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Why We Need Yeshivas — and Why They Must Compromise
A yeshiva student. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
What is a yeshivah? It’s a place where you sit, literally.
Of course, you can do many things when you sit — from meditation to wasting time. In the US, a yeshivah can be a Jewish school, which may include secular and Jewish studies. But in most other places, it is an academy for intensive Talmudic study — which may last a few years or a whole lifetime. And like any academic institution, there are serious students, students who shouldn’t be there, and layabouts marking time.
The story goes that the High Priest Simon the Righteous met Alexander the Great and came away impressed by his description of the Greek academies. He realized that the only way to combat Greek culture was to adapt the Greek academy to Jewish learning. But the first evidence of Jewish academies begins in the land of Israel with the emergence of the schools of Hillel and Shamai, and the large numbers of students who sat at the feet of the great rabbinic teachers during the first three centuries of the common era.
Great Babylonian academies flourished from the third century for nearly 1,000 years at Sura, Pumbedita, Nehardea, and Machoza in Mesopotamia. And they then spread across the Mediterranean. But most Talmudic studies around the Jewish world took place in small gatherings of pupils around distinguished rabbis. It was in Eastern Europe during the 19th century that large, organized academies called yeshivot were established and flourished.
During the Second World War, Hitler and Stalin between them, destroyed the Eastern European communities and all the yeshivot. Some survivors, including some from Mir Yeshiva in Lithuania where my father had studied, managed to get to Shanghai, where they continued to study for the duration until they were able to move to Jerusalem or New York.
I was sent as an unruly 15-year-old to a yeshiva in Israel. My father thought it would have a profound impact on me, and he was right. Back in those days, there were not many major yeshivot in Israel.
After the Six-Day War, a more spiritual dimension entered Israeli society together with the idealistic drive to re-settle traditional Israelite territory. This also affected the cultural climate. And secular Israelis who used to see themselves as the elite and entitled founders of Israel resented the overthrow of the old regime when Menachem Begin gave more power both to the Sephardi and the Religious communities. This aggravated the deep rift in Israeli society over what kind of state it should be. Since then, the religious world has increased exponentially — partially as a response to the Holocaust and the determination to produce large families to restore the lost academies and communities of Eastern Europe.
Yeshivas vary in atmosphere and intellectual approach. Now almost every town in Israel and significant Jewish community has its yeshivah. Thanks both to government support and wealthy donors around the world, there are yeshivot of all kinds, from those that combine study with serving in the army, for women as well as men, secular, and the whole range of the different Charedi sects.
A yeshiva is supposed to be more than a place of study. It is supposed to be a spiritual inspiration. It should be a deeply religious place of morality and spirituality. And yet, as with all academic and religious sects, indeed most human institutions, as they grow, they become cliquish, divided and often violent. Just read about the current saga of rival gangs fighting over dead bodies in Ponevez Yeshiva in Bnei Brak.
When Israel was founded, the military exemption for yeshiva students applied to only a handful of students. The number of those demanding exemption has swollen to thousands, and the yeshiva communities have been massively subsidized by the state without any reciprocal commitment.
For all their problems, internal and external yeshivas were and are the driving power behind the revival of Orthodoxy from near extinction and the growth of religious study and religious creativity. But the system that developed defensively to protect Jewish learning, now suffers from political infighting over, amongst other things, military service.
It is reassuring, and in many ways comforting and proof of our resilience that we as a people of the book are growing in numbers and confidence. Yeshivas today, as they were thousands of years ago, are the cornerstone of Judaism and its guarantee of its religious survival. But both sides of the religious and political divides, within and without, need to be more tolerant of each other and ready to compromise, lest we tear each other apart.
The author is a writer and rabbi, based in New York.
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Rashida Tlaib Renews Calls for Arms Embargo Against Israel Even as Jewish State Advances Toward Gaza Ceasefire
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on Thursday renewed calls for the implementation of an arms embargo against Israel, lambasting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “genocidal” even as the Jewish state moved to agree to a ceasefire deal with Hamas to halt fighting in Gaza.
“Genocidal maniac Netanyahu and his cabinet will never stop until we have an arms embargo,” Tlaib posted on X/Twitter.
Tlaib’s comments came after Netanyahu paused the finalization of a ceasefire and hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas, accusing the Palestinian terrorist group of “reneging” on previously agreed-upon terms.
“Hamas is reneging on the understandings and creating a last-minute crisis that is preventing an agreement,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “The Israeli cabinet will not convene until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”
The sticking points center on the list of Palestinian prisoners who have been detained in Israel largely for involvement in terrorist activities to be released in exchange for the hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza after being kidnapped during Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Hamas had attempted to overturn a key clause in the agreement that grants Israel veto power over the release of high-profile inmates who are considered “symbols of terrorism,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said. Israel has also accused Hamas of “demanding to dictate the identity of these murderers,” in direct contradiction to the previously agreed-upon terms.
Later on Thursday, however, Israeli officials said the last obstacles to a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal had been ironed out and Israel’s security cabinet was set to approve it on Friday. The agreement is supposed to go into effect on Sunday.
Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman elected to the US Congress, has positioned herself as a fierce and outspoken critic of Israel. Since entering office, Tlaib has repeatedly accused the Jewish state of implementing an “apartheid” regime in the West Bank and turning Gaza into an “open-air prison.”
In the year following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Tlaib has sharpened her condemnations of the Jewish state. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, she hesitated to release an official statement acknowledging the mass slaughter, abductions, and rapes perpetrated by Hamas. Less than two weeks after the invasion, Tlaib introduced a “ceasefire” resolution between Israel and Hamas. In November 2023, the House of Representatives voted to censure Tlaib over her anti-Israel rhetoric.
The progressive firebrand has also condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza, accusing the Jewish state of committing a full-scale “genocide” against the civilians of the enclave. She has also peddled the unsubstantiated claim that Israel has purposefully inflicted mass starvation against Palestinian civilians. Over the past year, Tlaib has urged the outgoing Biden administration to impose an arms embargo on Israel. Simmering with anger over the Biden administration’s support for Israel, she refused to endorse Kamala Harris for the US presidency.
Tlaib also slammed outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, accusing the State Department official of lying to Congress and helping facilitate “starvation” in Gaza.
“Blinken lied to Congress and allowed starvation to be used as a weapon of war. It’s well documented. He supported war crimes and blatantly lied to Congress about it,” Tlaib wrote on X/Twitter.
On Wednesday, negotiators reached a deal to implement a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, potentially ending 15 months of war sparked by the terrorist group’s invasion of the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023. During the onslaught, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages to Gaza.
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Rome’s Chief Rabbi Criticizes Pope Francis Over Israel Remarks
Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni speaks with Pope Francis during an inter-religious prayer for peace at the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, Oct. 25, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Rome’s chief Jewish rabbi on Thursday sharply criticized Pope Francis over the pontiff’s recent ramping up of criticism against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, in an unusually forceful speech during an annual Catholic-Jewish dialogue event.
Francis has unfairly focused his attention on Israel compared to other ongoing world conflicts, including those in Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Ethiopia, said Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, spiritual leader of Rome’s Jewish community since 2001.
“Selective indignation … weakens the pope’s strength,” said Di Segni.
“A pope cannot divide the world into children and stepchildren and must denounce the sufferings of all,” he said. “This is exactly what the Pope does not do.”
Francis, leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Last week, he called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “very serious and shameful.”
A complex ceasefire accord between Israel and Hamas emerged on Wednesday, and is scheduled to start on Sunday.
Relations between the Catholic Church and Judaism have improved in recent decades, after centuries of animosity. The event on Thursday, held at a Catholic university, was organized to mark the 36th annual World Day of Catholic-Jewish Dialogue.
One of the organizers, Rev. Marco Gnavi, a Catholic priest, expressed surprise at Di Segni’s comments.
He said he felt “discomfort” because of the rabbi’s words. “You can’t ask us not to suffer both with you and with others,” said the priest.
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Judge Tosses Challenge to Lawsuit Alleging Mistreatment of Jewish Professor at California College
California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Photo: Edward H. Blake via Wikimedia Commons
A judge has denied a motion from the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a professor who alleges that she was disciplined and humiliated for disagreeing with students about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, professor Karen Fiss engaged in a brief conversation with anti-Zionist students who, due to being told a historical fact they preferred not to hear, filed a complaint against her with CCA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office which alleged that she had engaged in “harassing and discriminatory” behavior. Her legal counsel, provided by the nonprofit Jewish civil rights organization the Deborah Project, maintain that Fiss merely challenged the students’ anti-Zionist notions and apprised them of a 1991 incident in which Kuwait expelled nearly 300,000 Palestinians from its borders.
The college ultimately found Fiss guilty of the charges lodged against her, ruling that she had imposed her “power” on the students, who are women of color, and betrayed her cultural insensitivity by citing Kuwait’s expulsion of Palestinians in their conversation. The college further alleged that Fiss had used her “positional power as a professor to get the outcome [she] sought, which was for the students to agree with her point of view.” The college reached those findings but had previously declined to apply the same logic to an earlier complaint Fiss had filed about the Critical Ethnic Studies program’s issuing a statement — “DECOLONIZATION IS NOT A DINNER PARTY,” it said — which justified Hamas’s violence and implied that Jews are not indigenous to their own homeland.
That is because, the Deborah Project argues, CCA’s rules are in place to protect left-wing anti-Zionism and punish Jews who oppose it.
“According to CAA, academic freedom is an impenetrable bar to complaints about celebrating the slaughter and raping to death of Jews, but is made of Swiss cheese when a fully-tenured professor — Dr. Karen Fiss — explains to students some truths about the Middle East,” Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, said in a statement included in a press release on Wednesday.
With her reputation blighted by scandal and the college threatening to revoke her tenure, Fiss resolved to fight for both her right to exist as a proud Jew at work and her right to free speech. She sued CAA for discriminating against her for being Jewish, a violation of Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and breach of contract, offenses which caused her “substantial damages” and other trauma.
Deploying the weapons contained in its legal arsenal, the college attempted to muzzle Fiss even in court by filing a motion to dismiss her case entirely, and later, to strike from her own complaint the most damaging allegations regarding the university’s alleged conduct — including that the college enforces a double-standard free speech code which protects anti-Zionists “who publicly call for the murder of Jews in Israel.”
However, Judge Haywood William of the US District Court for the Northern District of California has now struck down the college’s challenge to the case, clearing the way for it to enter discovery, during which her attorneys will amass additional evidence in support of Fiss’s allegations.
In Wednesday’s press release, Fiss’s legal counsel praised the decision.
“The Deborah Project looks forward to the state of litigation that follows denials of motions to dismiss, which is called the discovery phase,” it said. “We will learn how a leading California arts college lost its way and instead of focusing on art, became most focused on ‘Critical Ethnic Studies’ — which is the largest department in this ‘art’ school. Critical Ethnic Studies, inter alia, demonizes Jews, which are cast oppressors, and the Jewish State, which is described as a colonizing, ethnic cleansing, genocidal, and illicit country.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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