Recently, a modern Orthodox Rabbi wrote an article in which he spoke against attendance at secular colleges:
Our Sages pointed out Lot’s moral complexities. He came to Sodom, tried to blend in and eventually rose to prominence. He was appointed a judge in that immoral gutter – meaning he acculturated himself, probably attending college and law school there. Likely, he attended class on Shabbat but without writing or otherwise breaching a Shabbat stricture, and willfully absorbed all the heresy, mockery of religion and defiance of the fundamental moral norms with which he was raised – and he thought it did not affect him because he was on the kosher meal plan. He learned from the scholarly professors at the University of Sodom that G-d doesn’t exist and that His bible and moral laws were man-made, and Lot then must have pitied his poor old uncle who actually believed in G-d and His laws and comported himself accordingly.
A young man [who by no coincidence attends a secular college] took offense at this and responded:
One of Rabbi ----’s portrayals of secular college Jews is that they “[attend] class on Shabbat but without writing or otherwise breaching a Shabbat stricture.” I am unaware of any American college today that requires, or even offers classes on Saturdays, and in my experience and that of numerous friends and relatives on other campuses, colleges nowadays bend over backwards to accommodate Jewish students who need to miss classes due to Yom Tov observance. Moreover, I think [he] paints with too broad a brush in suggesting that Jews at secular colleges do not afford Shabbat the kavod it deserves. I have witnessed firsthand—at Princeton and at other similar colleges I’ve visited—Shabbat observance consisting of davening, shiurim and chavrusas learning together throughout the day, as well as friends playing board games, going on walks, napping, socializing and reading. Shabbat in Princeton is much like the Shabbat I know from home, not the version portrayed by Rabbi ----.
[His] article focuses on those few individuals who grew up observant and abandoned religion at secular college, while neglecting to mention the many positive religious expressions that are commonplace on many secular college campuses for those who seek to remain true to their Jewish values. I imagine that Rabbi his negative anecdotes of Jews at secular college are indeed inspired in part by real-life examples; however, by focusing only on these examples, he paints an overly negative picture of the Jewish community at secular colleges. While I cannot speak for all college communities, I can confidently and proudly testify to Princeton’s well-attended minyanim, daily chavrusas, hopping beit midrash and overflowing kosher dining hall. In short, the Jewish community at Princeton is passionate, successful and thriving."
Years back [when things on campus and in society were much better] a pamphlet about the dangers of secular colleges was circulating. Here is a review [from a non-Jewish publication]:
"There is a pamphlet making its way, via the Internet, through the Modern Orthodox stream of the American Jewish community. Written by Gil Perl and Yaakov Weinstein, graduate students at Harvard and MIT respectively, the pamphlet presents itself as “A Parent’s Guide to Orthodox Assimilation on University Campuses” and warns Jewish parents of the moral and spiritual corruption that awaits their children should they send them to elite secular universities. Perl and Weinstein speak as worried insiders, full of observations about how everything, from dorm life to Jewish Studies to the culture of the campus Jewish society, Hillel, holds the potential for subversion of Orthodox views and morals. The authors are clear that, as “grateful products” of secular universities, they do not reject secular education as such. Rather, they want to reveal its inherent pitfalls, as well as the problems rooted in the social environment in which learning takes place. They want the yeshiva high schools, which so many Orthodox students attend, to refrain from making “acceptance into an Ivy League school the barometer of student academic success.”
What really troubles the authors is the ethos of the secular university itself, which may be summed up in Kant’s still arresting phrase, sapere aude ”dare to think! The penchant of the university for “unyielding skepticism” and for Cartesian nostrums about the need to purge oneself of all preconceived notions before pursuing truth is the most potent threat to the well-being of Orthodox youth. As a result, “Orthodox students in secular universities often find themselves attacked simultaneously by a myriad of challenging ideas. From day one Orthodox students often find themselves on the defensive in an attempt to ascertain what it is they believe, why they believe it, and whether they should believe it anymore.” Precisely what practitioners of liberal education would count as success, the authors regard with grave suspicion as well they should, if their aim is to preserve a traditional culture....
The desire to have it both ways, particularly with respect to education, is foundational to Modern Orthodoxy. Modern or “Neo” Orthodoxy, an intellectual product of the nineteenth century, was premised on the belief that one could live both according to Torah, in all of its full traditional rigor, and the “way of the land””that is, the higher culture of modern Europe. The architect of Orthodox modernization, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, was of that Jewish generation that first began to taste university education. Hirsch was confident that traditional Judaism could hold its own against both radical religious reform (as practiced by his classmate and erstwhile friend at the University of Bonn, Abraham Geiger, the architect of Reform Judaism) and contemporary intellectual fashion. Unlike the traditionalist rabbis of Eastern Europe, Hirsch believed that the Enlightenment emphasis on education, religious tolerance, and rights was advantageous to Jews. He did not, as it were, pray for the defeat of Napoleon. He welcomed the unsteady strides toward emancipation in his native Germany. The Jewish future should not be held captive by the Jewish past. Judaism was more than the folkways of the ghetto. Although maximal observance of Jewish law remained the sine qua non of Judaism, the intellectual foundations of Judaism could be articulated anew in the idiom of the present age.
Although Hirsch did not complete his university education, he imbibed its ethos, writing affecting apologetic tracts in excellent German. His literary-theological project draws heavily on the Romantic currents of contemporary German thought to show how the Torah shaped the Volksgeist of the Jewish nation and how archetypal, natural man is completed by observing the Torah. Hirsch armed Orthodox youth with a rather sophisticated theology, which validated their participation in secular life and gave them intellectual tools to parry as well as celebrate its culture.
As Modern Orthodoxy took root in theology-averse America, it became a style rather than a coherent intellectual vision. Orthodox Jews built institutions, entered the professions, and established themselves solidly in the ranks of the middle- and upper-middle classes. As barriers against Jewish enrollment in the Ivy League fell, Orthodox Jews followed their coreligionists into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, et al. By the mid-1990s there was already a backlash. A group of five Orthodox students at Yale sought an exemption from the university’s residence policy, claiming that compulsory residence in the dorms would expose them to promiscuity. They filed suit against the university, essentially bringing Yale up on a morals charge.
The present pamphlet focuses little on moral-sexual matters. Rather, its concerns go to the heart of Hirsch’s synthesis itself. On its view, the intellectual values of liberal education as such are invidious to Orthodoxy. Take Jewish Studies, for example. Orthodox students might be drawn to such classes in order to “validate the beliefs with which they were raised or ‘to get credit for learning Torah.’” What they find, however, is a “majority of professors [who] are Jews themselves but may have unorthodox views on the nature of the Torah and the Jewish people.” Given the fact that only about seven percent of the Jewish community is Orthodox, it is not a surprise that the majority of Jewish professors are non-Orthodox. What is surprising, however, is the liberal anti-Orthodoxy of their views. Jewish Studies, far from being a safe intellectual haven from the wild seas of secular education, turns out itself to be a storm center. The authors refer to the most popular course at Harvard University in 1999, Professor James Kugel’s class on the Bible, which enjoys an enrollment of nine hundred students. The professor, wearing a “large, black kippah,” nonetheless went on to relay the current theories of biblical criticism on the human authorship of the Torah. The combination of apparent piety and troubling heterodoxy “only served to confuse Orthodox students even further.”
How should Orthodox parents and students cope with these alarming temptations? The authors do not rise to a Hirschian solution for their Hirschian problem. Their first line of defense is sociological rather than theological. Throughout the pamphlet they advocate more intensive socialization, partial isolation, and increased distance. “Our first step in preparing our students to successfully meet these challenges must be to redouble our efforts to produce stronger yeshiva high school kids whose eyes have been opened to the beauty of yiddishkeit and who have both an intellectual and a deep emotional attachment to it.” Parents must not take their children’s commitment to a “halakhic lifestyle” for granted; they must deepen the child’s emotional attachment to traditional Jewish life.
Similarly, parents must not view the existence of Hillel houses, even those with provision of kosher food or traditional worship, as a panacea. Where is the kosher food served? Is it close to where students live? If not, they might be tempted to attend the nearest cafeteria when in a hurry. Indeed, the premium that Hillel puts on inclusiveness and the acceptance of all Jewish choices relativizes Orthodoxy, degrading it to just another lifestyle option. The authors relate an anecdote about an observant girl who was active in the Orthodox minyan when she entered college, but graduated “as a Reform Jew and president of Hillel’s JbaGel (Jewish Bisexual Gay and Lesbians) group.” Hillel, in their view, counts this as a “success story.” The organization thus may be bad for an observant Jewish student’s spiritual health.
At the same time, the pamphlet’s authors warn Orthodox students not to go on the offensive and seek to convert other Jewish students to the “beauty of a halakhic lifestyle.” The active recruitment of non-Orthodox Jews (known as kiruv , literally “bringing near”) has “on numerous occasions resulted in disaster.” In an effort to show nonobservant students that Orthodox Jews can be just as fun-loving and “normal” as they, the Orthodox students frequently bend their halakhic practice or introduce illicit innovations, such as mixed seating sections in their prayer groups. Kiruv work may be too dangerous for the average Orthodox student who, lacking answers for his curious interlocutor’s questions, comes to question the adequacy of his own faith. It seems, then, that the Orthodox student should withdraw and leave such efforts to the “trained kiruv professionals.”
A mood of fretfulness thus pervades the pamphlet. The tactics it advocates”emotionalism and disengagement”attest to a failure of intellectual nerve. There is a theological vacuum behind the anxiety. Although the authors gingerly suggest that the yeshiva high schools expose their students to “potentially troubling theories such as evolution and the Documentary Hypothesis,” they also recognize that the high schools might “lack the resources to successfully implement this proposition.” Better, then, for it to be dealt with by the intellectual and spiritual leaders of Modern Orthodoxy. They are the ones who ought to “articulate sophisticated responses to the complex questions” raised by contemporary Bible scholarship, Jewish Studies, and so forth. But who are these leaders today? Modern Orthodoxy has no one approaching the stature of its late leader, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik...."
Would one allow his child to go to a summer camp where there is rampant drug and alcohol use? But his child would be part of the very small group that forswears the hard stuff. No. Because drugs and alcohol destroys lives. SO DOES KEFIRAH!! Kefirah destroys souls. So even if the student comes out of Ivy League school as an Orthodox Jew - is it worth the risk? Is it permitted to take the risk? This young man, all of 20 years old SHOULD ASK A SHYLA instead of lecturing the rabbi as he did in his article. Are people not influenced by their surroundings? Did he choose to attend Princeton because he truly believes that that is what the TORAH requires of him? Would let's say Ner Yisrael with night school or even YU not be better choices for his neshama?
Of course.
His very decision to attend Princeton shows how susceptible he is to societal values even where they contradict his core belief system. Society says "Go Ivy!!" Halacha says [possibly barring very unique circumstances] "Stay away from Ivy. TREIF ". He insists that Shabbos is observed but doesn't answer the claim that heresy is taught and that 99.9 percent of the teachers and student body don't believe in Hashem [as we understand Him].
On Princeton's website they have housing regulations. Here goes:
Cohabitation
Undergraduate Housing is gender inclusive. Students of different genders can live together in all rooms on campus, unless designated as a single-gender area. During room draw, students can form groups with students of different genders and live in most room configurations and locations on campus.
Now I am a 48 year old "rabbi" [so some call me. I vehemently deny it]. Married father and grandfather. YET, I WOULDN'T LET MYSELF SPEND ONE NIGHT ON CAMPUS.
Coed dorms??? And nothing is going to happen? 18-22 year old kids with raging hormones and a very limited awareness of Hashem's presence in their lives and in the world??!! And this kid says "NO - Shabbat on campus is so nice. There are tfillot and Torah study. We take walks [with whom? Girls maybe?] and play board games." Mamesh KAH ECHSOF NOAM SHABBOS!! 馃槉
You know what - A person can go to a club on Friday night in midtown Manhattan and bring a pocket mishnayos and learn his shnayim mikra. But that doesn't negate the fact that it is forbidden for him to be there in the first place. This boy went to Gush. If a girl is caught in a boys dorm room in Gush what happens? I am assuming that the boy is promptly expelled - even if all they are doing is learning Sfas Emes Al Hatorah. They are sitting on the bed together innocently learning up the Sfas Emes!! What is wrong with that? No touching. Just getting to the 谞拽讜讚讛 讛驻谞讬诪讬转 of the 讘专讬讗讛 that the Sfas Emes so often talks about. But even in Gush - no bastion of Ultra Orthodox "fundamentalism" - he is toast. Now he goes to a place where the dorms are 诇讻转讞讬诇讛 coed and little Sfas Emes Al Hatorah is learned.... And he forcefully asserts that there is nothing wrong with that.
Young people should remember that at their tender age they don't know everything yet. It is MUCH WISER to listen to people who know more Torah, are more attuned to Ruchniyus and have more life experience.
Sleep away secular colleges pose a mortal threat to anyone who attends and even if he or she comes out sill committed to living a halachic lifestyle - the damage done by hearing all of the kefira [see Rambam Avoda Zara 2-3] and being immersed in an environment whose value system and behavioral norms are in stark contrast to our tradition might never be undone.
So save your parents 200k and find a place where a Ben Torah should be. Maybe get your degree on line, learn full time in yeshiva until you finish and give the left over 170k to tzdaka. Feed poor people. Better than roasting your neshama.
Thank you:-).
