The knock on secular college
By Rabbi Reuven Spolter
Issue of October 16 2009/ 29 Tishrei 5770
Your son is ecstatic. He just received a letter granting him admission to the summer program of his dreams; five weeks at the highly prestigious summer science learning program in Maine where he’ll study with noted experts in physics and chemistry; areas of particular interest to him. You’ve been encouraging him to expand his horizons; taking him to scientific competitions and lectures for years, so you find his enthusiasm encouraging.
What about kashrut? Shabbat? Sure, it might be challenging for him to deal with religious observance over the summer. But that’s what real life is about, isn’t it? But then your rabbi confronts you with a troubling statistic: 25 percent of all Orthodox attendees to the summer program drop their Orthodoxy. Despite your skepticism, the rabbi shows you the surveys and it’s true: one-quarter of all Orthodox camp participants abandon Orthodox practice.
Would you encourage your son to go? It’s my article so I can say it: I wouldn’t. After spending so much time, effort, blood, sweat, tears and money on conveying the importance of Jewish life to my children, how could I risk it all on one summer — no matter how enriching it may be?
If you haven’t realized it by now, I’m not writing about a summer program. No, I’m writing about attending secular college.
In a fascinating symposium published in a special education issue of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah’s Meorot Journal, Rabbi Todd Berman writes about preparing students to thrive in non-Orthodox environments, specifically secular colleges. His essay focuses on important ways to mitigate the effects of the pressures to abandon religious life on campus, like sending educators from high schools to visit kids on campus; helping students form critical social bonds within the Orthodox groups on campus; and offering valuable courses both in high school and in Israel to help prepare them for college life
All of these represent good ways to help our kids retain their connection to Orthodoxy on the college campus. And yet, I wonder. Rabbi Berman himself states the numbing numbers: “one-quarter of the students who come to college as Orthodox Jews…changed their denominational identity while at college.” (Avi Chai Foundation, “Particularism in the University: Realities and Opportunities for Jewish Life on Campus,” Report, Jan. 2006)
That’s right. One quarter. If twenty students graduated this past June from your local yeshiva high school and headed off to campus, five of them won’t consider themselves Orthodox in four years — after a full twelve years of intensive Orthodox education. What causes this drop off? It’s not the intellectual pressures, by and large. No, it’s the social environment.
The campus culture, while ostensibly “celebrating pluralism,” often lacks tolerance for what is seen as xenophobic tribalism. Orthodox students are sometimes made to feel odd for maintaining religious observance at the expense of partaking fully in the smorgasbord of offered cultural delicacies.
However, both of these issues, while not insignificant, pale in comparison to the social pressures and realities of campus life. As one junior put it, “it is hard to be ‘shomer negi`ah’ when a girl sits down on your lap during orientation.” From the promiscuous parties sponsored by the university to the open support of binge drinking, to the small things like the experience of living in an openly coed dormitory, students are made to feel, as one student told me, odd for not being sexually and socially active. A former student once remarked that just as the State of Israel lowered the red line on the Kinneret Sea, pretending that the water level had not yet declined to the danger zone, so do students redraw their own red lines, or even worse, forget why they were there in the first place. It is quite difficult to describe the tsunami of social-sexual pressure crashing down on the religiously oriented student. These social pressures, and not the academic or even the cultural, are the most difficult to withstand.
We often overlook this reality by telling ourselves that sooner or later our children will have to confront “real life.” I’m sorry, but the college campus does not represent “real life.” In “real life,” women don’t sit down on men’s laps. In a normal workplace, that would constitute an inappropriate sexual advance which would be addressed immediately. Binge drinking might happen after work hours, but no one forces you to join your coworkers at the bar. In “real life” you can choose your roommates and the values you wish to maintain in your home. Can you do that on campus? In “real life” Orthodox people have the ability to avoid many of these challenging situations — something they cannot do on the college campus, where the parties take place on your floor — and probably right in your room.
Still, we satisfy ourselves with platitudes: “no solution works for every student” and “Yeshiva University isn’t the answer for everyone.”
Of course that’s true. But we then use those platitudes to justify sending our children to terribly dangerous spiritual situations. There’s a world of difference between “perfect” — or a zero percent drop-off rate — and “exponentially better than twenty percent,” Rabbi Berman writes.
Without a doubt, Yeshiva University remains for many a safe haven; yet more and more yeshiva high school graduates are bound for secular campuses.
I have a simple question: If a “safe haven” exists, why do parents send “more and more” of their children to “unsafe” environments? In trying to offer solutions to a glaring problem, we’re avoiding the elephant in the room, and failing to state the obvious: Secular residential college — any secular residential college — presents a serious and even mortal danger to our childrens’ well-being. It’s just not worth the risk.
Sadly, while many in Jewish education agree with me, no Modern Orthodox educator or administrator can actually say this. Parents would never tolerate an educator who, in their minds, discouraged his or her students from attending college (which they would not be doing; they would only be discouraging them from attending a residential college. Plenty of yeshiva students — both male and female — attend numerous secular colleges during the afternoons and evenings and seem to thrive both educationally and spiritually). Educators do not tell the truth for fear of losing their positions. Even Rabbi Berman seems to play this game.
“It is incumbent upon the community to empower our students to succeed in the college environment,” he writes. “We can achieve this goal if we keep several issues in mind: the positive social networks in place in high school or Israeli yeshiva should be maintained through developing programs for our alumni, refocusing our expenditures of energy on what is happening on the campus, promoting key social networks in college, and being realistic about what we expect to accomplish.”
Which is it? Can we achieve this goal of empowering our students to succeed in the college environment? What then does it mean for us to be “realistic about what we expect to accomplish”? What’s a realistic drop-off rate for Orthodoxy? Fifteen percent? Ten percent?
It’s time for Jewish educators to start speaking the truth: We cannot “achieve this goal.” The college campus promotes values antithetical to Orthodox Jewish life. Those are simply the facts, and we permit ourselves to pretend otherwise at the expense of our children’s spiritual well-being.
So I’ll say it: Please do not send your child to a secular residential college — even one with a strong Hillel and Orthodox community on campus. It’s not worth the risk, and certainly not the benefits. The options truly abound. He or she can attend YU, or Lander — or even college in Israel; he or she can live at home or study in a yeshiva and attend college at night, and still gain admittance the most exclusive graduate schools in the world. Many, many Jewish kids have and continue to do just that.
And while the numbers aren’t perfect, the vast majority of them still consider themselves Orthodox today.
Attending a Jewish university may well have been the perfect decision for a Rabbi wishing to live in Israel. However, for those of us who wish to build our lives and careers as Modern Orthodox Jews in America, or for that matter, anywhere else in the world, there can be no question that attending the best university that we are capable of opens doors and provides competitive advantage. Doing so at night or by commuting to school everyday closes some of the most valuable doors that help transform children into adults – those related to social networking or extracurricular activities. And YU is not the best of both worlds; it barely ranks in the Top 50 colleges, and Stern provides a worse education for women than that.
One might ask why a competitive advantage is so necessary. The answer is the reason that we are MODERN Orthodox Jews – we want to live successfully in this world while observing Halachah, and, we’d like to provide funding for organizations such as the one for which Rabbi Spolter works.
Living as a Modern Orthodox Jews is complicated – we are often caught in a balancing act between what feels like two worlds. If we wish to teach our children to live as Modern Orthodox Jews in America (and not simply sitting in Kollel), we must teach them to be comfortable and strong in their beliefs. Where better for a test run than at college, where the stakes are low and they are surrounded by their peers? Rather than having to awkwardly explain to a boss and coworkers that you cannot order the shrimp on the menu, you could have already perfected your lines, explanation of Kashrut, and comfort during college.
Rabbi Spolter’s article reeks of a slippery slope that ends in isolation. Yes, there is a chance that by crossing the street, one can get hit by a car, but the solution is not to live as hermits. Rather, we should teach our children to look both ways, decide when to walk and when to wait, and tread thoughtfully as strong individuals.
A commenter on the Jewish Star website responded to my article about attending college in America. I’ll take his comments piece by piece and respond.
Attending a Jewish university may well have been the perfect decision for a Rabbi wishing to live in Israel.
First of all, let’s set the record straight: When I attended college, I had no rabbinic aspirations whatsoever. I was actually interested in engineering, and figured that I would enroll in a joint program with Columbia University in that discipline. After attending YU, I changed my mind (I really didn’t want to stop my Torah learning completely), and switched to Computer Science (in which I got my bachelors degree). When I finished college, I still wanted to continue learning (and had already enrolled in Semichah.) I still thought that I would end up working in the computer science field, and felt that a Ba’al Habayit with semichah can often influence communities in ways that even a rabbi cannot. (For that I can give credit to my father.) Only during semichah was I bitten by the rabbi “bug” and decided to enter the professional rabbinate. So none of my personal decisions to attend YU or study for semichah were related to a career decision. Rather, they emanated from a desire to continue my Torah education first and foremost, while I furthered my secular education.
However, for those of us who wish to build our lives and careers as Modern Orthodox Jews in America, or for that matter, anywhere else in the world, there can be no question that attending the best university that we are capable of opens doors and provides competitive advantage. Doing so at night or by commuting to school every day closes some of the most valuable doors that help transform children into adults – those related to social networking or extracurricular activities.
I strongly disagree with the assertion that you need to hang out in the college dorm in order to make the proper social bonds to succeed in your career and “get ahead.” I just don’t think it’s true. Sure, if you’re a member of “Skull and Bones” at Yale, that might get you a head-start on your presidential run, but do you really need to live on campus to write for the school paper, or participate in the economics society? Is it really necessary in order to get the “good job”?
Let’s say that you learned at the Milwaukee yeshiva and attended the University of Wisconsin (which some yeshiva students have done). When you get to the interview, do you think that they’re going to ask you about your favorite football tailgate party? The Wisconsin degree is strong enough on its own. Finally, most “good jobs” demand a graduate school degree. In grad school, no one lives on campus. Many students work and attend school, and even if they don’t, they most often find housing near but not “on” campus. Those grad school connections are just fine to get into the most prestigious law firms. And to get into graduate school, you don’t really need to have had a campus experience. Plenty of good yeshiva students (men and women) have gained admission to the most – the most – elite graduate schools in America with a BTL or a YU degree.
But his (rather weak) point raises a different question: let’s assume that his incorrect assertion is actually correct, and that spending the four years on campus actually did open the doors to the inner sanctum of professional success. Would it be worth it? Would the benefits of those doors opening outweigh the spiritual challenges and dangers inherent in college campus life? I don’t think so.
And YU is not the best of both worlds; it barely ranks in the Top 50 colleges, and Stern provides a worse education for women than that.
Hey, don’t get me wrong, but top 50 is pretty good, if you ask me. A great number of liberal arts colleges would love to get into the top 50. More important is one of the main reasons that YU actually ranks so high: its students have very strong academic records, and consistently gain admission to the best graduate schools. In fact, I would argue that YU’s placing in the rankings speak volumes about its success: YU could never compete with the course offerings and facilities of numerous colleges across the country. That’s a function of the dual-curriculum, location, and many other factors. And yet, it still ranks in the top 50 every year. That’s not bad.
One might ask why a competitive advantage is so necessary. The answer is the reason that we are MODERN Orthodox Jews – we want to live successfully in this world while observing Halachah, and, we’d like to provide funding for organizations such as the one for which Rabbi Spolter works.
Now he’s starting to sound a little silly. You need to not only attend college in Penn, but live on campus so that you can get into the “good” businesses to make enough money to support Orot. Actually, I like that last part. We’d love to accept any donations you can send our way. But if you’re looking to build a wildly successful business that will generate money to give to my workplace, maybe going to college isn’t the best idea. The most successful businessman, in my experience, are not college graduates per se, but entrepreneurs who struck out on their own with passion, an idea, and a ridiculous amount of guts. Look at the Forbes 400 list: Bill Gates (dropout), Lawrence Ellison (dropped out of University of Chicago), the Waltons. The wealthiest members of my shul either made their money from a business they started, or inherited it from someone who did. (See the entire Walton/Walmart family). Perhaps one could argue that we put too much emphasis on going to college and working for someone else. What the Jewish community needs badly are precisely what we don’t have enough of: gutsy, passionate business people with exciting ideas who are willing to take crazy enough risks to make it really big. And living on campus has no positive influence on those kinds of jobs. None at all.
Living as a Modern Orthodox Jews is complicated – we are often caught in a balancing act between what feels like two worlds. If we wish to teach our children to live as Modern Orthodox Jews in America (and not simply sitting in Kollel), we must teach them to be comfortable and strong in their beliefs. Where better for a test run than at college, where the stakes are low and they are surrounded by their peers? Rather than having to awkwardly explain to a boss and coworkers that you cannot order the shrimp on the menu, you could have already perfected your lines, explanation of Kashrut, and comfort during college.
Of course Modern Orthodoxy requires balance, trying to live between two worlds. But that doesn’t mean immersing yourself in the center of hedonism and debauchery (the college campus) and expecting yourself to emerge unaffected. Campus life – the drinking, partying and sex, is one of the primary motivating elements driving many students’ choices when picking a school. How then could a religious parent just shrug it off? “The stakes are low” in college? Sorry, but at that point in life, when students are young, prone to experimentation, and are in the process of forming their identity, the stakes are not low: they’re at their highest. Instead of “perfecting their lines”, too many Orthodox kids are accepting that drink, eating the shrimp, and abandoning Orthodoxy.
Rabbi Spolter’s article reeks of a slippery slope that ends in isolation. Yes, there is a chance that by crossing the street, one can get hit by a car, but the solution is not to live as hermits. Rather, we should teach our children to look both ways, decide when to walk and when to wait, and tread thoughtfully as strong individuals.
Like it or not, Judaism believes in a large degree of isolation. What are the laws of kashrut – especially the numerous rabbinic laws like pat akum, yayin nochri, gevinat akum and the like, if not blatant attempts to establish a line of separation between Jew and non-Jew? The eruv ensures that we live in our own communities; we send our children to private schools not just for the Jewish studies, but also to shield them from the influences of wider society. Of course we protect ourselves and our children. Not to do so would spell suicide for our way of life and the values we hold dear.
And yet, I agree that there must be a balance. College does have a great deal to offer in terms of the disciplines in academia, learning to develop a deeper mode of thought, and even just learning the skills of a needed trade. I have never advocated not studying in college. I went to one myself. What I reject is the need for our children to live at that college, to soak up the “college experience”, and expose themselves to the negative spiritual influences so detrimental to their spiritual growth and identity.
That’s not a slippery slope. It’s falling off the deep end.
This post is not pro- or- against attending secular college but about Spolter’s mixing apples and oranges. There’s leaving Orthodoxy, and then there is drinking, promiscuity and self destructive behavior. One need not be Orthodox to object to the latter. Conversely, drinking itself isn’t against halacha, and while sexual activity might be, there are many who engage in sex and do not leave Orthodoxy (It’s called shomer 612 by frum satires blog. Quite common). Perhaps it really isn’t cool to be Jewish on campus nowadays, I have no idea. But to blame leaving Orthdoxy on drinking and sex is missing the point.
Wow. Talk about living in a bubble. Talk about a great PR piece for YU. Did they pay for him to write this?
Here’s the thing – MO or O kids are only ‘in danger’ of going ‘off the derech’ if they’re on shaky ground to start with.
That’s right – don’t start blaming a secular college for your child’s troubles. Those troubles start at home.
I go to a secular college. So do or have almost all of my closest friends. We’re turning out alright. The ones who are no longer religious often come from homes where the importance of being religious was never properly transmitted.
I think you can tell the difference between someone who went to a secular college versus someone who chose the YU/Stern/Touro route. Having a conversation with someone in Group 2 feels like talking with someone still in high school, who only knows about the world from what Mommy, Daddy and their Morahs have taught them. Because let’s face it – YU is basically just an MO high school for older kids. Same people, same cliques, same ideas.
People I know in Group 1 are a far more mature lot. They’ve been ‘exposed’ to people of other cultures and opinions. Which is not a bad thing, no matter what your Rebbe has told you. It’s good to know about people of different races and religions who are not your cleaning ladies and are not featured on CNN. Socializing with people who are not Jewish and not Orthodox actually strengthened my own identity, my own uniqueness.
I remember having my ‘aha’ moment in freshman year. I realized that virtually everyone I met ‘belonged’ to some kind of group, to a community – whether it be the Asian Club or Robotics or the Honors Society. And as much as I maybe would have liked to belong to one of those groups – ok, maybe definitely not Robotics – I never would have fit in. Besides the fact that I could never pass for Korean, lots of those groups had meetings on Shabbos. Which, in a way, is something I’m grateful for. Because it let me realize which group I did belong to.
I saw a link to this article a few days ago and I was just left speechless. From an emotional standpoint, the best way I can describe my feelings after reading this are deeply disappointed. But more on that later. First, I wish to address the faulty logic presented here as fact, and a problem that really has little to do with secular colleges.
Rabbi, you open up your discussion with the presentation of some foreboding statistics. It gets the readers attention; but perhaps the reader should be reminded that this world is chock full of foreboding statistics — like every 13 minutes, a person in killed (not injured…but killed) in an automobile accident. However, in spite of that terrible statistic, there are few people, including parents, who either hesitate to get in a car and drive, or let their children do so. I am someone who, B”H, survived a very serious car accident. Therefore I can understand if a person would not want to drive a car. However I myself drive 2 hours a day in a car for work. No one tells me that I should seriously consider my actions; or bemoan my choice to continue driving.
I went to secular college, so I know the environment well. I should also say that I was not born Jewish, much less a religious Jew, so I have no experience with growing up in a frum environment or a life molded by years of day school and/or yeshiva education. However I do know what it is like to live on the fringe of American society. My father is a Rastafarian. People many times assumed the worse and I was outright ridiculed for the lifestyle choices of my family. Yet I was so undeniably proud of my heritage, my family, and our outlook on life (and even though I choose Judaism as an adult, I still look back fondly and attest my present personality and demeanor to growing up the child of a Rastafarian). When I went to college, I was 17, and ready to truly flex my self-identity. It gave me a chance to embrace and express what was important to me — back then, it was Reform Judaism, being an aviation technology student, and putting my hair in dreadlocks. Almost no one around me was doing anything similar or any activities to reinforce mine. In fact, I remember being the only one out of a group of Jews I knew on campus who fasted one particular Yom Kippur (although several of us went to services together).
Yes, the secular college environment is tough. Yet it is not meant to be ventured into without the proper preparation. This “preparation” is not a pamphlet or a talk to be given before senior year to frum teenagers. No, this preparation starts and continues throughout the chinuch period. Jewish children need to be infused with a type of Judaism that they are fond of; that they will embrace at all costs. Show them the amazing treasure they have in being a Torah-observant Jew. Teach them the richness and diversity of the Jewish experience. Make them feel that when the time comes, they will have no reason to feel ashamed of their Jewishness; just like Muslim students are not ashamed of their status; just like physically disabled students are not discouraged neither.
In Koheles, it states:חנך לנער על פי דרכו גם כי יזקין לא יסור ממנה. Of course, we should not lead young Jews towards anything that will confuse them or situations that they can not probably deal with. But commitment to being an Orthodox Jew should not mean some sort of resolution to insulate yourself from the outside world. Like I mentioned before, I was not born Jewish. But I embraced the Torah because it is something that contains divine wisdom that is all encompassing. The Torah’s guidance is what marks anyone off as a Jew. I do not understand way it seems so threatening to have a pluralistic Orthodox Judaism. Frum people should run the gamut; from the chassidishe farmers, to the shomer shabbos IDF soldier, to the young bochurim in Lakewood, to the frum attorney who is a Yale graduate. Also if this pluralism does not exist within Orthodox Judaism, than that actually makes it easier for your child to go off the derech. By having such a narrow path that defines “Orthodox Judaism”, you communicate to those who cannot stay on that path that they are lacking in their Yiddishkeit.
I hope this comment begins to open up a fuller view of this issue and also of the damage that such message can do to the Jewish community. It paints the secular college as the bastion of sin and that social insularity is good for shomer mitvot Jews. This is not the case; and without a more far reaching, diversified presence of Orthodox Jews in many of these places, they will be seen as caricatures from those on the outside. On the inside, you will have many frum Jews who are not remaining frum because they are embracing Judaism; but because they don’t know of any other way to be or because they wish to keep their parents happy. Now which scenario would you have?
As a father of 2 high school yeshiva girls I would like to point out something Rabbi Spolter missed in his column on sending our kids to secular colleges. My family spent Chol Hamoed Succos looking at the colleges in the Boston area. We have friends in Sharon and since the girls were off from school it turned out to be the perfect opportunity to spend sukkot with them and see the colleges during the the week. Yom Tov coming out on the weekends this year worked out perfectly.
We went to Harvard, Boston university, and Brandeis. It was great to see the schools in session, and in addition to going on the tours and information session we were able to meet many frum students in the Sukkah. As you can imagine the best way to find out whether an observant girl would be comfortable on campus was to… actually talk to frum kids ON campus. We didn’t have to search them out since in addition to eating at the kosher dining hall, it was much more intimate in the Sukkah.
Yes college campuses are diverse and they are not for everyone. In my opinion my girls would be comfortable dressing modestly, davening with a minyan everyday, eating kosher and keeping shabbos at any of the above schools. There were other schools we went to that did not have a big enough frum community for them (or me) to be comfortable and able to spend 4 full years there.
We also visited Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania over the summer with similar positive results. One thing that struck me was the young men and women who run the orthodox component of these Hillel houses. Their respect and caring for the children (our children) and their yiddishkeit was truly heart warming. Some were paid and some were student volunteers but all had come to the job from various backgrounds and offered friendship, shiurim and hospitality. They really make the kids feel at home, away from home.
If Rabbi Spolter truly wants to explore the issue in a fair way he should visit these campuses with an open mind and will see the tremendous work these people do to make each college a community. He is certainly allowed to send his kids to any college he chooses and so am I.