Monday, September 04, 2006

Please! Put Away the Procrustean Beds!


The YUCommentator has undertaken a new series entitled: Perspectives on Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (obviously trying to continue the sterling tradition of Menachem Butler's YUdaica). The first three articles are by Rabbis Yosef Blau, Menachem Genack and Charles Weinberg, and all are highly recommended.
At the same time, while reading one of the pieces I started having an odd combination of serious heartburn and deja-vu. When will his students stop finding it so incredbly necessary to downplay, or even dismiss, the Rov's commitment to the acuisition of as broad a general education as possible? When will they cease dishonoring our rebbe by claiming, implicitly, that he was less than honest?
What do I mean? It's very simple. The Maimonides School was established in order to provide children with a dual curriculum. The need for that was not ex post facto. It was a priori. (See Seth Farber's study and the additional material here and here.) The Rov said this over and over and over again to the Maimonides parents. (See the remarks here, here and here.) Did Professor Twersky not know what he was talking about when he wrote of the Rov's deep and abiding commitment to as broad an education as possible?
Now, let me make this clear. There is absolutely no question that the Rov's first allegiance was to Torah and Masorah. Indeed, his epistemological assumption that Torah was intellectually self-sufficient and self-validating emancipated Judaism from intellectual dependence upon any system outside of itself. However, as I once argued in a paper (which is in press), the emancipation of Torah from חכמה actually expanded the range of knowledge that could be brought to bear upon the study and interpretation of Torah. And that's what he did. This was, taken all together, a חומרה. in other words, the Rov זצ"ל demanded both of himself and others. Does anyone think it's a coincidence that every single member of the Rov's extended family has a BA (At least) and, more often than not, an MA and/or a PhD?
So, please, fellow disciples. You want to disagree with our rebbe, bitte. You think he was wrong, or that he acted as a שעת הדחק. Fine. Please, however, don't try to fit him into a procrustean bed that suits you. That goes for both those who lean right and those who lean left.
Let the Rov be the Rov, a titan of Torah, a defender of Masorah, an intellectual giant whose cultural vistas were extraordinary, and a complex figure whose like we see only once in a generation.
חבל אל דאבדין ולא משתכחין
[Postscript: Menachem Butler pointed out that my formulation at the end resembles a letter that Rav Aharon Lichtenstein wrote about just this subject. Since I assume I must have seen it at some point, I want to credit him with the formulation. If not, ברוך שכיוונתי לגדולים. This is what he wrote:
[The Rav] sought, as we should, the best of the Torah world and the best of modernity. For decades, sui generis sage that he was, the Rav bestrode American Orthodoxy like a colossus, transcending many of its internal fissures. Let us not now inter him in a Procrustean sarcophagus.]

4 comments:

Menachem Butler said...

Thanks for the shout-out.

Once again, I think back to Rav Lichtenstein's now-famous and oft-quoted line that Rav Soloveitchik "sought, as we should, the best of the Torah world and the best of modernity. For decades, sui generis sage that he was, the Rav bestrode American Orthodoxy like a colossus, transcending many of its internal fissures. Let us not now inter him in a Procrustean sarcophagus."

For the PDF of Rav Lichtenstein's letter, see http://ajhistory.blogspot.com/2006/07/legacy-of-rav-soloveitchik-pdf.html

Ben Bayit said...

IMHO (and I could be wrong) I suspect that some of this "revisionism" is the result of later generations of RYBS' students and family making a big push for the supremacy of the Liberal Arts - davka the liberal arts - over other areas of secular education. for example see the interview with RAL that came out two weeks ago. http://www.inn.co.il/Besheva/Article.aspx/6032 (specifically the section of "haruach ve'hadama). I find it difficult to see how someone like Rav Dr. Nachum Rabinovitch or Rav Dr. Eliayahu Zini have somehow reached a lower level of avodas hashem b/c their doctorate is in Mathematics and not in Arts or Literature. Or that somehow Rav Zini's academic work in Math is "neutral" while his "private" non-academic work on Levinas is somehow more spiritually uplifting? Was RYBS' own brother - and teacher of RAL - Rav Aron S. somehow lacking in "complete" avodas Hashem b/c his degree was only a "functional" professional degree in the field of law? That's before getting to rabbanim like Rav Usher Weiss who have no academic training at all - are they lacking in avodas hashem?!?

BTW, as an aside the same students of RYBS who argue for the risk/reward benefits of the Liberal Arts despite the admitted dangers (they usually compare it to automobile transport) are often the same ones that take a zero-sum game to pikuach nefesh in regards the security situation, and take the "save one life for the kotel" dictum to its extreme proportion. I've never found a convincing explanation for this dichotomy in their thinking

Anonymous said...

Look, if this is how the author understands and remembers the Rav, then he is right for saying so. To do otherwise would be a denial of his truth.

Anonymous said...

IMHO (and I could be wrong) I suspect that some of this "revisionism" is the result of later generations of RYBS' students and family making a big push for the supremacy of the Liberal Arts

Yes you are wrong. Nothing in your comment makes any sense whatsoever, nor is it even remotely relevant. Next time you have an axe to grind, try to do it with a little more intelligence.