Public Responsibility for children's Jewish education

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From the Chaburat Eim Habanim Semeichah newletter.


Shalom uvracha. TORAT IMECHA #7 is devoted to the theme of Jewish Education
and Torah Leadership. A pdf version in a format more suitable for printing
and distribution is available on our web page,
groups.yahoo.com/group/toratimecha, under "Files." Ktivah v’chatimah tovah!

TORAT IMECHA - No. 7, Tishrei-Cheshvan 5765
Torah from EIM HABANIM SEMEICHAH by Rav Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal{*}
An occasional publication of Chaburat Eim Habanim Semeichah

On JEWISH EDUCATION and TORAH LEADERSHIP

CONTENTS

1. All Together Now (Communal Obligations)
2. A Chorus of Assent (Funding Chinuch: The Halachic Model)
3. Missing our Cue (Turning Our Backs On Education)
4. Blame the Conductor (The Silence of Torah Leadership)
5. Factional Dissonance (Fragmentation in Orthodox Schooling)
6. A Master’s Opus (Review of “Eyes to See”)

1. ALL TOGETHER NOW (Communal Obligations)

In Eim Habanim Semeichah (EHS), R. Teichtal repeatedly points out and
derives various insights from the fact that Scripture describes each of the
Torah and Eretz Yisrael as “morashah” - a heritage. (EHS 46, 52, 59-60, 166,
303-5; see Shemot 6:8, Devarim 33:4 and Yerushalmi Bava Batra 8:2.) One of
the inferences he draws is that the Land of Israel, like the Torah itself,
is a common legacy and responsibility of the Jewish people as a community,
rather than a personal possession of some or even all Jews individually.
(EHS 304-5.)

In this connection, R. Teichtal summarizes an halachic decision that he
rendered in volume 5 of his monumental Shu”t Mishneh Sachir, regarding the
obligation to support Torah education. He rules there that the Biblical
duty to sustain Torah from generation to generation is imposed on the Jewish
people as such, and is therefore a collective mitzvah by its very nature.
Accordingly, it cannot be discharged merely by the actions of individuals,
whether acting alone or in concert, in hiring teachers for their children
and compensating them from their personal funds. Rather, fulfillment of the
mitzvah requires that the kehillah pay teachers from its public purse, which
must be funded in turn by every member of the Jewish community, whether he
or she has children receiving instruction or not. (EHS 304-5, 367-8.)

R. Teichtal rules similarly as regards the mitzvah of settling and building
our geographical morashah, the Land of Israel. That duty likewise is
properly discharged only through communal funding from the public coffers of
Jewish communities worldwide, to which all Jews must contribute, as opposed
to private funding by those personally engaged in or especially sympathetic
to yishuv Haaretz. (EHS 303-5; see also EHS 156.)

2. A CHORUS OF ASSENT (Funding Chinuch: The Halachic Model){1}

R. Teichtal's conclusion regarding collective responsibility for the Torah
education of Jewish children is confirmed by venerable halachic authorities.
(See Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 245:7, 15.) Hagaon Rabbeinu Shneur Zalman
of Liadi, the holy Baal Hatanya, zt”l (1745-1812), is especially explicit on
this point:

“It is an enactment of the Sages to pay the compensation of children's Torah
teachers from communal funds on behalf of all the children of the city, both
children of the rich and the poor. . . . The poor may compel the wealthy to
pay for [the Jewish education of] their children from the communal coffer.
Even the wealthy may compel one another to pay the salaries of their
children's teachers from the communal coffer, to which those who have no
children must also contribute. For that was the essential enactment of the
Sages, to engage children's Torah teachers in every city, great and small,
and to impose the expense of the teachers of the children, whether rich or
poor, on the entire Jewish community of the city, each person according to
his means, including those who have no children, like all other communal
assessments . . . .” (Shulchan Aruch Harav, Hilchot Talmud Torah 1:3.)

Hagaon Rav Shimshon Refael Hirsch, zt”l (1808-1888), concurs that the Torah
education of children is a uniquely public concern, the responsibility for
which attaches to the entire community, and he goes on to state in an
halachic responsum to a well-known Jewish lay leader of his day that it must
be treated as a communal priority of the highest order:

“The Torah education of the children of the rich and poor alike is not only
a matter comparable in importance to other affairs of the community; rather,
the extent of its importance, its essentiality, and its urgency, exceeds all
else. For the synagogues as well as all the other religious institutions of
the community will lose all their value and prestige, and the glory of our
synagogues and our scrolls of Torah – their significance and content – will
be reduced to objects of scorn and derision if we are not concerned with
establishing schools which will raise our children to be faithful heart and
soul to Judaism and to be sanctified in those synagogues for the sake of
this Torah, in accord with all its statutes and judgments, from a state of
understanding and enthusiasm, and for the sake of being servants of God in
truth in the life of Israel, a life of Torah and commandments.” (Quoted
from David H. Ellenson, “Rabbi Sampson Raphael Hirsch To Liepmann Phillip
Prins of Amsterdam: An 1873 Responsum on Education,” The Edah Journal,
Volume 3, Issue 2 (Elul 5763).)

3. MISSING OUR CUE (Turning Our Backs On Education)

In stark contrast to the halachic model of communally financed Torah
education for all children, our day schools and yeshivot generally operate
on the basis of the very user financed model that R. Teichtal and the poskim
reject. “We Orthodox Jews have forsaken our tradition and teachings
regarding the obligation of each community to support basic Torah
education.” So writes Dr. Marvin Schick, a pioneer of the day school
movement and a veteran Orthodox communal leader, in a recent article
entitled “Turning Our Backs On Orthodox Education” (The Jewish Press, August
4, 2004), in which the current situation is aptly described:

“While the establishment of religious schools and their maintenance was for
generations regarded as a communal responsibility, increasingly they are
considered to be primarily the responsibility of parents whose children
attend them.

“Except for special situations, we have embraced a consumerist mentality by
accepting the once alien notion that basic Torah education is a product or
service, and like other products and services is to be paid for by those who
make direct use of them.

“This attitude, which departs from the traditional understanding, leads
desperate yeshivas and day schools to accept the notion that unless parents
– including those of limited means – are forced to carry most of the load,
the schools are unlikely to survive because they can no longer depend on
community support. . . .

“Basic Torah education is being downplayed as a communal obligation. There
are comfortable Orthodox Jews – more than a few – who go to shul regularly
and live strong Torah lives but who in the course of a year contribute next
to nothing to yeshivas and day schools. . . .

“Whether or not there is outside assistance, there is widespread difficulty
and pain as parents struggle to meet tuition and other obligations arising
out of their religious commitment, a struggle made more difficult because of
the growing size of Orthodox families.

“Parents who work hard and honorably and whose income is limited are being
told that high tuition is their problem, and it’s not for the yeshiva to
figure out how they meet this obligation.

“All of this exacts a huge toll in terms of emotional stability and shalom
bayis. Meanwhile, throughout the U.S. there has been a steady contraction
of scholarship opportunities for needy day school families. . . .

“What isn’t seen is the cost exacted among marginally observant families for
whom a day school education is preferable but not mandatory. It stands to
reason that rapidly rising tuition charges will tip the scales against some
and perhaps many such parents sending their children to a day school.
Enrollment data provides backing for this conclusion. . . .

“The students who are being lost to day schools have, with few exceptions,
no names. Who they are is mostly unknown. We do not calculate that they are
being lost to the Jewish people. We feel no pain or shame because day
schools are no longer in most communities the magnet [they once were] for
attracting families to Judaism.”

Dr. Schick goes on to point out that these errant developments have
compromised and are undermining the kiruv movement as a whole, even as the
emergence of certain outreach institutions, such as community kollels, have
contributed to the financial abandonment of day schools and the devaluation
of their critical role in sustaining and expanding Torah Judaism. Despite
the rosy picture painted by many outreach professionals, the sad truth is
that more Jews are exiting Orthodoxy in our day than embracing it. This may
be understood in terms of the “tragic strategic blunder” inherent in the
prevailing “functional division between kiruv and chinuch” and the resulting
breakdown in the organic interplay between outreach and basic Torah
education for the young, on which Dr. Schick has commented elsewhere (RJJ
Newsletter, September 2003).{2}

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4. BLAME THE CONDUCTOR (The Silence of Torah Leadership)

With day schools nationwide in financial crisis threatening not only their
own viability, but the integrity of the Orthodox family unit itself, one
would expect a resolute reaction from Torah leadership against our
abandonment of the halachic model of communal support. That expectation is
amply justified by the exemplary dedication and self-sacrifice demonstrated
by the gedolim of the prior eras, such as Hagaon Rav Aharon Kotler, zt”l, in
promoting the day school movement in this country as one of their highest
priorities. In recent decades, however, Torah leaders have seemingly
acquiesced in the very user financed model that has been a key factor in the
impending breakdown of the day school system.

Dr. Schick points out that Torah leadership has increasingly championed a
variety of special education, chesed and advanced learning causes, at the
expense and to the exclusion of elementary chinuch for the young. (The
Jewish Press, August 4, 2004.) As he lamented in an earlier article on the
subject:

“Has anyone seen even once during the past ten years a kol koreh from Roshei
Yeshiva and Torah leaders proclaiming that it is a sacred obligation to
support basic Torah chinuch? Their names are plastered everywhere,
prohibiting this and advocating that, but when it comes to basic Torah
education, they are silent.

“They do beat the drums for kollels, at times deservedly, and yet also at
times because it is the politically correct and safe thing to do. They seem
satisfied, however, with the current attitude that basic yeshiva education
is a parental responsibility, irrespective of the reality that so many of
our parents are struggling to make ends meet and are failing in the
process.” (RJJ Newsletter, July 2003.)

In the face of this abdication on the part of rabbinic leadership, it has
fallen the lot of independent lay leaders and activists like Dr. Schick and
Mr. George Hanus of Chicago{3} to raise consciousness as to the financial
crisis in Jewish elementary education and create viable communal funding
mechanisms that would guaranty affordable, high quality day school education
for all our children. Unfortunately, apart from a bit of supportive lip
service that day school advocates have managed to coerce or cajole from
certain rabbinic quarters, Torah leadership has turned a blind eye on these
efforts. Under the circumstances, one can hardly fault Dr. Schick for the
bleak prognostication that his impassioned plea for communal funding “is
likely to fall on deaf ears.” (Ibid.)

5. FACTIONAL DISSONANCE (Fragmentation in Orthodox Schooling)

Dr. Schick has also remarked on intra-Orthodox competition as a factor in
the current crisis. (RJJ Newsletter, May 2004.) With the fragmentation of
Orthodoxy steadily on the rise over the last half-century, discrete Orthodox
sub-groups have established separate educational systems to reflect their
supposedly unique attitudes, behavior and even dress, thus stretching scarce
communal resources beyond the limit and undermining the mission of the
flagship day school servicing, and thereby uniting, the entire spectrum of
Orthodoxy.

Like our abandonment of the traditional communal funding model, the
proliferation of factional schools represents a profound departure from both
halachic norm and time-honored practice, as Hagaon Rav Yom Tov Schwarz,
shlit”a, writes in Eyes to See (pp. 36-54). R. Schwarz observes that, in
contrast with the unified Torah education systems that generally prevailed
in pre-Shoah Europe, the current splintered approach habituates children to
separatism from their earliest youth, and substitutes a lifelong orientation
of insularity and polarization for the Torah imperative of love and unity
among Jews. In addition, as a matter of practical halachah, R. Schwarz
rules that the fragmentation of Orthodox education violates the prohibition
of Lo titgodedu (Devarim 14:1), which proscribes certain manifestations of
religious factionalism. (See Yevamot 13b; Magen Avraham, Orach Chayim 493.)

6. A MASTER’S OPUS (Review of “Eyes to See”)

Hagaon Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, shlit”a, and others have long bemoaned the
virtual disappearance from the American scene of first rank gedolei Torah.
True though that may be (to our great sorrow), one must remain ever alert
for the exceptional case -- the rare sage of intense piety, genuine humility
and passionate ahavat Yisrael, who combines expansive erudition, penetrating
insight, inspired wisdom and exquisite sensitivity with uncompromising
honesty, fierce independence and indomitable courage. Such a sage emerges
by God's grace once in a very great while -- sometimes almost unnoticed,
from outside the dynastic ranks of Roshei Yeshivah and the powerful cadres
of Orthodox factional leaders -- to correct, enrich and elevate us, if we
would but heed them.

The voice of such a sage, Hagaon Rav Yom Tov Schwarz, shlit”a, of Brooklyn,
New York, has gradually made itself heard over the last three decades --
initially, in the field of Talmudic discourse and halachic decision, with
his remarkable Ma'aneh L'igrot and Shu”t Adnei Nechoshet; and lately, in the
field of Torah ethics, with his more generally accessible Einayim Lirot,
originally published in Hebrew and recently issued in a fine English
translation as Eyes to See: Recovering Ethical Torah Principles Lost in the
Holocaust (Urim Publications 2004). In Eyes to See, R. Schwarz, a survivor
of the Shoah ordained before the War at the famed Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin,
offers an unaccustomed breath of Torah authenticity and clarity in his
critique of various aspects of conventional Orthodox culture, attitudes and
practice, at both the lay and rabbinic levels.

In a refreshing departure from typical Orthodox complacency,
self-congratulation and triumphalism, R. Schwarz measures many prevailing
trends and institutions of contemporary Orthodoxy against Torah ideals
embodied both in the teachings of chaza"l and in Jewish societal norms of
prior eras, especially pre-Shoah Europe. R. Schwarz presents an analytical
tour de force, at once measured in its criticism and incisive in its
advocacy of essential reforms, focusing on the ills of factionalism, the
declining scholarship and integrity of the rabbinate, inappropriate
attitudes toward gentiles and nonobservant Jews, relaxed standards of
conduct in interpersonal relations, and the excesses of the contemporary
kollel system of subsidized post-graduate Torah study, among other themes.

Although few remain among us who experienced the horrors of the Shoah, we
are a generation still reeling from its direct and indirect consequences.
An aspect of this phenomenon that is perhaps least recognized is the
continuing deleterious impact on the Orthodox world of the abrupt
transformations attendant upon the Shoah and our adjustments or failures to
adjust to them. In R. Schwarz, we have a faithful witness to the Shoah, to
the Jewish world obliterated thereby and to the subsequent reconstitution of
Torah Judaism on these shores. We are well advised to attend most carefully
to his challenging message on what has gone awry at the core of that
reconstitution.

It is often the unfortunate fate of great works such as Eyes to See to be
studiously ignored or subtly dismissed by establishment forces that, finding
no sound basis for escaping their conclusions, are yet threatened by them.
Chaburat Eim Habanim Semeichah highly recommends the study of Eyes to See,
and hopes that it will have the widest possible distribution and
influence.{4}

ENDNOTES

{*} Hagaon Rav Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal, Hy"d (1885-1945), was the Av Bet
Din of Pishtian, Czechoslovakia, the Rosh Hayeshivah of Yeshivat Moriah and
the author of Shu”t Mishneh Sachir, among other works. He composed Eim
Habanim Semeichah (EHS) during the Holocaust, while he was in hiding in
Budapest, Hungary, and was murdered near the end of World War II, when he
rose to the defense of a fellow Jew. Hagaon Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach,
zt”l, wrote of him: “He is considered very great in the world of Torah . . .
and is counted among the greatest poskim of his generation.” (Quoted in
Gedolei Hadorot, III:1155.) For back issues of Torat Imecha and related
resources, visit our the Torat Imecha web page,
groups.yahoo.com/group/toratimecha. All citations of EHS are to the
original Hebrew version published by Kol Mevaser (Yerushalayim 5758).

{1} The views of the poskim referred to in Torat Imecha are offered for
informational purposes only and no definitive halachic conclusions should be
drawn. The reader is advised to consult a qualified Torah authority for
practical halachic rulings.

{2} Dr. Schick expands on these themes in a series of essays that have
appeared over recent years, several of which are reproduced on his website,
www.mschick.blogspot.com.

{3} Information on two of Mr. Hanus’s important initiatives in the field of
Jewish education, Jewish Education Leadership Institute and Operation Jewish
Education/The 5% Mandate, is available on-line at www.jeli.org and
www.peje.org/fordayschools.htm. Information regarding his more recent
project, Superfund for Jewish Education and Continuity, is available from
the Superfund office at 333 West Wacker Drive, Suite 2750, Chicago, Illinois
60606, (312) 332-4172 (telephone), (312) 332-2119 (facsimile).

{4} Additional reviews of Eyes to See appear on the publisher’s website,
www.urimpublications.com, where the sefer is also available for purchase.

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