I’ve reached a point in my personal musings on Modern Orthodoxy that I’ve started to wonder whether such a thing is even possible: the merging of modern life and religious Judaism. Is Modern Orthodoxy a contradiction in terms?
The Modern Orthodoxy ideal is living and engaging in the modern world while maintaining a lifestyle committed to halacha and Torah. No balance is 100% possible, of course; when you get down to it, halacha will always trump modernity. A job with work on Shabbat wouldn’t fly, and so on. This is the natural consequence of trying to harmonize a secular society with a religious life, and something I’ve always innately understood, if not mulled over completely. But recently I’ve realized something else: the open- mindedness that we Modern Orthodox Jews pride ourselves on, especially in relation to Hareidi Jews, may be a lot more theoretical than realistic.
Yeshiva University, often called the “flagship of Modern Orthodoxy” (and rarely in a facetious tone, unless invoked by myself), is another one of those contradictions in terms. Can a school really be both a yeshiva and a university? It would seem not. At some point along the way, one or the other needs to fall by the wayside, and more often than that, that straggler is the university end. Yeshiva comes first, much like Orthodox comes first.
An article that was recently published on my newspaper, The Beacon, sparked a bit of controversy within the Modern Orthodox community, leading to angry, childish yelling instead of mature discussions. True, the article was not written as sensitively or articulately as it could have been, but I’m also starting to think that open conversation is something the Modern Orthodox community is not ready for. New ideas, or ideas that run counter to tradition, are rejected out of hand, or viciously attacked. This is a disappointing realization for a Modern Orthodox woman who fancies herself forward-thinking, like myself.
Open dialogue is the first step to effecting change. Without discussing ideas, there can be no revolution, and every group at every time could use some sort of revolution, be it small or large. How can Modern Orthodoxy keep up with the times if it refuses to allow new thoughts into its collective mindset?
