The recent controversy concerning the dramatics society has been interesting, and need I say, quite entertaining. The matter has been debated and discussed in the pages of this newspaper, and many of the issues raised are serious ones that merit further discussion. Others far wiser and intimately acquainted with the subject than I have weighed in and inveighed upon the topic, and it would be pointless for me to pontificate and torture the reader with my aimless musings. Yet there is a tangential issue that has arisen from it that bears thinking about.

Details aside, what basically transpired is that a student did some independent halakhic thinking. A student; not a rabbi, not a professor, and admittedly not an halakhic expert in the arcane and sometimes baffling minutiae of Jewish jurisprudence. A regular student like you or me. He did not meekly accept what he was told were the "rules;" he did not ascribe to the status quo merely because everyone else did so. He did his own research, looked at the original sources, and came to a conclusion that differed from that what he was told was the "official" halakha. And then he had the temerity to publically voice his opinion in the face of what everyone told him was the truth.

The main outcry over his column was centered on the details, not the concept. Can a teacher muzzle a student? Can a club expel a member for holding a divergent opinion? Is the dramatics society an abusive dictatorship? And the like. But the true invective, the true rage, was reserved for his perceived trespass into intellectual territory that many consider verboten. Students and non-students alike wrote letters criticizing him, and rabbis, both here in YU and elsewhere, publically excoriated him for daring to postulate halakha on his own. The standard rigamarole went something along the lines of: "The sheer gall, the nerve of this fellow, to state what he thinks is the halakha. Why didn't he ask a rabbi? Surely there is no lack of knowledgeable rabbonim with whom he could have consulted? What chutzpah!! He thinks he is a posek? He thinks he can give psak? He should be ashamed and embarrassed!"

I do not wish to mince my words. Such twisted attitudes are the product of shockingly diseased and ossified minds. And for me personally, it's painful hearing them come from individuals and rabbis that I respect.

These intellectual Luddites would have one believe that when the Jewish people stood at Sinai, God gave them a dry technical textbook rather than his living Torah, and told them to slavishly follow what they were told rather than to think. They hypocritically repudiate three thousand years of holy scholarship and Torah study, replacing it with rote memorization and mindless, slave-like obeisance to a false god of timidity and hollow practice.

The student did not arrive at the theater in a dress; he did not take direct action on his theories. All he did was think! He did not advocate halakhic anarchy, with every Jew deciding on his own whether his chickens are kosher or if the Catholic girl next door can be counted in a minyan. No one in their right mind (unless they are avowed Reconstructionists) advocates such a system. He took a critical look at the issue, independently studied the relevant sources and halakhic writings of the Rishomin and Achronim, and reached a conclusion. Did he proclaim that he discovered the truth and everyone else is flat-out wrong? Did he flagrantly disrespect our collective heritage, our rabbis or our traditions? Does God want a Jew to be a navel-gazing, knee-jerk automaton blindly following what he is told like some sort of perverse Prussian cavalryman? I think not.

When we stood at Sinai as a collective whole, receiving the Torah, we said the words that sealed the pact between us and our creator and defined what a Jew is - "Naaseh V'Nishmah," "we will do, and we will listen." The first and primary component is the Naaseh, the actual performance of God's commandments whether we understand and agree with them, or not. All the intellectual gymnastics and rational scholarship in the world is irrelevant - we perform the mitzvot because God commanded us to. Yet our acceptance of the Torah involves a duality; there is a Nishmah component as well. We must "hear" what we are told, strive to understand and comprehend and dissect it to the best of our limited human capabilities. In the immortal words of Pirkei Avot, Ethics of our Fathers, "Hafoch Bah V'Hafoch Bah, D'Koolah Bah" - "toil in it [the Torah], and toil in it, because it contains all." Naaseh without the Nishmah - soulless actions devoid of intellectual foundations - are idols made of clay and ultimately will crumble. To be a Jew, it is incumbent upon us that we think for ourselves. Anyone who advocates otherwise is delusional.

A rabbi of mine once said something that at first I found shocking, but as I dwelled upon it I came to understand the beautiful depth of his words. He said, that is healthier for the Jewish nation to have apikorsim, apostates, then to have am ha'aratzim, simpletons. On the face of it, this seems to be a radically mistaken idea. How can heretics be better for Jewish continuity then committed, albeit ignorant, Jews? But then I came to understand. Commitment is a wonderful thing, but on its own, it will eventually be worn down by the tides of time. But if people are coming up with heretical ideas, it means that they are thinking, they are grappling with a living ideology that is pertinent and gloriously vibrant. When gauging Judaism's vital signs, independent thought is surely the heartbeat of our religion.