B'chasdei Hashem, over the past almost 20 years, Beis Mevakesh Lev has produced over 13,300 audio shiurim and over 31,000 written posts, unmatched by any one-person website - all completely free of charge. There are no paywalls or anything else. Now we are turning to you for help so we can continue - any amount will help. Even 99 cents! Thank you to my sweetest and most beloved friends!!!:-)!!
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Author: You Decide
I have often pondered, in the quiet hours when the Beis Medrash empties and only the hum of fluorescent lights remains, whether the Modern Orthodoxy we so fiercely defended in our youth has not, in its very success, become its own most devastating parodist. We set out, did we not, to prove that Torah and madda could dwell together in harmony, that one could be a ben-Torah and a gentleman, a Talmudist and a reader of George Eliot. And behold—we have succeeded to a certain extent. The tragedy is precisely that success.
We have produced a generation that numbers individuals and some educators who can quote Rav Soloveitchik in the same breath as John Stuart Mill, that can deliver a brilliant pilpul on migo and then, without missing a beat, discuss the existential despair in Camus over Shabbos lunch. We have mastered the art of the seamless transition, the elegant synthesis, the tasteful juxtaposition. And in doing so, we have forgotten Yeats’s terrible truth: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” [Ed. note: "The best lack all conviction": The "best" refers to people who are wise, moderate, or moral. In times of chaos, these people often become paralyzed by nuance and doubt. They see the complexity of the world and are unsure how to act, leading to a state of indecision or silence. "The worst / Are full of passionate intensity": The "worst" refers to fanatics, extremists, or those with a lust for power. Unlike the "best," they have no doubts. They are driven by a blind, aggressive certainty (passionate intensity) that allows them to take control while everyone else is hesitating.]
Look at us. We are faultlessly polite, impeccably tolerant, exquisitely sensitive to every nuance of intellectual fashion. We have refined away every rough edge of commitment until nothing remains that could possibly cut, or wound, or demand. Our Judaism has become Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”—a melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating “to the breath / Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear / And naked shingles of the world.” 1]
We have mistaken sophistication for profundity, breadth for depth. We pride ourselves on our ability to hold complexity, to see all sides, to refrain from judgment. We have become so very good at understanding everyone that we no longer know how to stand for anything. We are, in Eliot’s devastating phrase, “stuffed men… shape without form, shade without colour, / Paralysed force, gesture without motion.”
Do you remember when we believed that engagement with the West would sharpen our avodas Hashem, not dilute it? We were going to be the generation that proved Kierkegaard wrong, that one could be both knight of faith and knight of infinite resignation. Instead, we have become his aesthetes—marvelously clever, endlessly ironic, incapable of the leap. We have read Fear and Trembling and concluded that Avraham was problematic.
The tragedy is not that so many of our children leave Yiddishkeit—many of them never had it to leave. They were raised in a Judaism that was always already apologetic, always qualifying itself, always anxious to prove that it was respectable, reasonable, compatible with the Times. We taught them that Torah was one value among many, that halakhic observance was a lifestyle choice, that the binding nature of mitzvot was a conversation rather than a command. We gave them a Judaism that could be discussed, debated, contextualized, and—when inconvenient—quietly set aside. We also put unfiltered smartphones in their hands in the name of some *openness* and *broadmindedness*.
And now we wring our hands when they treat it exactly as we taught them: as one more interesting perspective in a world full of interesting perspectives. We are shocked—shocked!—that they find the absolute claims of Sinai less compelling than the absolute claims of their own autonomy. We should not be shocked. We raised them on the milk of Hegel and the meat of historicism, and we are surprised when they find revelation indigestible.
Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l once said that the difference between us and the charedim was that they were afraid of the street, while we were not afraid enough. I have come to think he was more right than we ever admitted. We were not afraid enough—of our own cleverness, of our own refinement, of our own terrifying capacity to accommodate everything and stand for nothing.
Our learning has become an ornament, our observance a cultural preference, our God a hypothesis we find psychologically useful. We have refined ourselves out of existence.
Ah, but we are so very civilized about it all. We will discuss our spiritual suicide in impeccable Hebrew and flawless English, with appropriate citations from Rav Soloveitchik and appropriate caveats about complexity. We will die beautifully, tastefully, with perfect diction and impeccable manners.
Like Prufrock, we have measured out our lives with coffee spoons—only ours are kosher l’mehadrin, silver, engraved with the name of the yeshiva we support but do not quite believe in. In the rooms where we gather, the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo—and of the latest shiur on the parashah, and of how important it is to be nuanced.
And in the end, we shall drown—not in the waters of the sea we abandoned, but in the tepid shallows of our own sophistication. The mermaids will not sing to us. They never did. We only imagined they might, if we were clever enough, cultured enough, modern enough.
May Hashem have mercy on us, for we have had none on ourselves.
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1] Ed. note: The poet is looking out at the English Channel at night.
"Night-wind": It’s dark and cold, heightening a sense of loneliness.
"Vast edges drear": He’s describing the bleak, gloomy shoreline.
"Naked shingles": "Shingles" refers to the pebbly, stony beaches. Calling them "naked" suggests they are exposed, raw, and unprotected.
The Metaphor: The Sea of Faith
Earlier in the poem, Arnold describes the "Sea of Faith" as once being "at the full," surrounding the world like a bright, protective garment. However, in the lines quoted, that sea is retreating. The Retreat: As the "water" (faith) pulls back, it leaves the world exposed.
The Loss of Comfort: Without the "Sea of Faith," the world no longer looks like a place of divine design. Instead, it looks like a collection of "naked shingles"—hard, cold, and indifferent stones.
The Philosophical Meaning
Arnold is capturing a specific feeling of existential dread. He is saying that as religious certainty disappears, humanity is left standing on a "drear" (dreary) edge, facing a world that is:
Cold: Represented by the night-wind.
Empty: Represented by the vast edges.
Unfriendly: Represented by the jagged, naked stones.
The Core Message: Without faith to "clothe" the world in meaning, we are left with a raw, harsh reality where we only have each other to rely on.
