Just about every week I see a very nice ad in one of the Jewish newspapers for Yeshivat Chovevei Torah . This always reminds me of the Yeshiva’s founder Rabbi Avi Weiss. About a year and a half ago, the New York Times had an article entitled, "A Challenge to an Orthodox Bastion" (Published: April 19, 2004). There-in was a description of this new Yeshiva, characterizing it as challenging Yeshiva University’s role as the champion of Modern Orthodoxy.
I have great difficulty taking this new Yeshiva seriously.
Rabbi Avi Weiss, though a talented, committed, and zealous leader is of questionable value as a role model for young idealistic students and instead has shown a proclivity towards showmanship and controversy. While I am certain that he is sincere in his views and I realize that his actions are undertaken with great zeal, I never-the-less believe that he has done more harm to the image of Orthodox Jewry than good, despite his good intentions. Two incidents come to mind:
One was his Auschwitz adventure. Several years ago, in what was widely seen as an attempt by a Catholic convent to hijack that holocaust memorial, Rabbi Weiss responded by going to the infamous death camp and jumping the fence at Auschwitz insisting nuns leave the convent. Rabbi Weiss's conduct there does not reflect an appropriate mode of behavior by someone who purports to represent Orthodox Judaism. It was instead an attention getting act which served to garner much publicity for Rabbi Weiss and did little to enhance his cause, the removal of the nuns.
Certainly anyone with any degree of sensitivity wanted to see the infamous death camp remain an exclusively Jewish memorial and have those nuns leave (which ultimately happened). But the Rabbi Weiss’s theatrics did little to accomplish that end and instead made a representative of Orthodoxy, look like a crazed zealot. His intentions... honorable... his zealous actions in the cause of protecting the Jewish character of Auschwitz, at best counter-productive. Instead of generating sympathy for Jewish sensitivities he succeeded generating sympathy for those well meaning but misguided Nuns.
The other more recent event where his actions have been an embarrassment to Orthodox Judaism was his foray into the public arena through a stunt protesting Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ”. On the day the film was released he and some supporters paraded around a New York theater showing the film in the type of Holocaust prison garb worn by Jews in the Nazi concentration camps... with loud accusations of anti-Semitism. Once again, his intentions were honorable, his actions, counter-productive and bordering on the desecration of God’s name.
It was an insult and outrage to every survivor to use that symbol of holocaust horror to protest a movie, no matter how noble the intent. Rabbi Weiss accomplished nothing but getting a lot of public attention... all of it negative... for the Jewish people. Instead of gaining sympathy for Jewish sensitivities his actions actually created more animosity. Christians who came out of that movie experiencing a cathartic religious experience were met by this group of Jews who were in essence saying that they and their Christian religion were anti-Semitic!
This is not someone I would want as my child’s Rosh HaYeshiva and mentor.
More troubling than the behavior of the Yeshiva’s founder, is the very nature of his views on Modern Orthodoxy which defines the Yeshiva’s philosophy.
Rabbi Weiss and others in his camp are responsible for the “dumbing down” of Orthodoxy in the guise of openness and equality of the sexes. Just how far can Orthodoxy go to accommodate a feminist agenda?! He and has pioneered the innovation of “Rabbinic Interns” where women can serve as defacto assistant rabbis. This innovation is designed specifically to get around the Halachicly unacceptable concept of female Rabbis by calling them “interns”. At best this is a slippery slope toward the eventual ordination of female rabbis no matter how it is disguised or labeled.
To be fair, the school has publicly distanced itself from the ordaining of female rabbis, but “a rose by any other name is still a rose ". Maybe these female interns won’t receive a classical “Yoreh Yoreh” ordination degree but of what practical significance is that, if they function as rabbis?
The motto, “The courage to be both modern and Orthodox” to which I believe Chovevei Torah subscribes, as if it were the only ones with such courage, belies their actions. The only real divergence from Yeshiva University seems to be in the realm of feminism. The claim that "A major segment of the modern Orthodox community is looking for leadership that has... intellectual openness," implies that Yeshiva University does not. That is the furthest thing from the truth.
One of the biggest accusations against Yeshiva University from the right is that it is too open. Anyone who has ever attended YU or has visited the campus knows the importance it attaches to academic studies and interaction in the modern world. They can easily see just how open and modern it is, including granting its secular faculty complete academic freedom.
So in the end one can ask what is Yeshivat Chovevei Torah’s purpose? I do not think it has any legitimacy in challenging the Modern Orthodox credentials of Yeshiva University which includes a broad spectrum of influences, both religious and secular.
If the purpose of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah is to advance Orthodox feminism then it ought to label itself that way.
