A SEMINARY STRUGGLES FOR ITS SOUL -- FORTY YEARS LATER

Issues of doctrinal loyalty and removal of trustees struggling for the soul of Erskine evoke déjà vu that tugs at me to relate of a similar struggle forty years ago at my alma mater.

Once upon a time, my alma-mater yeshiva (seminary) was a kinder, gentler place, occupying the role of relative liberalism among the yeshivas descended from the academies of pre-Holocaust Europe. As is typically the case of “relative” liberalism, it was routinely criticized from both right and left – doctrinal impurity from one, wishy-washiness from the other. History will show, though, that for decades, it fended off the barbs its detractors, and stayed its own course.

That was true until the late sixties, when the yeshiva tilted to the path of rigid orthodoxy. The sociology would take days to explain, but the rightward direction came to be personified by the recruitment of a Rosh Yeshiva (“Head of the Yeshiva”) whose doctrinaire orthodoxy was surmounted only by his penchant for intimidation.

And therein lay the rub. Heads of classical yeshivas ruled by divine right. But the vast majority of them also led benevolently. Among the last vestiges of moderation in our yeshiva was that rule was shared between the Rosh Yeshiva and a lay board of trustees. So long as the Rosh Yeshiva was a benevolent scholar, harmony prevailed. The new Rosh Yeshiva, though, took his divine right as a mandate, and a rule of tyranny began, to the increased chafing of the trustees.

How does one define tyranny in the arcane world of Orthodox Judaism? Most of it is purely sociological, however much cloaked in theological terms. First, there must be the perception of “enemies within,” the scourge of those who are personally and doctrinally allied with the Rosh Yeshiva. Then there are the goons, loyalists ready to antagonize the enemies, either with the encouragement, or the benignly approving eye, of the Rosh Yeshiva.

As you likely surmise, I was one of the enemy, a handful of us who were relatively liberal, openly aligned with the “old left.” So . . . one day on return to the dorm, I found that my poster from the Lyric Opera had been shredded and “liberal” books had been trashed from the shelf. Other such indignities became a regular occurrence.

I was not singled out. The other principle of tyranny is to divide the immediate world into an all-virtuous “us” and an all-vilified “them.” In the world of the Rosh Yeshiva, the “them” were all other “denominations” that were not orthodox-adherent – Conservative and Reform Judaism and their derivatives. His pronouncements were unequivocal. He forbade yeshiva students from serving as teachers in schools sponsored by the non-orthodox. Then, he prohibited the students from teaching in schools of synagogues whose only infraction against orthodoxy was that men and women sat together during worship. Finally, he imposed that one could not be ordained unless he agreed to serve only in congregations in which men and women worshiped seated separately and concretized it in a signed contract.

Those of us who were within a couple of years of ordination were caught, if we were to have refused his final demand. But, the trustees assured us that it would not happen. Then, in a slug-‘em-out that could be fomented only by testosterone-pumped men, the trustees demanded that the Rosh Yeshiva yield. He refused. They fired him. He declared divine right. They hired a new Rosh Yeshiva. The Rosh Yeshiva declared the new Rosh Yeshiva illegitimate. Then he named his own trustees. The old trustees locked him and the new trustees out. He conducted classes in protest outside the yeshiva, with TV cameras running, the stations alerted by the goons. And so it went.

Please hear me well: This is not about Erskine or any other seminary. It is about what happens anywhere that benevolence gives way to tyranny, and testosterone substitutes for justice, mercy, and humility, when a beloved legacy, be it the Bible or the Constitution, falls into the hands of mean-spirited, malevolent interpreters.

All told, the reign of terror in the last years of my life at yeshiva was small potatoes. Forty years later, matters of far greater gravitas are still being fought out with hate-speak and bombs and the cruelty of wild-eyed talking heads. When will they – and we – ever learn?