A Challenge to an Orthodox Bastion
הטקסט שלך כאןBy DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: April 19, 2004
grand experiment in Orthodox Judaism sits nestled in four classrooms of an Upper West Side Jewish high school.
It is Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a small rabbinical school poised to challenge the might of Yeshiva University, a bastion of Jewish Orthodoxy and the nation's main supplier of modern Orthodox rabbis.
The school, founded five years ago, will ordain its first class of rabbis in June. The founders hope the nine young men will be the vanguard of a liberalizing, more open force in the world of modern Orthodoxy, which they believe has grown increasingly closed and intolerant.
The new yeshiva's founder, Rabbi Avi Weiss, said he hoped to ordain 8 to 10 working rabbis a year who are "fervently Orthodox" but are also open and inclusive-minded.
"We can literally transform the fabric of the Jewish community in America," he said in an interview. "And that's our goal."
Rabbi Weiss, the longtime senior rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, is well known for high-profile political activity. But he also has a reputation as a modern Orthodox liberal, giving women a greater role in his synagogue, stressing openness to non-Orthodox Jews and keeping the doors open to other faiths.
"He's trying to reproduce himself with this institution," said Samuel C. Heilman, a professor of Jewish studies and sociology at Queens College.
Over at Yeshiva, officials privately raise doubts about the quality of rabbis who will come out of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and publicly question whether it was even needed.
"If they can produce talented and well-trained rabbis for a community, then that's great, because the need is there," said Rabbi David Israel, Yeshiva's director of communal relations. "At same time, do I feel that the extra seminary is needed?" Probably not, he said.
Orthodoxy demands a stricter interpretation of Jewish law than other branches, like Reform and Conservative Judaism. It calls for separation of the sexes in synagogues and some other places, and provides little role for women in synagogue ritual. Modern Orthodoxy is distinct from the more insular ultra-Orthodox world, which includes Hasidic Jews from Eastern Europe, who keep their separateness visible by having their men wear side curls and black hats.
William B. Helmreich, a professor of the sociology of religion at the City University of New York Graduate Center, said that many modern Orthodox rabbis have grown increasingly conservative, with a small "c,'' in recent years. The signs range from the raising of walls separating the sexes at services to a ban on female singers or mixed dancing at social events to barring non-Orthodox rabbis from using an Orthodox synagogue's ritual bath for conversions. Professor Helmreich cites several reasons. Ultra-Orthodox communities, which are growing rapidly, are exerting more influence. As modern Orthodox have moved into secular professions, the teaching - and molding of young Jewish minds - is left to more ultra-Orthodox. And a growing number of converts to Orthodoxy are bringing their own zeal.
From a pilot class of two, the student body of Chovevei Torah, or "lovers of the Torah," has grown to 37. It has lured many students from Yeshiva University. Five of the nine to be ordained either have undergraduate degrees from Yeshiva or studied at its rabbinical school.
How many in the ordination class find jobs in the next few months will be a critical marker of success.
Of the two in the pilot year, who are included in this year's ordination class, Jeff Fox is a rabbi in Tenafly, N.J., and Ya'akov Simon teaches at a Jewish high school in Philadelphia. From the rest of the class, Daniel Levy has a teaching job offer, and Aaron Levy has accepted a job as campus rabbi at Cornell University with Hillel, the center for Jewish student life. School officials say two dozen congregations or schools have expressed interest in their graduates, and others in the class have interviews. In contrast, Yeshiva University's theological seminary reported that it had 147 graduates from 1998 to 2002. Of those, 24 have full-time pulpit jobs and 47 serve in some other professional rabbinical capacity, Yeshiva said
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