Lost Cause: a Conclusion in Which Nothing Is Concluded

EDITOR’S NOTE

LOST CAUSE: A CONCLUSION IN WHICH NOTHING IS CONCLUDED

n Orthodox supporter of Yeshiva University once posed a question: From time to time he hears glowing reports of some young A student whose brilliance is recognized and who has therefore been identifi ed as a future star in the fi rmament of rabbinic learning. He does not get similar reports about young people who are slated to become serious Orthodox thinkers. Why not, he wondered. The implica- tion of his question was that knowing why would help remedy the shortage. Here’s the most reasonable answer he was given. When a young person is very bright, with the work habits and the desire to excel at mastering the yeshiva curriculum, these hopeful omens are usually noticed fairly early. One can even detect, at that stage, the seeds of religious integrity without which one cannot become a faithful expositor and transmitter of the Masorah. Hence, barring unforeseen derailment, everything is in place for the individual to develop as expected. In other areas—and it doesn’t matter whether you label the “other areas” hashkafa or mahashava or philosophy or theology—such confi dence about teenagers or young adults is inadvisable. Too many qualities must come together that do not predictably come together: Begin with the fundamental prerequisite of competence in various branches of Torah; add the less common intellectual breadth and scope outside of Torah. Of course the potential thinker must desire and develop the ability to think perspicuously, sometimes obsessively, about questions that intimidate or fail to interest others, and whose real life implications often go unnoticed until it’s too late. Then, too, there is the hard work needed to formulate these questions and to communicate them to a serious audience. Finally, and most indispensable: what about the religious and intellectual maturity and what of the strength of character needed to avoid being defl ected by the pressures and distractions endemic to a society hostile or indifferent to sustained refl ection? These attributes are by defi nition fragile and they are reserved for those who have learned something of life’s variety and, for better or worse, become acquainted with themselves.

So identifying the challenge does not constitute a solution; it only helps us understand the nature of the problem. Here is a further perspective on the problem: Halakhic questions, like some of the questions asked by academic scholars, are supposed to have answers. We know that in real life, to be sure, responding to a halakhic query is not only a matter of content but also of how it is communicated. At the most crucial moments, Halakha on occasion demands what the Rav called an ethic of sacrifi ce; its realization frequently requires human sensitivity and nuance. Whether these situations become an opportunity for religious advance or, unfortunately, provoke frustration, sullenness, and resistance, often depends on the personal relationship between rabbi and congregant or between teacher and student and on the way the particular halakhic imperative is connected to the broader elements of theological and ethical consciousness. The ramifi cations for spiritual life of Talmud study and the important role assigned to it in everyday Jewish life likewise go beyond the communication of knowledge and information and thus have much in common with the world of Jewish thought. Despite this, halakhic texts and questions can be dealt with in a relatively uniform manner, one that can, in theory, be abstracted from the unique features of situation and character. This is not true in with respect to one’s personal relationship with God and with other human beings. A comment of R. Hutner’s captures the difference. Isaiah 3 refers to “the staff of bread” and the “staff of water.” The Gemara identifi es the staff of bread with the master of Halakha and the staff of water with the master of Aggada. R. Hutner explained the mean- ing of the distinction as follows: The standard halakhic measurement (shiur) for solid food is uniform for all people: if, for example, a person violates the Biblical prohibition by eating an olive-size of pork, or (on Yom Kippur) food with the volume of a date, it doesn’t matter if he is a giant or a dwarf. For liquid, by contrast, the measurement varies depending on the person: the amount of water that fi lls one’s mouth on Yom Kippur is greater for Og the king of Bashan than for a child. According to R. Hutner, the halakhic contrast between solids and liquids suggests the difference between the disciplines of Halakha and Aggada. Halakha is the same for everyone. In Aggada, however, each person possesses his or her singular perspective. From the standpoint of contemporary social and economic attitudes, serious Torah study, like the humanities, is condemned to hopeless “inef- fi ciency.” Our late capitalistic society wants to save time and minimize labor costs: we prize the short cuts that offer us more of the information

2 Shalom Carmy

we want for less effort and less personal engagement. Growth in Torah study, as opposed to information gathering and processing, is about gain- ing wisdom and deepening personal involvement. It demands the inten- sive investment of time. One of our greatest educational challenges is to overcome the utilitarian mentality of our culture. If this is true for Torah study in general, it is even more so for Jewish thought, precisely because the kind of thinking typical of the ba’al Aggada calls attention to understanding more than to quantitative knowledge, and cannot ignore the individual. The Jewish thinker is committed to self-understanding, however painstaking and painful, and to understanding others. What makes our lives worthwhile? What really makes our lives worthwhile? How can we live with serious failure or anxiety about failure in our religious or worldly preoccupations? How can we live with our failures and disap- pointments and with those of the people we are devoted to? These are not questions with simple answers we can look up in a book or extract from a congeries of texts. These are not even questions we can formulate accu- rately without thought. One size does not fi t all. Such matters of life and death do not become routine, even if we think we have dealt with them again and again. All this helps explain our community’s shortage of substantial theological existential refl ection. Torah educators are burdened; congregational rabbis are even more heavily overextended. When days are long, sometimes impossibly long, the hours devoted to refl ection are short. Parents, too, feel the unrelenting pressure of maintaining the upper middle class income and allegiance to the material lifestyle that culture makes virtually obligatory. Nor is it guaranteed that pursuing the refl ective life will yield externally measurable and recognizably rewarding results. If the benefi ts are uncertain and not appreciated, why make the effort? Rabbi Norman Lamm inaugurated Tradition over sixty years ago, when there was a sense that the American Orthodox community could develop an approach that was literate and thoughtful. Ten years later, as a young student, I looked at the greatest of the teachers with whom we were blessed and at some of the rabbis and Orthodox intellectuals I encountered and had reason to think that our community was advancing in faithfulness to mitsvot and sophisticated Torah study, in part because we had the intellectual resources and convictions to counter secularism, hedonism, and materialism. Since then the confl ict between dominant secular attitudes and philosophies and the foundations of a Torah outlook has become sharper, broader, and deeper. The common ground between Judaism and the ideas taken for granted by secular elites is progressively eroding. Consider the ethos of the family, the understanding of human

3 TRADITION nature and human destiny, the absoluteness of religious commitment and many other fundamental principles. The profound incompatibilities manifest themselves not only via the mass media and the classroom but behaviorally and spiritually as well. Maybe this is tolerable. Perhaps American Orthodox institutions and communities can get along by compartmentalizing, upholding one set of implicit standards for individuals in the formal religious sphere while conforming to another set of standards the rest of the time. True, this is neither healthy nor, for many individuals, possible. Nonetheless, as long as the number of defections is relatively low, one may accept them with a degree of resignation, ascribing bad outcomes to psychological problems, social and family dysfunction, and economic pressures and preoccupations, and we act as if these are unconnected to our intellectual deﬁ ciencies. Or one may treat Orthodox life in the United States as a holding pattern and hope the best will ﬁ nd their way to Israel. Given the widespread predictions of Orthodoxy’s demise in America that abounded in the middle of the 20th century, our present situation may even justify celebration. If, however, the goal is not only social survival but spiritual growth in our communities, the decline in Orthodox intellectual life is unfortunate. A promising young rabbi/lamdan/scholar, pondering that decline, recently wondered whether the kind of Orthodox intellectual life he had envi- sioned and prepared for was a lost cause. Is there more for him to do than to salvage what he can of the minority of receptive individuals (his term was she’erit ha-peleita) and otherwise keep the machinery of Orthodoxy running? The obvious response is that if having to abide this level of frustration and dissatisfaction was good enough for our predecessors, it should be good enough for us. What vocation is superior to serving God by facilitating Torah and mitsvot as best as we can? Perhaps, however, we can bring to bear a broader perspective. In his essay on F. H. Bradley, T. S. Eliot confronted the challenge of advocating cultural and educational standards against the spirit of the age. What he said is pertinent not only to those cultural disputes but to the religious situation as well.

If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We ﬁ ght for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we ﬁ ght rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.

4 Shalom Carmy

For now, and for the foreseeable future, we struggle to build what we can and to achieve the best for ourselves and for those we work with. We struggle for temporary victories and to keep our cause alive.

This is the last issue of Tradition under my editorship. One of the fi rst questions posed to me when I took over fi fteen years ago was how I in- tended to ensure the participation of younger writers. My response was to appoint a new generation of Board members. Of these, Rabbi Yitzchak Blau and Rabbi Jeffrey Saks were subsequently appointed as Associate Editors. R. Saks, who has accomplished a great deal as a religious educa- tor in Israel, who has produced scholarship in Jewish history and who is a respected authority on Agnon, is my successor. Under his leadership, we look forward confi dently to Tradition fl ourishing as a forum for literate, intelligent, and committed Orthodox thought. For me this is the time to thank the RCA for enabling me to serve Tradition for the past forty years. It was my revered mentor Rabbi Walter Wurzburger who fi rst brought me in as an author and later as an editor. I have benefi tted from the example and advice of my illustrious predecessors Rabbi Norman Lamm, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, and Rabbi Michael Shmidman and from the outstanding collegiality of the Associate Editors— Rabbis Blau, Saks, Hillel Goldberg, Shnayer Leiman, and Dr. Joel Wolowelsky. I feel an immense personal and intellectual debt to our Associate Editor Rabbi Aaron Levine, who is no longer with us, and to Professor Yaakov Elman, who died last year. For as long as he was able, my revered teacher Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein provided guidance when- ever asked and bestowed upon us his legendary attentiveness, precision, and sagacity. Rabbi Yamin Levy was indispensable in raising the funds that kept Tradition fi nancially stable. On a day to day basis I am beholden to the last three Editorial Assistants, Rabbi Daniel Schreiber, Rabbi Shlomo Zuckier, and not-yet-rabbi Avraham Wein, all of whom should be heard from in years to come. It is important to me that our journal has properly honored and stud- ied the work of my revered mentors. We have devoted expanded issues to R. Aharon Lichtenstein and R. Wurzburger and have published high level discussions of R. Soloveitchik. If I am remembered at all in the Jewish world, I hope it will be as a faithful and resourceful talmid of my teachers. For the last several years I have fought for the “lost cause” of traditional religion by contributing a monthly essay to First Things. The battle for a

5 TRADITION vigorous American religious culture on behalf of that wider audience is essential to our survival in the face of an indifferent and often hostile world. My editorial involvement in Tradition began before I joined the Board in 1979. Several years earlier the Rav invited me to assist him in preparing some of his writings for publication. The fi rst installment was the special edition of fi ve Tradition articles that appeared in 1978. This series included the Rav’s eulogy of the Talner Rebbitzen, in which he depicted the dual aspect of our religious tradition, the essential role of the Jewish father and the Jewish mother. A few months later the Rav handed me a letter he had received. His correspondent had read the article carefully and appreciatively. What replacement, however, could the Rav propose for people who do not have the benefi t of the ideal father and the ideal mother whom the Rav so eloquently extolled? We spent some time weighing possible responses, none of which the Rav found satisfactory. Did the Rav intend to write back? No, because he didn’t have a good answer. In that case, I asked, why did he give me the letter? The Rav looked me in the eye and said, very deliberately: “Carmy, I want you to think about this.” This anecdote adds one more ingredient to the profi le of the Jewish thinker adumbrated above. He or she must not only articulate Jewish convictions, insights, and arguments but must also be sensitive to questions for which we do not have clear-cut solutions. This is as true for the septuagenarian as it is for the young student. As for me, forty years have passed and I am still thinking.