The topic reminded me of complaints I have often heard in the Modern Orthodox educational system. The complaint goes that among the Modern Orthodox, in the USA, most people do not go into the "klei kodesh" industry and become rebbeim and teachers, and whatnot. They become lawyers, doctors, accountants, programmers, engineers, businessmen and whatever else, but not, with exception, By them mostly not becoming rebbeim, the rebbeim hired by these Modern Orthodox schools is almost always going to be rebbeim associated with the Haredi community. The complaint is that the boys pick up on the hashkafa from these rebbeim, they get gently, or not so gently, pushed in the direction of becoming "blacker", more yeshivish, more Haredi. But, because there seems to be a dearth of teachers from within the community, the schools don't really have a choice. They really need, in order to solve the problem, to encourage their kids to also consider careers in education as teachers and rebbeim, at least for children that it is appropriate for.
Anyways, the issue that reminded me of this is a report that in the Dati Leumi school and yeshiva system have already solved the rebbe issue and over the years has mostly stopped hiring haredi rebbeim as more and more rebbeim from the Dati Leumi communities have taken over those positions.
However, they have identified and additional situation that they have wanted to deal with. The Dati Leumi rabbinic world has produced a wealth of books in the Torah world, but almost entirely in the realms of halacha, Jewish thought/philosophy and Tanakh. They did not publish seforim that offered commentary and perush on Gemara, at an iyyun level.
The Dati Leumi yeshivas were using all the classic seforim, including the more recent publications from the past half century that have all been published by rabbonm and talmidei chachomim from the Haredi world. There just was not anything else available.
According to Srugim, in the past decade or so talmidei chachomim from the DL world have been concentrating on publishing their works on Gemara, and the situation is one now where they have "enough" such publications that they can actually use them and not be dependent on the seforim from Haredi authors.
This is allowing the DL yeshivot to replace the Haredi "achrei achronim" from the shelves with DL "achrei achronim"..
Halevai we should arrive at the day when Haredi yeshivas will accept and use seforim and rabbonim from the dati leumi torah world, and that the Dati Leumi yeshivas will accept and use seforim and rabbonim from the Haredi torah world (as they have until recently). Torah should be valuable no matter what kippa is worn by the people and talmidei chachomim learning it.
However, being that that is not the case, I can understand why the DL yeshivot would give preference to perushim written by their own people. The Haredi workd wont be using and promoting them, so if the DL world does not, who will? How will such talmidei chachomim be encouraged? The DL world needs to encourage such talmidei chachom to focus on these seforim and part of that is to give these talmidei chachomim preferential treatment as rebbeim and their seforim on the bookshelves.
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1: While there is certainly a difference between hashkafa sefarim that emerge from the chareidi world and those that emerge from the Dati world, why would they care who the authors of the articles on Talmudic sugyas are?
ReplyDelete2: I am very skeptical that what is reported in the article is true. First, it is based entirely on an interview with someone who publishes a Dati Torah journal, not exactly an unbiased source. Second, to give one example, everyone knows that the Hebrew Artscroll shas has totally overtaken the Steinsaltz in the Dati community.
3: This post is riddled with spelling errors.
1. the article describes some differences in thought and style. I dont know how much of a difference that makes. I have heard from haredi rabbonim (more than one) that "their way is not our way" - the thought process is different and anything they say has to be checked and confirmed. I heard it specifically in regards to halachic issues, but maybe the same applies in regards to a peirush on gemara, which would be a reason for each group stay away from the other.
ReplyDelete2. it could be exaggerated. I dont know. I have no information beyond what was written there. I am commenting on the idea. The reality might be different. maybe it is wishful thinking on his part, maybe it is an accurate picture. I dont know
3. Using spellcheck I only found one typo in my post, which I have corrected. thank you. Beyond that, feel free to point out where it is riddled with spelling mistakes.
I wouldn't say "riddled" but there are at least two grammatical/typing errors here which a spell-checker would never pick up on because the wrong word is correctly spelled... In one case "is" instead of "are" and there is "and" instead of "an" but I do also see "workd" and "dont".
ReplyDelete