Blinded By The 'Hood

Do you ever get the feeling you're in a ghetto? A small segregated minority living as a stranger in a strange land? Through no fault of its own, YU's uptown campus has ended up being a Jewish ghetto in the midst of a society who's values it neither shares nor accepts. This unquestionably is a sad state of affairs. However, it seems to me that this unfortunate situation is advantageous to some. Without noticing it, our surroundings have allowed people to tap into a powerful psychological phenomenon known as the ghetto mentality. Yes, you have heard it all before: Jews are always persecuted, Jews are always hated, and therefore they must shy away from the ways of their evil neighbors, they must envelop themselves in the protective bubble of Torah. The Western, consumerist, sex, sports, drug, and rock & roll culture, is the enemy. We are engulfed by pritzut and we must do our utmost to steer clear of any interaction. The people who cite this rhetoric need only to point to the window of a classroom Furst Hall and proclaim "There is nothing good out there!"

To hear some rabbis speak you would think that our current epoch is similar to that of medieval Poland or early twentieth-century Russia. "Everyone is against us." This phenomenon I would like to call the neo-ghetto mentality.

Sure, there are advantages to this kind of thinking. In a time like this, the ostrich (bury your head in the sand) mentality would protect the Jewish community from Western culture by taking a defensive posture in the face of its relentless pursuit for the possession of our souls. We would unify under a single banner and proclaim our solidarity.

But where is the solidarity? Last time I looked, YU was as factionalized as ever -- an entire entity split along sectarian lines: Yeshiva College vs. Syms, JSS vs. IBC vs. BMP, Religious community vs. non-religious community, even black-hat vs. kippa sruga. Worst of all is MYP, which at times resembles a chicken with twenty-nine heads running in every which way. With twenty-nine Roshei Yeshiva and no clear hierarchy, MYP is internally factionalized and loses much of its leadership potential.

Now take the subway and head downtown and soon you will inevitably run into some kippa wearing peers. Creative, intelligent, and successful frum Jews living amongst the goyim! With Jewish accapella groups and women's Torah study institutes! 'How can this exist' you ask me. 'I thought they were all assimilating' you'll tell me. The answer, my friends, lies in the fact that we are living in the Babylon of the Talmud, in the Golden Age of Spain, yes, yes, we live in AMERICA and not in Poland. And it is high time we begin to realize it. One day soon, we will wake up, smell the java, and it will dawn on us that our neo-ghetto mentality has left us lagging behind our downtown peers. It has left us barren, in comparison with the creative renaissance that the rest of Judaism seems to be experiencing. The YU community should realize that the bleak reality that surrounds us here is limited to this geographic area, and we should take that into account when we develop our world view.

Lest I be accused of being a typically negative, derisive, and mean-spirited writer, here are some constructive, pro-active, happy-go-lucky ideas that will facilitate our exodus from the dark ages:

- Doesn't the Gush Yeshiva send out Dvar Torah e-mails throughout the world? Can you not get Parashat Shavua on a multitude of web sites? Isn't it amazing then, that YU with its plethora of techies and Torah scholars, has been delinquent in this matter? Man, we should have RealAudio shiurim available to every Israeli who suddenly gets an urge for Yiddishkyte when he's in Kathmandu. Our Torah should be broadcast to the four corners of the world, and our name should be reestablished as a leader for Klal Am Yisrael.

- Next. We don't vote. I took a completely unscientific and unofficial poll. I walked around the library and asked people if they voted. AAAAHHHHH!!!! Hardly anyone votes. What happened to the legendary Jewish coalition? I thought Jews were intrinsically politically active. Yet when I worked this summer at AIPAC, there was only one other religious guy there. I was shocked. Voting is not only an issue of Hakarat Hatov, but rather simply watching out for your own good. So lets get voting.

- YU should hold a yearly conference on Jewish issues. Jewish students and educators from around the country should be invited to discuss a variety of issues such as the state of Israel, our generation and the Holocaust, and Jewish sexuality in our time. Included would be workshops and world famous speakers coming together for a real symposium of modern Jewish thought. A forum and intellectual outlet for timely issues, all right here.

- Have you ever noticed that there's a river around here, and did you know that not so long ago the park behind Rubin and Morg was a breath-taking site? We can make it all happen again, with only a bit of effort. Oh, I know how you love to jog around and around on the indoor gym track, but think how nice it would be to take a jog in the fresh air or enjoy a river vista on a Shabbat afternoon. All it takes is a bit of organization and ingenuity.

- This brings me to the next point. Community work. When was the last time you communicated with a local? A "have a nice day?" A nod? Lets have a community marathon around the neighborhood. Teachers and bodega owners, rabbis and local priests, Haim and Julio, clad in sweat pants. We'll call it some cliché name like "RUN FOR PEACE" or "UNITY THROUGH SWEAT." We will teach them about kosher, they'll teach us the salsa, and it will be a grand ole time, and a true kiddush Hashem.

- We Jews use tragedy as a form of social get together. When something really bad happens, we get this feeling in the pit of our stomachs, and suddenly brotherly love oozes forth and overtakes us with an empathy and closeness to each other that we lack the rest of the time. Now I have an idea: lets take away the tragedy component of this equation for a moment, and instead lets put in simcha. Let's throw a huge concert in the spring, shut down Amsterdam Avenue, put up a stage, and showcase all the beautiful Jewish music that exists today. Let's bring people from all walks of Judaism and introduce them to our unique institution through a splendid Jewish culture party. Or we can just sit here and pick our toes.

- Last but not least, what about our freaking radio station?

There you have it. Just a few ideas to get your mind salivating and into a new mode of thinking. Please don't misunderstand me. I am not advocating that we change our religion; what I am saying is that we can incorporate modern thinking with our timeless beliefs. We must adopt modernity to suit our purposes and not forsake it wholesale. We must begin to think BIG. Let us break out of the shell of neo-ghettoism! To those who say this vision is unattainable, I say "It is not hidden from you and it is not distant... Rather the matter is very near to you - in your mouth and in your heart - to perform it" (Devarim 30, 11-14).