Mark Wildes: Is Modern Orthodox Outreach the Way Forward?

Transcripts are produced by Sofer.ai and lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections. 

David Bashevkin: Hi friends and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast where each month we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host David Bashevkin and today we are exploring the topic of Modern Orthodoxy and kiruv, Jewish outreach. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big juicy Jewish ideas so be sure to check out 18Forty.org, that’s 1-8-F-O-R-T-Y.org where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. The question of modern orthodoxy and kiruv is a difficult question because it really is a question that begins with terminology.

What exactly do we mean by modern orthodox and what exactly do we mean by kiruv? And over here I’ll just speak kind of colloquially, the modern orthodox world communally is a very porous community. It does not have very firm boundaries of what you would consider Modern Orthodox versus not modern orthodox. So the first part of our question we are left with a lot of ambiguities of how should we define Modern Orthodox. I’ll be honest, just when I say that question I get tired, I get exhausted.

I do not enjoy conversations about kind of defining communal boundaries. I think all communal boundaries are somewhat porous, one kind of bleeds into the next and it’s very hard to find where’s the exact slice, where’s the exact line that you go from yeshiva community to Modern Orthodox community, yeshiva person to modern, like I just don’t think in those terms. I think there are kind of maybe examples that are easier to categorize and you could stay with those, but I don’t like really spending time in those differences, though I think colloquially we understand that different communities have different cultures. The second part of the question I think is also tricky which is what exactly is considered Jewish outreach? There is a professional world known as professional Jewish outreach where people as a part of their career spend time bringing Judaism to others.

In some communities this is called adult education which is such an unattractive term to me. Adult education, I don’t know why. I just like education, I don’t know why we had to add the word adult. We mean something I think more than that and we also mean something more than let’s say a Jewish communal professional, somebody who works in a Hillel or in a federation.

The differences are more complicated than you would think because somebody who works for a Hillel has a point of view, has an agenda even if that agenda is kind of a more pluralistic vision that Hillel adopts, but you kind of go out and you kind of share your version of Judaism. At the end of the day the only thing that we teach is ourselves. The only thing that we can teach is ourselves. Even when we’re teaching a text or daf yomi, we are teaching ourselves, our own understanding of everything and the only thing that we do is we teach ourselves.

Like what is the Yiddishkeit that I hold and I try to share it with others and share that perspective with others and hopefully it will contribute to your formation of self and the way that you think about the world and the way that you think of Yiddishkeit. But kiruv is something specific also. It does not include anybody who works for a federation, it does not include anyone who works at a Hillel. I think there’s something very specific that we mean from kiruv and that is programming that is meant to introduce people to the foundations of Judaism in the hope that they will build their lives in a way that the kiruv professionals consider Jewishly sustainable.

And I would say I kind of agree with them 99 out of 100 times. I think that for all of the difficulties that the kiruv world has kind of gone through demographically, it’s much harder these days, you can meet somebody with no Jewish background, with no Jewish education, so if the nature of kiruv is introducing them to their own Judaism and to Jewish texts with the hope that they continue it for the rest of their lives, sign me up. I have no problem with that whatsoever. Everyone should be in a mindset of continuous growth.

There are also other aspects to kiruv that have gotten some attention that people don’t love, which may be kind of being a little pushy, making sure that you know we want you to sign up for yeshiva for the year or go there and when you have a specific outcome in mind, which I think in the holiest of ways the outcome that the kiruv movement is looking for is sustained Jewish life, a Jewish life that is sustainable that’s going to continue on not just for the point and the period in your life where you are right now, but everything that comes after it and all the future generations that come after it. I think it’s very noble and in some ways it can get a bad rap, some of which I am guilty for. I bristle sometimes at the… one of maybe the ease, sometimes it’s oversimplified of just like here, it’s so obvious, of course, become totally frum and this is the way to do it and we’re going to prove it to you and we’re going to show you that this is undeniable, there’s no other way to live.

I appreciate the enthusiasm, I sometimes bristle because I’ve seen it with my own eyes backfire. We’ve had multiple people who the beginning of their almost distance from Yiddishkeit, from Judaism, from Jewish life, began with an overzealous educator, somebody who pushed maybe a little bit too hard. And that’s an experience that everyone has had. Everyone, I mean, whether you have participated in Kiruv or went to Yeshiva or everyone has had experiences with teachers, with educators, with Rabbeim, with a Mora, with a Rebbe in Israel, with a rabbi in a synagogue, whatever it is, who didn’t align to our own capacity, pushed too hard, didn’t push hard enough.

And so much of the blessing in life is finding the ideas and the visions that really work for us internally. At the end of the day, the only thing a teacher can teach is themselves, what they understand, what they know, what they’ve experienced. So where does that kind of leave the definition of what constitutes kiruv? What constitutes kind of the world of Jewish outreach that we are talking about? I think it means that there is somebody formal who is getting paid, like this is their job, the same way that the rabbi of a shul has a job, same way a marketing director at a federation has a job, the same way a professional at a Hillel has a job. There is a job called Kiruv, called Jewish outreach, where the goal of the job is to introduce the foundations of Jewish life to as many people as possible.

Now here is where kind of the conundrum and the focus of today’s conversation comes up, and that is, I think broadly speaking, and it’s hard to put an exact date on it, but much, if not all, but much, a very large majority of the professional outreach world is not populated by people who would describe themselves or at least align with the Modern Orthodox community. Most, not all, I’m painting in fairly broad strokes, most people who dedicate the entirety of their lives to Jewish outreach come from a more classical Yeshiva background. Now I am kind of of the opinion that there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re introducing Judaism, getting into these minutia and details—yes black hat, no black hat, what do you say on Yom Ha’atzmaut, do you say Hallel, no Hallel—these things is like we are dealing with such niche minutia that it’s totally unnecessary when you have the majority of American Judaism know absolutely nothing about Jewish life and Jewish text.

We are dealing in this kind of like pivotal endgame moment where we’re trying to figure out, like, who’s with us? Who’s going to be a part of this project called Yiddishkeit, called Judaism? And unfortunately, for so many, the actual life, what Jewish life entails, they’re removed from it. They were never really told, they were never educated. They don’t know about a Yom Kippur, they don’t know about a Rosh Hashanah, they don’t know about what consistent Shabbos observance can look like and how it can transform your home. And this is why I actually think when it comes to outreach, although like I don’t really pay that much attention or I don’t really think it makes that much of a difference whether or not someone is from Chabad or a Modern Orthodox community or from a Yeshiva community, we have all been given the gift, the common denominator is we’ve all been given the gift of a very rich Jewish education.

If we grew up in any of these communities, it places you very likely in the top one percent of kind of familiarity with Jewish life among the American Jewish community, that I don’t know that those differences are so important except for one factor. And that factor, in my mind, is what happens afterwards. Where do they go after? What happens after the last semester on a college campus where you go to Hillel, where you have a Shabbos, where you went to classes? Where do you go afterwards? Where is the community that you seek to build your life? Where do you hope to raise your children? What do you hope that that looks like? And this, I believe, is where it gets much trickier and kind of the emphasis on communal representation actually does have unintended consequences that I may or may not be reading correctly, but they certainly exist, which is, are we presenting a model of sustained communal affiliation? Do we even have a model of sustained communal affiliation where people who were not raised within an Orthodox community and then choose in their long term to live within an Orthodox community, what should that Orthodox community look like? Where is the right place for them? This is a question that everyone grapples with. Where should I live? Where should I raise my kids? I think it becomes much more acute when you are kind of of two souls—someone who was not raised within the Orthodox community, so they have all of their that is where they’re going to have the most sustained long-term Jewish connection.

And I say that myself with a great measure of pride. I don’t think that everyone is capable of living in an Orthodox community. I don’t think everyone is capable of becoming Orthodox. I hope to be proven wrong.

Who knows? But I do marvel, absolutely marvel at the depth and the richness and the level of education, the level of passion with all of its problems. There’s nobody who is more acutely aware of the problems within the Orthodox community, probably a handful of people, but yeah, I’m acutely aware. But with all that being said, I still marvel at the current global landscape. What is a community that is engaging with modernity and helping people build lives and providing them with a sense of community? I think that the current Orthodox community, particularly in the United States, is nothing short of a miracle.

It is jaw-dropping. It is my own story. I am a product of somebody who decided to really build his life in the Orthodox world when he was a teenager. That is my father.

But one thing that I think makes my father’s story kind of interesting and it was from a very specific slice of time is that the anchor, the lever of my father’s kind of own religious transformation was spearheaded by what we would I think all agree is the Modern Orthodox community, that is Yeshiva University and NCSY, which was back then known as the National Council of Synagogue Youth. Now full disclosure, I worked for NCSY for over a decade and have extraordinarily fond, reverent feelings for NCSY. And NCSY, I think, does serve as an incredible example of what I would call Modern Orthodox Kiruv. Does a really fantastic job of Modern Orthodox outreach introducing the Modern Orthodox community.

The only difference and why I didn’t kind of begin with that is because it targets exclusively high school kids. And high school kids do not have the same autonomy. There is no NCSY on college campuses to my knowledge. And NCSY is also mostly populated by non-professionals.

I think this is part of the magic of NCSY. Literally, most of its staff is volunteer college-age advisors, which I think is part of the beauty. It introduces a very organic Orthodoxy. You’re not hearing the principles from a rabbi or from a scholar.

It’s very organic. You’re hearing it from a twenty-year-old who himself is working through issues or herself is working through issues. I think that is part of its attraction and sticking point. Part of what I think NCSY does a fantastic job, I think there are three factors.

One is most of the staff is non-professional. Number two is that Yeshiva high school students, students who are in a Yeshiva high school and students who are not in a Yeshiva high school or just in the more standard public school have opportunities to interact in a very sweet but also careful way. They’re obviously going to influence each other, but it comes out in a very wholesome, very sweet way that you see in NCSY, that we don’t kind of cordon off the Yeshiva day school kids in one room and the public school kids in another room, but there are opportunities for real interaction. You get a Yiddishkeit that is much more I think authentic when it is organic, when it’s lived, it’s not pre-packaged, it’s not proven.

It is just the way of life where the actual motivation is instead of theological principles, what motivates it is the experience itself. S’char mitzvah mitzvah, the reward for a mitzvah is the mitzvah itself. The reward for Shabbos is Shabbos itself. The reward for keeping Halacha and Jewish law is a life that is tethered to something, that is tethered to transcendence even in my most mundane moments.

The final factor that I think makes NCSY so successful, and when I talk about its success, I’m not even talking about the numbers of people who decide to live in the Orthodox world. I’m actually not sure that those are such amazing numbers. I think that its success is the fact that those who go through the system of NCSY are really able to integrate quite seamlessly into the lived Orthodox community, which I think is a very good, though not, nothing’s in there, no guarantees in this world, is a very good predictor of kind of like a really sustained long-term Jewish involvement. And I think that’s absolutely wonderful.

A lot of that is a product of, again, the age, high school age. It is right in between the teenage years, which I think have always had a real space in Jewish law because it’s between Bar Mitzvah and when you turn twenty. You become responsible at the age of Bar Mitzvah, Bar Bat Mitzvah, twelve or thirteen, and you become capable of actual punishment in court at the age of twenty. The language, and I think I heard this once from Steve Berg, who is now the national director of Aish, but the language I would use is that the teenage years are in between responsibility and accountability, and there’s something very special that happens during those years.

So NCSY has done a fantastic fantastic job of that, and there are programs at Yeshiva University still run, my father used to participate in Torah Leadership Seminar and now there are other things, maybe Torah tours, but by and large, and here’s kind of the bottom-line truth, as a professional aspiration and as a professional career, there are very few people from the Modern Orthodox world who then dedicate their professional lives to Jewish outreach. If you walk into Yeshiva University’s Rabbinics program and you ask what do you plan on doing, where do you plan on practicing as a rabbi, you’ll hear a whole lot of pulpit rabbis and too many of them just want to be in the tri-state area. We need more pulpit rabbis. You’ll hear a whole lot of educators, which is wonderful, we need more educators.

You will not hear that many people, sometimes you will hear none, maybe a handful, maybe less than a handful of people who I want to go out, I want to go onto a college campus, I want to bring Judaism to those who are unaffiliated. Now, this can be a product of a whole lot of things. I’m not even sure how much it helps to speculate. It’s a product in many ways of the financial demands of a Modern Orthodox life and the amount of money that you can potentially earn as an outreach professional, which is not that much.

It’s not as much necessarily as you can get in other fields, and you grow up in a Modern Orthodox community, get used to a certain socioeconomic status, and you kind of cross off jobs. But that doesn’t fully explain it because it doesn’t really explain why no to kiruv, but yes to being a seventh-grade rebbe, which not to say that people are pouring into be elementary school rebbes as they should, but you still get people who want to dedicate their lives to that. I think the biggest factor is kind of the stability of community, where if you teach in a school, in a Modern Orthodox school, so you may have to switch schools every couple years, especially if you’re a principal or a head of school, but there is a certain stability in that institution. And there’s a certain stability that you can kind of have growing up being a pulpit rabbi of one community.

I think it gets a little bit harder, and maybe I’m just projecting my own concerns of finding that lifelong outreach. A lot of the image of what outreach looks like from a distance is like the wildest, most geshmak person in the room, the person who’s jumping on the tables and making everybody excited. And I understand why some people wonder like, is that sustainable, is that something that I can continue doing throughout my life? What am I going to look like when I’m in my forties and fifties and sixties? Not to say that there’s not a model for this. I think the model that hovers over everything is Chabad, which is very deliberate in not calling itself kiruv, because as the Rebbe one time said, which is a very sweet beautiful line that I think applies to everybody but it’s specific in Chabad, is he doesn’t call it kiruv, which means to draw somebody close, because how do I know that you’re so far and who says that I’m so close? Instead they use the term being a mashpia, which I think is a very beautiful term, which comes from the word shefa, which means to overflow.

We fill ourselves up and then we keep on flowing to our children, to our family, to those around us, and there is something a little bit organic about that. But the lament that I have and why I think this is such an important topic is that people like my father and of my father’s generation and I think people who live now maybe not within the tri-state area and they’re looking for a model of community that is sustainable, that is welcoming, that is culturally they’ll be able to navigate it, I really do believe that the Modern Orthodox community offers a tremendous amount to the wider American Jewish community. I don’t think it’s been fully realized or fully unlocked. And I know in my community there are so many people who did not grow up in a typically religious community and even though our community where I live in Teaneck is not, it’s certainly not Lakewood, but they really find a place for sustained Jewish life, for that communal metronome that kind of just like stays on beat day in and day out and you’re living adjacent to this community of practitioners.

And I wonder, why is it that the Modern Orthodox world has struggled so much with kind of articulating or even having a strategy for outreach outside let’s say of NCSY? Where does that come from? Again, some of it I think is socioeconomic. I think some of it is also theological. I think a lot of people are uncomfortable giving religious guidance, advice to others. When you feel insecure, inauthentic in your own life and you kind of have this attitude of just live and let live, let everybody kind of do their own thing, then questions of a proactive message of each person has a way to maximize their religious life, people can be uncomfortable with that.

And I understand that, I get that, I think it’s something that we need to develop more confidence in. It’s something that Rav Lichtenstein once said: insecurity is the Achilles’ heel of Modern Orthodoxy. When we don’t feel like we are authentic, and I’m using we because I consider myself Modern Orthodox in many ways, so I try to bring in the flavors from all the communities and the yeshivas that I’ve studied in, I live my life and send my kids to a school that I think would be fairly described as Modern Orthodox and I look at it as such an incredible return on my investment, my communal affiliation is one of the most wonderful decisions I’ve ever made in my life, I am not shy about the fact that I think more people should be kind of figuring out what their relationship is to community. I think we live at a moment where we have seen the utter breakdown of community.

We have communities that are too authoritarian, too suffocating, they’re not really going to be a sustainable model for most people who are looking for a religious communal destination in their lives, I’m not judging, I think some people want a very insular tight-knit community, we need more of them, but it’s not going to work for everybody, I think that’s a fair enough thing to say. And yet we have throughout America a crisis of a deterioration of community. So what is the model of community that the Jewish world can hold up and say, if you are looking for Jewish communal life, if you are looking for kind of that sustained connection, where should you turn, where should you go? I grew up in the tri-state area, I live in the tri-state area, this is where I feel the most that I don’t think this is for everybody and I get that, I understand that. So where is it and how do we get it and how do we create more neon entry signs that more people can find it and discover it? In many ways, that is the topic of today’s conversation where we both diagnose the problem and try to explore ways to address it and I’m speaking today with an incredible Jewish professional, Rabbi Mark Wildes, Rabbi Mark Wildes, who has really alumni throughout the entire world from his incredible program MJE, the Manhattan Jewish Experience, a staple of our community and somebody doing absolutely incredible work within the Modern Orthodox community and trying to articulate a vision outwards to those who did not grow up within the Modern Orthodox community, did not grow up with much Jewish community at all, I wouldn’t say zero Jewish community, but certainly outside of the Orthodox world and articulate a vision for Modern Orthodoxy that can be that neon entrance sign that can show people that sustained communal affiliation in the Jewish world is still possible.

While everybody else is bowling alone, there are pockets of the Jewish world where our greatest strength is our community and if only we could introduce this to more Jews, I think we would all have a more sustainable Jewish life. And when I say this, I mean Jewish community. What can and should a sustainable Jewish community look like? Why is it that the Modern Orthodox community has struggled in many ways when it comes to professional Jewish outreach? All of this in my conversation with Rabbi Mark Wildes. So really thank you, this is an incredible privilege and to be with MJE alumni at this moment is really, really moving because I think when you look around at the landscape of the American Jewish community searching right now post-October 7th for a model of Yiddishkeit, it is incredibly comforting to know that there are people who are really doing the work in creating a model, creating doorways of entry for people to come in.

We talk very often on 18forty about how rooms generally have neon exit signs and what we need in the Jewish community are neon entrance signs and that you have been spending the last 27 years putting up neon entrance signs that people can walk in and build Jewish families is really incredible. But I wanted to start with a bit of a hardball question when it comes to talking about kiruv and outreach. Kiruv is a Hebrew term that we talk about to draw somebody close and we talk about how we want to bring spirituality into people’s lives. But there is an element of the modern kiruv movement, the outreach movement, that is tethered to a specific denomination, namely the Orthodox Jewish community.

The common denominator of the alumni of what you’re trying to cultivate is someone who attaches themselves, connects and starts building roots within the Orthodox community. I want to open by asking how you think about Orthodoxy specifically in the prism of outreach. Do you think when somebody walks in the door of MJE or do you think every American Jew in this moment has the potential to live a fully integrated Orthodox life?

Mark Wildes: Okay, that’s an excellent question.

David Bashevkin: Let me develop why I think that’s such an important question at this moment.

There is an awakening that is happening right now post-October 7th. We are talking about it in the pages of Commentary, Dan Senor said it quite famously saying we need to invest in Jewish education, we need to invest in Jewish engagement and I’m sure most people who are a part of the Orthodox community are listening to these calls and are saying, hmm, we actually might have an answer here. Yeshiva University put out a public call saying, if you faced antisemitism on campus, come on over to Yeshiva University, we’ll be your new home. And a part of me in the Little back of my head says I don’t know if your average American Jew would be able to function in YU.

It’s designed for a very specific socio-cultural unit called the contemporary tristate area Modern Orthodox world. Zeh lo Yiddishkeit. Zeh lo, you know what I’m saying? That’s a difference between that and Judaism. Yet we need a vision for Judaism.

So my question is the role that Orthodoxy plays when you’re in outreach, do you come in and assume that everyone’s best option is to join the orthodox community?

Mark Wildes: It’s an excellent question. I make a big chiluk, a big distinction between turning people on to Judaism and orthodoxy. I can’t use that word. And I probably when you came to MJE didn’t use that word because it’s a scary term for most American Jews that are not Orthodox.

I talk about spirituality, I talk about commitment and enlightenment and spiritual wisdom and I’m part of the Orthodox community and a proud card carrying member of the Modern Orthodox community but unfortunately it’s a bit tainted that word. So I don’t use that term. I talk just about Torah. To answer your question, I think there’s a place for every Jew somewhere in Judaism.

Is there a place for every Jew in the Orthodox community? I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure. I meet people all the time that I feel can date exclusively Jews and maybe come to some classes and maybe they’ll show up on Shabbat at 11 o’clock and hit the kiddush afterwards but I’m not sure that they’re necessarily going to become a Torah observant Jew. But there’s a place for that Jew in our community too.

Orthodox synagogues used to be places for Jews whether they were observant or not and I think we need to bring that back. I’ve been trying to do that for a long time. The beginners service that many of you guys came to for a long time we just had this morning, it’s designed for people to come and daven. We don’t ask people how observant or not observant they are or what they’re doing with this or not.

We just want them to come and pray and be part of the community. But I do think that everybody has a neshamah and that neshamah needs to get connected somehow to Torah. Whether they’re going to take it the full way and become a part and parcel of the orthodox community is a very, very personal choice and a lot of factors but it’s not going to work for everyone. But I do think we should be trying to get as many people, more people and I don’t think the modern orthodox community specifically is doing its share.

David Bashevkin: I love that you mentioned the notion of the Orthodox community, synagogues, shuls that used to have many that were not Shomer Shabbos. I am a product of such a family. My Zaidy, he was not Shomer Shabbos until he conveniently retired from work, it’s a great time to start. But he was not Shomer Shabbos his entire career and my father really was in name in an Orthodox home but only really became fully committed in his teenage years through NCSY.

My father’s NCSY counselor, the person who really made him frum was somebody who I’m sure everyone has heard of who back then was known as Stevie Riskin. Rabbi Riskin was my father’s counselor and he drew in many to frumkeit. And that really does make sense to me and that work, NCSY, which I was affiliated with for many, many years, continues to do that work and it is situated within the Modern Orthodox community. And yet, I do sometimes sense there is a reticence of sorts within the Modern Orthodox community to engage in Jewish outreach.

It is not a long list when I look at the landscape of people who go into Jewish outreach. I wouldn’t call you an anomaly like you’re the only one, but there aren’t a whole lot of you, people who into adulthood set up a synagogue and they’re specifically trying to reach the unaffiliated. Do you think Modern Orthodoxy has an issue with outreach? If so, why do you think so?

Mark Wildes: So before I answer I do want to say because what I’m about to say might sound a little negative about my own community. I drank the Kool-Aid when I went to YU.

I’m a YU guy. I believe in Torah u-Madda, I believe in Religious Zionism, I believe in more women integration and leadership roles and when people ask me Mah nishtanah MJE from other outreach programs I say we are Modern Orthodox in our hashkafa, in our outlook. But we’re not passionate about kiruv. We’re not.

There are a couple of reasons possibly. I always like to say kiruv is, you know, if you go to a good movie and you really like the movie and you come home and you see your wife and you really like your wife you’re going to probably tell her a little about the movie or if it’s a book and you’re going to want to like connect the person you love with the thing that you just really appreciated. If you love football, you talk about football. Whatever it is, yeah.

So if we as practicing Jews are not sharing the love and passion we have for Yiddishkeit with those who were deprived of it in their youth, then either we don’t care about the people out there enough or we’re not so in love with our Yiddishkeit. And there is a lack of a passion in our community and if we were a little more meshugana about our own frumkeit I think we’d probably be a little more upset that not enough of our fellow Jewish brothers and sisters are practicing it.

David Bashevkin: But I want to push back on that a little bit because I actually think that it is the lack of passion, it is the normalcy kind of within the Modern Orthodox community that actually makes it a perfect entry point. I would have expected that the model of community that would have been best suited to absorb people who are newly frum, did not go through the Yeshiva League, don’t know that floor hockey’s the most important sport in our community—like they don’t know any of this—the easiest way to integrate should be the Modern Orthodox community.

It would be much harder to learn all of the cultural nuances of a Lakewood, of a Passaic. So the lack of passion, almost the level of observance being a drop more accessible, why isn’t that the ultimate—like, it’s so easy to transition, it’s not so hard?

Mark Wildes: Because you need—I’m looking at my wife when I answer this question—who—I’m sorry, I’m looking at everybody here—you need passion. If you don’t see passion, why should somebody give up the lifestyle they’re having in favor of a different lifestyle that requires commitment, discipline, additional tuition money, a lot of additional tuition money? Why would you do all those things for something that’s like a little parve? Okay, it’s an easier transition because you’re not making as dramatic of a change in your life, but to make a dramatic change you’ve got to really see something exciting and inspirational. And that’s why I’ve been advocating Modern Orthodox kiruv my whole career because I think we model certain, you know, ideologies that I mentioned before that I think are so attractive to less-affiliated Jews.

But if we don’t have that passion, if we don’t look like we’re on fire about our Judaism, then what exactly is attractive about it? Because we’re a little more similar, we don’t look as different, we have less facial hair, you know, than some of our Chassidic counterparts, so that’s good, we’re a little less scary. We’re definitely less scary. But what are you getting? What’s the experiential yield? What’s the experiential yield? Exactly. Now I think we have it, because when I spend time with my students and they come on Shabbat—and everybody here I’m sure can attest to this—if you didn’t grow up with Shabbas, and people walking to shul and going to people’s homes and kids running in and out of each other’s backyards, and God forbid something goes wrong there’s a shiva, my students think 125 people is a lot of people at a wedding.

What’s a lot of people at an Orthodox wedding? I don’t want to say the number publicly. Okay, because because we have this and we take it for granted. We don’t realize how awesome it is. And we need to be packaging it and we need to be presenting it and we need to be more excited about it, not to wear it on our sleeve.

David Bashevkin: So I want to come back to Shabbos, but I also want to come back to the example that I said, which was my father’s NCSY advisor was Rabbi Riskin. And Rabbi Riskin was deeply entrenched in Yeshiva University and the Modern Orthodox community.

Mark Wildes: Rabbi Riskin’s success was his passion.

He should live and be well and should continue to do this till 120. Amen. I was in his high school. He started MJE’s New Friday Nights, which is about 9 or 10 years old.

He turned on so many Jews and he turned on the West Side to kiruv. Shlomo Carlebach, Shlomo Riskin, I think get the credit for kiruv in the Upper West Side because he’s got a certain passion. Now, he’s got the Modern Orthodox hashkafa.

David Bashevkin: But my question is why haven’twe produced more? Meaning, we both went to Yeshiva University. Yeshiva University used to run Torah Leadership Seminar.

Yeshiva University used to send out—that there was a point of pride of going to small communities. My grandfather, who was not a product of Yeshiva University, but felt very connected—he was a graduate, the first graduating class of Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim—he was a rabbi in Portland, Maine. That’s where my mother grew up. There used to be a sense of pride of putting up an outpost and building community outside of the Tri-state area.

And now, when more and more when you look at graduates of Yeshiva University who are products of homes in these communities, the kids do not want to go into outreach, they don’t see it as a long-term career. Do you think that there needs to be rebranding about the very profession? Because it’s a calling, it’s a mission. But what is it about the mission of Jewish outreach that has failed to galvanize our best and most promising? Why isn’t that the go-to of every RIETS musmach? It used to be. Where did Rabbi Lamm get his start? He was in Kodima in Springfield where my great-grandparents lived.

Not everybody wanted, you know, the block over in Woodmere and now I’m going to get the next block over in Woodmere. They wanted to go out and build Torah and build Yiddishkeit outwards. Why do you think that sense of passion and building seems to have dissipated?

Mark Wildes: We never had a Rebbe. We had a Rav.

The Rav was unbelievable and the Rav was the intellectual giant of the 20th century and he’s our Rav. But the Rebbe inspired. You know, he’s been gone—he’s gone. Thank you for the confirmation.

For a long time, but look, it just keeps growing. The guys who do the filming and when they all get together, they can’t get them in the same frame anymore. That was never a passion, never exciting. I spoke with Rabbi Lamm, zichrono livracha, he was my teacher, he was a gadol she-be-gedolim, Rabbi Lamm, but that was not his passion.

Kiruv was not his passion. I spoke with Rabbi Halap, zichrono livracha, many years ago who was the head of the RIETS Semikhah program. The Wolfsons came to YU, offered real money for outreach. They’re an academic institution.

They’re not a Kiruv organization. I don’t think we were ever inspired to do that. I think what happened in your-

David Bashevkin: But pause right there. Why is it that Kiruv is considered less academic than being a pulpit rabbi?

Mark Wildes: Oh, I don’t think it is.

I just think it’s perceived that way.

David Bashevkin: Why? Because you can make it up as you go?

Mark Wildes: It’s not seen as sophisticated, it’s not seen as intellectually challenging. When you’re teaching somebody the Aleph Bet or basic Jewish concept, it hasn’t been presented in a way that a student in Rav Rosenzweig or Rav Schachter’s Shiur is going to be like “Ooh, I want to go into Kiruv.” Right? How many Rebbeim are proud coming out of YU want to be a second, third grade Rebbe? In the Yeshivishe Velt, that’s a Kavod.

David Bashevkin: iUsed to be, kind of, sure.

Still a little bit. Still a little bit. There is a pride in that and being a first grade and second grade Rebbe.

Mark Wildes: I didn’t mean to make the analogy between being a second, third grade Rebbe and teaching a 25, 30 year old young professional, but we never put that out as being a- I was assistant rabbi at KJ before I started on the East Side and I have a lot of Hakarat HaTov to Rabbi Lookstein sh’yichyeh and be well and to the whole community there.

I would never have started MJE if it wasn’t for KJ and the Modern Orthodox world, but when people ask me, “What are you going to be doing?” and I told them I’m starting this Kiruv organization, they’re like, “Oh, I guess you didn’t get any real rabbinic offers.” You know what I mean? That was the kind of reaction I got. And there’s a certain kind of respect, a little, from a distance, but it’s not like you’re a Chashuva Rav teaching Torah on a high level.

And I will tell you though, and present company included, you get to teach on a very high level because your students, they may not be well Jewishly educated, but they’re smart.

David Bashevkin: I think teaching on the highest level, I tell people to make the case for Yiddishkeit based on first principles, to be able to take the entirety of Yiddishkeit and literally take from first principles to get somebody eventually to come and dedicate their lives within a community, that requires genius, that requires creativity, that requires brilliance.

But one thing that I wanted to ask about is that process of integration, of really what you are doing when somebody comes in off the street or they come and they find out, they bring in a friend, and slowly they’re going to classes, then they eventually come in. I want to ask about a very specific situation, which may even be painful or difficult to talk about, but it will help understand some of the issues that we’re grappling with communally. Have you ever had an MJE alumni, and my guess would be the answer is yes, who after integrating in the Orthodox community decided to leave?

Mark Wildes: Yes. Feeling not the kind of love and warmth, the “love bomb,” Rabbi Pinny always likes to use that, that we give, and anyone in Kiruv, whether you’re Chabad or Olami does amazing work.

We give a lot of love and attention and we know your name. And when you don’t come a couple weeks in a row, Chani sends you a text and said, “Have you seen so-and-so?” And then you move to a beautiful community like this where, you know, it’s bigger and you’re not paid as attention to. The Davening is not as inspirational. We work like crazy to make our Davening rocking and rolling every Shabbos.

I work like crazy, my Drashas. I’m not saying that a pulpit rabbi in a community like this is not working hard on their Drashas either, but I’m constantly fine-tuning what is going to inspire, what’s going to do this, the food at the Kiddush, who’s talking to who, the whole thing is like, “How do we inspire this Jew so we don’t lose him?” We’re crazy about it. Then you move to a community like this and it’s beautiful, but people are a lot more matter-of-fact about things. You’re raising kids, people are running around, the rabbi’s doing the best that he can to keep his Shul quiet.

You know, we don’t have talking at MJE. The only time there’s talking at MJE is when an Orthodox Jew walks in, stands in the back, and they’ll never sit down, they have to stand in the back and talk. And I’m like I have to explain that it’s a beginner’s service so we don’t speak here as though- anyway, so I think that’s number one. That happens.

They just don’t feel the inspiration, they don’t feel the love. And there’s a money factor. It’s just becoming increasingly expensive, certainly in the Tri-state area. You know, the funniest thing is that whenever we do Shabbatonim in Teaneck, you know, we’re doing the Shabbaton primarily to inspire our students to, you know, check out a beautiful community, but it’s also for fundraising purposes.

So we tend to, you know, stay in some of the nicer areas. Sure. I was walking with a group, it wasn’t here, okay, it was somewhere in the Five Towns. But it’s happened here too.

And somebody stopped me and they were looking, this house was like the size of the block. They’re like, “Rabbi, if I become Orthodox, will I get a house like that?” You know, because that’s kind of what they thought we were presenting.

David Bashevkin: No, but you do get a nursing home immediately. Everyone gets one nursing home after becoming religious.