Nearly ten years ago someone approached my younger brother, then a rabbinic student, and asked about his career path. My brother replied that he was studying to be a rabbi. The questioner retorted, “Just what the world needs, another rabbi!”
I have long been struck by this brief exchange, one that I witnessed firsthand. What was it that prompted that disparaging comment, even if it was made in half-jest?
Certainly, there has been a long-standing appreciation within the American Jewish community of the “classic” fields of medicine, accounting, law, etc. (I have never heard any concern about an excessive number of doctors, accountants or lawyers. Well maybe lawyers.) But why would one belittle those who pursue a position within the rabbinate? Should we not extend even more honor to those who have committed themselves to the task of educating and guiding their brethren, while forgoing more lucrative professions?
There are several possible answers to the question. I would like to challenge it at its very core by asking the following: What would happen if, instead of too many rabbis, there were none at all? Could we survive as Jews?
Perhaps – for a short while. But our long history teaches us that the existence of strong rabbinic leadership and an active spiritual infrastructure is absolutely vital to our continuity, particularly as the minority faith in a hostile exile. The Torah presents multiple instances in which Jews were forced to relocate within the leading pagan society of the time. Each time it was these two vital components that preserved our unique identity in the face of alien societal norms.
The first instance occurred nearly four thousand years ago, in 1522 BCE. It involved Jacob and his family, who descended to Egypt during a period of famine to be with their son and brother Joseph.
And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan, and came to Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him, his sons, and his grandsons with him, his daughters, and his sons’ daughters, and all his seed brought he with him to Egypt Andhe sent Judah before him to Joseph, to show the way before him to Goshen; and they came to the land of Goshen. (Genesis 46:6-7, 28)
Our sages (as cited by Rashi, Genesis 46:28) point out that Judah’s objective in his early descent to Egypt was to establish a house of study that would be operational upon his family’s arrival. This house of study and others like it would serve as the basis for Jewish life and survival as a distinct nation in Egypt despite the upcoming decades of physical, emotional and religious oppression. In fact, according to our tradition, it was Jews’ ability to preserve their distinctive names, language and dress that allowed for them to eventually be redeemed.
Several hundred years later, at the end of the first commonwealth (5thcentury BCE), the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar exiled the Jews living within the southern Judean kingdom to Babylon. This occurred in three separate stages. The second phase, which transpired in 433 BCE, followed the deposal of the Judean king Jehoiachin, following the latter’s revolt against his Babylonian overlord.
And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city, and his servants besieged it And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths; none remained, except for the poorest of the people of the land. (II Kings 24:11,14)
Eleven years after that, during the reign of Zedekiah, the Temple was destroyed and the final (and largest) group of Jews was brought into exile.
According to the Talmud (Gittin 88a and Sanhedrin 38a, see Rashi ibid), this earlier arrival of Jewish leaders during the second phase – particularly the Torah scholars, identified as “charash u’masger,” or craftsmen and smiths – allowed for a solid Jewish infrastructure to be established within the Fertile Crescent. (“Charash” were such great Torah scholars that when one of them would open his mouth to speak, all would remain silent. “Masger” means that all would sit before him and learn from him with closed mouths.)
Before the arrival of the masses, houses of study, synagogues, and ritual baths were constructed; kosher food was made available, as were other key components to Jewish life. Such a foundation helped facilitate a strong sense of Jewish life and identity for subsequent exiles, despite the many challenges they faced as an exiled people within the dominant Babylonian culture.
In contrast, the Israelites of the northern kingdom, who had been exiled by the Assyrian rulers many years before, did not survive as an independent nation. Rather, they quickly assimilated within the dominant culture and have been lost to us since.
One-half century later, in 370 BCE, more than forty thousand Jews returned from exile to the land of Israel following King Cyrus’s proclamation of return (Ezra, chapter 1). Faced with a number of challenges – including the revocation of the earlier proclamation, putting the Temple’s construction on hold – the small, fledgling Jewish community struggled to maintain a strong spiritual connection. The intermarriage rate rose precipitously and the level of spiritual life diminished.
Only with the later arrival of Ezra (347 BCE) – a person of immense greatness whom the Talmud (Sanhedrin 21b) compares to Moses – and afterward Nehemiah, was the tide stemmed. Collectively, these two leaders strengthened the religious state of the local Jewish community by establishing the great legislative body later to become known as the Great Assembly, which was responsible for many fundamental enactments involving prayer and blessings, public Torah reading, and the redaction of the Bible.
More important, they established a strong Jewish identity capable of withstanding future spiritual challenges, most notably the introduction of Hellenism but a few decades later.
Shortly before the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE, a conversation took place between the Roman general (and soon to be emperor) Vespasian and the great sage Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. Having found favor in the general’s eyes, Rabban Yochanan was granted three requests, all relating to Torah and the Jews’ spiritual preservation. The one that would have the greatest impact was his desire to preserve “[the Torah academy of] Yavneh and its wise men” (Talmud, Gittin 56b). This would later become the seat of the relocated Sanhedrin and the primary Torah center for the next generation.
At first glance, one cannot help but wonder whether Rabban Yochanan’s requests truly addressed the needs of the people, who were faced with military defeat, the loss of Jerusalem and its Temple, and exile. Seen from the vantage point of historical hindsight, though, it becomes abundantly clear that in asking for Yavneh, Rabban Yochanan comprehended that for the sake of survival, the Jewish people would be better served with a viable Torah center – more so than with its own capital.
“Give me Yavneh and its wise men!” Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai stood before the Roman emperor and asked of him, not the preservation of the state, because it was no longer a state of the Torah, and not the preservation of the holy Temple, because Herod’s name was associated with it – but the preservation of the Oral Law of the Torah, which depended on Yavneh and its sages. He knew that if there were a people of the Torah, there would be a land of the Torah, and in the future – a state of the Torah. With “Yavneh and its wise men” he saved everything. (Rabbi Eliyahu E. Dessler)
Shepherdless Flock: American Jewry
Our recent history tells a similar story. For the first two centuries of its existence, the Jewish community in America, dating back to its inception in 1654, lacked any meaningful rabbinic leadership. Not even in the larger Jewish communities of New York, Newport (RI), Philadelphia, Charleston or Savannah was there a rabbi to lead the people, only a chazzan to read from the Torah and assume other ceremonial functions. Without adequate leadership, and with a powerful drive for social acceptance, 10-15% of American Jewry intermarried during the colonial and Revolution periods. Over time the intermarriage rate grew, reaching 50% by the middle of the 19thcentury.
Only then, with the arrival of a quarter million (mostly German) Jews in the mid-19thcentury, did a slow trickle of rabbinic figures begin to arrive on American soil. Still, these imported leaders failed to stem the massive tide of assimilation they inherited. They themselves battled to merge their Old World religious values with those of the vastly different, “modern” communities that had recruited them from across the Atlantic. This friction often resulted in power struggles between rabbis and their congregations, whose lay leaders were long used to complete hegemony in religious and social affairs.
Those who did bridge the gap more aggressively did so in the spirit of “reconciliation,” moving the community even further from its traditional religious moorings. A few decades later, leaders of what would become American Reform Judaism completely abandoned the notion of a chosen Jewish “nation.” They instead accepted the less restrictive notion of a Jewish “community,” one that did not preclude marriage outside the fold. This philosophical shift is evidenced in the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, which was issued by the leading reform rabbis of the day:
We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community. (Article 5)
A similar trend manifested itself a few decades later, when 2.5 million largely religious Eastern European Jewish immigrants arrived here between the years 1881 and 1924. Despite the parallel influx of many rabbis trained in the great yeshivas of Eastern Europe, a large percentage of the Jewish arrivals soon parted from the sacred values their families had preserved for millennia.
(This is not to imply that all of the Central or Eastern European Jewish immigrants were fully observant upon their arrival in America. Far from it. Many were already irreligious. Others saw emigration to America as a means of escaping the religious and rabbinic strictures of the European Jewish community. Still, both waves of Jewish immigration experienced sharp increases of spiritual disconnect and assimilation within a short time following their arrival in America.
Surveys conducted in 1919-1920 showed that only 23 percent of all American Jews were affiliated with a synagogue, and 65 percent of all Jewish youth experienced no formal Jewish education.)
What caused this sad and relatively sudden willingness to forsake ancient traditions? Surely there were many significant contributing factors. These included the social and religious upheavals brought about by the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe, as well as an increase in pogroms, persecution and legal restrictions in Russia.
Also contributing was the new-found social order in the U.S., where economic opportunity presented itself in an unprecedented manner, beckoning all to partake in its bounty, if only they would conform more readily to the open Protestant society that surrounded them.
Still, there is no question that the absence of a more fully developed and unified rabbinic leadership to guide the people during these trying times contributed heavily to the growing gap between these Jews and their heritage.
Postwar Trends
Since the end of the World War II, a more encouraging trend began to manifest itself. An influx to the U.S. of thousands of Orthodox Jews, and the subsequent growth in the number and quality of yeshivas here, led to a spiritual renaissance. Torah leaders have emerged in large numbers and communities have flourished with all of the religious and educational components necessary for a true Torah existence.
This is not to say that the American Jewish community has completely reversed its assimilatory trends. To the contrary: the long-standing effects of centuries of assimilation have proven far too powerful to overcome, and the number of disaffected Jews, particularly among our youth, continues to grow.
Shortly after the release of the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey conducted by the United Jewish Communities, I came across a pie graph that used current rates of childbirth and intermarriage from each sector within the Jewish community to project future community size over the next four generations. Of the different groups, only the Orthodox were projected to grow, and at a rapid rate. All other sectors showed decline, often in dramatic terms.
My students expressed initial joy at seeing the forecast of a continuing Orthodox renaissance. I tempered their joy with the reminder that Orthodoxy’s projected dominance was not an indication of a national reconnection to Judaism, but rather a sign of growing estrangement within our nation as a whole. An ever- increasing number of our brethren are moving further down the slippery slope of assimilation.
* * *
Throughout our long history we have continued to exist despite numerous challenges – from persecution and exile and poverty on the one side, to freedom and hegemony and opulence on the other. The secret? An active presence of Torah sages and a multifaceted religious infrastructure, together serving our spiritual needs.
Can there be too many rabbis? Both ancient and modern history have shown us that it is far better to possess too many than too few.
