An Introspective Look at the Spiritual Challenges Facing Modern Orthodox Jews

transcribed from a talk by Rav Ozer Glickman delivered at Cong. Beth Sholom, Lawrence, N.Y.
v"xa, vhksd oum

For a vchah atr, the days before vcua,v hnh ,rag should be a quiet time for reflection.
ohrugha ended three days earlier and all I had to do was review ,hrja ,khp, which I have the
privilege of leading one day of vbav atr. This year more than others, though, my phone rang for
three days before vbav atr with calls from current and former students. They wanted to read me
their ,uars. Faced with real world audiences with real world problems for the first time in their
young careers, there were daunted by the prospect of delivering sermons that to them (and sadly
often to me) seemed out of touch with life outside the arsnv ,hc.

How does a young rabbi with little life experience without the cloistered walls of the
vchah speak to the hearts of mature men and women who know that life can be a struggle? When
one enters the doors of the arsnv ,hc, it is like being at home on ,ca. The vchah extends its
warm embrace around our shoulders and we feel protected from the slings and arrows of the
chaotic world outside. There’s a hum of Torah and we are far away from the cacophony of the
street. Sometimes when I walk in Manhattan, I strain my ears to hear the song of Torah (gunak
vkhp,v ktu vbrv kt), and try to ignore the dissonance of traffic and the roar of the crowd. If you
have been fortunate to have spent many wonderful years in this safe environment, what prepares
you to inspire those who have labored outside?

So I listened to trite vortelach about learning more Torah and going to minyan regularly.
These are important ohbhhbg and should be on the agenda of every Jew. My ohshnk, were
frustrated, though, because they wanted to be bold, inspirational, and moving. I worried about
the boys over vbav atr but I won’t worry about their futures. They will be good ohbcr because
they are aware of their own inadequacies just as we all need to be.

I also have been thinking about our lives as Jews as well. When Rabbi Skydell called me
on vbav atr crg to ask if I might substitute for Rav Twersky, I advised him to leave Rav
Twersky’s topic as agreed. It is a perfect choice for his unique heritage, the brilliant scion of the
Lithuanian yeshiva tradition and the heir to a distinguished chassidic dynasty. I myself would
have loved to hear his thoughts on these matters. I cannot do as well even if I had any advance
notice but Rav Twersky’s topic does speak to me and I’ll share my thoughts with you crv ,uarc
kvev ,uarcu tr,ts trn. I am honored to speak to such a distinguished group led by one of the
outstanding ohbcr in North America, Rabbi Hain, and pleased to spend some time with one of our
most talented ohshnk, in recent years, my student Rabbi Skydell.

Our spiritual lives are framed within the ,unt ws of vfkv. All observant Jews must
concern themselves with the minutiae of Jewish law. The times we pray, how we stand, the
direction we face; the length and freshness of the ohbhn vgcrt, the amount of water in the vuuen
and its source. Much of our attention is directed toward the procedures of ,uumn, not to their
potential impact on our interior spiritual lives. We want to experience vause. We strive to feel
signficant. We desperately wish to link up with eternity. As much as our ohbcr seek to inspire us,
we yearn to be inspired, elevated above the mundane. This is in my mind a formidable challenge
for vfkv hrnua.

I must admit that the words “Modern Orthodox” in the title make me somewhat
uncomfortable. It’s as if other observant Jews aren’t also troubled by the seeming triviality of our
religious lives. Even Jews to the right of us can be thinking people. The term Modern Orthodox
is often elitist; sometimes it’s code for less observant. I’m interpreting the Modern Orthodox of
Rav Twersky’s title to mean Orthodox Jews who live in this era, this time of Modernity. I
believe the challenges I will address apply to all observant Jews. We all find ourselves caught in
the details and sometimes feel empty and uninspired.

There were sublime moments for me on vbav atr when I did feel connected to the
source of our vause. It’s a measure of my spiritual immaturity that most of them occurred while I
was standing before the sung. Egotist that I am, I was most inspired by the sight of myself
inspiring others. Happily, though, there were one or two others. When the young father across
from me closed his eyes, holding his little girl and listening together to the rpuav kue, I was
moved. When I stood with my soldier son and listened to the k"vm hkhhjk vkhp, and thought of the
times last year we didn’t know where he was or what he was doing and our family tearfully
shook to the same words... To put my around him and hold him to me, knowing he was safe for
the time being, that was a sublime moment for me.

Perhaps the most moving for me during the entire 10 days are those climactic moments at
the end of vkhgb, when the entire kve summons its remaining strength, and declares loudly,
together ohektv tuv oav, ohektv tuv oav.

Although the auck describes this recitation as a farewell to the vbhfa as it departs this
world at the end of our ,ukhp,, 7 declarations for the ihgher vgca, the seven skys described in wxn
vdhdj that the vbhfa must traverse, these words were the response of the people of Israel when
thcbv uvhkt confronted the prophets of kgc on knrfv rv. After generations of struggle between
the faith of ubhct ovrct in an Omnipotentent Creator and the pagan cults that constantly sought
to exercise their nefarious influence over his descendants, thcbv uvhkt challenges ctjt to
summon the 450 prophets of kgc to face him across knrfv rv, they on one side, he alone on the
other. They both invoke their dieties but only the True God responds. The pagan cult has been
vanquished ktrah kf hbhgk and the people declare in concert: ohektv tuv oav, ohektv tuv oav.

It is a unique moment in our spiritual history, a public sanctification of God’s name in the
most public of places, a ecstatic moment of national vcua, marked by spiritual ecstasy and
unquestioning commitment.

It didn’t last long. In the very next erp in wt ohfkn rpx, by the account of the text just one
day later, he is fleeing for his life from the wicked Queen kczht. When he reaches the wilderness,
he sits himself down under one of the trees that still grow like brush in the cdb, the o,ur ¤ it’s
called in Hebrew, and begs God to let him die. cr, he says; it is more than enough; je oav v,g
hapb- take my life, he prays, now.

The contrast of thcbv uvhkt’s changed circumstances in a matter of hours- boldly facing
450 false prophets and the entire people of Israel, on the heights of the knrf, leading the people
to affirm the Living God- to hours later, sitting under a broomtree in the dry wilderness, begging
to end his miserable life. How does one get from here to there so quickly?

These sharp shifts from ecstasy to despair, from sublime faith to abject denial, from light
to darkness, typify the history of our people in the age of the prophets. Our national spiritual
existence was characterized by extremes. The people of Israel staggered from mountain top to
mountain top, joyously affirming life and God on the peaks, reeling in the valleys, lost and
forsaken. The higher the peaks, the deeper the valleys between them.

Something changed in our history. k"zj describe it in the first erp of tr,c tcc. The
context is a legal discussion around the principle that jointly owned property cannot be forcibly
divided in such a way that each partner receives a share with no economic value:
vzk ,unt gcrtu vzk ,unt gcrt tvha sg rmjv ,t ohekuj iht
The court cannot forcibly divide a jointly owned courtyard so that either party receives less than
four square ,unt. Any less is deemed to have no economic utility as a courtyard.

In the trnd, other types of real property are discussed: a t¨kuu§s,

© a watering hole- cr rnt
injb: the minimum size with the economic utility of a tkuus is tnuh ukts h¥c, the size from which
one can reasonable expect to draw enough water to keep a worker irrigating for a full day.
© when the court forcibly divides a vineyard among two feuding partners- vuct rnt
tẍs¥r§p-
ktunas- the father of the ktuna trunt is cited: ihce ,aka ,c- each of the partners must receive a
parcel of land not less than 3 ihce.

After citing a t,hhrc that corroborates his view, the trnd records a reaction to ktuna’s
father’s statement:
,Uthcb hrcs tkt ukt iht hxuh hcr rnt
This teaching is basically nothing but prophecy. h"arp ihhg: ogy tkc.

ktuna’s father had no means for deriving the rugha of a economically viable xsrp. He
just quoted what he heard, like a prophet who is a mere vessel for the transmission of the Divine
Message. Lest we think this is not a pejorative description, wxu, make it clear: rnte jcak tk.
This wasn’t meant in praise. Citing vfkv without derivation, to be memorized like oheuxp in
ohkhv,- lrsv uz tk. The way of a ofj is not the way of the thcb.

All of which launches the trnd into a discussion of the relative merit of sages and
prophets:
ohnfjk vb,hbu ohthcbv in vtucb vkyhb 'asenv ,hc crja ouhn :vphj ins hnhsct hcr rnt
When the first Temple was destroyed, the power of prophecy was taken from the prophets and
given to the sages in their place.

The trnd questions this tradition: tuv thcb utk ofj uyt? The clear implication of cr
hnhsct’s statement is that prior to the end of the prophetic period, no sage enjoyed the power of
prophecy. Is that really tenable, given the greatness of the early ohnfj?

The trnd therefore reinterprets hnhsct cr’s statement:

/vkyhb tk ohnfjv in 'ohthcbv in vkyhba hp kg ;t -rnte hfv
It is not that the ohnfj only received the power of prophecy after the destruction of the
first asenv ,hc. Rather what happened is that the ohthcb lost the power of vtucb and the ohnfj
retained it.

When the asenv ,hc is destroyed, the age of prophetic leadership of the people of Israel
ends. The trnd makes clear that k"zj may be the spiritual equals of the ohthcb and may have
retained the power of prophecy when it was lost to those outside the arsnv ,hc. But it is clear
from numerous places throughout x"a that prophecy has no role in the halachic process.
Although vfkv is launched by a prophetic act, hbhx rvc vru, i,n, although sug vanf ktrahc oe tk
thcb, although van is the greatest of prophets, it is ubhcr van who stands at the beginning of the
unbroken chain of halachic authorities that reaches until our very day.

We don’t have time to do the entire thdux but I commend it to your attention. I’d like to
jump ahead to another statement on vtucb in our post-prophetic era on wc sung:
/,ueubh,ku ohyuak vb,hbu ohthcbv in vtucb vkyhb asenv ,hc crja ouhn ibjuh hcr rnt
On the day of the destruction of the first asenv ,hc, prophecy ceased among the prophets and
was given to the mentally ill and children. The trnd proceeds to substantiate this tradition with
examples from the Talmudic period of a deranged man who made outlandish statements in the
marketplace that incredibly turned out to be true and the story of the young daughter of tsxj cr
who unwittingly prophesized that she would eventually marry both tcr and tnj rc hnr,
something which eventually came to be true. Also not in praise of prophecy in the post-prophetic
era. As rnhnt added to the discussion above: thcbn lhsg ofj- the sage is superior to the prophet.

What are we to make of this discussion, we who yearn for oav rcs? The i"cnr explains in
his ohaushj on the thdux in tr,c tcc: the Talmud’s intent is to say that the prophecy of the ohthcb
was lost. This is the prophecy that originated through visions and ecstatic experience. The
prophecy of the ohnfj, though, the prophecy that comes about through the exercise of the
intellect, was thankfully not lost.

This was most fortunate for ktrah hbc. In his mystical, sublime tribute to divine
inspiration, ,urut, the legendary chief rabbi of Israel, vfrck ehsm rfz eue ivfv ejmh ovrct cr,
clarifies for us the meaning of the superiority of the ofj over the thcb. The sages of Israel
accomplished what the ohthcb could not with: the eradication of idolatory and the end of the
basest degradations of oppression, violence, murder and profligacy. Where the fiery rhetoric, and
passionate oratory failed, the promulgation of Torah, the raising up of ohshnk,, and the
promotion of a discipline of study, review, and application succeeded. This is what rnhnt means
when he observes thcbn ;hsg ofj.

We could not lurch from spiritual mount to spiritual mount and wallow in the degradation
of the valleys in between any longer. Our spiritual history demanded that prophecy cease and
that the intellect lead the way. At the height of the hba ,hc, the degree of constancy in observance
and spiritual rectitude was greater than at any period of our history.

We live in the post-prophetic period just as k"zj did. If there is accessible content in the
word Modern that we apply as a prelude to the Orthodoxy that we profess, it may be that we live
in a rational age, albeit beset by irrational forces that seek to destroy us. If we order our
mercantile lives by rational principles, if we pursue professional knowledge in order to gain
practical success, we need to apply the same rational processes to gain spiritual success. We
need to engage our intellects in order that we regain the spirituality of the golden age of Torah
learning. We cannot return to the prophetic period in the world in which we now live.

Rav Kook lamented the passing of time in which the principles of Torah, its generalities,
its intellectual categories, the topography of its concepts and internal coherence, disappeared into
a myriad of details. It is not the way of the ofj. Dry, unthinking Orthodoxy is a shadow of real
Torah.

The ,uumn, when studied faithfully and with constancy, have the ability to elevate, to
inspire, to link us with the eternal. The greatest challenge is to muster the resources to devote to
the elevation of our spiritual souls as Jews with at least a fraction of the commitment we make to
our secular lives.

So now I’ve come full circle. Like my students, I’m encouraging you to join the song of
the arsn ,hc, to link your intellect with the great minds of our tradition, greater than prophets,
gifted with the ability to derive laws from the intellect, to link our physical observance with a
conscious appreciation of the nuanced tradition of wisdom that governs it. In the post-prophetic
age in which we live, the Modern Era that started with the destruction of the First ,hc, we
Modern Orthodox Jews must number ourselves among k"zj’s ohshnk,. Such is our destiny, ever
mindful though that our fervent seven-fold declaration this Shabbos, ohektv tuv oav, tuv oav
ohektv, has the power to cause prophecy to flower again, to bring us speedily to the warmth of
an eternal Shabbos, with the arrival of the brave prophet who vanquished 450 false prophets on
knrfv rv leading the ubhnhc vrvnc esmv ktud. Thank you for having me and vcuy vnh,j rnd to you
all.