Volume 67, Issue 4

Kippot on Campus: Our Readers Respond

A Religious School? JSS’s Changed Role

To the Editors: 
Jamie S. Hirsch's “Lack of Kippahs Raise Important Questions,” and “Presidential Priorities” prompt the following observations:
1) The article about the YC students who choose to eat and walk around the campus without a kippa missed the story. It is a cause of no small concern that the students identified display no awkwardness or shame in throwing off a means of dress that has come to demonstrate Jewish identity, despite its original origin in Talmudic times as a minhag, or custom. There is no rationalization about loss of income, anti-Semitism or the like. Instead, the reader is informed that some YC students are not religious. How is it that students whose lifestyle is antithetical to Torah observance were accepted in the first place? Why isn't religious observance a sine qua non of acceptance to YU? Is the reader to be shocked or not surprised at all?
2) The interviews with the administrators of JSS and others about the role of JSS reveal a great deal. Once upon a time in the 1960s and 1970s, JSS was known as the one place where a Baal Teshuvah could learn "it, and not about it” and simultaneously get a college education. Many of its finest graduates walked in wholly ignorant of basic Jewish texts and graduated learning on a very high level. These graduates developed a life-long desire to learn and study Torah. There were some FFBs in the program, who also benefited by learning from scratch classical texts such as Chumash with Rishonim and redeveloping their skills in approaching Talmud. This was the legacy of JSS's director , Rabbi Moshe Besdin, ZT”L. 
The JSS of today is viewed as a happy medium between Baalei Teshuvah, the rebellious, and the indifferent. It is no wonder that Baalei Teshuvah seek alternative environments where they will learn “it and about it.” However, in doing so, YU has forfeited any claim that it can accommodate a Baal Teshuva who is not happy with the approaches favored in the more charedi Baal Teshuvah institutions. The fact that an anonymous JSS official stated that “Yeshiva is not set up as a kiruv institution” shows how far JSS has traveled from the 1960s and 1970s when Baalei Teshuvah who are now Rabbis, educators and educated laymen flocked to YU. With all due respect, does anyone within the YU family care enough to restore the Mesorah and tradition of Rav Besdin of “it and not about it,” as opposed to leaving JSS as an ill-defined group of students?
3) Where are religious role models in the administrative levels and recent faculty appointments? The absence of frum YU alumni in recent appointments bodes poorly for a university whose raison d’etre is Torah U’Madda. 
4) The editorial entitled “Presidential Priorities” is filled with hatred against the best recruiters for YU-its Roshei HaYeshiva. These world-class Talmidei Chachamim, all alumni of RIETS and talmidim of the Rav ZT”L, are the reason why the dorms and the Batei Medrash are filled to capacity. In my opinion, their contributions to the moral welfare of America are more valuable than the incessant talk about the latest Business Week Top 25. 
YU alumni are often described as having a “love-hate relationship” with their Yeshiva and YC. I often wonder about this relationship. Indeed, considering the phenomena described in this article, many alumni will refrain from sending their children to YU. 

Steven Brizel
YC, JSS; CSL '76

An Issue of Acceptance

To the Editors:
As an alumna of Stern and a current Revel & Columbia U. Student, I felt the necessity to respond to the recent piece about yarmulkes on campus. I think the issue extends past a simple head covering and can be extended to the Stern issue of pants. It's an issue of acceptance. As a university that receives state funding, YU cannot discriminate between students on the basis of religious affiliation in any way for acceptance. Attendance at classes should be enforced more, but that may not be an issue of religious preference. Who cares why someone chose to attend YU? Maybe their parents pressured them, maybe they wanted a religious place, maybe they wanted credit for Israel, maybe they couldn't get into an Ivy, or maybe their friends were going there. Do you think one reason is better than another? Do frummer people have more of a right to attend? 
I think YU has to come to terms with the fact that there are many Jews in this world, thank G-d. Yes, it is the pillar of the Modern Orthodox educational establishment, but it can be respectful and even flourish more if it focused on issues that unite us and not divide us. Has anyone forgotten we are a minority in this world? As Jews, we spend so much time caught up in criticizing each other and playing G-d as to what we individually think is right and wrong. Who are we (any of us) to judge someone's relationship to G-d? It is not our business. 
Yarmulkes (and some say pants) are minhag; some have that minhag, while others do not. For much of the time that we Jews lived in America we chose not to wear them. Even the frummest people chose not to do so. Our standards are changing. How we determine frumkeit has become largely socio-cultural instead of halakahic. You know, maybe those students who are the minority and do not practice Judaism in the “orthodox” way that others claim to have the monopoly on, could be model people in other ways. 
I think the sooner we come to realize that we ourselves are not perfect nor should we seek to be carbon copies of others the sooner we can come to appreciate and respect people who feel differently from us. Also, I don't think the only students who are cutting classes are those who aren't “frum” and I certainly don't think that problem with admitting them to this institution. Need we forget that many great things have been accomplished on behalf of the Jewish people by people whose observance maybe different from ours? We would not have the state of Israel if it weren’t for secular Jews. Of what are we scared? When we get out into the real world, and we live in our Jewish communities, will we go over to Jews who don't wear yarmulkes or skirts and say, “I'm offended?” I should hope not. 

Jennifer Rosenberg
Revel 2004

A Historical Precedent

To the Editors:
The latest brouhaha at YC over kippot brings to mind an incident that occurred when I was a graduate student at BRGS back in the 1960s. The administration, under the leadership of Dean Sidney Hoenig z"l, invited one of the most distinguished archaeologists and historians of the Ancient Near East, William Foxwell Albright, to be a visiting professor at Revel. Albright, the son of a Protestant missionary (I believe), showed up for his first lecture and donned a kippah. Later, when we joined him for lunch at the cafeteria, he continued to wear the kippah. In response to our puzzled gaze he told us that even though he was a non-Jew, others in the room might not realize this and take offense, hence the ever-present headgear. Perhaps what some of the young yeshiva men have failed to learn from their rabbis they can learn from this Christian scholar.

Jonathan Helfand YC, BRGS '66
Professor of Modern Jewish History, Brooklyn College 

What’s in a Name

To the Editors:
I was wondering why in Jamie Hirsch's article on guys not wearing kippahs at YU, he never mentions that Yeshiva University is a non-denominational school. If Yeshiva University were meant to be for only Orthodox Jews, then we can't go around calling ourselves non-denominational, for by definition that means that we accept all Jews, as they are. Anyone looking for an all-Orthodox institution has come to the wrong place and is making the wrong demands on the students.

Ezra Butler
YC 03

Whither YU?

To the Editors:
This is regarding "Lack of Kippahs Raise Important Questions". The same questions are raised from that very article. Since when did we start referring to rabbanim by their last names without the title "Rabbi"? Does "journalistic license" override the proper respect due to rabbanim? 
Both of these are manifestations of the same problem. Torah U'Madda is dead in the water, and nobody is really doing much to revive it. The same mindless drivel about what YU is supposed to be was around when I was a student at Revel over a decade ago, and YU still seems to be stuck without clear leadership to pull you out of the mire.
Hint: It won't come from the "University" side of Yeshiva University. The Rav died. Nobody replaced him. Until YU has a leader of that caliber and stature, what does YU have to offer? Students might as well just go to Columbia or Brandeis, or to Ner Yisrael or Chaim Berlin. 
Whither YU? It's long-past time to decide.

Yishai Ben Mordechai
Kochav HaShachar, Israel
BRGS 1980

Editor’s Note: The article introduced Rabbi Rapp and Rabbi Blau with their titles, while subsequent references used only their last names. 

One YU, One Problem

To the Editors:
It strikes me as somewhat ironic, and not the least bit coincidental, that The Commentator addressed the growing absence of yarmulkes on campus just pages away from an op-ed on the so-called intolerance of "Yeshiva Guys" (Oct. 18 issue). The two issues may appear unrelated, but draw very much from the same source.
Without question, Yeshiva now divides along narrow ideological lines, forcing students to choose between a “yeshivish” lifestyle or a more secular one. Neither group seems to want to engage the other at any level, even though both camps share the same classrooms, eat in the same cafeteria, study in the same library, and belong to the same religion. Sadly, the only American university that caters exclusively to the needs of Jewish students now finds itself broken in half, fragmented by reasons not only illogical, but ultimately correctable.
It is the job of our Roshei Yeshiva, teachers, student leaders and the undergraduate body to recognize officially the polarization of Yeshiva students as a major threat to the continuity of Yeshiva. This problem can no longer be brushed aside with casual shrugs or sighs of indifference. Solutions to this problem, elusive as they may be, must be conceived without delay. Last year, when the candidacy of a certain individual threatened to split the Yeshiva presidency into two, students greeted the news with cries of “One University.” If only they would apply the same level of concern for the splitting of our student body.

Joe Hirsch
YC '04

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