More Of The Same…

We do not at all envisage rabbinic education at our yeshiva in the years ahead to be much different at its core from what it is now or has been in the great and shifting centers of Torah learning in the past-from Babylon onward and before. To be a rabbi, one must first of all strive to be at a talmid chakham (a scholar) and a yirei shamayim (pious Jew)-who profoundly believes that "the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord" (Psalms 110:10).

Nonetheless, even while avowing that RIETS' approach to curriculum is hardly distinguishable from the classical yeshivot of old, there are and continue to be several critical differences that give it a persona all its own, and that will remain boldly integral to our anschuauung in the future, as well: 1) The acceptance of secular learning. Indeed, RIETS is the foundation stone upon which rose the variegated edifice of Yeshiva University; 2) Its aggressive commitment to the totality of the Jewish people.

RIETS expects its students to serve the Jewish community in its many and oftentimes disparate needs-from the congregation to the school, from rosh yeshivah to communal rabbi. And, it views this expectation as the fulfillment of "learning that leads to doing," which has always been the exquisite realization of Torah lishmah-"Torah for its own sake."

Lomdut And Service

To this end, Dr. Norman Lamm, who this year is completing his second decade as rosh yeshivah and president of RIETS and who has stood at the helm of its most far-reaching and creative expansion, has given particular thrust to RIETS' original vision of serving the Orthodox community, but with no less a sense of obligation to all Jews, whoever they may be and from wherever they come. We do not intend for that to change, whatever century or millennium. On the contrary, we view it as a sacred task to bend our every effort to intensify that bond to all of klal Yisrael.

RIETS is committed to meet, surely and wholly, the expectations of the rabbinate as that term was traditionally understood: deepening lomdut, the analytical mastery of the sacred text, which has ever been the intellectual stock-in-trade of the yeshiva. At the same time, it endeavors equally to hone, to their keenest edge, those professional tools and skills needed by the rabbi to do even more effectively what has traditionally been his responsibility, especially in the fantastically quickening circumstances and contexts which characterize our time and probably even more so will define the years ahead.

The Message Is The Medium

A striking paradox underlies Orthodox Jewish reality today and promises to become even more emphatic in the years ahead, posing an awesome challenge to the Orthodox rabbi. On the one hand, the community the rabbi serves directly is apt to be more learned and punctiliously observant than before. On the other hand, the largest part of the Jewish community, beyond his synagogue or school, is fast slipping away from its Jewish moorings and, God forbid, heading towards oblivion. At once, the rabbi has to be a greater talmid chakham within his own congregation, with all the necessary credibility that that implies, and be accessible, as well, to the people "out there" he is trying to reach and to whom much that he represents may seem so unappealingly alien. The gap that divides these two groups today threatens to become an unbridgeable chasm. We have no choice but to address this impending disaster and hope to prepare a rabbi for this altogether formidable task.

Since the beginning, the first law of successful Jewish communication has been the message and the spiritual integrity of the messenger. In the end, we do not subscribe to the notion that the medium is the message. Although we dare not gainsay the importance of medium, our history has shown us that, over the long run, the message and the messenger are the medium-the only medium that can successfully and enduringly convey the Torah and the faith of the Jew.

Moshe Rabbeinu was abashed in the face of God's summons to him to assume the leadership of a bedraggled, ornery slave people made dumb by the harsh lash of servitude and trained to unseemly obsequiousness. Moses recoils from God's call: "I am not a man of words…," he protests, "For I am hard of speech and hard of tongue." And yet it was no mesmerizing preacher or silver-tongued orator, but Moshe, this man of no words, who entrenched "the Ten Words," as the Ten Commandments are denominated in the Torah. It was precisely Moshe who gave us the surpassing valedictory of Devarim-of "Words," which is the ultimate summation of Torah.

But having said all this, we do not eschew the incredible technique and technology that have been spawned this century, especially these last years. On the contrary, we embrace them. Nor did we ever reject the power of language-well spoken and well written-to convey that message.

The Changeless And The Changing

We train our rabbis to know how to use these new vehicles and use them to the hilt. If properly manipulated, they can become important supports for scholarship and can help to disseminate Torah and connect with all of our people. Each rabbi has the potential of becoming a global rabbi in his way.

Our overwhelming charge in the future is to sensitize our rabbis to the infinite opportunities this new world and time offers them.

But still, the message is the medium.

If we were pushed to point to one overarching imperative to give to our students that will define them as rabbis in the unending tradition that began when the first lawgiver pressed his hands upon Joshua, it would be to convey to their community how to discern between the unchanging message and a world changed by invention, science, and politics in their broadest ramification. Nothing has so unnerved the equilibrium of Jewish faith and observance these past two centuries as the lightning fast acceleration of change all about us and in every area. Possibly the sorest casualty in this headlong rush to change is our ability to tell the difference between the changing and the changeless-indeed, what dare not be changed and what, in the end, in fact, cannot be changed. The lines have become blurred, and we have attempted to impose change mindlessly and grotesquely on all parts of our sacred tradition, unheedful of its dreadful consequences to our integrity as Jews, and, indeed, as humans created in God's image.

Bartholomew And The Oobleck

Dr. Seuss, in his children's classic, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, said it as well as anybody:

King Derwin tired of the things that were coming down from heaven: "The snow! This fog! This sunshine! This rain!…"

"I want something NEW to come down!"

"Something new come down…" Bartholomew gasped. "…even kings can't rule the sky…"

"Mark my words, I will have something new come down." The King roared.

He summoned the court magicians, and after a lot of hocus-pocus, they, indeed, caused something altogether new to fall from heaven-a gooey, sticky substance called "oobleck." It came down in large blobs "big as greenish cupcakes." The trouble was that anybody who touched it, human or animal-anything-was stuck to its place and couldn't move. The kingdom was immobilized. All the efforts of the king to reverse the "plague" of oobleck were unavailing. That is, until he sobbed: "I'm sorry!" Wondrously, upon hearing these words, the oobleck melted away.

The king knew now that those "four old-fashioned things…the rain, the sunshine, the fog, and the snow…were good enough for any king in the world, especially for him, old King Derwin."

Ani HaShem lo shaniti-I, the Lord, have not changed! (Malachi 3:6).