The Most Important Thing to Come out of the YU Ganel

It is finally official:

The Torah's prohibition of homosexual sex is a hok, not a mishpat. The contemporary generation of Jews might be comfortable, or used to, or even OK with the fact that homosexuality is assur. But deep down, very few of us claim to understand it. Thirty years ago, or three hundred years, homosexuality = immorality = abomination was obvious. No Longer.

Because we can't see homosexuality as anything but a hok, the Ganel got such a large turn out; because we can't see homosexuality as anything but a hok, Stern girls and social commentators alike emphasize the importance of remaining sensitive and understanding towards Orthodox homosexuals; because we can't see homosexuality as anything but a hok, we're going to have a whole lot of trouble trying to educate our kids about this in 20 or so years.

Smicha for the Wrong Purpose

Overcoming Bias has a couple of posts on how contemporary academia isn't designed to produce or disseminate world-ready knowledge, but instead focuses on manufacturing prestige and "authorities". If the system was actually about knowledge (as we idealistically imagine it) then:

a. Undergraduates would be taught by expert teachers, not big-name professors who don't really care and require the assistance of a team of TAs.
b. There wouldn't be undergraduate research journals (even our much beloved Gesher), nor would there be the glut of academic journals filled with silly jargon. Academics would focus on the most pressing questions, and seek to find the most compelling answers. Everything else will got tossed in the can.
c. University curricula would be much more comprehensive, focused, rigid - and practical. Once you determine what it is that you wish to study, it should be relatively obvious what does and doesn't need be covered. That core of knowledge and analysis should neatly match what it is you want to do with that education.

Since, however, its about prestige: we want to be students of fancy professors whose research has nothing to do with our mid-level course; people publish for the sake of publishing, and, in the process of finding something they can write about, they lower the quality bar, specialize in something no one else cares about, and avoid the big questions; the curricula has more to do with graduating with a title than anything else. Universities make their set of requirements and, well, you just sort of do 'em. Generally, the knowledge you cover is useful - but only coincidentally.

Unfortunately, I believe the same flawed set of goals applies to our smicha system (though it expresses itself in different ways): the goal is not to produce knowledge (or effective rabbis), but prestige.

a. Rabbis running a smicha program are not always the best teachers - in fact, I'd say that after high school, pedagogically sound rabbis were the exception. The goal isn't to learn from Great Rabbi X, but to have learned under Great Rabbi X.
b. You have shiur in Bava Batra b'iyun, and learn the Halakhot of Taaroves - even though these have nothing to do with life as a rabbi. Sure, some Rosh Yeshiva-track semicha students need to know it, but that's coincidental. Heck, it'd be nice to a have a tanakh-track, and a shul-rabbi track, and high school teacher track, . . . but that's not how its done. Instead, its about having "done" prestigious Bava Batra, and having learned what every other smicha program makes their students learn. Smicha program X's curricula parallel the curricula of other smicha programs - because the point isn't to have the best curriculum, but to send the same signals everyone else is sending.
c. Roshei Yeshiva are not encouraged to produce publishable hiddushim, or to focus on big or unsolved questions, but to just to give shiur and just generally be respected and smart. Nonetheless, lots of people publish (e.g. our much beloved Beis Yitzhak, the glut of "Shiurei haRav X" that are published at the behest of Rav X's students!) but without any really significant product.

Nope - its just about prestige. In a way it works - people leave RIETS with a title "rabbi" that signals something about them to other people (much as a BA from Hopkins does), and that is important and - apparently - useful. But, considering how we have this great, well-funded, well-staffed set of institutions, wouldn't it be nice if we used them for a better purpose?

In a traffic jam, why don't people just start driving on the shoulder? Fear of getting a ticket?? What's the chance they'll pass a cop, who happens to be in the left-most lane, who happens to have sufficient time and room to even think he has a chance of chasing them down? A lot lower than the chances of getting caught speeding, which drivers often decide to do.

Same question, more universal situation: Often a lane leading to highway interchange is backed up, while all other lanes are running smoothly. Every driver reading this has at one point or another sped through a smooth lane, right up to the point of interchange, where they slow down and wait for some sucker to let them in. Why doesn't everyone do this, all the time? Why is anyone waiting in the slow lane?

Any rational incentive at play?

Ideas for Terrorists

Suicide highway car accidents. People will stop driving. Choose a city, one accident a month for ten months. . .


Also, add this to the list of perverse experiences/thoughts all Jews of our generation have had:
a. Holocaust nightmares.
b. Wondering, "man, if I was a terrorist, I'd have so many good ideas. What are they waiting for?!"

So True - I can't believe its taken me 22 years to think of this

Aggadic Midrash can be seen as evidence that Hazal didn't take Biblical narrative literally. At the very least, they must have viewed the "truthiness" of Biblical narrative very differently than we do today.

This is what I mean:
a. Assume that midrashim themselves aren't meant literally/factually/historically. I think thats a fair assumption and is accurate at least 75% of the time.

b. I can't imagine building a whole conscious genre of midrashim on something that you imagined was in fact literal and factual and historical. I just can't imagine it! Would someone write midrash-esque stuff on, say, . . . Six Days of War, or Ghandi's biography, or the Diary of Anne Frank?

c. I'm not really sure how Hazal viewed the "truthiness" of Biblical narrative, and I'm not close to confident about taking a radical view. This much, however, needs be kept in mind: the fact that Hazal wrote midrashim on Tanakh says something interesting about how they viewed Biblical narrative . . . and that something is important and requires deeper thought.

Opera Rock Superstar Two Thousand and Ten

Musical film and theater reached its rousing climax in the '60s. For fifty years since, American media consumers simply stopped feeling that people bursting into spirited song, or love expressed through plaintive duet, were as moving or meaningful as the realist's less exuberant alternative.

Musicals continued, but were more fun than anything else. A spectacle and a tradition, but not a particularly accurate expression of the human experience. Actors sing; humans don't.

Ah, but now, to sing is to be real and quite gloriously human: American Idol, an assortment of YouTube superstars, and of course Glee mean we have aesthetically realigned ourselves away from realism.

So far, the musical revolution has been reserved for humor, love, and light dramatics. My prediction: a return to opera within the decade. By opera I don't mean foreign languages or big fat voices, but Glee-style tragedy and dark drama. Glee for grown-ups - not just pretend grown-ups.

Guide to the Damned

In The Inferno, Dante is guided through the Abyss by Virgil. Not a bad choice.

Who'd you pick? Like, traveling through hell is a pretty big deal, and the guides make all the difference.

My short list:

1. Adam
2. CS Lewis
3. Mother Teresa