Shalom. I hope all is well with you.
I read your recent post entitled “The Scandal of Jewish Illiteracy.” When I read it, I could not help but agree with your take of the metzius, that after 12 years of Jewish Day School education there are many (a frightening percentage) that cannot read a pasuk or mishna (forget a Gemara!) without the aid of Artscroll, etc.
But now that a few days have gone by, I feel the need to disagree with certain points you made in the post.
First of all, I found a flaw in your whole mashal with the car. Let me digress for a minute with a story. After Rav Elyashiv zt”l passed away, there were many articles and obituaries in papers across the spectrum. One chiloni reporter, I believe it was in Ha’aretz, wrote that Rav Elyashiv was the leader of a large number of frum Jews, and therefore we must evaluate him not only on the personal level, but on the community level. He therefore thought it was appropriate to list what he thought were the “problems” that were facing the frum community and to see what effect Rav Elyashiv had in mitigating those problems. What he viewed as problems were people learning Torah instead of getting a job, serving in the army, etc. etc. I assume I do not need to elaborate. As you can imagine, Rav Elyashiv did not “help” with those problems, and therefore this article concluded that Rav Elyashiv was a failure.
The absurdity of this author (in addition to the audacity of being the one to judge Rav Elyashiv) was that he assumed the goals that he had for the charedi community were the same ones that Rav Elyashiv had, and therefore when Rav Elyashiv did not achieve those goals, he was deemed to be a failure. In reality, as you know, Rav Elyashiv’s goals for the community may have been the OPPOSITE of this chiloni writer, and therefore he may have been very successful in his goals for the community (in addition to leading by example in many other areas). Yehi chelki imo.
Why did I bring that up?
You assume that the goals of Jewish day school education in America are to make people able to read Gemara on their own, without the aid of any tools or crutches. Because they fail in that goal, the education is compared to a car that does not move – useless! Why do you assume that is the goal of Jewish day school education?!? Whether that SHOULD be a goal (and for legitimate reasons) is another discussion. But there is no scandal here if that is not even a purported goal. Or if it is their goal, it is only a secondary (or lower) goal, and therefore the education cannot be considered useless.
Without thinking to speak on behalf of the schools, I would imagine that many of the schools don’t judge their success stories based on the ability to learn Gemara without Artscroll, but on whether, after all the years of education, they have an INTEREST in maintaining contact with their Judaism. Do they want to marry Jewish? Do they want to give their kids a Jewish education? Do they want to go to Israel to learn for a year or two? Will they want to be active in the Hillel on their college campuses? Will they contribute to the Jewish community (with time or money) in the future? Are they proud to be Jewish? Do they have enough basic Jewish knowledge to continue to be religious or know how and where to find those resources? In my view, most of the schools have those goals as their main goals. Many also have a goal of inspiring them to continue their Jewish education (to quote some teachers and principals I’ve spoken to: “Just like they would not stop their secular education after 12 years, and opt to continue it even when no one is forcing them to, we want them to opt to continue their Jewish education too”). In other words, there are schools that consider it a success (dealing in the binary world of success or failure) when their graduates go to Israel for the year. So the fact that it is now up to the yeshiva to make sure the students can read a Rashi without the Artscroll does not factor in to whether they achieved their goals. Many schools see their role as providing a Jewish education together with a secular one, as otherwise these kids might be in a public school etc. So the fact that “a very minute percentage of day school graduate [sic] become talmidei chachomim” is not necessarily a failure of not achieving its goals when the school’s main pressure from its parent body is to make sure that their kids get into Ivy League colleges so they can become successful doctors, lawyers, or businessmen.
Again, I’m not saying Jewish literacy should not be a goal. I’m just saying that very often it is not one of the goals or expectations of graduating students.
Second, without having done any sort of scientific study, the problems of not being able to read a Gemara properly exist with a “charedi” yeshiva education (at least in America) as well. I don’t think it is only a problem with what you call “the Modern ones.” I spent a few years going through many different chavrutot who had such an education, and I found it too frustrating to learn with many because of a lack of familiarity with how to read basic lines in the Gemara. If a guy reads “ein hachi” stops to sort of translate, and then reads “nami" as part of the next sentence (even when they use the phrase “ein hachi nami" as part of their casual parlance), or reads “mai kamashma” separate from “lan” that shows that he does not have the necessary background. This surprised me, because many of these bnei Torah had attended schools where they had years in which they learned Gemara for 4-5 hours a day, were in top shiurim (knew a ton of Torah), and were bright in other areas too. Somehow, this skill of knowing how to break up phrases that appear CONSTANTLY in the Gemara, or knowing FREQUENT Rashei Teivot, eluded them. These were students who spent their lives in real black hat yeshivot. Somehow, the same guys who would make me feel inadequate because they knew the “famous kashya of the ketzos” on the sugya, “the famous Tosafot,” or the “famous machloket” did not know how to read as well as I did.
Three, I object to the notion that there are not currently yeshivot dealing with this issue. I do agree that it is not as ubiquitous as it should be, and it does not happen across the board, but it does exist. In the yeshiva where I learn, there are 2-3 shiurim that new shana aleph talmidim are put in (the “lower” shiurim) that focus specifically on this issue! But I do think that many more need those shiurim than go in it (from my few years of experience, not as many of you as course, I see students who went into those shiurim far surpass those who did not (who were in the “high” shiurim), specifically because the others need it too!). But the effect can be readily seen just by learning with one of them at the beginning of the year and again at the end of the year. But again, I don’t believe that is a goal of many yeshivot!!! Many see their goal as emphasizing the importance of learning Torah, so that when the students leave yeshiva they will want to continue learning (albeit part-time in most cases). So if they knew that 100% of their students would do daf yomi with Artscroll every day until 120 they would be ECSTATIC. They achieved their goal! Halevai…
Four, I found it interesting (this is from your follow-up post: Ignorance – The Sequel) that you judged being “halakhically observant” based on “shmiras einayim.” Unless that is a euphemism for something (like “not owning a TV”) and not actually referring to guarding your eyes, I don’t think there are very many “halakhically observant”people in the whole world! Yechidei segula, that’s it! Ashrecha if you are one of them, but I don’t think it’s possible to walk the streets of even Yerushalayim (let alone cities in the US). Charedi and modern alike are confronted with this issue. Imagine if I defined “halakhically observant” by whether they ever speak lashon hara. Would there be anyone left?
To sum up, what you are proposing is a change to the goals of the educational system, not an assessment of their current success rate.
I look forward to hearing your response to what I wrote. Tell me I’m wrong…
Kol tuv
