The Fight for the Future of Orthodoxy
Can a Jewish person be religious and participate in modern life?
“The Search Committee” by Rabbi Marc Angel poses this question in the frame of a simple story. Two rabbis go before a yeshiva’s search committee as candidates for the new head of school. One is Rabbi Grossman, the heir to a rabbinical dynasty mired in narrow tradition who sees himself as a bulwark against the contaminating outside world. The other candidate, Rabbi Mercado, is an outsider who has studied in secular college and embraces the modern world with cautious optimism. Each side—including the candidates’ wives, children, students and fellow teachers—speaks before the committee.
But Angel does not reveal the committee’s decision, letting the reader decide instead. The debate also speaks to the struggle between modernity and tradition, a struggle exemplified by the yeshiva’s two major benefactors, each one supporting a different candidate.
The first, Clyde Robinson, is a deeply assimilated Jew who supports the intellectual stagnancy of the yeshiva as advocated by Rabbi Grossman. Clyde seems to believe, perhaps from his own experience, that it is impossible for a Jewish person to remain religious in the outside world. There is no effort made to bring Clyde closer to Judaism; The Yeshiva takes guilt money and seems to give nothing in return.
The other benafactor, who testifies for Rabbi Mercado, is Mrs. Neuhaus, a religious woman and longtime supporter of the yeshiva. Despite being brought up as an observant Jew, she blames the yeshiva system for hurting her marriage and developing students with no career prospects.
Although Angel seems to have more sympathy for Mrs. Neuhaus than for the broken and remorseful Clyde, she also represents a threat to the yeshiva, which for better or worse has preserved Judiasm for the coming generation, albeit through an intolerant and narrow-minded ideology. Mrs. Neuhaus’s ideas may be more modern, but there is no guarantee that they will keep the community together.
It is during these debates that the book becomes a masterpiece. Angel’s keen ear for dialogue allows each section to sound unique to the ear: the reader can almost hear the characters speaking.
But while Angel makes a valiant attempt to give logical arguments to both sides, his bias is clear: he would have voted for Rabbi Mercado. Some of the meaning of the book is lost with such heavy handedness. Angel would have done better to temper Rabbi Grossman, rather than making him so offensive as to say, “We don’t need their ideas. Our Torah has all of the wisdom in it” in reference to the gentile community.
Although I hope Angel’s bias will fade as he continues to write fiction, here his favoritism makes for a guilty pleasure and his storyline will enthrall readers enough to finish the book in one sitting. Spoiling the ending would be a disservice, and the conclusion of the story is one worth waiting for.
The discussion will continue long after the final page is turned. This is not a book to offer answers, but to force us to question our beliefs and prejudices. “The Search Committee” will become a classic of Jewish literature and for Angel’s first journey into fiction, it is a masterful work, recommended for anyone who demands to know more than what tradition tells us.
