Rebuilding Torah in America
On Parshas Haazinu and start of the American yeshiva movement
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
When I was in yeshiva, I wanted to start a music group called “Guys with Mediocre Voices.” The proposed music album was going to be me and my dearest friend Mati Diamond, our mediocre voices singing classic Friday night tunes from davening. The album's hit track would be the classic Magen Avos, sung at the end of Friday night davening. Though this idea, like many of my youthful dreams, never came to fruition, I still think it is a great idea—music that is pleasant enough to listen to, but not professional enough that you feel bad singing along.
But it is not just davening that is meant to be sung—Torah is described as a song as well:
וְעַתָּה כִּתְבוּ לָכֶם אֶת־הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת וְלַמְּדָהּ אֶת־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל שִׂימָהּ בְּפִיהֶם לְמַעַן תִּהְיֶה־לִּי הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לְעֵד בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל׃
Therefore, write down this song and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this song may be My witness against the People of Israel.
Moshe's final commandment to the Jewish People is to write down the Torah, which is, for the first time, referred to as a song.
That song, as the Rambam explains, literally refers to our parsha, Haazinu.
Why is this the first time the Torah is being referred to as a song? Moshe is about to pass on—is this really the right time to share a song together?
Secondly, if you actually read our parsha, the lyrics for the song of the Torah, you will see that it seems to be a pretty depressing song. So depressing, in fact, that Rav Tzadok asks why our parsha is considered a song at all:
ושירה זאת אמת שבתחלתו שבחים מיצ"מ והכנסתן לא"י אבל אח"כ יש בו מצער הגליות וקינה מבע"ל ומה זה שירה
And this song although it begins with praises of God redeeming the Jewish People from Egypt and our entry into the Land of Israel but afterwards it includes the period of pain from the exile, and what kind of song is that?!
—Rav Tzadok, Pri Tzadik, Haazinu #8
To understand the nature of the song of our parsha, let’s explore the efforts to rebuilt the yeshiva world in America.
The emergence of the yeshiva world in the United States of America began with a prophecy of sorts. As Zev Eleff details in his fascinating article, “Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin, Rabbi Aharon Kotler, and the Remaking of an American Jewish Prophecy,” the resurgence of Torah in America was foretold by Rav Chaim of Volozhin, the founder of the Volozhin Yeshiva. One of the earliest accounts of this 'prophecy' appears in Rabbi Moshe Yoshor's 1937 biography of Rav Yisroel Meir Kagan, known as the Chofetz Chaim. Rabbi Yoshor, a student of the Chofetz Chaim in Radin, quotes Rav Chaim of Volozhin as saying:
It is regrettable that some of the great leaders refrained from legitimizing what Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin had predicted over a century ago: that America would become the center of Judaism and the Torah would find in America its host, the last stop along the ten exiles, according to the tradition. After it had already passed through these nations: Babylon, Africa, Egypt, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Poland and Lithuania— America will be the last Torah center before the Messiah.
While it is impossible to verify the historical veracity of Rav Chaim of Volozhin’s prophecy, it certainly makes sense that this story was used to burnish the founding mythology of the American yeshiva World. Couched in the personality of Rav Chaim of Volozhin, the founder of the European yeshiva movement and the champion of Torah L’Shmah (the study of Torah for its own sake), it provided an added sense of authenticity and inevitability for the American yeshiva world. As Zev Eleff explains:
Given Rabbi Hayim’s high station, it is very reasonable that a legend linking him to an American Orthodox community that placed significant value on Torah study would accrue considerable currency as a “usable past” and foundational origin story—or prehistory. In this respect, the account of Rabbi Hayim’s prediction of the cultivation of America as a Torah hub parallels other “historical memories” that helped Jews in the United States claim a sturdier foothold in their adopted New World milieu.
Historically, there were yeshivas in America prior to the arrival of Rav Ahron Kotler and his fellow roshei yeshiva after the Holocaust. My grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Bekritsky, studied in Yeshivas Torah V’Daas with Rav Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz, who was affectionally called Mr. Mendelowitz, and later left with his rebbe Rav Dovid Leibowitz as a part of the first graduating class of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, named after Rav Dovid Leibowitz’s great-uncle. Additionally, Rav Dov (Bernard) Revel, the first president of Yeshiva University, played an instrumental role in bringing serious Jewish education into the mainstream American Jewish community.
Still, the momentum and vision for bringing traditional yeshiva study into the mainstream of American culture was a product in many ways of the roshei yeshiva that emigrated to the United States following the Holocaust, most notably Rav Ahron Kotler.
As Professor Yoel Finkelman writes in his article, “An Ideology for American Yeshiva Students: The Sermons of R. Aharon Kotler, 1942–1962,” it was Rav Ahron Kotler’s vision and ideology that laid the foundation for the American yeshiva movement. He writes:
Beth Medrash Govoha, and the American haredi yeshiva-centered Judaism which it led and exemplified, grew dramatically over the course of the second half of the 20th century. Kotler’s personality and his ideology helped lead the way as American Orthodoxy became more insular, increasingly religiously stringent, and less integrated with the larger community of American Jews. In the middle of the century a handful of yeshivas existed at the periphery of American Judaism. Since then, yeshivas have grown and expanded exponentially, and have become the linchpin of a strong and emboldened haredi Orthodoxy. Several factors contributed to this growth. Judaism became increasingly accepted as part and parcel of American culture. Freedom of religion allowed for the growth of non-mainstream religious groups, and permitted individuals to join those groups without fear. Indeed, beginning in the 1960s, religious, cultural, and ethnic distinctiveness became increasingly accepted.
In 1982, Professor William Helmreich published The World of the Yeshiva: An Intimate Portrait of Orthodox Jewry, which analyzed the success of the yeshiva movement on American soil. In the final chapter of the book—“Why Has the Yeshiva Survived”—he turns his attention to the unique contributions of the post-war generation of roshei yeshiva in America. He asks why the previous generations of leaders within the American Orthodox world did not achieve similar success in their efforts to popularize serious yeshiva study:
The presence of such men on the American scene raises an interesting question. The prewar American yeshiva community was by no means leaderless. Besides Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath and Dr. Bernard Revel, the first President of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, perhaps the two most important figures in this period, there were other prominent leaders such as Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner of Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, Rabbi Dovid Leiboiwtz of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yaakov Ruderman of Ner Israel Yeshiva, and Rabbi Shlomo Heiman of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. Yet these men were unable to generate the same degree of enthusiasm that marked the postwar period. It was not, however, a question of their capacity to lead. Their problem was the nature of the community itself and the times in which they lived. They had taken the first step in establishing yeshivas in the United States, but conditions were not yet ripe for the full transformation of Jewish education the higher levels into a mass movement.
Following the Holocaust, several factors aligned on American shores that allowed the yeshiva world to blossom. Helmreich points to several factors including the character of the immigrant generation, the role of the American Jewish community, and the Day School movement. Still, Helmreich acknowledges that no individual sociological explanation can account for the movement’s improbable success on American shores. Helmreich cites Rav Hutner who echoed this sentiment:
They’ll give you all sorts of reasons, but in reality it’s a mystery just like the mystery of the Jews. How did the Jewish people survive? And this question and the yeshivas is a mystery within a mystery. And all the reasons are junk. It was the work of God. That it lasted so long is to me a greater miracle than the crossing of the Red Sea. The Jew has a deep, mysterious connection to Torah that we don’t fully understand although we know it’s there. If you ask me, we have survived because Torah is true, because it is great and eternal.
Perhaps even more fascinating than Helmreich’s book are the interviews with leading roshei yeshiva he conducted and transcribed as a part of his research.
These interviews offer a rare window into the founding ideology of the yeshiva world as articulated by its leaders. One question posed to each rosh yeshiva is their understanding of why the yeshiva movement was so successful. A common theme in their answers was the urgency to rebuild following the Holocaust. As Rav Gedalia Schorr responded, “The influx is one point, and what you call today the Holocaust; to try to get back to the origin, so to speak.” The yeshiva movement in America gave American Jewry a sense of continuity and authenticity—that we have not been cut off from our origins.
The yeshiva movement, however, did come at a cost. As Professor Chaim Soloveitchik discusses in his landmark 1994 article, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” later published as a book, the rise of the yeshiva world in many ways replaced the mimetic traditions of the home as the central source of religious authenticity. He writes:
Having stepped into the breach left by the collapse of the traditional agencies of Jewish upbringing, the yeshivah has become a mass rather than elite establishment, more a religious institution than an academic one. To be sure, contemporary yeshivot seek to produce great scholars now no less than in the past, and often successfully so, but currently their major function is molding the cadres of the orthodox enclave, people whose religious character and countenance are a product not of home breeding but of institutional minting. Sensing this shift in the educational imprimatur, intuiting that the new source of religious identity entails changes in the old religious model, the enclave has already coined a distinctive term for the new, emergent exemplar, namely, the "ben Torah," the young adult who will bear the yeshivah ethos throughout his life, despite continuous exposure to the invasive culture of the surroundings.
Following the rupture of the Holocaust, the rhythms and cadence of Jewish life in the home, what Professor Soloveitchik calls the mimetic tradition was reconstructed through the rigorous text-based culture of the yeshiva. Roshei Yeshiva became the central source of communal power rather than the rabbi, and local custom was often overshadowed by the stringencies adopted from within the yeshiva world.
It has been three decades since Professor Soloveitchik published his landmark article and it is unclear if his assessments remain true. Undoubtedly, the yeshiva world has become ascendant in the American Jewish imagination. It has provided authenticity and depth to American Jewish life, but it has also evolved from its roots nearly a century ago. The mystery of its success has only grown as the community itself continues to expand. As Professor Helmreich concludes:
For centuries people have been asking, Why have the Jews survived? Education, while perhaps not the complete answer is certainly a major piece in the puzzle. Moreover, it is from advanced yeshivas that the leaders and interpreters of the culture frequently emerge. It is they who, as members of an elite group, often set the standards for others to emulate and aspire to. Whatever the fate of the Jewish community in the decades to come, the long and venerable history of the yeshiva and its ability to adapt within different cultural surroundings suggests that there will always be Jews who feel both obligated and honored to hold fast to their faith and to the ancient ways.
And that brings us back to the song of Torah and our parsha.
Immediately preceding the first description of the Torah as song, we find the following verse describing God’s apparent absence:
וְאָנֹכִי הַסְתֵּר אַסְתִּיר פָּנַי בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא עַל כׇּל־הָרָעָה אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה כִּי פָנָה אֶל־אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים׃
Yet I will keep My countenance hidden on that day, because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods.
וְעַתָּה כִּתְבוּ לָכֶם אֶת־הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת וְלַמְּדָהּ אֶת־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל שִׂימָהּ בְּפִיהֶם לְמַעַן תִּהְיֶה־לִּי הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לְעֵד בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל׃
Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel.
Before Torah is described as a song, we are first told that God will hide, so to speak, His direct presence in the world. Only after that do we confront the Torah as song.
Why is this?
When God’s presence is no longer seen through open miracles and prophecy, the way to uncover the immediacy of the Divine within our lives is through transforming the Torah into a song. Instead of a rule book, or a collection of stories, the Torah as a song becomes a part of our very sense of self. When we sing Torah, we are acknowledging that the eternity of the Jewish People, even through exile, is guaranteed through the Torah that emerges from the very rhythm and tempo of our lives. God is never completely absent, so long as we remain connected to the song of Torah.
And this is what makes Haazinu such a unique song. As Rav Tzadok mentions, the song of Haazinu includes many of the difficulties that the Jewish People will endure in exile. Yet, we still call Haazinu a song. Why?
אך ממה שהעיד בישראל כי השחת תשחיתון מזה יש על כלל ישראל זכות שהי' נודע מקודם שישחיתו דרכם וכבר שאל הרמב"ם ז"ל (ה' תשובה) על עונשי מצרים הא הי' גזירה מלפניו ית'. והתשובה שלא פרט השי"ת שם אומה ובבחירתם בחרו להיות הם המשעבדים ומענים. אבל כאן שנפרט שם אומה ישראלית כי ישחיתו דרכם אם לא הי' כן הי' כמעט חלול ש"ש. שנכתב בתורה דבר שאינו אמת ח"ו. ואף שאין זה תירוץ על פרטי הנפשות מישראל על הכלל כולו יצא ללמד זכות. וזה אם יהי' חטאיכם כשנים ודרשו (שבת פ"ט:) כשנים הללו שסדורות מששת ימי בראשית כשלג ילבינו ומאחר שכן הי' הסדר שישחיתו דרכם וישיבו אח"כ ויגאלו וכמו שבחר השי"ת לכתוב חטא ב"ש על דהמע"ה ושיתקן ע"י תשובה אף שלא הי' ראוי לאותו מעשה (כמ"ש ע"ז ד':) כן הי' הרצון על כלל האומה שיהי' כן הסדר עד שיתקנו ע"י תשובה כדכתיב ושבת ואתה תשוב ושמעת ולכן קורין פ' זו או קודם יוהכ"פ או אחר יוהכ"פ ששולחין השעיר ונשא את כל עונותם עונות תם. וזהו שאמר דהמע"ה גם כי אלך בגיא צלמות לא אירא רע כי אתה עמדי:
The song of Haazinu is a reminder that even during our exile we can still sing because the Jewish People already know the end of our story. Our return to Godliness is guaranteed by God, which means that during all the years of wandering in exile, we were never truly apart. Even in times of pain and suffering, we will always retain the capacity to sing.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin, Rabbi Aharon Kotler, and the Remaking of an American Jewish Prophecy, Zev Eleff
An Ideology for American Yeshiva Students: The Sermons of R. Aharon Kotler, 1942–1962, Yoel Finkelman
The World of the Yeshiva: An Intimate Portrait of Orthodox Jewry, William Helmreich
Interviews Conducted by Professor William Helmreich with Various Roshei Yeshiva, William Helmreich
How Lakewood, N.J., Is Redefining What It Means To Be Orthodox in America, David Landes
Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy, Haym Soloveitchik
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