Never Meet Your Heroes? A British Outsider Meets YU
They say you should never meet your heroes. Admittedly, Yeshiva University is not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of a classic celebrity obsession. Most people don’t grow up across the Atlantic dreaming of Washington Heights. Yet from the moment I first heard about YU during my year at MMY, it acquired something of a mythical status.
Despite knowing very little about it, I developed a remarkably detailed picture of what life there must be like. On many occasions, while nodding off during lectures at the University of Manchester, I found myself imagining what my life at YU might have looked like.
In my mind, YU was a sort of Modern Orthodox / Dati Le’umi — pick your favorite box — utopia. It was a place where serious Torah learning and serious academic ambition didn’t merely coexist but strengthened one another. A place filled with intelligent, driven young Jews who cared deeply about Judaism, Israel, their careers and the world around them. A place, unlike my hometown, where you didn’t have to justify wanting it all but where wanting it was simply taken for granted.
Then, this summer, I made the potentially dangerous decision to meet my hero.
I came to Israel as a British, non-YU student to join the BIU-YU Summer Science Research Internship program. Suddenly, instead of hearing about YU from afar, I, for a few weeks, became a temporary part of its world.
Selfishly, I almost wish I could report that the experience shattered my illusions. I could have returned home content with the realization that the YU in my imagination never really existed. Institutions, after all, are made up of people, and people have an irritating habit of being more complicated than the labels we tend to dump on them. I should know: I come from a background where putting people into boxes is practically a competitive sport — and one in which we would undoubtedly win gold.
However, much to my dismay, I cannot console myself quite so easily.
I cannot dismiss my fascination with YU as a classic case of “the grass is always greener” when I have now seen both sides and regret to report that the contrast is indeed rather blinding.
Instead, I must admit that my exposure to YU was, most irritatingly, every bit as remarkable as I had imagined. If anything, my dream to attend YU not only remains alive but has returned with newfound fervor. This was despite having to tolerate a group of students plagued by a severe case of Anglophilia, a common symptom of which was the incessant need to mimic the British accent, with each attempt somehow more abysmal than the last.
Although I jest, I was most struck by the YU students themselves. The students I met seemed to embody the Torah Umadda ideal I had admired from afar: intellectually curious and ambitious, with serious plans for their futures and a desire to contribute both to the wider world and their own communities. They were interesting, respectful, wholesome, warm and fun. Most importantly, their engagement with the modern world didn’t appear to diminish the seriousness of their avodat Hashem.
Coming from a Bais Yaakov high school education, where the synthesis of Torah Umadda was presented as coming at the expense of Torah, seeing lived examples to the contrary was powerful.
Beyond the individuals themselves, it was refreshing to be surrounded by a community where these values required no explanation. Career aspirations, an interest in science, a love of Israel, women’s Torah learning and attendance at minyan required no justification.
It felt surreal to spend my days surrounded by people conducting serious scientific research, only for dinner conversations to turn naturally to Torah and for evening plans to make room for both fun and learning. None of it seemed contradictory. More strikingly, none of it seemed particularly noteworthy.
But admiration doesn’t require blindness, and my rose-tinted glasses are not quite that opaque. My summer may have confirmed much of what I had admired about YU from afar, but experiencing it up close inevitably complicated the picture.
I had imagined a fairly uniform group of students who had all arrived at essentially the same synthesis of Torah and modern life. Instead, I encountered considerable variation in levels of observance, outlook and the weight students gave to the different components of an ideal Modern Orthodox life. In hindsight, expecting a large group of Jews to agree on anything may have been my most naïve assumption of all.
One area in which this became particularly apparent was the question of coed socializing. Coming from a predominantly yeshivish community, I grew up in a world where mixed social settings were generally frowned upon. However, after three years at a non-Jewish university, studying and socializing alongside both men and women has become entirely normal to me. I therefore arrived assuming that within YU’s Modern Orthodox world, coed socializing would be similarly unremarkable.
I quickly discovered otherwise. Even among the relatively small group of YU students I met, there were different levels of comfort with coed social environments. Conversations arose about whether a summer program should operate differently from life during the academic year, and it became clear that one’s choices in this area could carry social consequences within particular circles. What interested me wasn’t so much which approach was correct but that the issue could produce a kind of tension and stigma I recognized from my own community. I had imagined — or ignorantly hoped — that the greater openness of the Modern Orthodox world would automatically remove some of the stigma that can accompany religious choices. Instead, I realized that even within YU’s much broader framework, students can feel pressure to conform to a particular image of what religious life ought to look like. A community can offer far more options while still leaving some of its members wondering exactly where they fit.
I encountered a different version of that tension when it came to women’s Torah learning. Coming from a community where a woman’s desire to pursue serious learning can invite judgment, I was in awe of the opportunities available at YU. Yet several Stern students also described disparities that remain. They spoke of limited access to roshei yeshiva and of scheduling conflicts between Judaic studies and core academic requirements in contrast to structures available to male students that provide designated time for both. This disparity struck me precisely because one of the things that I had found so inspiring about YU was its commitment to women’s Torah learning. Perhaps because Yeshiva University has accomplished so much in this area, the discrepancies become more noticeable.
Ultimately, none of these observations detracted from my admiration for YU. They simply opened my eyes to the reality that when I finish my degree and move away from my hometown, I won’t be free from many of the tensions and stigmas surrounding religious choices. They will continue to exist even in communities filled with remarkable opportunities. Perhaps that was the misconception underlying my imagined YU all along. I had thought of YU as a finished product: a perfect, worked-out model of Torah Umadda. Instead, I found a community still building and growing. While that makes it less utopian than the university I had imagined from Manchester, it also makes it more meaningful.
I therefore stand by my choice to meet my hero. Returning to Manchester and leaving behind a world I had so quickly grown to love was painful, but I wouldn’t trade the experience. I left with a more nuanced picture of YU, imperfections and all, but also with a deeper appreciation for the Torah-centered life that had drawn me there in the first place.
Most importantly, I remain profoundly affected by the incredible YU students I had the honor of meeting and can now call my friends.
They say never to meet your heroes for fear that reality will disappoint. It turns out there is another, perhaps more dangerous, possibility: You meet them, imperfections and all, and somehow leave wanting them even more.
Photo Caption: Pre-Shabbat picture on the Summer Science Research Internship program
Photo Credit: Shevy Rickman
