The Spy in the Ivory Tower
Princeton’s Gothic spires cast long, judgmental shadows across my desk. I sit among the wreckage of a secular life: peer-reviewed journals, dusty monographs, and a coffee mug from a "Reason Rally." Anthropology is the family business. My father tracked history; my mother dissected philosophy. In our house, God wasn’t a being; He was a data point. Faith was a vestigial organ—something the unlearned hadn't yet evolved away from.
But my hands are shaking. And I am hiding a book.
For months, I’ve been a mole in my own office, tucking the Torah beneath copies of The American Anthropologist. I study Rashi and Ramban with the frantic energy of a man breathing oxygen for the first time. I’m not doubting God’s existence anymore. I’m doubting my own.
My wife—a computer scientist whose algorithms are rewriting the future—would think I’ve suffered a neurological break. Our marriage is built on the bedrock of the observable. At dinner, we laugh at the "folly of the faithful" over organic wine. My colleagues are no better; we are the high priests of the secular, the guardians of the rational.
And yet.
It started with a student’s question about Leviticus. I began to explain the sociology of the law, but the words turned to ash in my mouth. I wasn’t interested in the why of the ritual anymore. I was hungry for the is.
Then came the drive to Lakewood. It was an impulse, a suburban safari that turned into a revelation. I saw men in tallitot and children holding hands, moving with a terrifying, beautiful sense of gravity. They weren't just "living life"; they were answering a Call.
I want that Call.
But the cost is total. To choose the Beit Midrash is to torch the Ivory Tower. My colleagues would see a "descent into the primitive." My wife would see a stranger. Can a marriage built on shared atheism survive a partner who finds the Infinite?
I am caught in the magnetic pull between Princeton and Lakewood—between the seen and the Unknowable. My feet are stuck in the mud of the life I spent forty years building, but my soul is already halfway down the GSP toward New Jersey’s pockets of holiness.
So, I play the part. I deliver the lectures. I nod at the faculty lounge jokes. But in the silence of my study, I whisper the Shema. It is a quiet revolution, one page of Gemara at a time. I am a secret believer, waiting for the courage to trade my reputation for a truth that won't let me go.
I am waiting for the courage to go home.
