Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, a founder of SAR Academy and a pillar of the Riverdale community, recently celebrated his 90th birthday. To mark this milestone and all that Ralph Greenberg has contributed to our institution, I recently sat down for an interview with him on ZOOM from his home in Jerusalem for an episode of the Opening up podcast. This is one of our longer episodes, but still, we couldn't cover everything Ralph Greenberg has accomplished, or even close to that. In addition to his rabbinical service, Ralph Greenberg is an author, an activist, and a scholar. Ralph Greenberg earned his BA from Brooklyn College and Master of Arts and PhD from Harvard University. He is the founding Rabbi of the Rebel Jewish center and served as the Jewish Chaplain at Brandeis University. He's written numerous books on Jewish life, history, and the Holocaust.
He was the founding president of KLAL and the Jewish Life Network Steinhardt foundation and serves as president of the J.J. greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life, established in memory of his son, JJ Zikh.
Early on, together with his wife, Blue, Ralph Greenberg helped establish the founding principles that still guide SAR Academy today.
They researched and encouraged the open and inclusive educational model, even when many of their contemporaries had reservations about it. From the outset, the Greenbergs believed that girls deserve every education and learning opportunity as boys, which was another groundbreaking concept at the time.
As Ralph Greenberg put it, they had a dream to create a Jewish utopia, one in which every child would be equal and unique and treasured.
Please join me in welcoming Ralph Greenberg to the Opening up podcast and in wishing him a very happy birthday and in expressing Hakaratov to him for all that he and Blue have done for sar.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. It's Erev Shabbat here in New York. It's Erev Shabbat and Yerushalayim. Just a little bit closer to Shabbos. And I am honored to be with Rav Yitz Greenberg. Thank you very much for. For being with us today. Rabbi Greenberg, it is really, really an honor always to talk to you. I had a nice talk with you when you were. When you were local a couple of weeks ago, and it's. It's great to continue the conversation.
I want to take the opportunity to wish you a happy 90th birthday. You should be well and you should be strong. And it was. How was the celebration?
[00:02:20] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
I thought I was going to sneak by, but apparently people take 90 more seriously than I do, so. Baruch Hashem, as we say, Baruch Hashem.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: And you should continue. You and Blue should continue to be. To be well and to Be strong. And I'm happy that we're able to have this conversation.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: I am not going to go through your entire bio because that would take, take us all the way into Shabbat.
You are speaking largely to an SAR audience. This is an episode of the Opening up podcast that we started a year ago to share the open schools philosophy and some of the things that we do here with our own community and with the world.
But I would like to say that you have been a role model to me and to so many of us here in this community, to so many rabbis, educators, Jewish leaders around this country and around the world.
And what might not be so widely known beyond this community, is that you were one of the founders of this school 50, I think now, 54 years ago, as at the time the rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center. Is that correct?
[00:03:37] Speaker C: Correct. Correct.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Maybe since I wasn't around. You can give us the context, Rabbi Greenberg, on this part of your bio and tell us what the lay of the land was like here in Riverdale 54 years ago and how you came to be one of the founders of this, of this school.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: I just want to say for the record that.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: I'm given a lot of credit as one of the founders.
Number one, is that the core idea, the distinctive open school, I think Blue gets as much credit as I do. We'll come back to that in a moment.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: The history of the story is that at that point, Riverdale, this is in the mid-1960s, Riverdale was the up and coming Jewish neighborhood. Very sadly, the bulk of the Bronx, which had been rich with having many Jewish neighborhoods, the Jews were emptying out and those communities were declining.
There were two important day schools in the Bronx, not counting Riverdale. One was the Salanter Yeshiva and one was in University Heights, the Akiba Academy.
Both schools found that as the, as the neighborhoods were emptying out, they were losing students and they were facing eventual collapse.
And so they began to think, somewhat in desperation of possibly seeing if they could relocate or move to Riverdale. Riverdale had a small day school, Riverdale Hebrew Day School, which was created by Rabbi Jacob Sable, my predecessor.
And as we began to hear the reports.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: We in Riverdale, and I want to give particular credit to the two lay leaders, Ludy Jesselson and his brother in law, Edmund Lang, who became the president of the school.
Both of them played a crucial role here. We began to say a, the school itself, the small, everyday, everyday schools growing, is going to need a building.
So we said to ourselves, let's take advantage of this moment.
And instead of simply each of the schools going in its own direction, let's see if we can a merge the three schools and more important, take advantage to create a whole new building, a whole new school, a whole new approach.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: These three schools were not the. Were not. Were they, I mean, I guess similar that was the three Jewish day schools. But would they, did they have the same approach? Do they have the same clientele, same demographic?
[00:06:15] Speaker C: That's. It's a very good question. The honest answer is of the three schools at Lenta was the most traditional. Its leadership educationally was an 80 year old rabbi, very much European in tradition. In fact, it became a major challenge in stumbling block for Remerger because he was shocked at the thought that Riverdale Hebrew Day School was planning to have women learn Talmud.
And so that became a stumbling block, although we eventually overcame it. Akiba Academy was University Heights. It was much closer in spirit to ours. But, and as it turned out, Rabbi Maurice Lamb, Zechariah Luvrachan Rabbi Norman Lamb's brother was the rabbi. And he also felt strongly that this is an opportunity. He wanted to be involved, but he was certainly open to new thoughts and new educational approaches. So. Yes, so there were some major adjustments between us. To the extent that I have any involvement in the school and influence, I would say this I think the single most important teaching in my own life, my personal life is the idea. Of course it's not mine. It's from the, it's from the Gemara, that the fundamental principle of Judaism, of the whole religion is Selim elokim, that every human being is created in God's image. And as I understand that, what it means is that it's based on the mishnah in Sanhedrin 37ameans that every human being in the image of God is endowed with three fundamental dignities.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: If the, if the declaration pen says that every human being is entitled to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, well, the mission's version is that every image of God is entitled in fact is born with, is bestowed the dignities of one infinite value. Their life is absolutely precious, more precious than any amount of money.
And no amount of money is too much to spend to save a life or to educate or upgrade a life. The second dignity is equality.
Human beings, our images of God are equal. There are unequal images of God. There are idols that claim this is God, that is God's image. But we believe that all images of God are equal because Hashem is not fixed in one image.
And third and least, not least importance that every Tsalamilokia and every image is unique. Human images can be duplicated, not divine images. That's what the Mash Mishnah says. This is the greatness of God, that all humans are derived from one couple and yet each one one mold, but each one is different.
So the thought went through my mind and Blue's mind, what would it take? Or what kind of a school could be built that would literally take this as the fundamental building block? Could you create a school in which each child will be treated in all the uniqueness, heard in all the uniqueness, encouraged to develop their own uniqueness, encouraged to develop the self dignity? It's a school in which every child, that means men and women would be both treated as equal. And that means again that women should have access to all the advanced rabbinic learning or any other learning that boys are entitled to. And of course the value is that you treasure and you feel love and responsibility and treasure each child. So I would say that was the core idea. Now when we asked what kind of a school would you need to do that? We heard about it. And Blue is the one who drove my attention to it. She's the one who discovered it.
There was an open school movement in England at that time which was saying that by creating a school without walls, you broke down the structure of teachers lecturing and students sitting there passively and opened the way to individual initiatives, to greater individuality for each child, less lecturing and more participation and so on. So in other words, the open school and the taking down the walls really grew out of the desire or the dream to create a Jewish utopia, so to speak. One in which every child would be equal and unique and treasured and treated accordingly. That's why I want to say one more thing. To me, with all due respect to ideology, the secret and the greatness of SAR from day one has been not the ideology or the theory, but the reality.
Starting with Rabbi Schwadzikon first principle down to you and everyone in between, and starting with this same vision, recruiting teachers who practice this.
It's a tremendous discipline and a tremendous effort to move from the all knowing. You tell it to them and they just simply copy it.
To be the initiative enabler, to inspire people, children to trust their own creativity and to build it, to set up a system in which they can go to the library at any time they want to raise their hands, permission, they go to the bathroom or the library, and they can really pursue their own particular individual talent and insights.
So the Secret of SCR to this day, I say is you and this incredible staff.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: All the, all the.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: All the people who came together and have amazingly, in my mind all these years had this ability to consistently keep the atmosphere of love, respect for student, encouragement of initiative, trusting their ability to choose and to recognize and to make decisions rather than pushing them into a movie.
So that is the. That's the story of the background. I'll add one more personal.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Sure, absolutely.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Side note, which is the open school and the implication of informality and less structure and less authoritative and more. And more equal and, you know, devolution of authority.
It was particularly striking because Ludi Jesselson and Edmund Lang, the two most important lay activists. There were many other very important laid backs that were coming home, but were Yekas, and they were proud of being Yekas. And in their mind, that really means, you know, discipline and order.
So there was a lot of people were very skeptical that they would be able to accept the idea of, you know, of an open school and a school that is much less structured. And we said from day one, it won't have exams, it'll have. This is. Rodney. I shouldn't say day one. But Rabbi Schwartz came up with using anecdotals rather than grades and things of that sort. So there were a lot of people were very skeptical that, that people with that kind of German ramrod, stability and order would be able to accept this.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Well, that that's the best thing.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: Did they.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Did they push back on that?
[00:13:20] Speaker C: I mean.
[00:13:22] Speaker C: Did they say, okay, we.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Think this is crazy, but you can do it? Or do they. Did they fight?
[00:13:25] Speaker C: The greatest secret? And to me, there was. To me, that was.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: It was the fact that they decided to roll up their sleeves and find out and experience. And I remember we visited schools. In fact, to me, it was a turning point. And it was.
[00:13:40] Speaker C: Rabbi Lam, myself and Edmund Lang flew to somewhere in New Hampshire. I've forgotten the name place. It was a school. It was a working class neighborhood which had an open school.
And we flew up there to visit the school and we walked in, we walked in, the kids ignored us. I mean, we were coming from outer space. But they didn't pay attention. They were so engrossed in their own work, in their own atmosphere that they literally ignored us. And we went through and we talked and we visited.
On the way out, Edmond Lang says to me, you know what just happened? I said what? He said, we walked in, here you are six foot two. It's like the Trilon and Perisphere of the. Of The World's Fair of 1940. You know, you're six foot two. Rabbi Lamb is about five foot four.
He's, you know, he's. You're both wearing yarmulkers. I'm with you. I'm short, bald and round and, you know, we look like for Mars.
And they wouldn't care notice they didn't pay attention.
He said, I really understand what you said that in the open school, the kids are so personally engrossed that they don't need, you know, to be regimented. They don't need to be that they.
That was the turning point. Or he came back and convinced other people that this is not a reckless experiment. This is really something that could work and could really be marvelous. And of course, I don't want to just stress the open school, whether we have commitments to such things as learning Talmud for women were very strong from day one. Zionism, we were absolutely committed to the. And of course, in 1967, the Six Day War, we as religious Jews, we loved Israel and were closely connected to it. And of course, we said from day one that it'll be an important part of the culture and of the learning of the school. And of course, as you know well know every principal of the school sincere, when they finished their career, they made aliyah and they brought in Israeli teachers. We brought in Israeli fellows for the base medrash in the high school. In other words, there has been a living, exciting contact with Israel from day one. And not just geographic or demographic, but spirit, atmosphere, sense of chalutziyur and commitment on both sides. And this has been a very important feature of the school.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Well, there's certainly a lot there. One thing that you. A couple of things that you got me thinking about as you were, as you were talking.
First of all, I don't know if you remember, but I came to this school in sixth grade. I lived in Queens.
I ended up in my father, as you know, my parents were in St. Louis and ended up moving to Queens. And I was in school in Queens that no longer exists and people don't know, but was not for me.
But luckily Rabbi Yonah Fold was the principal of sir who lived in the neighborhood where I was. And he ended up seeing how miserable I was in school, took me to school with him, convinced my parents to send me to school with him, and as they say, the rest is history. Made a very big difference in my life. All those things that you described, the flexibility, the openness, the warmth, not so raising your hand, you know, to move a Couple of feet and things like that, that kind of, you know, this is, you know, obviously 20 years later. But that kind of environment and culture that you were trying to create or that you described from these other places was very much what I experienced and made a big difference in my life. And I will tell you that every time we bring groups, whether it's prospective parents or groups that come to visit the school a lot from Israel, but from, from all types of places, that is one thing that amazes them. I tell them we're going to walk into a classro, five adults, 10 adults, whatever you want, you know, mayors or whoever they are, and nobody's going to care. They're not going to care that I'm there. They're not going to care that you're there.
They'll say hello if they, you know, if they, if we pass by, they'll, you know, hopefully they'll be friendly, but they're not going to be, it's not going to be any kind of formal, formal visit. They're just going to be doing their thing. And that is something obviously in 1969 they were, they were probably less than fewer than 300 kids in this institution. Now, thank God, with a high school have been been built over 20 years ago. 20 years ago, it looks like we'll have 1700 kids this September.
So a lot has changed and we'll talk about that.
But that kind of open atmosphere based on Selim Elokim, that really I hope hasn't, hasn't changed in all of the years. And I know that we talk about that when you come visit. You were here a few months ago to visit.
I, you know, you also, I remember, I think last time you were here you talked about your own children in terms of their experience and how, you know, raising children allowed you or forced you to think about, you know, what good education is like and how it worked for them. And I just tried to describe how it worked for me, but I remember you telling me about how, you know, what you thought they needed and how this school fit into that.
[00:19:06] Speaker C: I'll tell you first, of course, I got another personal story and about Blue's role in it also.
One, one day, David, our number two son, he was tall, much taller than even his class for his age. He also was behind in his fine motor skills. And the truth is he paradoxically enough, very bright kid, but did not start reading until late, until late. I think it was late in the second, maybe in the first year. But any event, he was as it. But they thought this Happened before.
We sent him to a local nursery school where we lived in North Riverdale at that time. It was called the Spite and Divel Infantry.
And he came home one day from school and Blue said to him, how was school today? He said, you know, it was good. I enjoy it. He said, you know what, though?
In the middle of the day, I just had this tremendous. I just wanted to get up and run around the class, get some of this energy out of me. I was feeling, you know, I.
[00:20:08] Speaker C: So Blue registered that that night she went to a parent teachers meeting, to a parent teachers assembly, right? And the principal of, of the infantry had just come back from a year's sabbatical in England where she studied the Open School movement.
And she spoke about this experience, including the fact that kids could get up in the middle of the day and, you know, not to sit there for hours at a time and. And Lockjoy, you know, in. In one seat.
And Blue said to me, you know, I told me the David story. And she said, we should be checking this as a possible school, which. So not just David, but any child who has this urge to get up and run around the class could do that without, you know, without breaking the system or getting punished for making trouble. So that was really one of the great initiatives that started. Started the whole system personally. But of course, I will say something even deeper than that here. Our children loved, loved the experience of sar.
[00:21:13] Speaker C: The school made room for the individual differences. I mentioned David.
As I said, he's born February 16th. He was just like a day could have been at the cutoff from entering his grade. We thought, seriously, in the end we did, of not pushing him forward, but pushing, but holding him back. So he got into his grade as the oldest, the tallest, the biggest. But as I said, he turned out he was behind in reading.
I think in any other school he would have been ruined because they get anxious, they start pressuring him, they push it, whatever, including us maybe at sar, they just handled. It was so smoothly and so beautifully and left room for the difference. And they didn't feel ashamed or backward because he wasn't reading. In March, he caught on. In April, he caught up and by June he was reading at fourth or fifth grade level. But that was sar and there was, I think almost any other school would have pressured or embarrassed or hurt the confidence of the child. Right now, our granddaughter Julia, she's here. And it's the same experience when they come and they talk about scr, they talk about with joy, with love. The uniform thing is this sense Of I felt, loved that I love the experience.
And therefore my whole feelings, not about the school, but about Judaism, about my family, about my people, is so warm and so close about Israel. I think that is worth more than anything I can say or anything else. And it's such a joy to see it year after year and to hear that experience.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: It is something that we, you know, again, when I talk to parents, you know, we call it the Happy School. You know, that's kind of the nickname or whatever that's. That's gotten out there. And it is something that we take a lot of pride in. You know, some people say, well, you know, is. Is the rigor there, academic rigor? I believe that it is. But.
But what I tell parents and I think does resonate with a lot of people is, is that when. If a kid wakes up in the morning and wants to be there, you have at least a better chance that he or she is going to. To learn something. It's not 100%, but. But if they don't, then. Then the chances go down dramatically. And, you know, we just had, like I told you, you know, we're. We're out of session now. It's June 30th, and it's a little. It's a lot quieter in this building. But we have. I don't know if you've ever seen it or if you. It's. We have a countdown of on the steps. Like, we have a lot of these events on the steps, right? We say hello on the steps for Yamat's move, 9, 11. On the steps for Yom Hazikaron.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: And.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: And we gather on the steps for the last 60 days, 60 seconds of school on June, whatever it was last week on June, June 20, the 21st.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: And you gather on the steps and obviously it's like.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: This is it. You're out. And. And what we actually see. And obviously we never like to see kids unhappy, but we see kids who are not so excited to be. To be ending the school year because this is their, you know, this is for many of them or hopefully for all of them, you know, their safe space in their comfort zone, in a place where they feel comfortable. And that is something that we take a lot of pride in and that we're, you know, that we know was there, was very much there from the beginning. The other thing that you. That you referred to, which I would love to hone in on a little bit, is, you know, obviously the way support special education, support everything, you know, therapies, fine motor skills, Things like that as developed over the years. But.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: We, you know, as a community school, we see ourselves, right, this is officially a private school, but it's a community school in that we think that whether a child or a family can afford to pay for private education, we have to figure out a way for them to be here. And we also have to figure out a way educationally to service them. And that's something that we really, really try to do. It's not okay for, you know, a kid to say, well, my three siblings or two siblings go to, go to sar, but it's not for me because you.
I have different kinds of needs. And I don't think there's any school in the world that can be successful for every single child. But it is something that we see as our responsibility. I wonder how you thought of that in the early days.
[00:25:21] Speaker C: Well, again, it's back to this question of if a child is an image of God and a child is unique, sometimes uniqueness isn't special handicaps or special disabilities. Sometimes the uniqueness, of course, not only in that area, but still, in other words, that's the secret, is to love, accept and develop the child in accordance with their own unique capacities.
Our salvation says really that this is the way we imitate God, because human qualities are instilled by God. And God shows uniqueness. God shows understanding, God shows capacity for love. So if we want to make our children more godlike, more image of God, and then we have to develop those capacities and we have to respect the differences, the limitations, that's also part of the distinctiveness of this person.
So from the day one, SAR was committed to really seek out and to honor and to develop a particular need and a particular talent of each child.
And I think again, it didn't all happen in one day. It took a long time. And each of these things takes a tremendous effort, ongoing effort, as I say again, I always feel is tremendous gratitude. And I feel we should sing the praises every day now, if you and your predecessors, but really of the teachers, because that's what it does. You have to renew every hamachadesh. But the God of the love renews creation every day out of love. The teachers have to renew their thinking. They have to continuously come up with new or deeper or sensitive awareness of a particular child. What does this moment in their life, what's bothering them, what's their handicap that needs attention.
The fact that the school has managed to do this not only has to recruit special people, it has to nurture them. It has to give Them the strength. Yes. And part of the nurturing you hinted in the beginning was also financial. No family should be deprived because they can't afford it. And it's an expensive school. And you want to get good, quality education, you have to pay your teachers. And I'm proud of the fact that a CR pays more than the average and so on. It needs to be. That's part of human dignity and human capacity, that the teachers can support their family and can live at a decent level.
So each of these takes effort, unyielding determination, constant work from a lot of people, from lay as well as professionals, as well as staff, as well as leadership. But it's something that we watch from a distance, but we feel emotionally very close to. And it's part of the joy of identifying with and supporting us ourselves.
I think you've.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: I think you've touched upon a lot of the core. The core values or the central pieces of our mission, whether it's Selim Elokim, obviously Child at the center, and Medinat Yisrael in connection to IVRIT and.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Educational philosophy.
You know, when we talked a lot about. I don't, I don't know if we use the term modern Orthodoxy here yet. You know, we're talking about 50, 50 years, 54 years later. We've had, we've gone, you've gone through everything. Modern Orthodoxy, Central Orthodoxy, open Orthodoxy.
You know, we don't necessarily need to.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Figure out which label applies to whom.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: But I guess I would want to know, like when this school was founded.
And I think it has changed in the day school world in general. I think that in my class, probably 50% of the students were not Orthodox. They just, they came to a Jewish school because they wanted to be here, which is different now for all kinds of reasons, I imagine.
But maybe could you tell us a.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Little bit about that?
[00:29:09] Speaker C: I'm glad you asked. Before we leave this previous topic, I just want to throw in one more thing. Yes. Because people are suspicious. If it's the kids are so happy and, and feel so loved, it's probably not accomplishing much intellectually, academically. It's a bias that we all have somehow. If they're not sweating or frightened or suffering, then they're not love at learning.
It's completely false. And one of my favorite statistics came out a few years back that SAR came out as the top day school and as I think, second in the state. I forget the details now. You know, an academic achievement and those measures of the state statewide measurements against old schools not just excludes so again, I think, I think that's part of the miracle, but it's part of what should be appreciated. It's SAR shows you can have more and more, not less and less. So I want to just acknowledge that and post about that if I can. For a moment, I want to talk about the religion. I appreciate your asking the question. I thought of a interrupting you when you mentioned your father in passing. I. I say that because to me again, your father was one of the great role models of what I think a modern Orthodox rabbi should be and should stand for. And again, what I mean by that, number one, is that he was on the one hand, a great Talmud Chachon. And the modern Orthodoxy should not be a synonym for less knowledge or less immersion or less capacity, less achievement in Talmud or in Tanakho learning. It's not an excuse and it's not a rep. It's not a replacement.
On the contrary, the richer, the more deeper the Jewish background, the better one will achieve the integration and the learning and vice versa. One reason why was such a great scholar is that he got a PhD in Philosophy and the conceptual approach, the theoretical understanding, principles, paradigms that are taken for granted in training of philosophy. He was able to take them and apply them to understanding halacha, to getting the patterns and the deeper insights into Torah. So number one is we also felt the same way that the school is going to strive for highest level of expectation and achievement in learning and Torah learning and in sophisticated, intellectually rich paradigms of Jewish understanding and of Torah understanding. And the Torah is not, not just a bunch of thousand details, but it also has concepts and values that have to be understood. At the same time, your father has another special quality. He felt that his language and his halacha, his learning is a gift, is a talent, is a. A weapon, you might say, which he is given a tool to use the Torah to make life better, easier, more fulfilling for people who want to live this way. And therefore that's why he did not think this is something that we should create in such a way that only the most committed will come, or we have to cut off the influence of the outside world in order to somehow get intensity. He believed the opposite, that we make room for the whole range of Jews because we want to share our gift and our richness of life and Torah with them and they can understand it and treat it. And given the right approach, I think the day school movement has in a way lost out in many ways it became more right wing, it became more intense. I don't want to make light of the achievements. There are a lot of achievements of the last 30, 40 years.
But I think in doing that, they lost out to some extent on the Torah's ability to influence life, to bring deeper ethical commitment, to bring a sense of Tikkun Olama, trying to make a better world, and not just for myself and my family, but for the homeless people, really, for the whole society.
So to me, again, by the way, for the beginning of Sarah, to talk about core principles, one of them was that we were going to connect to the local community the the old age home, the Hebrew home, was a national stature, to connect our children, to visit and to serve and to entertain and to help all the people. In other words, that idea of the whole community and of hoping the whole, all kinds of people as part of Chesed, as part of the basic Torah personality we're trying to stream, that was an important part of the school. But let me come to the particularly to be challenging and amazing accomplishment. Modern Orthodoxy runs the risk, always has run that risk of on the one hand, not being deep enough or demanding enough or achieving enough in the religious area, and on the other hand, sacrificing the quality or the achievement levels in the secular area. And in a way similar from day one, we were committed, yes, to, I would call it a more liberal Orthodoxy in the sense that from day one, not only to embrace all Jews and not just the observant Jews, but from day one to embrace Israel, which is not just a religious state, but involves so many secular Jews as well. And from day one.
[00:34:37] Speaker C: To approach the challenge of being open without. And this is the risk because we saw the community is religiously observant and becoming more so the danger was, can you stay open? Can you push, for example, women's learning and women's equality without losing some of the very parents, maybe more of the parents who are observant and committed. And you know, a school can never be much better than its own constituency. We always felt we don't want to lose that group in trying to reach out. So when we fought, the slanta story was particularly charming, as I said, because they really fought very hard against this idea that girls should learn Torah and Talmud halacha at the same level as boys, which in those days is revolutionary. Well, thanks to many good trends, of course women can learn Talmud. Of course they should have access to the whole Torah. Of course they should be given chances to teach and to lead and to learn. Yes. And now we have women Orthodox rabbis. I always tell that joke the first Time Blue wrote an article saying that what would it take to have Orthodox woman rabbi? And she went through all the sources and tried to show that there's no halachic obstacle. It's really custom and practice. That's, that's the absence. She said it's not trivial, but it's not a fundamental block. And so she ended this article by saying, if I predicted in my lifetime there will be Orthodox women rabbis because once you allow them to learn Torah, they'll get to be well. She showed me the article before it was published and I read it, I loved it. And they got to the last paragraph and she, it said there that in my lifetime there will be women Orthodox rabbis. I hugged her, I said, this is wonderful. You've just announced you and I are going to live forever.
[00:36:32] Speaker C: So of course I was wrong. We're not going to live forever. And I was wrong in that there are in fact women rabbis in my lifetime. But here's the point. The danger becomes because the Rabbinical Council, a major bastion of centrist Orthodoxy, voted against recognizing women rabbis. And there are still serious people, let's say, in the Young Israel movement and so on, who said a woman president of a shul is improper. So we understand. So the secret of the challenge to SAR was could you remain open and yes, give the girls the higher quality and a greater equal access to learning and to practice and to religious expression without losing either side, but particularly without losing the more traditional parents. And it's a juggling act. There's never a one time answer particularly doubly challenging when the community was moving to the right.
And to me that's again one of the major accomplishments, although I'm sure it's at many, many times the principals have lonely nights, lonely days.
[00:37:37] Speaker C: But there was a whole when Tully permitted girls who asked for permission to wear tefillin when they're davening again, I think parents have come to realize the school is not a radical flamboyant. You know, anything goes, that it is measured, that yes, it stands for continuing upgrade of women's participation in Orthodox Union. I think this is one of the great religious accomplishments of the generation. But it's not so far out or so far ahead that it's going to leave behind those parents who either can't go that far or who are afraid of going that far.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: Listen, you know, individuals evolve, communities evolve. You know, you talk about my father's, you know, you don't know, maybe, but yesterday would have been his, his 86th birthday. So we, you know, we missed him, especially yesterday, we missed him every day. And, you know, when he sent me to this school, when he didn't send me to this school. Let's start with that. When we moved to Queens and he wouldn't. My parents wouldn't let me go to a coed school. That was not, you know, we lived in St. Louis. That. That's where you go. There's only one school, so you go to that school. But, you know, he was a traditional European rabbi, and he didn't think I should be going to code school. One of the funny stories is when he finally did, and he was very happy about it afterwards, you know, he ended up sending me to sar. I think. I don't remember now if it was my father's parents and my mother's parents, but they came to graduation and they were shocked to see that they were girls in my class because nobody had ever. Nobody had ever mentioned that in the three years that I was in sar.
But, you know, it is, you know, it's. It is something that. That evolves with your own. With your own experiences and, you know, kind of the way you see the world and the way you experience the.
The world and your thoughts evolve. So it's interesting to see that on a communal level and also obviously, on a.
On a. On a personal level.
[00:39:25] Speaker C: Go back to Rabbi Sabbath when he finally agreed that we girls could study Talmud because we already had that practice every day with this.
Then he said to me at the end, but at least they won't sit with boys and learn, will they?
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Turns out.
[00:39:40] Speaker C: So I. I sort of took a deep breath for a minute as I said, I'll talk to Ravish. What? I'll get back to you. So Ravishwa said to me, just tell him the whole point of the open school is that the kids learn like individuals they were. So tell him each girl will learn with herself.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: A girl, everyone learns with themselves.
[00:40:00] Speaker C: So he should know that his fears are not.
I thought it was a brilliant answer, slightly evasive, but it worked.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Wow, that's a great story. Right? So now, like I said, 54 years later, and thank God, there's a lot to be, a lot to be proud of.
What do you think?
What would you identify as the number one, either challenges or opportunities of, you know, as we. As we move forward here, it's the.
[00:40:24] Speaker C: Same challenge for the whole Jewish people now. For several hundred years, we are after. After 2,3000 years of being segregated.
[00:40:36] Speaker C: During the whole rabbinic period, we were segregated. We were behind a ghetto. So the truth is that we had to function internally and we had to meet the standard of internal.
What happened in modernity is that it took us out of the behind the protective tariff of exclusion, of alienation, of rejection by the general society, which had many negatives, but the positive was it kept you inside the Jewish bubble, and it kept you very much Jewish.
Now, for the first time in history, in thousands of years, we were totally exposed. This is the most open and the most attractive culture of all time.
And so the honest answer is, from day one, Jews condition improved, respect for us improved, our opportunities improved, including the wealth and the achievement which made possible to have great private schools like sar. But at the same time, as it were, the competition, the culture that is the alternative to our culture has become steadily more powerful, more attractive than ever before.
And so, in a sense, the truth is most of our losses as Jewish people.
What I mean by a loss is that people leave the primacy, the commitment to being Jewish, and they want to be citizens of the world and so on. That remains the highest level casualties of a problem of the whole community.
So my answer again is with all its accomplishments, but then ser, because of its accomplishment, places a lot of kids in Harvard and Yale and Stanford, the highest and best schools. But those schools offer a very high level of intellectual, spiritual, ethical alternatives.
And so my answer is, if we don't raise our own level, if we don't perform at our best, I mean, I welcome it because there's pressure. This competition makes us play at the highest game. It's like we're in the major leagues. For 2,000 years, we were in AA or AAA minor leagues, and suddenly we are competing in the major leagues, and it's much harder, and it's, you're competing on a global basis. So my answer that the challenge then has always been the same way. To find even better ways of communicating, better ways of raising our level of understanding, of deepening our commitment, their values, of creating a richer environment in which people become fulfilled as cell and Lochem, as images of God. Each of these that the religion becomes so attractive, so warm, yes, it's demanding. And sometimes the ethics really, it cost you if you live by them. But I think if we do that, and if we do that, then we end up being able not only to hold our own in the open society, but we become role models, we become influential, we become major contributors. The Torah becomes a Torah for the world and not just for some remote side tribe. And I, I, to me, I look back now, I'm thinking a lot about my years with Rabbi Saloveitchik, and that many times people would ask me, you know, what was his influence? What did you learn from him? I've realized in the last year, thinking about it, that one of the most important lessons he taught me, he never said openly, and it's his example, and yet it's so important.
He used to read the newspapers every day and he thought about it. He was worried about the world problems, not just about the Jewish problems.
And he had opinions and he had judgments, in some cases important judgments as to what is or not going on in the national society. I realized what he was trying to tell me, trying to tell all of us, was that Judaism is a world religion. It's not, you know, it's not a private club in which we can live in a Lakewood or in a ghetto somewhere and take from this society but not give much. We don't have to meet their challenges. We can close out the intellectual and spiritual issues that they're raising. That's one way of flourishing and surviving as Jews. But I think it diminishes the Torah. What he was trying to tell us, that the Torah opens up with gracious power. It doesn't start with the first law.
The Torah was a book of mitzvah. As Rashi points out, it would start with the first mitzvah, Exodus, chapter 12. If the Torah was the story of the Jewish religion and Jewish people, it would start with Avraham, Avinu and sorrow. And that's in chapter 11 and 12 of Reishi. It starts with chapter one, the beginning of creation. Because the Torah wants to not only inspire the Jewish people and lead the Jewish people and shape our religion and our life and our culture, it wants to shape the whole world. It wants the Jews to lead the whole world.
[00:45:24] Speaker C: Making this world a paradise, toward the messianic vision of a world in which there is no war and no evil, in a world which there is equality and dignity and no hunger and no suffering. This is our ultimate dream of the Torah. So it says, start with your own community, start with your own people, start with your own country where the Jews make the decisions, like in Israel, and then spread to the whole world. But my point is, the challenge ahead of Ser, as I see it is not become complacent and routine, but to continue to see how it can deepen its religious atmosphere. It's experiential. It's a great part of the school's program. It has experiences, it has.
It has celebrations. And not just exercises in study or learning or using your mind. It's a challenge to raise the religious levels. It's a challenge to continue to keep the highest level of ethical interaction, of respectful relations between Jews and non Jews, between loving relationships between teachers and students, between parents and administration.
[00:46:27] Speaker C: Those challenges which SVR has done very well on, they never become routinized. Human life is too dynamic, the culture is too dynamic.
So I, you know, so I always say is to me, I, I can, I cannot say this is the story. And so it's all done. I think it's just at the beginning. I think it's a growth story. It's a, it's a story now. But I hope and believe it will continue to lead the role model. In fact, in my judgment, the whole state of Israel could use a major infusion of SAR type schools. You know, it's funny when we, we never got to making a high school. It's a whole story in itself. While I was the rabbi, we came to spend the Israel after I gave up the rabbinate and went to City College and we spent the year in Israel and the kids went to school and they said, they kept saying to me, why didn't you create a high school? You know, we, why can't we or why can't you get us here to come to Israel and create some SAR schools in Israel? It's so different and it's so much less here. So I say that again. I, I think that, I think one of the things I hope in the coming years will have more energy, maybe more funding to enable it to be the laboratory. I know people come now to study and to learn from you. But I hope that in addition to improving its own game, it will become even more a laboratory for the whole Jewish educational system and for the whole Jewish people.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Thank you. We know that you're very proud of all of sir and of course that the high school was created and where honored that bears the name of JJ Zichar Livracha. And you know, I think that, you know, I knew JJ not very well, but I think a lot of the things that we're talking about here were really.
That was his personality, right? He certainly, you know, he and I, both of us couldn't sit in the classroom for too long that had four walls.
But it really nurtured his, you know, his personality and his energy. And I think a lot of what happens there obviously represents you, yours and blues, ideology and vision and who he was and you know, and we're very, very blessed to be part of it.
[00:48:38] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: I know, like I said, I started off by, first of all, wishing you a happy 90th birthday and second of all, telling you it's erev shabbos and seven hours later in Yerushalayim. So we're going to end, although we could probably take a lot more topics and do a couple hours on each of them.
But I really, really appreciate the opportunity to have this con. And I know that the people in our community, and hopefully beyond, will appreciate and enjoy listening to it and learning from it, and hopefully to continue the conversation of what Jewish education should be like. Can't be like, both the challenges and the opportunities. Very grateful to you, grateful to Blu for your continued friendship, support, serving as a role model to me, meant to all of us here.
It means a lot to us.
