Volume 67, Issue 4

The Culture of Limitations
by Avi Robinson

Scanning the various faculty and student contributions to the ongoing debate on academic free speech at Yeshiva, the reader senses that a communication gap has emerged between the two sides. Professors decry censorship and homophobia, even as students demand cultural sensitivity and respect for religious values. Each side seems to acknowledge the other’s point but cannot convert to, or even understand, the alternative position. For our faculty members have graduated from a post-modern academic world that idolizes individualism, freedom, and relativism; whereas Yeshiva University students mature within a culture of limitations. 

Each YU student makes a remarkable and courageous choice. Halacha legislates every aspect of a Jew’s life, and speech and thought are no exception. Rather than flee from the conflicts that inevitably arise between religious conservatism and academic openness, however, the YU student actively embraces them. Spending three or more years in this searing furnace of institutionalized doubt, he fashions for himself an individual course, ideally but not always consistent with core halachic values, for mediating the boundary between constructive education and destructive heresy.

Subjecting a liberal arts education to the demands of religious principle endows the YU student with heroic discipline and sharpened creativity. In “Catharsis,” (Tradition 1978), Rav Soloveitchik ZT”L differentiates between koach, strength, and gevurah, heroism. A person who dominates the world, employing brute strength and potent technology, exhibits koach. A gibbor, however, controls not only others with physical strength, but controls himself with mental strength. He withdraws, absurdly, at the very moment of conquest, not because he desires to but because he is commanded. This dialectical, cathartic movement between advance and retreat, Rav Soloveitchik argues, manifests itself through all realms of halachic and existential experience, and similarly forms the foundation of the YU experience. Additionally, agonizing over his intellectual limitations propels the YU student to reexamine the values he is learning, from both poles of his education, in an attempt to solve contradictions and establish true relationships between ideas. The limits both foster and force this deeper understanding. As in quantum mechanics, equations without boundary conditions yield chaotic, meaningless solutions; whereas bounded equations give rise to a beautiful, enriched worldview.

Sadly, not only do certain faculty members, in both the college and the Yeshiva, deny the value of the Torah U’Madda experience, but they blithely pretend that it does not even exist. This cavalier attitude leads to severe, if unintentional, pedagogical errors.

For example, at a tisch last year a nervous yeshiva student posed the following question to an influential Rosh Yeshiva:  “Sometimes things we learn in the afternoon courses conflict with what we learn in the morning, and we aren’t quite sure how to handle it. Such as . . .  Nietschze. How should yeshiva students deal with such situations?” The Rosh Yeshiva shrugged his shoulders and replied: “Don’t take the course.” Unsatisfied, the student persisted: “But what if the course is required?” Again, the Rosh Yeshiva responded matter-of-factly: “Complain to the Dean. They’re supposed to be teaching, I don’t know, American literature. But not this sort of stuff.”

Modern society has killed God. Depraved supermen rule the world. The dawn of a fascist era beckons. Nietschze’s doctrines would spook any person, Jewish or not, imbued with moral sensitivity. Had the Rosh Yeshiva considered his student’s question to be legitimate, he might have responded that even as we forcefully reject Nietschze’s philosophy, we cannot ignore his role in intellectual history. He might have assured his student that while the Torah beats on in the hearts of Modern Orthodox Jews, Nietschze remains, if not dead, then largely irrelevant. He could have chosen any of a variety of resolutions to the student’s existential crisis. By denying any experience of conflict, however, the Rosh Yeshiva only left his student even more confused. Rather than strengthening the student’s faith in halacha’s ability to confront the modern world, the Rosh Yeshiva consigned him to a life of educational and spiritual poverty.

I have experienced this dilemma most acutely when considering the bounds of permitted art and sculpture. The halacha has instituted extreme limitations on looking at women, prohibiting even gazing at a woman’s little finger or garments for the sake of pleasure (Even Haezer 22). On an aggadic level, Reish Lakish reports that “the sight of a woman is more appealing than the very act itself (Yoma 74b).” Authorities go so far as to debate whether the requirement of martyrdom may extend even to these protective barriers to illicit activity (see, generally, Sanhedrin 74b). From a halachic perspective, then, the conclusion seems absolute.

Yet for me the question continues to sting. Try as I may, I cannot ignore the penetrating lessons about human nature that I have reaped from artistic representations of the exposed body. Can I strike from my consciousness the brazen, dehumanizing evil portrayed in the concentration camps of Schindler’s List, which, ten years later, continues to give me nightmares? Can I ever forget the absurd, wrenching suffering pent up in Edvard Munch’s crucifixion scenes? By realizing my contempt for Greek art’s worship of the body, I have finally managed to cultivate a similar disdain for Freud’s pathetic reduction of the human being to a slave of his sexual drive. Must I regard these and other lessons, born from raw emotion, as fruits of a forbidden tree, unequivocally treif?

A somewhat embarrassing, yet ultimately invaluable experience brought the conflict to a climax. Meandering through the 19^th century French wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a young lady and I had arrived at the gallery of Gustave Courbet, the realist master. Having encountered Courbet’s work at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, especially his provocative but clever l’origine du monde, I had a general idea of what to expect. Even so, a gigantic canvas, entitled “Woman with a Parrot,” completely overwhelmed me. A lascivious nude was luxuriating on a couch, basking in carefree prosperity, supporting a beautiful parrot on her raised right arm. Most irritating, however, was that Courbet had structured the image’s angles so perfectly that the observer’s eyes were directed, willy-nilly, exclusively towards the model’s exposed midsection. After pondering this manipulative effect for a couple of minutes, I mentioned it to my companion, who, thoroughly uncomfortable, finally chided me: “You know, I thought Yeshiva bochurim weren’t supposed to look at that sort of stuff.” 

The mutual discomfort only heightened the moment’s power. When my friend and I faced a bold painting that forced us to define our boundaries, instead of running from the question we grappled with it. Two students transformed “Woman with a Parrot” into a springboard for pained introspection, testing anew their assumptions about a religiously consistent approach to general study. To be clear, I certainly do not condone the insensitivity that I displayed towards my companion by forcing her to stare at that painting with me. Nor is my purpose solely to recount how that experience and others have developed my sensitivity towards halacha’s boundaries, although they have; suffice it to say that placed in that situation again, I would avert my glance. The point is to celebrate the moment itself. Amidst a relativistic culture in which “truth stumbles in the street, and he who departs from evil appears ridiculous,” (Isaiah 59), my friends and I have dedicated ourselves, in this moment and in others, to confronting the world with integrity and heroism.

To return, finally, to the question of free speech: Certainly professors, Roshei Yeshiva, and students must feel comfortable expressing their opinions publicly about any matter. Let nobody, however, silence a student who rises in indignation and proclaims: “That statement violates my religious principles.” Such spineless tolerance, while consistent with the values of the academy, violates the experiential reality that makes our unique educational endeavor sacred. ¨

What do you think? Click here to send a letter to the editors.
All content is copyright © Yeshiva University Commentator.