Give Up on Torah Umadda

“Don’t Give Up on Torah Umadda,” a recent editorial proclaims. The writer is referring to that famous YU motto whose meaning is as vague as the values it represents. The time has come for our institution to honestly assess the ubiquitous slogan. So I ask: Is Torah Umadda a living philosophy or an extinct idea? What does it have to do with us? What does it have to do with Modern Orthodoxy?

The article under discussion provided a dubious definition of the term in question. “The study of Torah and the liberal arts” is Torah Umadda and, therefore, YU’s raison d’être, the editor-in-chief seems to have ruled. The remainder of the brief article decries YU’s lack of focus on this alleged foundation of liberal arts. The cases in point provided are: the lack of languages and political theory, as well as philosophy, math and physics at Stern. The broader examples are the high enrollments in the Sy Syms School of Business and the Computer Science program at Yeshiva College. 

Unfortunately, the writer has done what many have done in the past. In an attempt to defend that superannuated phrase, he has pointed out the very reasons it is out of commission. Anyone who has the time and conviction can peruse Rabbi Norman Lamm’s seminal work “Torah Umadda.” There they will find an elaborate, imaginative exploration of this idealism. There is and has always been, a problem: Torah Umadda is not and was never a shayach [applicable] hashkafa: not for a school, not for a movement. 

“Torah, faith, religious learning on one side and Madda, science, worldly knowledge on the other, together offer us a more overarching and truer vision than either one set alone,” Rabbi Lamm writes in his magnum opus. “Each set gives one view of the Creator as well as of His creation, and the other a different perspective that may not agree at all with the first … Each alone is true, but only partially true; both together present the possibility of a larger truth.” 

We’ll ignore the offensive suggestion contained herein, that Torah is in any sense “partially true.” In “Some Comments on Centrist Orthodoxy,” Rabbi Lamm explains, “... for us, the study of worldly wisdom enhances Torah. It reveals not a lowering of the value of Torah in the hierarchy of values, but a symbiotic or synergistic view.”

Let’s begin with Torah Umadda’s applicability and presence in its ideal environment: Yeshiva University. How does the study of liberal arts shtim [align] with Torah? Well, one thing is clear: students will not discover the answer through their YU classes. As a spectacular Commentator article explains, the ideal synthesis and confluence that Torah Umadda preaches is as hopeful as it is impractical. Professors do not tailor curriculums to incorporate Torah synthesis. Just the opposite, one can find liberal arts professors teaching material that any halakhically observant Jew would have great difficulties learning. I spoke to a friend whose morning rebbi (and RIETS rosh yeshiva) advised him to steer clear of a particular course, not for hashkafic reasons, but halakhic ones. It is obvious and evident that there is no collaboration between the yeshiva and the university. 

The few liberal arts classes that do meet the practical ideal of synthesis are taught by RIETS faculty. People who are knowledgeable about Torah tend to have the capability to teach liberal arts and synthesize them with the Torah. But how are professors completely ignorant of Torah supposed to synthesize their subjects with the Torah? What is the difference between YU and any other non-Torah Umadda subscribing yeshiva whose students take night classes at a university? Because at YU both happen on the same campus? Is that synthesis? 

Indeed, when this synthesis fails and Torah and Madda are carelessly thrown in together, problems arise. Liberal arts professors who preach values and ethics at odds with the Torah start objecting to perceived injustices. Faculty start — for lack of a less dramatic term — blaspheming the very Torah values they should in theory be inculcating. It is not their fault. It is the fault of the school, which has high-minded ideals and little ability to instantiate them.

What about the Torah side of Torah Umadda? You don’t have to hear it from me. The following question was posed to Rav Schachter in March of last year: “Should Jewish boys/men take the path of Torah Umadda and why?” He responded, “Dr. Shmuel Belkin, a past president of Yeshiva University, said that Torah Umadah is ‘a yeshiva with a cafeteria & a dormitory in one building.’ You need a degree to make a parnassah. Dr. Belkin said that we give everything in one building, so you don’t have to travel to a city college. That’s what Torah Umadda is all about.” A more succinct and utter demolition of Torah Umadda can only come from the top. The fact is that no matter the ruminations and written soliloquies appearing in journals, books or endless articles in The Commentator from time immemorial, confusedly grasping for this phantom philosophy ignores the fact that Torah Umadda does not exist meaningfully in YU. It can be plastered all over the walls and ceilings, irrespective of the glaring reality.

In regards to society, one only has to look around to perceive the absence of a Modern Orthodox hashkafa, certainly to the exclusion of Torah Umadda. Is Modern Orthodoxy a society of intellectualism or materialism? Is the left wing embracing Torah or pushing it away b’shtei yadayim [with both hands]? Does its right wing embrace worldly wisdom as an integral complement to the Torah in search of a larger truth? 

Modern Orthodoxy, as a living breathing community, has never been defined by Torah Umadda. Still, every community is defined by something. In this case, there are two things that set Modern Orthodoxy apart from other Orthodox communities: modernity and Israel. Whereas all other Orthodox communities without “modern” in their name have traditionally eschewed modernity, Modern Orthodoxy has engaged with the modern world. The classic excuse for this departure from tradition is the meaningless catchphrase “Torah Umadda.” In truth, this philosophical position is driven by much more practical concerns. One needs to look around and see whether the “modern” in Modern Orthodoxy of today is motivated by a sincere desire to gain from the “rich” culture of a society ever more antithetical to Torah values in order to enhance their Torah, or for other less idealistic and more practical reasons.

Modern Orthodox Jews are deeply committed to Medinat Yisrael not from an indifferent bystander’s perspective but from a Zionist one. However, the cognitive dissonance that arises when a Religious Zionist lives in the Diaspora is palpable, which results in the development of an ideological excuse. Torah Umadda is an impracticable and befuddled product of galus, and more significantly, incompatible with the substantive hashkafa and comprehensively cohesive tzionut datit. Note that there is no equivalent of Modern Orthodoxy in Israel. There are no “Modern Orthodox” yeshivot in Eretz Yisrael. Modern Orthodoxy in its present state is a latent and undeveloped Religious Zionism only realized when its adherents make aliyah. If Torah Umadda is the ideal Hashkafa, why is it not present in Israel? The answer is simple. It never was a functional ideology, and Israelis do not need the excuse of Torah Umadda to compensate for their incomplete Zionism. In recent times, this crisis has come to the forefront. Have we been asleep in galus dreaming up fantastical ideations? 

With this broadened understanding of the practically defunct nature of Torah Umadda, a case in point of the garbled excuse for a hashkafa it has become can be analyzed. One writer describes Torah Umadda as the foundation of the “ideal student of Modern Orthodoxy… someone who takes both Torah and madda equally seriously, one who finely weaves the mundane and the holy into a coherent lifestyle. Not someone who, although admirable, just sits down and learns Talmud all day at the community’s expense.” I’ll leave aside the unabashed agenda of disdain for right-wing (“Haredi”) Orthodoxy (including unbecoming ridicule for their rabbinical “Polish aristocratic mode of dress”) motivated by personal history; something the author makes clear from the outset. 

Placing Torah and l’havdil, madda, on an equal pedestal is what many in Modern Orthodoxy have unfortunately done, and there is no stronger example than the religious disaster that is the left wing of Modern Orthodoxy. It is this viewpoint which would deign to condemn Kollel as an expense instead of an asset. Not a lechatchila but rather [a] bidieved Judaism is created when individuals try to reconcile their own predilections with the values of the eternal Torah. Still, the hashkafa crisis that this writer sees unfolding in YU is a natural result of developing mevakshim [those who yearn for religious growth] who are bothered by the unserious reconciliations of those who cannot admit that they are settling for less. Something’s gotta give, and in Torah Umadda, it’s Torah.

Photo caption: A prospective sketch of YU’s future Wilf Campus from the 1920s 

Photo credit: YUNews