• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
1Rabbinic Leadership ReexaminedBy: Alex LuxenbergWhat is the biggest problem in the Modern Orthodox community today?Much ink has been spilled on this question. It is the
raison d’être
of many Jewish periodicals, seminars and rabbinic sermons. For many, the ultimate issue is the hashkafic
 
shift to the right or left; for others, it is the dethroning of theology as the foundation of religion or the minutia of halakhic disagreement which present the greatest challenges. Itseems to me, however, that the crux of all the issues faced by Modern Orthodoxy is thedeep ravine that exists between rabbis and their communities. We have come to a pointwhere the values and goals of many rabbinic leaders are not in-sync with those of their own communities. In other words, it is not a communal shift in hashkafah that must beaddressed, but rather a rabbinic shift; it is the leadership that does not jive with itscongregation, not the other way around.I would like to consider three types of rabbinic leadership: communal/pulpitrabbis, high school teachers, and rabbis in yeshivot or seminaries in Israel. Each case presents a different framework in which the rabbi connects with his students and/or community. I hope to demonstrate that there is a significant chasm in all of theserelationships and to discuss potential remedies. While I realize that each community isunique, it seems to me that many of the motifs that will be discussed have becomecommonplace in Modern Orthodox neighborhoods across America. I am not an experteither in sociology or in education, but I am the product of an Orthodox
 shul 
, school andyeshivah, and it is from these perspectives that I write this article.
 
2Before we elaborate on each case, I would like to try to elucidate what is at thecore of the disconnect between clergyman and layman. Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, in anessay entitled “Towards a Renewed Rabbinic Leadership,” seeks to define what is neededfrom rabbinic leadership:“Rather, the point is to urge the need for personalities to exercise rabbinicalauthority in the sense of national leadership, based on the decisive influence of Judaism in all spheres of Jewish life…The new situation demands new men, menwho themselves are children of this new situation. They must themselves havesuffered all the agonies of the dualism in the life of the modern Jew…Only a personality harmonized within itself, after a struggle of conflicting ideas, will beable to reveal the message of Judaism to this generation, for such alone will be ina position to translate it into the terms of our age.Such an achievement demands knowledge and character; real knowledge of Judaism combined with the critical insight into the structure and workings of Western civilization…”
i
 Berkovits argues that we need leaders who are in touch with their communities. We needauthorities that understand our daily plights, concerns and struggles. Ideally, Berkovitsclaims, our rabbinic leaders should be products of our own systems, not outsiders from analien civilization that has morals and ethics that seem strange and offensive to ours.
The High School Rabbi
ii
 Rabbi Myles Brody, a teacher at Yeshivat Hakotel and the online editor of 
Tradition
, as part of a symposium in the recent
Meorot 
publication, addresses the
 
3following question: “What skills among faculty and administrators should bestrengthened to ensure the success of educating Modern Orthodox students for life andthe continued success of the Modern Orthodox day school educational system?” Hewrites:“This problem, which at its root is related to the complex engagement of Orthodoxy with modernity, will not be solved with more formal educationtraining for teachers. Solutions will stem from faculty and administratorsrecognizing this unfortunate reality and doing what they can, given thecircumstances, in making a halakhic lifestyle attractive. The most importantmethod is to lead by example, and therefore it is an imperative to find (andcultivate) educators whom the students will relate to and respect.”
iii
 According to R. Brody, it is our responsibility to ensure that educators in our schools are people who “respect” and “relate to” our community, for if they do not, how are our students supposed to look up to them? It seems, however, that this is not our reality. Howoften does a child come home excited by a relationship fostered with a teacher in school?How often is a teacher regarded as a role model by a fifteen-year-old? And even whenone manages to come out of high school with a real relationship with an educator, moreoften than not these relationships develop in the later years of schooling. I would like tosuggest that the reason students and teachers do not mesh well is a result of differenthashkafot
.
Rabbi Dr. Noam Weinberg, Associate Principal of the Moriah School, in anarticle entitled “The 20
th
Century Jewish Educator in the 21
st
Century Classroom,”illustrates the importance of what he calls “the educator as advocate.” Weinberg grapples
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...