Yitzchak Breitowitz: Navigating Controversy

David Bashevkin: 

Hello 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 this month, we’re reflecting on 1840. We have some really cool episodes reflecting on what we have been doing and inviting back some past guests, so stay tuned and be excited. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big juicy Jewish ideas. So be sure to check out 18forty.org where you can also find videos, articles, and recommended readings. I’m also so grateful to this episode’s sponsors Daniella and Ari Schwartz in honor of their grandfather, Mr. Baruch Mapa whose Yahrtzeit is on Tes Zayin Teves. Baruch Ben Asher Zelig was a very special person who I met personally. He was also the grandfather of a high school friend of mine, Mordy Jacobs, a friend of the podcast. He’s also Daniella and Ari’s grandfather. Baruch Ben Asher Zelig was one of the few survivors of the Łódź ghetto in Poland. Together with his wife, he established a prosperous frum family here in America. I’ve had many opportunities to meet him and that’s why it is so special to have this episode and one of our future series dedicated in his honor. Thank you so much to Ari and Daniella Schwartz. 

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. I’m fairly exhausted as we have been trying to put out an episode every single week. We had a brief break after the Yamim Tovim but we’ve been really trying to put out a ton of episodes beginning with the teshuva series, Origins of Judaism, and our very long series that we just completed on dating. I wanted to take the month of January to take a moment to breathe as part of this podcast is to reflect on what we have been doing. There is a goal, mission, and purpose to what we are doing. In order to stay goal-aligned, mission-aligned, and purpose aligned, it requires reflection from time to time. What we will be doing this month is we will have today’s episode with a generational scholar who has inspired so many and who is really fearless and courageous in the issues that he is willing to discuss. We will still have the return of Malka Simkovich, who I know so many of our listeners have been wondering where she went. We had a scheduling issue with the end of the Origins of Judaism series, going into the dating series so I apologize to all the listeners who have reached out. I want to thank everyone who has reached out, we will be getting back to you in a future episode. 

I really want to reflect and speak about what we are doing. One of the questions I get from a certain demographic is, do you have a rabbinic advisor? Do you have someone who vets what you do? The honest answer is no, I do not. There is no one person going through all that we put out. I don’t know of any rabbi who wants to listen to my very long intros. Our listeners barely want to listen to my intros let alone the a rabbinic advisor. We are mission-driven, purpose-driven and we do talk about controversial issues. So how do we put out the content without any oversight? I think it’s a fair question but it doesn’t really bother me that people ask it though they are usually at issue with something we have said. We have certainly taken on some extraordinarily theologically sensitive issues that are punching way above my weight class. I am certainly not a generational scholar, I am not even sure I am the scholar of a day, hour, or minute. I’m just a person who takes this seriously. I am not a world-renowned scholar, I strive to be a dearest friend. When people ask me that, I do take the question seriously. The reason why we don’t is twofold. I don’t think in this medium, rabbinic advisors work. If I were to put a rabbi’s name down who we ask everything to and who vets all that we do, aside from the fact that no one would commit to that, given the amount we put out, but secondly I look at it almost like a fig leaf of sorts. It’s basically ducking behind a name and saying if you have an issue with me, take it up with this other person. I don’t fully believe in that. I think that I need to be the person who takes full radical responsibility for everything we say on here both for good and for bad. Both things that people love and inspire and that resonate deeply, help them navigate the thorniest and most controversial issues in their religious lives but also the issues that people find were not handled correctly. Opinions, and ideas that bristle that maybe erode or can erode people’s faith which is obviously something I try to avoid. But to have someone’s name on it will end up being someone else’s punching bag, someone I can duck behind and I’m not looking for that. 

Instead, what I try to do on 18Forty is to have a process. I do have a process where I try to find the voices and opinions that I can react towards who I think to require framing,  ideas that require framing, or the personalities who I think deserve more attention. I have a process, which is a process of people who I reach out to before I create a subject. I ask them about certain names, and what they think about certain guests, particularly on the most sensitive issues. 

It’s a variety of people because it’s not any one person who I look at as our target demographic. I want to make sure that our overall mentality towards the podcast is like a Hippocratic oath, it is how I begin all my classes at Yeshiva University. It is inspired in many ways by my father. There is something called the Hippocratic oath which really begins in medicine like my father, an oncologist, likes to mention. The Hippocratic oath was a promise that you would do no harm. That the course of medicine that you would give a patient would not make them any worse. I think the Hippocratic oath was very instructive. In oncology, the primary medicine is chemotherapy, and for anyone who knows the history of chemotherapy, there is a fantastic book called The Emperor of Maladies which is about the history of cancer. It was written by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It’s a phenomenal book. The warning I will give you is to read it with care as it will freak you out. Chemotherapy was created through this yellow mustard gas which during the war they realized was chemical warfare that was able to affect and eradicate, curing tumors.

In a way, I think that when it comes to discussing more controversial issues it’s part of the Hippocratic oath.  Of course do no harm, but part of our ability to frame and discuss more controversial ideas is sometimes you need to introduce ideas or frames that may momentarily challenge or make the grounding on what you are standing on feel a little less secure and that’s ok because that is a part of growth. It is the friction that propels momentum. Underlying everything we do is a process as I try to figure out who are the people, ideas, and personalities we want to hear from. Sometimes we have people who are more controversial and sometimes less controversial. I don’t have a particular rabbi who can put his stamp on everything but every interview is done with deliberateness, intentionality, and with care and is all within the frame of the Hippocratic oath that I have to the audience. The ideas and people who we discuss them with ultimately should lead to a stronger sense of commitment to Jewish ideas, Jewish faith, and to Jewish life. 

The way that we strengthen ourselves is not always by taking vitamins. Sometimes we introduce things like exposure therapy or chemotherapy that can momentarily make the body weaker in order to eventually create a stronger grounding for the Jewish commitment that animates our lives. That is why I thought today’s episode is so important. 

Rabbi Breitowitz is not our rabbinic advisor, I want to make that clear, but I would call Rabbi Breitowitz one of my rabbinic inspirations and I want to tell you why. Rabbi Breitowitz has been running a question-and-answer podcast. He is a teacher in Ohr Sameach and he is a genius of geniuses. He also went to Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, though he studied with Rav Ruderman and was really one of his prized students. He eventually left Ner Yisroel and got a law degree from Harvard Law school which they still talk about in Ner Yisroel as one of the What ifs. What if Rabbi Breitowitz had stayed in Ner Yisroel – where would he be now? 

He has really done something more transcendent, which is bringing Torah to the masses, talking about each and every issue with the full command of both Torah and secular scholarship at his fingertips. He has creativity, sensitivity, and courageousness that I find so deeply inspiring. Very often when I have an issue with 18Forty, Rabbi Breitowitz is the person I reach out to. He has given me guidance and encouragement. He is not the person that you should be emailing to cancel 18Forty, you can direct those emails to me. He is the person I reached out to when we first began in 2019 and he was so encouraging and kind. I look at him as my rabbinic inspiration for a lot of what we do here. It’s more than that, it’s some of the issues he has covered that I have found are exceptional. He has served as the rabbinic advisor to Jewish Action, a magazine for which I am actually on the editorial board, which is the quarterly magazine of the Orthodox Union. Aside from the fact that he has guided so many sensitive issues that I know only behind the scenes, he has very infrequently stepped out and written publicly on the most sensitive issues. 

An article that he has written that I have quoted more than once on this podcast, is a must-read for anyone and everyone within the Jewish community, regardless of what community you are in. That is an article called “When leaders fail, healing from rabbinic scandal” which we asked him to write in aftermath of the 2014 Freundel scandal. His article was written with such sensitivity and thoughtfulness and was really ahead of its time in being able to stand in front of one of the most difficult issues, particularly in the Jewish community. Something that erodes so many people’s faith, he was the person that stepped forward and wrote one of the most powerful articles that you can find on the Jewish Action’s website, entitled “When leaders fail, healing from rabbinic scandal”. 

There is another area where I actually saw the courage and sensitivity of Rabbi Breitowitz. I have a friend, who later in life left Yiddishkeit, someone who studied in kollel, married, had children, and at his midpoint in life no longer believed in the truth of any of this and picked up and left with his family. It’s someone who I have spoken with on 18Forty and who I know quite well. I was once speaking with him and he showed me an anonymous letter that was written to his parents about how to react and how to deal with the situation. Should they cut him off? Or how they should react? It was written with such care and thoughtfulness. 

He didn’t tell me who wrote the letter and I read it and I said,  I only know of one rabbi who could have written this and that is Rav Yitzchak Breitowitz. He confirmed that I got it right on the first try.  That really tells you the type of person Rabbi Breitowitz is. He’s not afraid to talk about these issues of grappling with faith even later in life. I actually went back and listened to some of his old question-and-answer sessions and I found a clip where he talks about this issue of adults grappling with faith and the misconception that it’s only teenagers. This is what he had to say from his Ohr Sameach question-and-answer. 

Rabbi Breitowitz:

Most of the time, we think of the phrase “off the derech” or kids at risk as a high school kid who stops being religious for whatever reason. It could be emotional turmoil or not getting along with his parents.  A lot of it is the rigidity of the chinuch system that does not acknowledge individuality. I’ve come across in recent years, a different problem than the rebellious teenager. The son of a good friend of mine, a 35-year-old fellow who was in kollel for a number of years, with a family and he just decided at age 35 to become an apikores– someone who denies’s God’s existence. He didn’t believe in god, didn’t believe in Torah, or anything. His kids were in Yeshiva with their tzitzis out and he had to have a meeting where he and his wife had to sit down with their kids and tell them we don’t believe in this stuff anymore. I was asked to intervene. Part of my argument was can’t you just fake it? You have a family, a community, and friends. Be frum for the sake of the kids. There are people that do that. He thought for a little bit about it but ultimately decided he had to be honest and he totally left it. This is an unusual case and it is this person who kind of became a celebrity in the off the derech community. 

Those people are the most difficult to be mekarev back because those people know everything already. This is what Chazal says, the guy who was learned and left is by far the most difficult person. I’ve met other people like this. Sometimes I’m walking and some guy from Mir says I don’t believe in this anymore. It’s more than just the rebellious teenager who’s going through a stage but there are some real defections that happen and you wonder how can such a thing happen at all and that’s a major problem. Part of this happens when a kid that’s in high school asks questions and gets rejected as being an apikoris or shagetz. He shuts up and 12 years later, this happens. You have to be very careful as a mechanech to allow kids to express the problems they are struggling with and give them the answers or possibilities. 

David Bashevkin: 

And that is the kind of person Rabbi Breitowitz is and given some of the sensitivities and subjects that we have covered over the last few months. He is a person who has given me a tremendous amount of encouragement, inspiration, and guidance in how we cover things. I am so indebted to Rabbi Breitowitz. It was a relatively short conversation, that I hope is ok with our audience. I also want to let our audience know, given where he is situated, there may be some words that are not completely translated so for that I apologize. More than anything else, I want to make sure our listeners know there is a Rabbi Breitowitz out there and there are questions and answers that he puts out every week that deal with the most thorny issues. It was a privilege and pleasure that he was willing to come on. He was sick and he made the time to come on, which is really a testament to his generosity and kindness. I think more than anything it was a personal encouragement, letting me know because he saw I was tired and he was kind of putting his arm on my shoulder, saying let’s do this together, without further ado, my conversation with Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz.

I wanted to begin with the following question about the generation that we live in. We live in a time where there is access to information—more than we ever had in the past and I’m curious if there are specific issues related to Jewish theology that given this access to the information you think our generation in particular struggling with. 

Rabbi Breitowitz:

It’s a very interesting question. I’ve noticed something new in recent years. We’ve always had kids at risk or off the derech kids but usually, those are behavioral issues. Often they were very frum inside. They would cry that they believe in Hashem and the Torah and they would get emotional. The Yetzer Hara was very strong. That is of course an issue we still face but in recent years I’ve noticed that I can be walking in the street and a Ben Torah, someone learning in kollel , someone frum from birth who will all of a sudden tell me he doesn’t believe in god anymore or doesn’t believe in Torah shbaal peh anymore. At least superficially, it’s not an issue of tayva, but a person is married with children, and I’m thinking to myself that kind of changes the whole rhetoric as we always say it’s emotional problems and it’s not philosophical but apparently what is happening because we live in the information Age whether it be Richard Dawkins, archeology or reported conflict with science, everyone is getting exposed to it. The truth is, these ideas are having an impact. It’s almost like we are going back to the old-fashioned apikorsim. The apikoris that the Rambam addresses that’s more ideational than behavioral. That is a unique challenge because as they say in the kiruv world, we do deal with these problems but we like to emphasize warmth and achdut and community. It’s like the old saying that the Rebbetzin’s cholent brings more people to yiddeshkeit. I’m beginning to see that perhaps that’s not all that needs to be done, there are issues of hashkafa and philosophy that must be addressed. I do connect that to the internet and to the exposure and to a certain aggressiveness in which there is an atheistic kiruv industry starting out here. That is sadly the Torah world at the highest level.

David Bashevkin: 

We have very little in common, except for the fact that we both happen to run podcasts. I studied under your brother in Toronto where we learned the third Perek of Brachos and Maseches Sota—both experiences that still stay with me but our podcasts in different ways address some of these thornier theological issues. I’m curious how do you figure out what should be shared in public and what should only be shared In private conversations? I think with any issue related to theology, we have our more neat, prepackaged answers that are very strong, but they can sometimes veer to the side of simplicity and not really deal with all of the evidence because rightfully so, there is a concern that if you give a more theologically nuanced answer, really getting in the weeds of any theological issue you can be exposing people who would not have otherwise had any questions and you can be sowing doubts in their religious life. On the flip side, we need to have places where people can go and have very in-depth, nuanced conversations about theological life. I’m curious how you figure out the balance between getting into the more nuanced philosophical issues in a public platform like a podcast, knowing that some people listening can walk away, God forbid, with more doubts than with they came in, possibly. 

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

This is a difficult issue and in fact, when I joke about the hate mail that I receive, it’s really connected largely to that type of issue. 

David Bashevkin:

We have more in common than I thought 

Rabbi Breitowitz:

I myself because of my personality tend to err on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion. In other words, I will try to bring up controversial positions but I recognize that there are risks in that. The problem is that you are in trouble either way. If you stick with the standard position, so those that hear it and accept it will be fine but then other people may feel that they have no place in Yiddishkeit if that’s the stance you are taking. If on the other hand, I open up some other possibilities that are less mekubal, I might be influencing people that are on the straight narrow to move away from that straight-narrow path. It’s “Oy li sheomer and Oy li shelo omer.”

I think when you are dealing with a podcast, something that represents the public face of Judaism particularly since I’m doing it under the auspices of a Yeshiva that has more or less a philosophy within the Charedi world, I try to present the mainstream understanding of the Mesorah as we would say a majority of our chachamim subscribe to it because that is the version of Judaism that we consider to be most authentic. However, in many conversations with people individually, I try just as Chazal says in Halacha there are certain inyanim that you can be somech on bshaas hadchak. I think in hashkafa there very well be a concept of shaas hadchak. For example, we have the Rambam’s Yud Gimmel ikrei emunah, which are fairly extensive and detailed, but on the other hand, we have Rav Yosef Albo in the Sefer Ikarim who says there are three Ikrei Emunah: metzias Hashem, schar vonesh, and Torah min hashamayim. Now it’s clear if one were to believe In those three ikarim but deny various other aspects of the Rambam, the Rambam would call that person a Kofer without any place in Olam Haba but Rav Albo would call that Jew someone in good standing. 

When I’m confronted with a person Who says they cannot believe in all of 13 ikrei emunah of the Rambam and that’s going to mean he’s going to leave Judaism and stop doing mitzvos, I’ll tell him, you can still be a Jew in good standing according to the view of a very esteemed person, Rav Yosef Albo, why don’t we try that. I know people will accuse me that I’m tailor making hashkafos to make people feel good but there are mekoros (sources). Whether we pasken (follow) like those mekoros is a separate issue, is there a psak halacha in hashkafa in ikrei emunah- that’s in it itself a very interesting and controversial issue. I look for ways that people should keep a Kesher to Yiddishkeit, Torah, and mitzvot. I understand people say, Judaism is a deed and not a creed but the emes is that is not completely true. Obviously, there are crees , and there are yesodei emunah that are involved but I think there can be a certain flexibility in a shaas hadachak in understanding how those ikarim play out . I think Rav Albo might be a little better for the Jew that is grappling with emunah. In fact, I think, Mark Shapiro makes the argument that Rambam’s formation of systematic theology was more based on Greece than Chazal. Chazal themselves were not systematic theologians, chazal gave us various value systems, ethics, and morals, they didn’t send out ikrei emunah. The Rambam’s need to systematize is connected to great philosophy and is a response to Christianity and Islam that the Rambam had to deal with. But In terms of intrinsic importance, it’s not so pashut that Yiddeshkeit rises and falls. 

David Bashevkin: 

You may have already given me an answer to my next question and it’s kind of a question that defeats itself in its very phraseology but I’m wondering if there are any topics that you think should not be discussed in public? Are there any things that you deliberately avoid, you have this incredible podcast where you address all sorts of questions and answers? Are there questions that you deliberately avoid or don’t like speaking about in public?

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

I make plenty of mistakes and I try to correct my mistakes but I’m not so reluctant to talk about anything that I’m asked about that I’m able to say something sensible but again I’m criticized. Just yesterday someone sent me a letter asking why I always bring up these crazy marginal opinions about things. Maybe it’s my nature as a teacher that I like to be more inclusive of different opinions in Judaism. I think it’s a good thing, I think it’s an aspect of shivim panim ltorah to connect it to the infinity of Torah, the notion that there can be paradoxes and contradictions, you’re not always a chisaron but it’s part of the richness of a reality that encompasses multiple conflicting perspectives that I’m sure you know from your limud of Rav Tzadok. I think about this and the nature of the podcast has changed. When I was just doing a question and answer for a podcast, I was talking to twenty people in a room that I knew, and now I’m speaking to more people. And maybe that does create a need for a different orientation, maybe I can’t be as open as when I was in an audience of familiar people that could ask for follow-ups and everything else. So, something I am debating is whether I am being too open, am I talking too much, or am I introducing dangerous ideas. One thing I can tell you is I’m not a professional agitator, I am not agenda-driven and i don’t want to come in and b’davka , it’s not what I try to do consciously. But I address the issues and speak about these things but I’m not agenda-driven, a lot of it is my own process of thinking out loud. You ask me a question, I think about it and obviously, I don’t have a prepared response because the questions come to me at the time.

David Bashevkin:

I grapple with this a lot and I’m curious if this plays a role in the way you share Torah, both of us spent time in very different standings in the same yeshiva in Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, you were a talmid of Rav Ruderman and I obviously never learned in Ner Yisroel when Rav Ruderman was there so I’m curious if your experience in yeshiva, still animates the work you are doing now or do you feel in a way because of your role in the podcast and in an outreach yeshiva that you almost have to step out of the traditional kind of yeshiva has more of insularity in the way that it presents and contends with ideas and it could be very painful to me to even have the feeling that I am stepping out moheli beis medrish. So im curious on a personal level how do you connect the work that you are doing now to your formative Torah years in yeshiva?

Rabbi Breitowitz:

I would do it in two ways. I’m not sure if Ner Yisroel has cut me off or not, and I’m not sure how they regard me but I do regard Ner Yisroel as my spiritual home in many many ways to this very day and in two different ways. First of all the notion of going back when I am able to a sugya, Rashi, Tosfos, Rambam, Ramban, Rav Akiva Eiger that is like taking a bath or going into a mikveh, it cleans me out and gives me a rooting. I feel connected and then i can do other stuff that I have to do but without that connection, I would be like a kite that simply flies off into the stratosphere not being held down. I think it is important for any Ben Torah who is into kiruv or philosophical issues or is maybe moving the envelope a little far, he has to have that rootedness in the beis medrish. Even if you are going in directions that may be different than the yeshivish orientation, you need that connection that will give you chiyus. It is very important. There is something else that I think Ner Yisroel gave us and that is Rav Ruderman and the whole yeshiva was based on Rav Ruderman’s vision, even the talmidim who never knew Rav Ruderman should know that. That is, he was the talmid of the Alter of Slabodka who he was very close with. The Alter of Slabodka’s inyan was gadlus haadam, individuality, autonomy and not being cookie cutter. Unlike other great yeshivas, the Slabodka talmid was never an invitation of somebody else. Everyone was unique. You had a Reb Aharon, Reb Yaakov, Rav Ruderman, Rav Hutner, and then you had the apikorsim of Slabodka like Harry Wolfson. That’s going to be the danger, when you create a seviva that’s designed to foster individuality and autonomy you will get Rav Aharon Kotler and you will get people in the opposite direction. That is the danger. As opposed to the cookie-cutter approach, everyone will be kind of the same. That is an issue in chinuch that one always has to evaluate. So I think one of the gifts that Ner Yisroel gave us was the freedom to think for ourselves and to branch out. I don’t know if you knew Rav Nachalamsky, he still is a resident mekubal in Ner Yisroel yisroel, people like him they might not have found their place in another makom of Torah but Ner Yisroel created that environment. So even though I wouldn’t call Rav Ruderman a mekubal per say, he was a gadol in shaas and poskim but he fostered an atmosphere where you can go into Chassidus, you could go into Kabbalah and think about questions that may not be the standard Yeshiva curriculum. He hired rabbeim that were different than him because he said different Talmidim need different types of teachers. So that’s the second thing that I did get from Ner Yisroel and that is the notion of trying to be an individual. That is a very precious gift.

David Bashevkin: 

I find that deeply moving and I very much do appreciate that. I’m curious, you mentioned you get very long emails, I also get very long emails from time to time, with concerns. I always appreciate the emails, especially those that are critical because there are people who are really taking an interest in the work that we are doing. Every once in a while, I can be accused of stepping over the line and stepping over the line and sharing something that could potentially be branded as heresy, something outside the redlines of theology. The way I respond to those emails will be different than the way you do because you have broader shoulders than I do. For someone like myself who is not an authority, I don’t present myself as having all of Jewish theology at my fingertips, I go through the ideas and contend with them but I’m curious what advice would you give to someone like myself as to how to avoid this if we are going into the breach and contending with these issues. How should we be defining those red lines and what are the best processes to ensure that we are avoiding them short of having someone like yourself listening to every minute and every single episode which lord knows even getting you to listen to one episode could be a headache. We don’t all have that time on our hands. What advice would you give me on the work that I’m doing now?

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

It’s very difficult because if you wanted to be totally safe, your show would be boring and wouldn’t be telling people much that they don’t already know and you would be playing to the crowds. I understand that there is no heter to be an apikoris because that’s more interesting, there’s no heter like that per se but there ought to be a forum where one can explore the outer limits of things. So people should be able to find a home within yiddishkeit. The problem is how you know that you’ve approached the line or crossed the line. It’s very difficult. To some degree, if the email is written in a proper way it can give you some guidance, you can learn from these emails and modify your stances when necessary. Other times people just have different opinions. They can say what your saying is apikorsis when it’s just a matter of a different opinion, especially in Eretz Yisroel. Anything that deviates, if someone says they should teach math in eighth grade they use the word apikores. That may be wrong or right but it has nothing to do with apikorsis. People don’t use language correctly. But what I would say is if you had the time to do research, if you can have mekoros (sources) for what you say even if it’s not Rambam but a Rav Tzadok or Rav Kook but something that is authoritative that is a way you can ensure to yourself that you are within the mesorah and number two to also give you defense. People may not be machshiv Rav Tzadok or Rav Kook but at least from your side you’re covered because these are gedoli yisroel.

David Bashevkin: 

I know you have guided, I think we both know I’m speaking about someone in specific, many people that we mutually know and their families that have left yiddishkeit going back to that second model of people that have left not for behavioral reasons but for philosophical reasons. This can be one of the most painful things for a family to experience. In some ways more painful than someone who leaves for behavioral reasons where you think at least you have an answer and it doesn’t erode your own faith but I can almost feel like an act of betrayal if someone leaves for theological reasons, assuming you can have pure theological reasons, which I too am skeptical of, but I’m curious what advice would you give to families who have had children who the reason why they are leaving the fold is because they say I don’t believe this is true anymore?

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

This to me is the most devastating tragedy there could be. Somebody is an alcoholic or on drugs, they want to be connected to yiddishkeit and I think there is a way to be reconnected. But this is what Chazal say “shanu peyraish kasheh mekulam “ there is really no hope. Maybe a miracle will happen but you can’t rely on a miracle. So it’s a tragedy for a family but my answer is to keep the connection. Try to build a relationship as a parent with a child. Then you never know what the power of love and connection might be. At least maybe you will have a chance for the next generation, the children of children, they will remember Bubbie and Zaydie that loved them and took care of them. So I would have to say, though this is a devastating painful issue, I think you need to keep the kesher as long as the person is not madeach other people, I would try to keep the kesher and try to make them a welcomed part of the family. 

David Bashevkin:

I appreciate that a great deal and you should know. Someone once showed me a letter that you wrote to their parents, someone who had left for similar reasons. They didn’t say who wrote it, and they wouldn’t tell me but I looked at them and said this could only have been written by one person, it is Rabbi Breitowitz. They said wow how did I know this? I said I only know one person who would be capable of writing this. It was deeply moving and incredibly powerful. I’m curious both on a personal and broader level. This is a question that has been dealt with In many different ways, we are seeing the Orthodox community and its relationship to academia, scholarship, and what was once known as the “vizonshaft” , like the more academic study of Torah. We are seeing some of those lines blur in different ways both in the Modern Orthodox community and in the yeshiva community. In very interesting ways and different ways and I’m curious both on a personal level how do you and on a broader level how should we relate to the field of academic Jewish studies?

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

Well, you know the old way used to be that the academic study of the Talmud told you what Abaye ate for breakfast or what he wore as opposed to the tochen and to a lot that may have been true but on the other hand, if you go back to Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, the Sreidei Aish was a gadol btorah and yet did have a strong academic background and he did draw on academic insights to inform his understanding of Talmudic passages. So I think there really is a chochma there that can be used in positive ways. The problem is you need to integrate it with emunas chachamim, with mesorah and I think it could be a powerful tool. The truth is the Charedi incursion into the academic world is very interesting I think they are doing that. There is quality articles and books comparing the Noda b Yehuda and the Chasam Sofer to the Reform movement. It is an interesting limud. Or Chasidic approaches to medinas yisroel. This enriches the understanding of how our Mesorah develops. Our mesorah is a living thing. People sometimes look at it like a relay race where all you are doing is handing down stuff from Sinai but the mesorah evolves, adds dimensions and deals with new facets of reality building on the received tradition. But it’s very dynamic, the whole Torah shbal peh is one of dynamism and not something static. I think the academic study of the rise of the ideas of how new ideas come in, what’s rejected, and what’s brought in is very illuminating. We make a very big mistake when we think the Chovos halevavos was like Rav Shimon Shkop and Rav Baruch Ber. There were different realities and approaches. To give you one example, Rav Chaim Volozhiner kind of wrote the mission statement for the litvisher Yeshiva world, Nefesh Hachaim and he wrote in Shaar daled that no matter what you’re learning whether it be kadshim or teharos, it has no shaychus explicitly to ruchniyos but it will bring you closer to Hashem. Now the Chovos halevavos is a very mekubal Sefer in the Yeshiva world but would the Chovos halevavos accept that as true? Absolutely not! Chovos halevavos ridicules the abstract learning of the Torah that is not connected to tikun hamidos. He had a passage there where someone asked a chacham a Sheila in Gittin and the chacham said have you perfected all your middos that you are asking a question that would happen in one in every 10,000 years. Rav Chaim Volozhiner would not have a problem with that so there are different approaches in the mesorah of klal Yisroel. There is a whole diversity and that’s a part related to Torah and derech eretz and how that integrates. I think the academic world has a meila in that it doesn’t look at mesorah in a monolithic way , it understands that there are distinct strands so which I find very compelling and interesting. Boruch Hashem there are great talmidei chachamim in the Charedi world that are using those insights to illuminate chalakim of Torah for us. 

David Bashevkin: 

I really appreciate that. My final question before we see if you are willing to indulge my rapid-fire questions. There is a statistician who I have been thinking about a great deal lately named Abraham Wald. He dealt with a question that has become somewhat famous due to an internet meme, but basically, they had a question during the war of where should they armor airplanes and basically what they were doing is they would look at airplanes that came back to land and would see where the bullet holes were. All of the other engineers were saying let’s reinforce the places where we see they are getting shot at constantly and put the extra armor there. Abraham Wold who was the child of Orthodox Jews, I don’t think he was observant himself, though I could be wrong, he said you have it all wrong. You should put the armor and reinforce the airplanes not where you see the bullet holes but where you see no bullets at all because what you’re not factoring in is the planes that don’t come back altogether. Those are the ones getting shot down and those are the ones that need reinforcement. I’m curious in our community we think very often of where we need reinforcement. I look at that incident as an analogy of sorts that very often we are reinforcing where we see the most bullet holes but at the end of the day the airplanes are coming back what I’m concerned about is the airplanes that god for bid get shot down and don’t even return back to the hanger. I’m curious to hear from you in our educational system it’s been a while since you’ve been in America though I’m primarily interested in that, where do you think we need to reinforce our educational system better?

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

The issue where the airplane analogy is not complete is that one airplane has no effect on the other airplane and therefore they get shut down. With klal Yisroel, there is a ripple effect or a critical mass. When you have a strong core it radiates out to the periphery. That’s both mystically and even communally. For example, let’s go back to the Vilna Gaon. The Vilna Gaon did not have a lot of talmidim, he was not a popular teacher and yet through the Vilna Gaon’s concentration on yichudei segula, eventually a whole yeshiva movement in Eastern Europe was created. So I think there is a lot of merit that we need yeshivas that will train talmedi chachamim, poskim and Rabanim kind of the elite who will go out and have major impact on community kollelim and day schools and they themselves will prevent the planes from being shot down on that level. Meaning kiruv is not the only thing we need to do, on one hand, we are hemorrhaging and losing Jews and we need to go out and get those Jews but on the other hand one could say that one of the ways you will prevent the hemorrhaging is building up the core. I think it’s important not to neglect that, you need to have strong, strong learning with an emphasis on an ultimate achrayis to klal Yisroel too. 

David Bashevkin: 

I cannot thank you enough. Incredibly profound and helpful. I always end my interviews with more rapid-fire questions, there are only three. I’m curious for someone who wants to get a broader understanding of Jewish thought and really a volume that could introduce them to more sophisticated Jewish thought. Do you have favorite books that you like to recommend to some of your students? Maybe something like they say from the b side of the album, books or sefarim that don’t get as much attention as you think they deserve that you like to recommend that open people’s eyes to the depth or breadth of Jewish thought? 

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

I very much like Rav Chaim Friedlander’s sefarim especially on emunah and bechira because he does tackle in a very systematic and organized way some of the big questions. Emunah and yediya, can a Baal bechira hurt a person that Hashem didn’t decree. These are questions that bother a lot of people and he goes through them. Plus his mussar , he was a talmid of Rav Dessler who wrote Michtav Meliyahu which is wonderful. I think Rav Friedlander is wonderful. I think Alei Shor is very good for middos and general hashkafa of life. I would pick amongst Rav Tzadok’s sefarim , Tzidkat HaTzadik might be relatively easier into the amazing world of Rav Tzadok . It’s always hard to choose maybe Rav Hirsch the 19 Letters or Chorev excerpts from his Perish on Chumash. These are different schools and I would add Tanya too. 

David Bashevkin: 

I’m just curious this is not one of my rapid fires but you can answer it rapidly. I know Ner Yisroel has one copy of Tzidkat HaTzadik, did you ever interact with Rav Ruderman about Rav Tzadok or more Chassidic machsava?

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

I never did. You may know Rav Ruderman himself was from a Chabad mishpacha. People used to say he had a Tanya in his Tallis bag, I have confirmed that. He had some criticism of Chabad so I’m not really sure if he maintained any type of relationship with it but in some ways, Rav Ruderman’s passivity was a little bit of a green light. He allowed these things to be discussed and he understood that they would be beneficial to many bochrim and therefore he did not impose an agenda against it.

David Bashevkin:

My second question is if someone gave you a great deal of money and allowed you to take a sabbatical without any responsibilities whatsoever to go to university and get a Ph.D. in any subject of your choice? What do you think the subject and title of your dissertation would be?

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

Oh, gee! What I talk a lot about which I would like to do and I’m happy to speak about it in a more systematic way is how the Talmud was written. This is not an original idea, there are many dissertations on it but I would like to do my own work on it. Because the thing that I constantly hit a wall in especially in Ohr Sameach is the oral law comes from Hashem and on the other hand the Talmud is a literary composition so it was composed in various ways and I’d like to explore the interaction between the man-made literal construct and the notion of divinity and mesorah.

David Bashevkin: 

I hope we get a chance to see that one day. My final question I’m always curious particularly with you, is what time do you go to sleep at night and what time do you wake up in the morning?

Rabbi Breitowitz: 

Well it depends, I’m not, unfortunately, a great sleeper which is why I’m tired a lot but I go to sleep typically around 12:30 and I wake up around 7 or a quarter to 7. Not too bad. But the problem is I wake up several times in the night 

David Bashevkin: 

Rabbi Breitowitz I cannot thank you enough for your time and your insight. Thank you for joining us today. Be well.

I would never put myself in the same sentence in terms of scholarship with Rabbi Breitowitz and I would not even put myself in the same paragraph, page, or book but there is something that I find incredibly inspiring about his work which is that he’s doing it in the public sphere. He puts out all of his questions and answers in the public sphere. And there is fearlessness in the way he approaches ideas and the way he shares ideas. There is a deep sensitivity to the theological, sociological, and emotional struggles that people are having which is why I thought it was so important to have a conversation with him about lines,about process, about how we approach certain ideas about which ideas should be discussed and which ideas should not be discussed and I think he really is an inspiration to anybody who is tackling more difficult issues which is why I’m so appreciative that he joined us today. If you will bear with me, I know we are almost at the end here but these episodes are far shorter than those two-hour-plus marathons that we did in our dating series. We have two announcements. We actually have two surveys that are dropping, one from 18Forty and one from our friends at Nishma Research. Nishma Research which is headed by Mark Trencher who was actually a former guest on this podcast during our series on wealth and the economics of the Jewish community is conducting a broad communal survey that covers topics like belief, practices, how people relate to their shul, the role of women, family, agunahs, family planning and more. I happen to be on the advisory group that helped develop the survey and I can tell you the topics and questions are really thought-provoking and plus if you enter you can get a hundred-dollar Amazon gift card. So if you have a moment in your time and they really want a diverse showing for this survey, you can take the survey. We will have the link in the episode notes but I’ll read to you the URL which is the clunkiest, most awful thing to do in a podcast but here we are. To get the survey it is bit.ly/Jewish-community-2023 . You can find that survey online, I hope you fill it out. They are doing important work but make sure that you also have time, next week we are sending out our 18Forty listener survey which is probably the most important survey that we send out. We only do it once a year and I hope that you have the time and bandwidth to fill out more than one survey in a one-month period. We will also be offering some awesome prizes but our friends at Nishma, headed by our former guest Mark Trencher. So please check that out. 

Thank you so much for listening. This episode, like so many of our episodes, was edited she’s more than our dearest friend, she’s a hero, Denah Emerson. Thank you so much and thank you to our sponsors, Ari and Daniella Schwartz who sponsored this episode and upcoming series in memory of their grandfather Mr. Baruch Mapa. Baruch ben Asher Zelig whose yahrzeit is Tes Zayin Teves. Really one of the most special people that I have had the privilege to meet. One of the few survivors of the Lodz ghetto. He built such an incredible family and life here in America. 

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