Part One – My Student Years
There is a piece of Chicago Jewish history which I would like to tell. I’ve been thinking about telling this story for quite some time and now I think the timing might be just about right. It is a rather lengthy story with many parts so I have decided to post it as a series over the next few days. It is in fact a story of what was, what is, what could have been, and what could yet still be. Parts of this story have been included in other essays I have written but never in the current context or in sequence. Everything I write is from my own perspective as I experienced it or saw it happen. Hopefully it will enlighten. I’m sure there will be those who disagree with my perceptions and memories having seen or having rememebered things differently. But this is my story and I’m sticking to it… (unless I’m corrected).
The Hebrew Theological College, HTC, was founded over 85 years ago. It is better known to many people as ‘Skokie’ after the suburban village where it is currently located since1960. Amongst students it is simply… the Yeshiva.
HTC had always had a mixed reputation going back to its very beginning. There always seemed to have been controversy surrounding it. My earliest memory of the Yeshiva was through its rabbinic placement program. Our Shul in Toledo always hired a Rabbi from the Yeshiva for the high holidays. The young rabbis I met there in my childhood so impressed me, that they became my role models. To this day, one of them Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Goodman whom I met before I was 13 years old is my role model for what a Jew is supposed to be and how a Jew is supposed to act.
My next encounter with the Yeshiva was via a disparagement. It was denigrated by a Beis Hamedrash Bachur in Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland, when I was a student there. I had confided that I was going to transfer to Skokie for my junior year in high school. He told me, “better to go to public school” “At least you won’t be misled about Torah there”. Besides that, Skokie advocated co-ed camps like Moshava.
When I arrived as a student in the fall of 1962, they had just extricated themselves from a threatened or actual Cherem for setting up a women’s college, The Rose Cohen College for Women. The building was built. It was on the edges of the Skokie Yeshiva campus about a city block or two away from the Yeshiva dormitory across an empty field. That building currently houses the Modern Orthodox day school, Hillel Torah.
The rabbinic leadership in Chicago was not too keen on that idea. I’ve heard all kinds of rumors about what happened there including one which supposedly has it that the 3rd floor of the Yeshiva was going to be the women’s dorm. I doubt that was the case but I have never been able to verify this rumor one way or the other. This is but one example among many over the years which had kept the Yeshiva steeped in controversy.
When I arrived it was a relatively benign period, until Rav Chaim Zimmerman was fired about a year later. He was a Gaon of world renown and gave the highest Shiur in the yeshiva. But he was not the Rosh HaYeshiva. There was none. Rav Chaim was but a bit eccentric and could sometimes be found giving Shiurim at midnight. He was clean shaven, wore sports jackets and slacks and drove around in a Cadillac convertible. As would be expected of someone so brilliant and colorful he had a very loyal following of students. When the Yeshiva fired him, it was immediately ‘put in Cherem’ by various Gedloim… until the matter was resolved to Rav Zimmerman’s satisfaction.
About a year or so after that, Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik, affectionately know by all as Rav Aharon, was hired as the Rosh HaYeshiva. His tenure there lasted from 1966 to 1973. When he was let go, after a bitter dispute between Rav Aharon and the board of directors, the Yeshiva was once again in trouble and ‘put in Cherem’. But in the end that too was finally resolved to Rabbi Soloveichik’s satisfaction. But that event left a bitter taste in the mouths of both sides.
Nevertheless the yeshiva’s board of directors had finally gotten what it wanted. A free hand to do what it desired without interference.
There were many issues that separated the board from Rav Aharon. Among the biggest was the issue of hiring a president of the school after the death of its president, Dr. Simon G. Kramer. He was hired a few short years before to replace the retiring Rabbi Oscar Z. Fasman. Dr. Kramer was the one who convinced a reluctant Rav Aharon to become the Rosh HaYeshiva at HTC. Rav Aharon opposed virtually every candidate the board put before him. Rav Aharon tried to recruit rabbis from Mechitza Shuls but they declined.
It was a stormy relationship from the start. Before he accepted the position as Rosh HaYeshiva, Rav Aharon asked Shailos about whether he should take the job. Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetsky urged him to to take it. He felt that the new Traditional movement grabbing hold in Chicago was a real threat to Orthodoxy.
Traditional Judaism was different from the Conservative Movement in that it had the endorsement of a big Talmid Chacham,Rav Chaim Dovid Regensberg who was a respected Rebbe in the Yeshiva. He felt that the Shuls that wanted to remove their Mechitzos were in danger of becoming Conservative Shuls which were much worse since they were heretical in nature. Better these Shuls should remain Orthodox and be run by Orthodox Rabbis who would do the best they could to keep the members Orthodox in every other way. Additionally they would be able to influence their members to send their children to Jewish day schools and high schools. And indeed they did succeed to some degree at doing that. In the meantime they were mandated to try and install Mechitzos. But that rarely happened.
So was created this sort of quasi-Orthodox movement called ‘The Traditional Movement’. No Mechitzos, and using microphones that were left on before Shabbos. Nevertheless, all Traditional rabbis were members in good satnding of the Chicago Rabbinical Council (CRC) and some were members of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA).
The rest of Orthodox Rabbinic leadership worldwide forbade taking Shuls like this, including Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rav Aharon’s brother. Rav Yaakov saw an opportunity to fight this Movement from the front lines. Rav Aharon took the job and immediately instituted a poilicy whereby rabbis ordained by him were essentially forbidden to take Shuls without Mechitzos.
This caused an immediate rift between Skokie’s board members and Rav Aharon. Most of the board members of that time were either lay leaders of their respective Traditional Shuls or their rabbis. They did not take too keenly to this new edict. Those rabbis were offended that they were now looked at as outside the pale by the Rosh HaYeshiva of their alma mater, when their own respected and beloved Rav Regensberg had permitted and encouraged them in their endeavor.
The war between Rabbi Solveichik and the board had begun.
Updated: 6/28/07 8:26 AM CDT
