Don’t Give Up on Torah Umadda

What is the mission of Yeshiva University? Ostensibly it’s encapsulated by the motto on our school’s logo — Torah Umadda. The purpose of YU is to provide for an environment in which students can pursue excellence in both the study of Torah and the liberal arts. According to the mission statement of the Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Torah Umadda “has been the watchword of Yeshiva University almost from its inception.” 

The idea that Torah and secular studies are not only compatible but in fact mutually reinforcing is a radical and unique proposition, and one which YU pioneered with great success, but when observing YU today, it’s often difficult to say whether the school or its students still hold this lofty vision as its philosophical lodestar.

According to the self study YU submitted as part of its Middle States reaccreditation process, since 2017, the administration has “shifted the focus of YU from a largely liberal arts’ conception of Torah u-Madda to one centered around infusing YU’s Torah-based values (i.e. Truth, Life, Infinite Human Worth, Compassion, and Redemption) into the liberal arts as well as into professional training, STEM, and business.” YU’s mission statement on Schedule-O of its most recent form 990 omits any reference to Torah Umadda, as does the mission statement on the homepage of YU’s main website. When one opens YU’s news blog, one finds that more stories are written about research conducted at the Katz School of Science and Health than any other subject. 

Moving away from the purely verbal alienation between YU and its founding vision, we find many ramifications of this paradigm shift in the undergraduate and graduate schools. Torah Umadda’s natural habitat is the undergraduate schools, where students study Torah and zealously pursue a dual curriculum, but these seem to no longer be the university’s focus.

Yeshiva and Stern College both lack any foreign languages (besides for the infamous asynchronous Hebrew), Stern barely has a philosophy department and to my knowledge, neither campus any longer has a full-time faculty member teaching political theory.

Perhaps most ironic, Stern College has few options for students to study mathematics or physics at the same time as YU endeavors to expand a graduate school which offers master’s degrees in those very fields. And these are just a few examples — many undergrad departments feel underfunded, understaffed and underappreciated. Trust among undergraduate faculty members in the administration, as of last year, is at astonishing lows.

At the Centennial Hanukkah Dinner just last night, President Berman spoke about how YU ought to be the source for future Jewish thought leaders, for the future Joe Liebermans, Albert Einsteins and Rav Soloveitchiks. Perhaps, he suggested, with the doubling in size of its predominantly non-Jewish graduate schools, YU may even be the source of the next John F. Kennedy. But YU will never produce a JFK — certainly the Katz School won’t — and even if it could, should this be its goal? 

Even if YU could replace the storied (and recently deeply troubled) universities that are as old as this very nation, it could only do so at the expense of itself. It cannot become the new Harvard without giving up on its roots, removing itself still further from its founding vision and losing its place as the flagship institution specifically of Modern Orthodox Jewry. By attempting to become something which it is not and should not be, by attempting to produce a JFK, it will only sabotage its ability to produce Liebermans or Rav Soloveitchiks. Without Torah Umadda, YU would lose the very thing that differentiates it from every other American university.

Now, it would be unfair — although perhaps satisfying to some — to lay the blame for Torah Umadda’s decline solely at the feet of the university administration. The decline of the humanities is a nationwide dilemma, and students and impersonal economic incentives are perhaps just as culpable as the schools themselves. The majority of undergrads on the Wilf Campus at least appear to have little interest in the liberal arts. Most attend the Sy Syms School of Business, and even within YC, the largest major is by far computer science. Although I’m sure many would love to study liberal arts if their career choices allowed them to, it seems that for most, avoiding those subjects is a feature rather than a bug of their programs.

I also don’t want to detract from the enormous strides that many areas of the university are taking in the advancement of the humanities and the true spirit of Torah Umadda. The Moshael and Zahava Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought — which was just renewed last night with an incredibly generous donation of $11 million by the Straus family — stands out as the most eminent undergraduate program at YU dedicated to carrying on the school’s core mission. Currently, Yeshiva College Student Council (YCSC) President Uriel Sussman (YC ‘25) is working tirelessly with Deans Cypess and Stenhouse to put together an opportunity for students to study Latin next semester for the first time in years.

However, with all these positive developments in mind, the university must still make Torah Umadda a priority. Donors can be encouraged to endow chairs for new tenured faculty, the core curriculum can be revamped to actually provide a well-rounded education and the school can once again message the centrality of YU’s historical mission. As I mentioned earlier, the loss of Torah Umadda would be equivalent to the loss of YU as a unique institution itself, and that is a loss far too great.