take it literally, but that is not what matters. That isn’t what it means to be a believing Jew.

Strange, too, doesn't take everything the Bible says literally, and he, too, kept his faith while studying.

I find this quite interesting, especially when it is applied to the Orthodox Jewish community. To those who believe that lice don't come from eggs, or that the moon landings were faked or that the sun goes behind a barrier every night, they are going to face a rude awakening when they discover that things are not as they've been told. Having accepted the premise that everything that Chazal say is infallible, and that Chazal had perfect knowledge of science, they may not be able to accept the fact that they can be proven wrong. And even if they close their eyes and refuse to see the evidence, their children or their grandchildren will. On the other hand, by willing to be flexible in your interpretation of ancient texts*, one can easily accommodate new challanges, ideas and evidence that arise without having to suffer the major shock that can cause one to lose their faith, as happened to Dever and Ehrman.

It's the attitude that "it's all true or none of it is true," which is prevalent among many fundamentalist Orthodox Jews, that causes all the problems. In a discussion regarding the Rambam and science, it was put to me this way: "If the Rambam could be found to be in error regarding his astronomy, then who is to say that he is not in error everywhere else in the Mishneh Torah. How would we have any authoritative basis for halacha at all?"

Of course, this is all very specious. One does not have to take an "all-or-nothing" approach to any ancient text. Why should the fact that the Rambam is wrong about the diameter of the sun affect anything he says regarding Hilchos Yibum? Obviously, they shouldn't - one area is halacha and the other is science. Just as we don't expect our engineers to be legal experts, and yet we still rely on them to build safe bridges, so too we should not hold Chazal to perfect scientific knowledge in order to arrive at a valid halachic decision.

In the end, I found this interview quite enlightening and it reinforced my belief that literalism is, in the end, an obstacle to maintaining one's faith, not a safeguard to it.

The Wolf

A Rant on Parental Responsibility and My Son's Classmates

Some recent events have forced Eeees and I to have a talk with Walter, our oldest, about birds, bees and other similar topics. He is approaching an age where he has to learn to cope with certain urges and understand certain feelings that his body is giving him. He has to learn how to properly deal with women and what are the healthy and unhealthy ways of dealing with them.

During the conversation, the topic took a detour from him to his classmates. To be honest, I was kind of surprised to hear the things that I heard. I've been told that the vast majority of his classmates spend a fair amount of their free time discussing "hot babes" with each other. Some of them have pictures of "hot babes" on their cellphones, including some that are unclothed. Many of them, it seems, have seen movies or television shows that are highly inappropriate (IMHO) for thirteen-year-old boys. All this in a yeshiva that, while, not at the outmost fringes of the right-wing is certainly on that side of center.

To be honest, I'm kind of shocked and a bit angry. I'm shocked that there are parents that are so clueless as to what their children are doing. I'm not saying that Walter is an angel -- heaven knows (pun intended) that he's not -- he's got his own teenage issues to deal with -- but I can honestly say that we have a pretty good handle on what he sees, listens to and reads, and we do screen for inappropriate material. We didn't let him see the latest (fourth) Harry Potter movie because we felt the bath scene with Moaning Myrtle was somewhat inappropriate for his age. Maybe in another year or two... but not yet. I know that most (all?) of his classmates have no doubt seen it. One kid in his class carries around episodes of Family Guy (a funny show, but not for kids) on his MP3 player. The kids in the class talk about Borat (they saw Borat??!!) and some of the reported homosexual content in the movie (I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it one way or the other. However, according to the report from CommonSenseMedia, it's fairly explicit).

Do parents know what their kids are doing? My son sometimes complains that we won't let him watch this or that. But in the end, we believe that it's for his benefit and that he'll thank us in the end. After all, isn't that what responsible parents do -- shield their children from things that are inappropriate?

I'm also a bit angry, but I suppose that it's somewhat my own fault. I'm angry because for years the yeshiva has been making me feel (or, perhaps more correctly, I've been *allowing* the yeshiva to make me feel) like a sub-standard parent because we have a television in the home and we allow our kids to watch DVDs, read secular books, etc. But now, I see what other kids in the class are doing and, with perhaps one other exception, I find that our child is probably the most "shielded" kid in the class -- and I'm angry. I'm angry because (a) I feel like I've been stigmatized by the administration for no reason and (b) instead of needing to screen the other kids from mine, I find now that all along it's been my kid who has been needing screening from the other kids! And yet, Eeees and I were the ones who were told that we run a "liberal household" by a former principal at the school. If only he knew what would become of this class five years later!

I just don't get it. Who is in the wrong here? The "good parents" who "don't have a television" or "don't watch movies" but have their kids watching things that are highly inappropriate and who have pornographic pictures on their cell phones; or me, who openly has a television, who openly goes to movies (although my kids don't) and who does his level best our guide our children in what they should watch and see and try to teach them that some media are just inappropriate for them at the present time?

The Wolf