Yitzchok Adlerstein: Zionism, the American Yeshiva World, and Reaching Beyond Our Community

Transcripts are lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections.

David Bashevkin: Hi friends, just before we get to our episode, I wanted to tell you about one of our incredible sponsors and partners, and that is our friends at Nishmat. In our post October 7th world, are you seeking to connect more deeply with your Jewish heritage? Are you a mom with kids at camp looking to spend a week or even three weeks immersed in Torah? A Torah teacher seeking a summer of in-depth learning in Yerushalayim? Or maybe an entrepreneur eager to explore the Jewish laws of business in detail. No matter your stage in life, Nishmat’s Summer Beit Midrash is the place for you. This program offers transformative Torah learning for women of all backgrounds in the heart of Jerusalem.

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We are so grateful for their partnership, friendship, and support. Check out Nishmat. Before we get to today’s episode, I did have one more thing I wanted to say, and that is one of the struggles of 18Forty is sometimes we have a topic that we could really talk about forever. There is so much more to say. And obviously, in the way that we structure our series and our episodes, we don’t just talk about one topic.

We really do series on all sorts of stuff. And there’s always more to say, particularly about the issues going on in the state of Israel, most notably the integration between the Charedi community and service in the IDF. This is an extraordinarily sensitive issue. There is so much to say about it, so much to discuss, but it is not the topic of our podcast.

Though I very often turn to a friend, and that is my dearest friend Ari Koretzky, who does have a podcast where this is the primary focus. He has been incredibly helpful really since our inception. You may remember we once had an episode of 18Forty where Ari interviewed me, and now he is doing incredible work with the Iyun podcast. Since October 7th, the question of Charedi integration into broader Israeli society has generated renewed urgency.

Both the challenges and possibilities are substantial and demand serious consideration with sensitivity for those concerned about the future of each of these communities. The Iyun podcast is committed to exploring topics like Charedim and army service, the community’s relationship to other subsets of society, unique dimensions of the Anglo Charedi world, divergent conceptions of life’s purpose, and more. On the Iyun podcast, they feature changemakers and thinkers representing the Iyun Institute’s tagline of Charedi responsibility. The Iyun Institute is part of Cheirut, formerly Tikvah Israel.

Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer’s the director. We have had him on 18Forty in the past, and he is somebody who I know personally and is doing really incredible, thought-provoking communal work in Israel. They also have an online journal called Tzarich Iyun in both Hebrew and English. If you are interested in this topic or exploring more the future of Charedim in the state of Israel and so many of the incredibly urgent, sensitive, but essential questions that are emerging now in the state of Israel, be sure to check out the Iyun podcast and the incredible work of Ari Koretzky and Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer in the Iyun Institute.

Their work is available wherever podcasts are sold or given out for free. Make sure to check it out. And I just want to say how grateful I am for all of Ari’s friendship, support, guidance, advice over all these years. Friends help friends, and I consider Ari, Rav Pfeffer and the Iyun podcast a dear friend of the 18Forty community.

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 this month we are exploring a new topic of outreach. 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, recommended readings and weekly emails.Do you remember a time in your life when you tried to change somebody else’s mind? There’s a similar question you could ask of remembering a time in your life where somebody tried to change your mind. I was thinking about this recently.

I do this pretty frequently on social media to varying degrees of success. Sometimes I really I really airball. Sometimes it goes well. But I think the dynamics of changing somebody’s mind lies at the heart of what we think about when we think about outreach.

Now, this is a little bit of a bait and switch, which I rarely do, not for anything that’s sensational, but just because I think the topic is so important and I couldn’t find a better word. But most people when they hear the word outreach think about the Hebrew word kiruv, meaning Jewish outreach, specifically when members of generally the Orthodox community try to bring in Jews from the non-Orthodox or just assimilated and bring them in. That is often called Jewish outreach or in Hebrew kiruv, which means to bring somebody close. That is actually not the form of outreach that we are talking about, though it is certainly related and I want to explain why.

There is a lot to talk about when it comes to traditional Jewish outreach. And it’s something that we have explored in our Teshuvah series. We’ve spoken to leaders in this movement in our series that we did on Chabad. We’ve spoken about those mechanics and those dynamics.

And there are so many important things to say about that form of outreach. But I actually wanted to take a step back and think about the principles of one community reaching beyond itself. I think if there is one characteristic that is valuable to the Jewish community, to every community, Jewish and non-Jewish, at this very moment, it is the capacity to interact, to reach out beyond your own community, beyond your normal circle and sphere of people, and learn how to reach out and whether it’s change people’s minds or influence, uplift, but change the status quo beyond those people that you speak to on a day-to-day basis. Why do I think this topic is important right now? Because of a central theme that we have been talking about on 18Forty for at least a year.

And that is this shifting realignment that is happening throughout the world, whether it is religiously, whether it’s in the business and tech center, whether it is in politics. There is a worldwide realignment and shift that is taking place before our eyes in the way that society organizes itself. We have things that are becoming more and more valuable. We have things that are becoming less and less valuable.

And communities that have previously never interacted are now almost rejoining together. We’re seeing this in the United States, obviously, after a major presidential election. There is a realignment of sorts, communities, ideologies are now almost like sitting in a different chair, where members of the periphery are now at the center, members of the center are now in the periphery in terms of political power. And there is a massive realignment.

There is a massive realignment happening religiously around the world. Not only in the Jewish world, obviously, in the awakening post October 7th of people contending and examining their Jewish identity in ways that they haven’t previously. But even more widely, there’s an examination right now happening in the Christian world, in the Islamic world, in the non formally religious world. What are we to make of our lives? Personally, I think a lot of what is driving this is really modernity and technology itself.

I don’t think that we are ready to experience the absolute tsunami of change that is about to literally blanket the world with the advent of AI. There was a lot of excitement and, you know, talk about Chat GPT when it first came out and Dali, and we even did a series examining some of the principles of AI and how it relates to prayer. But more than anything else, it is reimagining the entire world where the value of information is declining rapidly. How valuable is it to have information, to know information? It’s not that important anymore.

All information, it’s something that we can access so easily. I have a Chat GPT app on my phone. Google is becoming way more precise. I mean, just recently, I was looking for a video recommendation for my kids.

Like, what movie should I put on for them to entertain them? I was on a vacation, everything was crazy, and I just needed to entertain the kids for like an hour and a half. Where did I go? My first thing was going to Chat GPT and typing in who the kids were, what the ages, gender, and it spit out some fantastic movie recommendations. The information is less valuable because it is so easy and it is so accessible. It’s the same principles of economics in terms of scarcity.

When information becomes so attainable, so accessible, its value is going to go down. Well, on the flip side, the value that is going up is experiential. People who are able to reach into the interiority of people’s lives, people who are able to change the social dynamics, the communal dynamics that we situate ourselves in. Experientially, that is something that no technology is going to fully be able to control or transform, at least not in the immediate future.

And because of that, because experience is so much more valuable, is so much more centered. What is the actual internal experience of our lives? Because of that, because experience is so much more valuable, what religion, what community, what ideology even offers, what it gives us is so much more valuable. And that is why I think you see more and more now communities looking towards one another, individuals looking towards one another. What is the experiential framework with which I can live my life? What are the communities, the family life, the professional life that is going to give me the experiential quality of life that everyone so desperately seeks? And in order to do that, as part of this realignment, communities are having conversations in ways that they haven’t before.

Whether that’s in the Jewish world or the non-Jewish world, you see this really starkly in politics, where there is an element of soul searching, of looking for an identity. Who are we now? Especially for those who are on the losing side of an election. There is like a real question which is like, what are we supposed to be about? And I think in this moment, in the United States and in the world, there is this hunger for purposeful meaning. And the way that we find that, there’s no information that is going to answer that question.

To influence, to elevate, is really experiential. It is about two people sitting down, listening to one another, understanding one another. There is a fantastic book that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently called Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz. Kathryn Schulz is a writer for The New Yorker.

I believe she actually won the Nobel Prize for this terrifying article, not the one we’re about to discuss in The New Yorker that basically said that a West Coast literal like apocalyptic earthquake is on its way. You could look up that article if you live on the West Coast and want to know when and if this earthquake is coming, really a brilliant article. But she also wrote a book called Being Wrong. And it’s an article that really talks about how people change their minds.

How do people learn about different ways of life, about really understanding the options or the approaches of we don’t have to live this way. We don’t have to be at each other’s throats. And learning how to embrace the fact that sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes we are headed in the wrong direction.

Sometimes we are heading in the right direction. How do we figure this out? And in that book, she has a fantastic chapter, chapter 13 entitled transformation, where she tells the story of CP Ellis and Anne Atwater. It is a remarkable story. C.P. Ellis, full name was Clayburn Paul Ellis, but he was known as C.P. Ellis.

He grew up in the early 1900s. He’s very poor, uneducated in South Carolina, and he ended up becoming one of the heads of the KKK, of the Ku Klux clan. On the flip side, Ann  Atwater was an African-American woman who was working to represent in the words of Kathryn Schulz, its most impoverished and disenfranchised blacks. And in 1970, the federal government funneled $75 million to North Carolina where both C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater lived.

Why? To desegregate its schools. And this chapter tells the remarkable story of when it came time to desegregate the schools. How are they going to do that? There are two new communities that are now interacting with each other, meeting with each other. They were not always on the same side, and now they are here.

And they did something absolutely remarkable. Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis sat down together to talk about how this was going to work. They took the leaders of the two opposing sides and they sat them in a room. And she has some of the dialogue initially was vicious.

I mean, really vicious. There are too many expletives in here that I can’t even repeat much of their early conversation. But then they started to talk, and they started to talk about their shared experiences, whether it was poverty or feeling pursued or disenfranchised by society, until finally they were able to understand one another. They did not agree on everything, but at the very least they were able to understand each other.

And this is what Kathryn Schulz writes. The transformation that was taking place inside Ellis, the way that he was reorienting himself and his worldview, now felt as inexorable as the larger societal changes that had made integration seem inevitable. As a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, Ellis had always been sensitive to poverty. And even before his experiences with Anne Atwater, he had registered reluctantly the economic sufferings of Durham’s African-Americans.

I’d look at a black person walking down the street, Ellis said, and the guy’d have ragged shoes, or his clothes would be torn. That began to do something to me inside. He began to see how the other side lives, of how these larger societal changes encompass everyone, and there was no escaping it so long as we remain alone. And what we need to do is come together as individuals, as communities, and almost like compare notes to learn how to confront this moment better.

And that is why I believe outreach is such an important subject right now. It is not an easy subject, but speaking to people who have gone beyond their community of origin, and in this moment of realignment throughout the world, have the capacity, have the experiences that allow them to reach beyond their own natural communal constituents and be able to reach out and to elevate. Now, I just want to be absolutely clear. Even though in this story, you know, we spoke about somebody from the KKK.

No side in any of these discussions is the KKK. You don’t need to sit down with anybody from the KKK or any neo Nazis. But what this is about is being able to reach, for some people, an inch beyond your own community, a foot, a mile, 10 miles. It’s just about taking the next step.

What is the community right outside of your own that you could understand better, that you can learn better, that you can explore better, approach with gracious curiosity to better understand the fabric of one another’s lives. You know, there’s this article from a former guest on 18Forty. We had her a long while back, but it was a brilliant conversation. It was somebody named Bethany Mandel.

Bethany has a fascinating story of her own, but if you’ve been following her long enough online, she’s had a thousand and one online controversies. I don’t know how she became, you know, like public enemy number one online in a lot of people’s minds. Maybe I’m missing something. But the one thing that always gets thrown back in her face, if she was on right now, she’d be able to finish the sentence.

There was one article that her haters, I mean, she has quite a bit. She’s built up quite a cohort of antagonizers. But the one thing that always happens whenever people disagree with her is they share an article she wrote many years ago, actually on my mother’s birthday, August 24th, 2017. She published an article in the Forward with the title, We need to start befriending neo Nazis.

And anytime that she has an online controversy, somebody posts this article. You can look. And they say, we’re supposed to trust you. You’re the one who said that we should be friends with Nazis.

And I’ll be honest, I think the first time I saw this article posted, I was like, oh wow, that is kind of a crazy take. But I did something very unusual and very wild. And that is, I actually read the article. And everything she is talking about is the form of outreach that I hope we’ll be able to discuss in the Jewish world of how we reach beyond our community.

What are the ingredients that allow people to reach beyond their own community? And this is what she writes. It is so powerful. She writes about somebody named Daryl Davis. He’s a Jack of all trades, a musician, actor, author, and lecturer.

But a documentary profiling Davis’ focus on not his jobs, rather it told of Davis’s unusual hobby, meeting and befriending white supremacists. Davis is African-American, and his MO is this. He meets with white supremacists from around the country and asks them one question. How can you hate me if you don’t even know me? In other words, Bethany writes, he starts by listening.

Give that person a platform, let them air their views, and they will reciprocate, he explains. Now, 18Forty is not about to invite on neo Nazis, is not about to invite on members of the KKK. That is not what we’re about. But we are very much focused on creating a community, creating a Jewish community that has this exact capacity, the ability to reach beyond ourselves.

And the way to do that, and we will talk about this over and over again, is not just to focus on what you have in common, but to actually have a real conversation about what you disagree about. Have a real conversation about what the divisions are. Have a real conversation about where we don’t see eye to eye. And if you build that upon a real foundation of personal understanding, of approaching the person in their totality, we may have the ability and develop that capacity to really reach beyond ourselves.

I first posed the question of have you ever changed your mind? Have you ever changed somebody else’s mind? And there’s no question that if somebody approaches you and says, I think you should change your mind. That is actually what creates the most stubbornness, the most fixedness. The first step is just to understand this person. There is no way we will receive political advice, religious advice, or any way to understand and build our individual or collective future, if it is not built upon that foundation of real gracious curiosity and understanding.

It doesn’t mean agreement. It doesn’t mean you need to validate what they are doing. But think about your own life. We don’t seek advice from people who don’t understand us.

The people who have the capacity to bring about change in our lives are the ones who we look towards, who understand us in the interiority of our own lives the best. And that is hopefully what we will be examining today. The mutual understanding, the purposefulness, the mission-driven approach to elevate each other and the world, to be able to reach beyond ourselves. And that is why I am so excited to introduce our guest Rabbi Yitzhak Adlerstein, who aside from being the director of Interfaith Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center does something else absolutely remarkable.

And that is for many, many years, he has been sharing ideas with the Yeshiva world and back and forth. And right now has been involved in a project that has been going into more Yeshiva non-Zionist communities to make the case for a different and new approach to Israel. To me, this conversation is not about Israel, and it’s not about Zionism. What this conversation is about is how we approach this conversation of reaching beyond our communities.

It’s not about modern Orthodox versus Yeshivish or any other segment. It’s about learning how to understand and approach other communities beyond our own. Rabbi Adler has built an entire career of this, whether it’s his work on his blog called Crosscurrents, which is always like its name is about sharing ideas back and forth between different communities. Someone who is incredibly in the know and involved in Jewish communal work and Jewish communal leadership, which is why it is my absolute privilege and pleasure to introduce Rabbi Yitzhak Adlerstein.

The reason why I invited you on is particularly since October 7th, I have been really fascinated by the idea of how do we reach beyond our community? Each of us has a community of origin. And how do we spread outside of our community? I grew up in, you know, a centrist Orthodox community. What kind of community do you consider your community of origin? 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Uh my community of origin is the one that I somewhat left behind in favor of jumping onto what at the time was a very small wagon of people leaving centrist Orthodoxy for circles further to the right. So what I grew up with starting from high school really, not before was more of what we would call today the world of the Yeshivas.

At that time people who entered it were swimming against the current. It was part of a counter culture but it was so successful that within a matter of just a decade or two, it became the larger culture, it became the prevailing culture. That’s the topic for another discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of that. But I stayed with an identification as Charedi.

Left-wing Charedi perhaps. I remember once during the great Rabbi Slifkin controversy, I refused to drop my endorsement of his book and we continue friendly today, although I disagree with him about three times a day, but I did not retract my approbation from his book. And somebody said, well, that doesn’t really matter. Adlerstein’s really not Charedi.

It was the true Scotsman argument, but I said, hey, you know, there may be something there. Let me think why am I Charedi? What are the reasons why I could be considered not Charedi?

David Bashevkin: Well, I just want to pause right there because you mentioned the not a true Scotsman argument, which is something I’ve actually discussed before and it’s so important. Just for some of our listeners, I just want to explain what that means and how it’s relevant over here. The not a true Scotsman is a classic philosophical fallacy where somebody’s reading the newspaper every day and says, sees some crime purported in his hometown of Scotland and he says, no, there’s no way a Scottish person did this.

And the news the next day is, again, crimes. No Scotsman would ever do this. And then finally, he changes one word and says, no true Scotsman would ever do that, which means that he’s kind of conceptualized it so it’s impossible to falsify. So if you see somebody doing something you don’t like, that’s not what a true Scotsman would do.

You almost paint the bullseye around the arrow. And sometimes in our communal boundaries in all sorts of directions, we have, you know, not a true Scotsman arguments. What would a truly modern Orthodox person do? What would a truly Charedi or Yeshiva person do? What would a truly Chasidish person or non-Orthodox, Conservative. Everybody has their own ideology where this philosophical fallacy can play.

But please continue. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: So, I grew up with that identification. My kids all went to Charedi schools in a town where I had the option of Charedi or non-Charedi, and they grew up as what I would call Anglo-Charedi, which means very different from our cousins in Israel, but with significant overlap, and that overlap became more and more severe over the decades.

David Bashevkin: Could you just elaborate what exactly you mean by that for our listeners? 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Sure.

David Bashevkin: How did Anglo and Israeli Charedi, where did the overlap become more prominent?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Well, a good number of decades ago, there was a decision, a conscious decision in America, shortly after the Petirah, the deaths of Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, as the American community was reeling losing the two most important leaders in the space of one month and looking for new leadership. And rather than say, you know, we got to lick our wounds and Hakadosh Baruch Hu, God does not leave a community without guidance, and we’ll find it here in America. Instead, a decision was made that from now on, effectively, all of our guidance was going to come from Israel. 

David Bashevkin: In the Yeshiva Orthodox community in America, we’re going to turn to Israeli leadership.

Rav Elyashiv, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was still alive. Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav Schach. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Rav Schach himself resisted stronglyfor quite a while.

David Bashevkin: Do you know, was this like an official effort? Who were the American representatives who brokered that? 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: I don’t want to say.

David Bashevkin: But this was an official effort that was made. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Well, they didn’t constitute themselves as the Elders of Litvish Zion at the time, but there were people who clearly were looked up to by American Charedim, and they traveled back and forth and prevailed upon Rav Shach and said, “Look, America really wants your guidance.” Rav Schach said, initially, the wise thing he said, “I’m thousands of months away, and I don’t know the community.” To be a leader of a community, you have to understand it from within. But they convinced him that the eyes and ears of American Litvish Charedim were open chiefly to his guidance. And another thing that happened was the emergence of a very, very strong, confident American Charedi community to the point that today it dwarfs the modern Orthodox one, literally dwarfs.

David Bashevkin: For sure. It’s massive.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: As I was growing up, it was the minority, and then within a decade or so, and for a few decades thereafter, everybody thought that, you know, roughly the Orthodox community is split down the middle, 50/50. And that changed.

And many Americans don’t realize what kind of an effect it’s had on Jewish life in America.

David Bashevkin: Oh, it’s been absolutely massive. And the departure, you dating it to the Petiras, the deaths of one of the some of the greatest leaders ever on American shore, Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky where this shift began. I look at it the same way.

I was born in that aftermath. At my bris, they were saying Tehillim for Rav Moshe Feinstein. Rav Nisson Alpert, I believe was still alive, and it was in Shaarei. That’s who they were davening for.

And I grew up in the aftermath of that world where things began to shift, and it became a lot more Israeli almost, the American yeshiva community. I’m so fascinated by this. I love your responses. It really is a brilliant analysis.

And it sets up for what we’re going to talk about, which is how to reach beyond our communities of reach. And I want to couch it in a very specific initiative that you’re doing that I found absolutely fascinating. I want to hear about it, not even so much the details, but more generally how you approach something like this. You have an initiative called In Step Together, where you, alongside other rabbis, are visiting, I think explicitly, more yeshiva oriented right-wing communities to make the case for what exactly?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: It’sa complicated case.

It’s a case that American Charedim really do have their own identity, that they can and should look at events in the Israeli Charedi community as necessitated by a particular set of circumstances and politics that exists here in Israel from where I’m speaking and that they don’t have to feel that everything that comes out from that community necessarily jives with their spiritual needs, with their understanding of Torah as they grew up with from their own gedolim. I think it was a piece of history that took place right here on your podcast when Rivka Ravitz was interviewed, I think by you, and said the definition of Charedism is separateness, that Charedim try to keep themselves insulated from and isolated from all foreign influences, anything that is not organic to the Litvish Torah community. And at one point in one of the cities that I visited, I pulled out my cell phone, put it down on the table and said, how many of you have one of these devices? And of course, everybody did. And I said, well, perforce, you are not really in sync with the official pronouncements of the Israeli world.

Now, I was very careful to speak only to Charedi audiences because I didn’t want my words to be accepted with glee by those who already had a chip on their shoulders about Charedim. I wanted my words to be accepted with sadness, like there’s something wrong with our world when we’re expected to believe things that we simply cannot believe. And we should understand that we are in effect the separate community with separate Roshei Yeshiva and separate Gedolim, most of whom cannot be identified publicly, but first of all, folks, you’re not alone. If you’ve been feeling since the beginning of the war that there was something just impossible to accept about the conduct of Israeli Charedim during the war.

First of all, understand that there’s good reason for that behavior. Understand the history of it, understand that it doesn’t come from a place of horrible rejection of everybody else. It’s necessitated. I’m not saying even then I can agree with all the decisions, but I’m saying we’re not part of this.

And we have different needs, and we should have different reactions. And when they’re not in sync with the line that we read in Charedi press, we should realize that we’re not getting the whole picture. One of the things, and I think this may be what you’re interested in, is that I said, if you’re reading the conventional Charedi Anglo-Charedi MSM mainstream media, then you’ve missed one of the big stories of the war. And that has taken place in the last four months.

And that is the horrible, horrible chasm that has opened up between the Charedi world and the Dati Leumi world. 

David Bashevkin: Which wasn’t priorlyas casmic, as visceral, as emotionally charged. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Right. And you’re being a nicer guy than I am.

I use the word, I use the powerful word, which I had to think about for a long time before using it, but I believe that it’s 100% true. That what a sense of difference that had been there for decades, a sense of ill ease, a sense of tension, even a sense of rejection of some of the values, but at the same time, a feeling that there was so much of our emunah, of our core beliefs that overlapped. That was true until about three months ago. And then we started seeing from davka, specifically from what’s called Dati Leumi Torani, the more right-wing parts of the Dati Leumi, religious Zionist world here in Israel, people venting and saying that we don’t speak to our Charedi relatives anymore.

We just don’t because we’ve come to hate them. We don’t want our kids speaking to them. It has devolved into open hatred among people who really don’t want to hate. And I don’t have a response to it.

I can’t see anything that I could do to possibly mollify them. The sacrifices that their sons, that their husbands have made, and without proper recognition from the Charedi world, only a sense of, hey, this is not us. We were grateful to them. Some people will say, some people will not even do that in Charedi leadership, but most would, we’re grateful to them, but it isn’t our world.

They don’t experience the war as everybody else in the country does. And I found that in every city that I spoke to, the Anglo-Charedim just had no idea of this crisis that we were paying. 

David Bashevkin: I am so fascinated, not just by the particular issue, but how you are setting up the relationship between the American Yeshiva world, what you call Anglo-Charedi, the American Yeshiva world, which is understudied, underappreciated, but incredibly important to all Jews who live in the United States of America. Like all Jews, whether or not you are conservative, reform, modern Orthodox, wherever you find yourself, if you live in North America, an understanding of the American Yeshiva world is crucial because it creates giant currents behind it, like a cruise ship going through the ocean because it’s so big and so prominent.

But I want to begin by kind of piecing apart because you’ve said a lot, the differences between the needs of the American Yeshiva world and the Israeli Charedi world. Explain to me first, how do you approach the differences? How do you explain to the American Yeshiva world, which I think looks at the Israeli Charedi world with a lot of kinship and similarity. We’re part of one unified Torah world. How would you explain to them that there is a difference?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: I would start with Rifka Ravitz’s definition of Charedism and say that this is clearly not us, that in the Anglo-Charedi world, we don’t live even in an attempt to be hermetically sealed off from everything else.

The conduct of our lives is mostly that there are things going on around us, and as Torah Jews, Hashem expects us to respond to them, to meet the challenges as Bnei Torah, but to meet them, to engage them, rather than the tool of choice being withdrawal, complete withdrawal. That’s not to say that it’s better. I’m not saying that, but that is the way we’ve lived our lives. Because of that, there are some things that we expect.

In America, for reasons I’ll leave to some future PhD student, from the beginning of the emergence of Charedism here, it was taken for granted that your children went to school and got some general studies education. Not so much in some of the Chasidisha communities, they were split down the middle about that. But in the Yeshiva world, everybody went through school. In the last few decades, it’s become a source of pride when more right-wing yeshivas can say, hey, 

David Bashevkin: We gotinto Harvard Law School.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: No, they’re not taking pride in that. They’re taking pride in eliminating it.

David Bashevkin: Oh, eliminating. It’s going the other direction.

Gotcha. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: One of my favorites today is Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky, shlita, actually, who was once approached by a talmid of his, who had opened the yeshiva many years before, and now came back to his Rebbe and said, “Rebbe, I’m so proud. We finally abolished Limudei Chol entirely.” And he said to him, straight-faced, dead pan, he said, “So how are you going to train them to be able to fill out federal entitlement forms?” 

David Bashevkin: Oh, biting. That’s a biting response.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Okay. Butthat anecdote tells you is even more true today, that there’s a split even within this community. Not everybody in the Anglo-Charedi community would be happy to hear what I’m saying. We talk about that later, how I could not speak in most places.

Part of American Charedi education is similar to Israeli Charedi education, which means we don’t question what we’re getting from on top. That is Daas Torah, and we don’t question. But there’s a good part. I’m not going to speculate on what percentage, but it’s not minimal, whether it’s a majority, minority, I’m not going to speculate.

We don’t believe that complete isolation is the way to go. And that means you can find in America in sort of Yeshiva communities outside of the tri-state areas, communities that the core of our community Kollelim with people who have the best of American and Yeshiva Charedi education, where fathers will take their sons to Little League Sure. on Sunday and cheer them from the stands, to their credit mostly with a sefer in their hands at the same time, but they look approvingly at things like sports, while in Israel sports are banned in Charedi Yeshivas. There are no sports.

Americans are made fun of for playing basketball Friday afternoon. You’ll find plenty of guys from the Mir who did just that. But when it comes to shidduchim, one of the questions was, does he play basketball? Because that’s seen as a horrible foreign influence, that we don’t see it as a horrible foreign influence. We see it as something, a potential beast that we’ve tamed and used to our advantage.

David Bashevkin: One thing that I’m really fascinated by, because I have a sister who’s American Yeshivish, and I have a sister who’s Israeli Charedi. What actually fascinates me is their children are going in opposite directions. My sister who’s American Yeshivish, her kids are even frummer than her. They’re even more intense.

The ones who are raised in America, and my Israeli Charedi sister, her children are more engaged with the world. They’re more like of the Chevran mindset. I don’t know what happens to them, but they’re not burning dumpsters and knocking on soldiers. They’re actually much more aware of what’s going on in government and the war, which I find very, I’m very optimistic about that.

It means the natural winds of change in Israel and societal pressure is building an openness that can happen and emerge organically, while in America, it might need to be more carefully engineered. But the question is, do we have such engineers? And maybe that will lead to my question at the heart of this, which is when you reach out and are in dialogue with an American Yeshiva community, talking to them about reimagining their relationship to Israel and Zionism. Why don’t you suffer from the not a true Scotsman argument? Why are you not automatically by dint of your position? Why aren’t you an outsider coming in trying to agitate? You’re not a true Scotsman. No true Yeshivaman would come in and ask us to take a second look at this.

The Gedolim have already spoke. You’re not a gadol. Why doesn’t it stop right there?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: I hate to rain on your parade, but it does. There are parts, I got different responses by different parts of the Anglo-Charedi world.

And certainly one of them is, no, give me a break. You don’t have Daas Torah. You won’t tell us who your gadol is, who you speak to. And I do.

And I do. 

David Bashevkin: But you don’t tell them. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: No, I don’t. 

David Bashevkin: Why not? Wouldn’t that answer all the questions to have one in the back pocket gadol that you could, you know, flash quickly? Why not tell them? 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: The gedolim haveto stay in the back pocket because it is true of our community, particularly here, I live in Israel, that if you are open about those things, life becomes impossible for the people who you’ve fingered.

It’s a kind of a Charedi form of doxing. If you point out who they are, then life becomes unlivable for them and all the good things that they’re doing and all their potential for the changes which, as you say, are happening in front of us right now, become impossible. I have people who’ve In Israel.

David Bashevkin: In Israel?

There is organic winds of change in Israel. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Yes, yes. So that is one reaction that you are not a true Charedi. And therefore we don’t really have to take you seriously and we’ll fight what you’re saying and tell our own children that this is not true Torah Judaism because we don’t ask those questions.

But the secret sauce is not claiming Daas Torah, which I don’t claim that I have, although again, I do, I repeat, I do consult frequently. The secret sauce is numbers, that the fact that we really do lead lives inconsistent with what we’re told is the true Charedi line because we’re trying to imitate the situation that obtains in Israel and exported to the United States. That has led to many people just not living that kind of life. Tom’s River is not Lakewood.

And although there are lots of people in Tom’s River, A, because they and their parents were brought up to believe everything is Daas Torah, everything is what we hear from our Gedolim, we don’t go past that, then some of them retain that because they believe it. Others, a second group, retains it by giving lip service to it, although they don’t believe it at all. But they still feel compelled to mouth the words, sometimes only because they want their kids to get into local schools or they don’t want to hurt the chances of shidduchim for their kids. But then there’s a third group that feels, huh, this is not what I signed up for.

I’m living with internal dissonance. I remember in a visit many, many years ago to Moscow and Leningrad before the fall of the evil empire, a few of us that at a Modern Orthodox school, we took high school senior girls for a trip, I think that changed our lives. One refusenik in Leningrad said, you know what’s wrong with life here? He says, every day we turn on the radio and we hear the state spokesman telling us how happy we are and how we live in a worker’s paradise and how horrible things are in the West. And we are the most entitled and lucky people on the face of the earth.

And then we look in the mirror and say, I don’t see a happy person. Drives us crazy. So, we have people, Americans, and many, many Charedim here in Israel after October 7th, their reaction was beautiful. They made the trips, they put the time into efforts to reach out to soldiers and visit hospitals and prepare food, and they’re still going on and Carlin stolen women are sending packages to women whose husbands are in miluim.

They’ve done it from the beginning of the war and still doing it now. And that’s true of many people in the Litvish world also, but they can’t say it. And it’s not the official party line. And to live that and at the same time hear just closing doors to even the possibility of negotiation about something like army service creates an internal pressure.

So I was there to speak to those people, to tell them, hey, you’re not alone. And I’m not starting a revolution. I was there first and foremost to tell people that there are more people who think like you than you’re ready to believe, Baruch Hashem. And there are ways of uniting with those people, with talking to those other people just so that you know you’re not crazy and you are a true Ben Torah.

Uh you’ve had Rav Aaron Lopiansky on your show before. He wrote a brilliant book. You write brilliant books, but the book Ben Torah For Lifewas in a sense loved.

I asked Rav Aaron once, when are we going to get it translated into Hebrew for use here on the Israelis?

It’s not goingto happen. It’s impossible. They won’t allow it. 

David Bashevkin: Meaning thatbook which was seen as like the guide for the Yeshiva values and the values of the Yeshiva world would be thrown into cherem instantly in Israel because it talks about getting a job and all which is a very different battle.

But I want to ask you more generally, kind of moving away from the specific issue of army service, which we can return to. When you come to dialogue with the American Yeshiva world and you think about how it has changed since the American Yeshiva world that you grew up in. I mean, the successes are obvious of the growth of the community, the values, the Torah learning of the community. What do you see is important now in terms of the cross communal conversation right now? What needs to be brought into the Yeshiva world in your opinion? 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Two things primarily.

One is that we have neglected the importance of Eretz Yisrael. It has not been part of the chinuch in Torah schools. The reality is that in the Charedi world, since the late 19th or middle 19th century, anything that Jews to the left touched, we dropped.

David Bashevkin: Yeah.

Hebrew, Nach 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Hebrew, TanachExactly. Dikduk. 

David Bashevkin: Zionism.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Zionism. Anything that secular Jews embraced, we ran in the other direction. 

David Bashevkin: By we meaning even the American Yeshiva world.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Even the American. It started in Europe and then got exported to America, particularly Zionism.

There was good reason for it, especially in perhaps the first decades after hakamat hamedinah, after the establishment of the state, but it meant that generations of young Torah Jews grew up without feeling the absolute centrality of Eretz Yisrael in Jewish life. And that’s tragic. And that is one of the reasons why you have now generation after generation of people who don’t even ask the question in Israel or in America for that matter. You know, just because I live in America and there’s a war against the largest Jewish community in the world, is it so pashut? Is it so simple that I have no responsibility? Maybe I should be going over there and signing up.

David Bashevkin: I understand that. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: I’m not giving you psak halacha. I’m not even telling you what my own leanings are. But, you know, Rav Herschel Schacter, shlita, has asked the question.

But nobody in the Yeshiva community even asks the question. It’s like a given. Hey, you know, it’s not our problem. We feel, we say Tehillim, and in many cases, they say Tehillim after davening with more fervor than I see in my own Charedi neighborhood.

David Bashevkin: Sure.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: But the feeling that Eretz Yisrael is important, which would lead more Charedi young people to consider, okay, the army is a dangerous place until they set up Chativat Chashmonaim, this new base and this new unit. But under what conditions would I? Or do I feel a sense of urgency to contribute? Should I count on when I’m 26 and leaving kollel and maybe I have a child or two, but I’m still really just emerging in life? Is this something I should be doing for the community? Which is really the second point that I think has been lacking in our chinuch, and I believe it’s been lacking in major parts of the Modern Orthodox community as well. And that is the importance of Am Yisrael, qua Am Yisrael, the Jewish people as a nation.

Rav Kook famously said that we should not be too harsh on many of the people who uh who gave him a hard time. He said, for the last 2,000 years, we have survived. Baruch Hashem, miraculously, but we survived as small communities. We survived as families, we survived as individuals.

We lost the sense of what it means to be a nation. Part of that loss means that individual groups look at themselves literally as God’s gift to man, that everyone else out there is kind oflike

David Bashevkin: Yeah, and the sum total of Klal Yisrael. You could look at the Yeshiva world, like I was a part of the Yeshiva world, you look at yourself as we are Klal Yisrael almost. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Right.

Andit’s not that we don’t have responsibility to other Jews, but we have responsibility to Jews as individual Jews. And sort of Klal Yisrael is envisioned as a collection of some X number of millions of individuals. But there’s more to it than that. In our mesorah, starting from Tanach, you see Hakadosh Baruch Hu relating to the nation as a whole, having expectations, standing by the nation even when lots of individuals if notmost individuals were doing terrible things and Hakadosh Baruch Hu said, yeah, but there’s enough there for me to continue the bris.

I can keep the covenant going because there’s something there. When you look at what October 7th has done to the Am Yisrael of Israel, outside of the Charedi community, it’s breathtaking. It’s not perfect, but Hakadosh Baruch Hu never expects it to be perfect. Do you see now a sense of purpose, a sense of identity, a sense of pride in being Jewish, a sense of commitment of people to the corporate entity of Klal Yisrael? You do.

But that also is not part of the chinuch of our kids. It’s one of the reasons why you have so many people in the Dati Leumi Torani world, who are the combat soldiers, who suffered 60% of the casualties, the fatalities in combat, because they are taught that to their pride, and we haven’t. That I think is something that has to change. That’s part of the picture then.

But again, the secret sauce is already a critical mass. 

David Bashevkin: My question is, you and I both traverse in a lot of different circles, right? And we’ll talk about it. Part of the reason why I reach out to you is I’m looking for people and what this series is about are people who reach beyond their community of origin and kind of don’t just live in the context of the community, but understand the dynamics that shift and how communities interact with each other and have the ability to almost be bilingual communally. But one question I have with you and I I ask myself this sometimes and my answer is probably even worse than yours is, but how do you know that you’re right? How do you know that when you approach an American Yeshiva community and you are trying to make the case for them reimagining their relationship to Israel and Zionism? You are definitely touching fire.

It’s a burning coal of an issue that Jewish leaders far greater than you or I or far greater than any of our Rebbeim debated about. And there’s just like this default to passivity, to paralysis because like how do you know you’re right? Who are you to stick your head in on an issue that we’re still working off of the inertia of debates over a hundred years old. So how do you know you’re right on this? If somebody were to ask you in that community even, and when you ask yourself undoubtedly, what’s your answer?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: There’s a smaller answer and a larger answer. The smaller answer is that when I look at Jewish history, I see that there was far, far, far more room for individuality than exists in the total world today and that the stifling of that individuality, the narrowing of the boundaries has not been good, not been good for learning, has not been good for total life and that individuality or the ability to speak one’s mind is important.

Many years ago, there was a dispute between Rav Shach, zatzal, and his cousin, brother-in-law, Rav Chaim Greiniman. And it was huge and it inflamed the community. And someone came from Eretz Yisrael and reported to Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, zatzal, about what was going on. And Rav Yaakov said, to the surprise of his interlocutor, Rav Chaim was correct.

Rav Chaim Greiniman was correct. Rav Shach, he said, no, no, no … I don’t mean that he should act on what he felt. To act, you have to follow the recognized manhig and leader of the community.

But he was right for voicing his opinion. That’s the smaller answer. The larger answer is, of course, I’ve struggled with this struggle, not just for days or months, but for years. And at times, I felt that, you know, maybe the thinking that I was brought up with … so there’s no purpose in it.

David Bashevkin: That was from a time past. That was from a previous generation. Out with the old, in with the new.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Today … we have more frum generation and they’re ready for something bigger so don’t try to immortalize yourself by beating a dead horse. So of course he agonized with that and there were times I was ready to get up sink into the woodwork, but I did what we’re all trained to do. What good card-carrying Charedim are still trained to do, when you have questions, you go ask people and you speak to people of great Torah learning. That is my starting point. firmly believe in that.

You know, Rav Wolbe writes in the second volume of Alei Shor, in his section on Daas, he says, you know, most people when they have a question, they go, they run to some Torah figure and they ask. He said, I’ll tell you how you’re supposed to go to a Torah luminary. You’re supposed to work out both sides or all sides of the question. Then, after crystallizing the different positions, you’re supposed to arrive at a decision of which is the better route to take.

And then take your analysis to your Rebbe and see if he concurs. If you don’t do that, you will never be a bar daas. This is Rav Wolbe speaking, who certainly one of the icons of the Charedi world, although, you know, some people will probably say he was a Baal Teshuva and he had a PhD, so we don’t listen to him. But that’s also unusual.

So, I have spoken to chaverim and to people whose ankles I don’t come up to in Torah, spoken about these issues. Should I be speaking? Maybe we should just leave it and let the new generations take over. And what I’ve been told is, Adlerstein, not only do you have every right to talk, but you better talk. You have no excuse not to.

So, I’m going to be somewhat from that. These are the people within the Torah world who resonate most with me. 

David Bashevkin: And bringit back full circle. You know, we were talking about the differences between the American Yeshiva world and the Israeli Charedi world.

And they’re not the same community. There are real differences. Why should the American Yeshiva world care about what is going on in Israel? Meaning, why not continue this mesorah more or less of, I wouldn’t say it’s anti-Zionism, but it’s like non-Zionism. It’s like, well, Tehillim, why do we have to get more involved? Why do we have to change anything? Hasn’t this suited us well? We’ve gotten this far.

Our community is stronger than ever. More Torah is being learned than ever. More people are following halacha and mitzvos than ever. Why would we change our relationship to the state of Israel? Why would that be in our interests even if our decision making has gotten us here and this is wonderful?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Torah ultimately is about emes.

The Gemara says chosmo shel Hakadosh Baruch Hu, God’s seal is emes, is truth. And when what you hear day in and day out know not to be true, you have no choice but to re-evaluate. There were good reasons for some of the battles in the past, but to pretend that Zionism today is the Zionism of Ben-Gurion or even the Zionism of 30 years ago is a joke. Zionism to most Israelis, except for a handful of guys at Haaretz that are not going to be around in five years, is we are lawful occupants of our homeland in Eretz Yisrael that is now the home of the largest Jewish community in the world.

Much of the rest of the world does not accept that, and we know it in our bones. And therefore, we are going to live and die for it. That’s what Zionism is today. And people who don’t realize that are living a lie.

And that’s the greatest reason. By accepting that Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s hashgacha, especially what we’ve seen in the last 15 months in the conduct of this war. You’re recording someplace in the United States. I don’t know where.

I’m here in Israel where we feel the nisim, we feel the miracles every day. It’s much harder to write them off as just coincidence. We see the Yad Hashem. And not to ask the questions, what is Hakadosh Baruch Hu trying to tell us other than, well, you got to learn more and you got to learn better.

And ignore the question of, well, there are people in the Dati Leumi world who also learn. Is their learning chopped liver? Does it not count? That actually was one of my the most painful things that I conveyed on this tour, that even if you believed it, and I’m not sure on what basis you would believe it. How do you have the insensitivity to keep broadcasting that to the public when you have 800 almanos, many of whom had husbands who loved learning, who were learning on the front, who were writing chiddushei Torah on the front. Hakadosh Baruch Hu just doesn’t count their learning? How do you have the insensitivity to broadcast that to the rest of the community unless you really see yourself as a nation apart.

David Bashevkin: One of the real drawbacks of being a multi communal traveler like yourself is you see the beauty of all of the different communities, but you also see the struggles of all of the different communities. And I’m curious for you as somebody who’s built an entire life about translating conceptual ideas from one community to another, which has been all of your work. Especially with your work within the American Yeshiva world, the Modern Orthodox community. It sounds like, you know, what we call like hashkafically homeless.

Like it’s so easy to get unrooted and get hopeless and feel like I’m not in sync with any community anymore. I don’t really have a home. How do you manage and how do you ensure that you don’t become a part of the problem where you soak up so much cynicism, so much negativity that instead of bringing constructive ideas from one community to another, it’s almost reverse. You just become a sponge of cynicism and negativity so you just spread that around.

How do you remain hopeful, purposeful and optimistic about the work you’re doing?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: I wish I could get a transcript of that so I can take it to my therapist. After deal with the cynicism, I don’t know, I am Es chato’ai ani mazkir hayom I am somewhat of a cynic and that can be devastating, but I don’t feel homeless at all. That part is an easy one to answer. I’m not homeless hashkafically, certainly not homeless.

I’m a proud Hershian and I’m a proud learner of Maharal and Rav Kook. Between those three, I got everything that I need to fill my head with things that are both optimistic, things that are both universal and particular at the same time. And my hashkafic needs are very, very well provided. But we’re social animals.

So what do we do about that? And for that, what do you think Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the internet? 

David Bashevkin: And podcasts. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: And podcasts and for social connectionswith other people with whom you trade ideas. You know, Chazal’s recipe is that you should have rebbeim and you should have chaverim. I have both.

So I’m not vulnerable on that side. Vulnerable to cynicism, unfortunately, unfortunately, yes. And don’t forget that it’s not just the Jewish community that I deal with. I get boyed up by my work with a much easier kind of work, which is non-Jews.

David Bashevkin: That was actually going to be my next question. You do a lot of the interfaith work with the Simon Wiesenthal Center. And I was so fascinated by the fact that you’ve done that work and you’ve also done intra communal work within the Jewish community. How would you compare the experience of working within the Jewish community and doing almost outreach within and bringing ideas versus working with the non-Jewish world.

How is the way that you approach that act of communal translation differ when you are approaching your own versus approaching those outside of the Jewish community? 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: That’s pretty embarrassing because if you got it down to a binary question, which one is easier? Hands down, it’s working with non-Jewish communities.

David Bashevkin: Why?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: I’ve quipped for years that we’ve taken on a lot of projects at the Simon Wiesenthal Center over the decades, but the one that we really never took on is like inreach within the Orthodox world. You know, we have tools for tolerance, very successful program for law enforcement and other public figures from working within the community. done a lot of good, but to spread that to within the Torah community is much harder.

David Bashevkin: Why? Wouldn’t you want the Torah community, the one to be the most receptive?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Of course I would. Of course I would. But the Maharal points out that one of the features of Jewish life is we’re not satisfied with the things that other people get satisfied. What is the day of the year that there’s the least crime in the United States?

David Bashevkin: What a great question.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: The answer is Super Sunday.

David Bashevkin: Is that true? 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: That is true. That is true. I don’t know if it’s still true, in my day it was true. And theexplanation was …

David Bashevkin: Super Sunday, in the Super Bowl?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Super Bowl because you had so many millions of people including the criminals who were all glued in front of a screen.

David Bashevkin: Then watching the game. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Watching thegame and you put some pretzels in front of them and a keg of beer and this is Nirvana.

They’re in heaven. But Maharal says Jews are not satisfied with that. Jews are people who by nature are into ideas, into something higher. And ideas affect them.

They hold on to ideas. They protect ideas like they would dear life itself. So we’re a fractious people and there’s much more confidence and surety that I’m right than you’re wrong. Maharal doesn’t apologize for it.

He says it’s terrible, but he says I want you to know that it comes from a good place, not from a bad place. No excuses, but still it comes from a good place. It’s much harder within the Jewish community. I wish it were not the case.

At the same time, we certainly believe that all those people we disagree with have a Jewish neshama. And that neshama can be reached. And our job is only to try to do the best we can with as many as we can. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is running the world.

There is going to be more openness in the in the Charedi community here in Israel, simply because times are changing and economics are changing. 

David Bashevkin: Sure. There’s general societal pressure that is every generation you can see the changes. You know, I’ve been saying for a while, a lot of my concern is actually for the American Yeshiva world because it’s so large and there’s so much momentum, but I don’t remember a period in Jewish history where it was less clear who’s in charge.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: You know, that wouldn’t be so terrible because I think something that would really benefit the American Torah community is if local rabbonim were in charge. We have rabbonim today who are incomparably better prepared Torah-wise, psak-wise, depth of their learning wise than they were four decades ago. And those are people that people could be turning to, their local rabbonim, who in turn have their own rabbeim who they would consult. But to feel that they’re getting Torah guidance and Daas Torah from people other than an approved small list in Bnei Brak and Yerushalayim.

David Bashevkin: My nephew Moishey has a Rebbe. His name is Rav Shragi. He’s a long time listener to 18Forty, and he’s a member of the American Yeshiva world. And we were recently in conversation a couple months ago, and we were talking about what he talks about in his Musar shmuzin to his students.

And how that’s changed, what people talk about. And he said something that I’ve been thinking about ever since. I asked him, what do you miss most? What’s the messaging that you grew up with that you don’t hear in your own Yeshiva and even in your own shmuzin? And he said achrayus, a sense of responsibility for the Jewish people. That sense of a Rebbe getting up and saying, what are we doing? How do we take responsibility for building Yiddishkeit? At those times it was building Yiddishkeit in America, it was helping Acheinu Bnei Yisrael, our brothers and sisters in Israel.

What advice would you give to parents, educators within the American Yeshiva world. We have plenty of listeners in that world as well. It’s a very important, if not the most by size, by momentum, it could be the most important community in the United States. What advice would you give for those who are looking to reinfuse assuming that this insight is correct that it’s not really spoken about to reinfuse that sense of what you called Am Yisrael, what I called Amcha Yisrael, what others called Jewish Peoplehood, and what this Rebbe called an achrayus for Klal Yisrael, a responsibility for the Jewish People.

How can that be taught? How can that be cultivated?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: So, you know, we’ve made progress in the American Charedi world on a number of fronts when there was a dearth of chinuch and melamdim in certain areas. Parents after a while caught up with the fact that Musar, which they really wanted instilled in their kids. They wanted their kids to concentrate more on middos, and we didn’t have teachers in the classroom who were really stressing it or knew how to do it. But the community responded to it.

And there are many parents who now will choose a school and choose Rebbeim who have values, not necessarily coinciding entirely with my pitch, but with parts of it. And parents should make sure that they exert a tremendous amount of pressure on their schools. And if they band together with a few other parents, they can get the schools to gradually introduce things in the curriculum that have really not been stressed, including Eretz Yisrael, including middos, and including achrayus, Am Yisrael. Let me put this a different way.

When you look at important changes in the Torah world, for quite a while, for quite a long time, you find that they were not top down. Almost all really important changes were bottom up. 

David Bashevkin: Do you have an example of a bottom-up change in the Torah world?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Yes. One was Bais Yaakov.

David Bashevkin: Okay, that’s a great example.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Which definitely was bottom up. Another one was incorporation of middos curriculum, which was bottom up. 

David Bashevkin: I would add the chasimas haGemara.

I think our process of canonization has always been bottom up communal acceptance integrated through families, individuals, not institutional.

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Andthe modern form of that is the Daf Yomi revolution where there was a lot of antagonism despite the haskamos that ArtScroll got for those first volumes from various Roshei Yeshiva … those Roshei Yeshiva were not happy at all with the publication of ArtScroll. They were banned and in many cases are still banned from Yeshivas.

David Bashevkin: There’s definitely a stigma or, yeah, for sure. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Right. But think of the millions of hours of Torah learning and the enthusiasm for learning that it’s injected among people in both the Charedi and the Modern Orthodox world. It’s incredible.

But that was bottom up. I have spoken to Gedolei Yisrael who said, nothing, you guys come to us all the time and expect us to have all the answers. We have lots of stuff on our plate. It’s hard enough for us to reside over our institutions.

What you should be doing is you have great ideas, put the ideas together and then come to us and ask us if we approve. That’s the way it should be. In fact, that is the way Klal Yisrael conducted itself for most of Jewish history. So that can happen again today and should be happening.

If we learn that it’s not so treif to have an opinion and to voice it even if it’s not the approved party line.

David Bashevkin: Rabbi Adlerstein, I cannot thank you enough and for your efforts bridging, informing, elevating and educating different communities both inside and outside the Jewish world. I am so grateful for speaking with you today. I always end my interviews with more rapid fire questions.

My first question is just in your work of reaching beyond, going to communities outreach work. Were there any books that really informed either your sense of civic responsibility, books that informed the way you understand the Jewish community or the non-Jewish world? Do you have any book recommendations that enhanced your capacity to reach beyond your own community?

Yitzchok Adlerstein: I think nothing outside of the ones that you would have predicted. Certainly Jonathan Sacks. Sure.

Almost anything by him. Rav Hirsch, I believe is more relevant today than when he wrote it even though parts of the community have said that was for for history, 19th century, we don’t do that stuff anymore. I beg to differ. Rav Kook.

I think that Rav Kook and Rav Hirsch between the two of them would give a different sense of purpose to young people if they were really studied in depth. And Maharal, my first love sort of in the Torah world and Ramchal. Specific packaging, I can’t say. I’ve had wonderful mentors in my life besides my own Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Henoch Leibowitz, zatzal.

And I was zocheh to be close for 10 years with Rav Aryeh Kaplan, who was a great influence. 

David Bashevkin: I need to mentionthis just because you mentioned his name and my grandfather’s yahrzeit was just a few days ago. My grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Bekritsky, was from the first generation of talmidim of Rav Dovid Leibowitz. He broke off and started Chafetz Chaim from Torah Vodaas.

And when he passed away, Rav Dovid’s son, Rav Henoch, came to his levayah. He was a kohen. It was the middle of December. He stood outside.

I was so moved by that. It was the one time I ever met Rav Henoch. That ethic that the Chafetz Chaim has produced among its graduates to go out and to build is definitely something that you embody. I don’t know why it should not come as any surprise that you were a student of Rav Henoch.

My next question, if somebody gave you a great deal of money that allowed you to take a sabbatical with no responsibilities whatsoever to go back to school, get a PhD in any subject of your choice. What do you think the subject and title of your dissertation would be? Probably would be the erasing of the mesorah of Rav Saadia Gaon, the Rambam, the Rishonim, the Geonimabout hashgacha

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Divine Providence, not kosher. Divine Providence in favor of the Baal Shem Tov and the Arizal. 

David Bashevkin: Fascinating. I didnot expect that. There definitely has beena marked shift in the way thatwe conceptualize divine providence from the times of the Geonim for sure to the more pantheistic approach of the Baal Shem Tov. That would be a fascinating PhD. I hope you do get that great deal of money.

My final question, I’m always curious about people’s sleep schedules. What time do you go to sleep at night and what time do you wake up in the morning? 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Yeah, that varies. I don’t have a handle on that. I try to get like sixor six and a half hours of sleep.

As I got older, I thought I’d need less sleep. Instead, I’m finding I need more sleep. So sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of the day. I crash.

And then I go to sleep later at night, so it kind of catches up. That’s my schedule. 

David Bashevkin: A midday crash and going to sleep at some ungodlyhour to perpetuate the cycle. I can’t break out.

I can’t break out of it. 

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Thursday night I’m doing another podcast at 10 o’clock. This timeit’ll be my own podcast. Like everybody else in the world, I have a podcast too called Two Rabbis, Three Opinions, which I do with Rabbi Simy Lerner from Ramat Beit Shemesh.

He’s generation or two younger than I am and we talk about contemporary issues.

David Bashevkin: Say the name one more time. Two rabbis

Yitzchok Adlerstein: Two Rabbis, Three Opinions.

David Bashevkin: Three opinions.

Rabbi Adlerstein, thank you so much. We’ll make sure ourlisteners tune in and we will link to your podcast for your time, for your efforts, for your generosity and guidance over all these years. Thank you so much for joining us today.

One of the things that we discussed at the very beginning of this interview, which I think is so important when it comes to kind of intercommunal dialogue reaching beyond ourselves, is this notion of the no true Scotsman fallacy.

And I just want to unpack it and talk about it for one moment. You know, the basic fallacy, which is attributed to a philosopher named Antony Flew. Antony Flew has his own really interesting story, was an atheist philosopher for most of his life and then there were rumors that he recanted on his deathbed. I don’t know if they’re to be believed, but he is a really interesting writer.

And the way that he explains the no true Scotsman fallacy is as follows. In this ungracious move, a brash generalization such as no Scotsman puts sugar on their porridge when faced with falsifying facts is transformed while you wait into an impudent tautology. If ostensible Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, then this by itself sufficient to prove them not true Scotsmen. What he’s basically saying is that the moment that you say no true Scotsman would put sugar on his porridge.

No true Scotsman would commit that type of action. You basically create a tautology where you’re not really defining what it’s about, but you’re just jerrymandering the borders of who you think should and should not be included. Say no true Christian ever kills. No true communist state is repressive.

And no true Trump supporter endorses violence or whatever, whatever it is, the way that we take that word and we say no true X, and you fill in the blanks. No true Yeshivaman would ever be rude. No truly religious person would ever, I don’t know, steal something or whatever it is. It creates a fallacy where we’re not able to deal with the actual lived reality of the status quo present in front of us.

We may want a world where no true religious person would ever steal, where no truly Jewish person would ever say something mean or insult somebody. Yeah, we want to live in that world, but that is not the world that we live in and jerrymandering the definition of any affiliation is not going to help us get any closer towards that utopian vision. And I think the first thing that we have to be able to do is have an honest conversation about what is the landscape of the status quo and where do we want to get to. And I think with that we’ll have the capacity to really have the form of outreach that can elevate not only our community, not only the Jewish lives, but us as individuals and our own individual life.

And I just want to say very quickly before we wrap up, you may have missed it in the interview, but I have a special message that I want to deliver from Moishey to his rebbe, Rav Shragi, who I mentioned very briefly in the interview. And just say thank you to you. Hopefully you’re listening. I know you try to listen to most episodes.

But if we never succeed in having you on, you are somebody who serves as a model, who lives within the Yeshiva world, but somebody who serves as a model for me. I know it’s strange that I’m speaking to an individual on a podcast for everybody, but that appreciation comes from a very real place. And whenever I meet someone like a Rav Shragi or anybody else who has that capacity to really listen and understand and connect beyond their community of origin, beyond where they’re currently situated, and allow us collectively to create a world, to paraphrase the words of Walt Whitman, that contain multitudes, who he famously said, you know, do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large.

I contain multitudes. And I think if anything what the Jewish community needs right now in this moment are people, are individuals, a movement, a revolution where each of us have the capacity to contain multitudes, to reach beyond ourselves and uplift the world. So thank you so much for listening. And once again, thank you to our sponsors at Nishmat.

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This transcript was produced by Sofer.AI.