1. Mishnah (hereafter M) Avot 1:1.
2. I know, I know, in Slobodka they wore modern clothes, and at Ner Yisroel, they dress up but not always in black and white. My great-grandfather, may his memory be a blessing, was a musmakh of Slobodka. Too much detail spoils the narrative.
3. Other movements within contemporary Jewish life also take tradition seriously, of course. The Reform movement seeks to draw inspiring, universal good from the tradition while leaving behind what seems unjust or irrelevant. The Conservative movement wants to preserve the tradition while simultaneously updating it. Reconstructionism views the tradition as having shaped a civilization that can help guide spiritual and ethical development while not being conceived as explicitly binding. Modern Orthodoxy strives to obey the tradition’s laws while embracing social change it deems compatible with Torah. That’s why my father dressed like anyone else in our university town and why he and my mother and my friends growing up all comfortably studied liberal arts and sciences at modern universities. But none of these other movements treats the tradition as the be-all and end-all of personal obligation and communal life. None of the others thinks that Truth (with a capital T) may be found solely and entirely in the written and oral Torah contained within the tradition itself.
4. As of 2020, Pew estimated that there were 7.5 million Jews in the United States, of whom 9 percent were Orthodox. The 2020 survey did not break down Orthodoxy into Haredi versus Modern Orthodox. A 2015 Pew analysis, however, estimated that Haredim made up around 62 percent of the Orthodox. Given high Haredi birthrates, that percentage is likely even higher today. “A Portrait of American Orthodox Jews,” Pew Research Center, August 26, 2015, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/08/26/a-portrait-of-american-orthodox-jews.
5. Israel Democracy Institute, “Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel,” 2020, https://en.idi.org.il/haredi/2020/?chapter=34272. The report estimates Israel’s Haredi population as 1,175,000, “expected to reach 16% of Israel’s population by 2030, and to grow to around 2 million people by 2033.”
6. According to its website, “8000 students are enrolled in its undergraduate and graduate programs.” https://www.bmg.edu/. See also David J. Landes, “How Lakewood, N.J., Is Redefining What It Means to Be Orthodox in America,” Tablet, June 5, 2013, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/lakewood-redefining-orthodoxy; and Noah Feldman, “Where Jewish Life Thrives in America,” Bloomberg, October 3, 2013, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2013-10-03/where-jewish-life-thrives-in-america.
7. The Mir’s website proudly declares that it is “the largest Yeshiva in the world,” with an enrollment that “stands at over 9,000 students.” https://themir.org/about/.
8. Exodus 19:5. Deuteronomy 7:6 says, “The Lord your God chose you from among all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a treasured people unto Him.”
9. Exodus 19:8.
10. Exodus 19:17.
11. BT Shabbat 88a.
12. BT Shabbat 88a.
13. BT Shabbat 88a.
14. Genesis 1:2.
15. As a child, I was struck by a line in the film Chariots of Fire (1981) in which an evangelical Scots minister says that the kingdom of God is not a democracy, thus explaining why the Sabbath may not be broken. It seemed entirely immediate to my religious education and entirely inconsonant with broader social norms of voluntarism and liberty.
16. Deuteronomy 17:11.
17. The most famous exposition of the history of interpretation is Maimonides’s introduction to his Commentary on the Mishnah. For a perspective from the boundary of Haredi and Modern Orthodox thought, see Hershel Schachter, The Transmission of Torah SheBa’al Peh (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2017), 109.
18. BT Rosh ha-Shana 25a.
19. BT Rosh ha-Shana 25a.
20. BT Rosh ha-Shana 25a.
21. For a creative analysis that is both serious and lighthearted, see Chaim Saiman, “The Market for Gedolim: A Tale of Supply and Demand,” Lehrhaus, October 13, 2016, https://thelehrhaus.com/commentary/the-market-for-gedolim-a-tale-of-supply-and-demand/.
22. See The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, q.v. Daas Toyre, https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Daas_Toyre.
23. The three major views, discussed by all medieval Jewish philosophers, are laid out in Maimonides’s Guide. See Daniel Rynhold, An Introduction to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 54–60.
24. BT Makkot 23b and in many other rabbinic sources.
25. BT Sanhedrin 56a–b.
26. Yalkut Shimoni 222:1.
27. Leviticus 18:22.
28. Deuteronomy 22:5.
29. BT ‘Arakhin 4b.
30. For a comprehensive modern treatment, see ’Idan Ben-Ephraim, Dor Tahapukhot (Jerusalem: 2004). This work was further explored in a lecture by Ronit Irshai, “The Contemporary Discourse on Sex-Reassignment Surgery in Orthodox Jewish Religious Law, as Reflected in Dor Tahapukhot (A Generation of Perversions),” presented at the Trans/Gender and Religious Law conference held at Harvard Law School on March 30, 2017.
31. Zalman Rothschild, “Free Exercise’s Outer Boundary: The Case of Hasidic Education,” Columbia Law Review Forum 119 (October 11, 2019): 204.
32. The parliamentary election held on November 1, 2022, led to the creation of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.
33. For one example, see Nehemia Polen, “Niggun as Spiritual Practice, with Special Focus on the Writings of Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira, the Rebbe of Piaseczna,” in Contemporary Forms and Uses of Hasidut, ed. Shlomo Zuckier (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2022), 257–77.
34. A mystical incantation plays on the name of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, who moved to the Ukrainian town of Uman and is buried there: Na, Nach, Nachman me-Uman.
35. Hanna Arhirova, “Jewish Pilgrims Gather at Holy Site in Ukraine Despite the Perils of War,” Associated Press, September 25, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-travel-religion-d403ec92e7b8903911bb72a40e9d51b4.
36. The term appears to have been coined by Eliezer Goldman. Alexander Kaye, “Eliezer Goldman and the Origins of Meta-Halacha,” Modern Judaism 34, no. 3 (October 2014): 309–33. See, however, Isadore Twersky, “Religion and Law,” in Religion in a Religious Age, ed. S. D. Goitein (Cambridge, MA: Association for Jewish Studies, 1974), 69.
37. Shaul Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century: Creating a Tradition of Learning (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012), 2, 15.
38. The comparison was noted by R. Aharon Lichtenstein at a question and answer session in Jerusalem with ATID fellows on March 28, 2001: “Rav Chaim of Volozhin says that Torah LiShmah (for its own sake) doesn’t mean for the sake of heaven but for the sake of Torah. The equivalent of art for art’s sake, or knowledge for knowledge’s sake.” (Recording and transcription available at ATID.org.) Lichtenstein further elaborated his thoughts in a Hebrew essay published the following month in which he wrote: “The pursuit of Torah for its own sake bestows upon Torah an inherent status of value. Just as the pursuit of ‘l’art pour l’art’ (art for art’s sake) in the nineteenth century expressed a value system in which art occupied a central position, so does the pursuit of Torah for its own sake reflect a perspective that recognizes Torah as a supreme value … This perspective, which held a central place in the philosophy of Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, must be ingrained in our consciousness.” See Aharon Lichtenstein, “The Way of Yeshiva: Between Alon Shvut and Volozhin,” Alon Shvut Bogrim, no. 14 (April 2001): 39, 45 (Hebrew). I owe these citations to Menachem Butler, whom I asked if anyone had made the comparison before. Any theory of a source common to both concepts would have to be investigated carefully and judged with extreme caution. Perhaps someday I may have the merit to make that investigation.
39. The artistic theory was, it seems, a product of the French reception of Kant’s ideas about pure aesthetic value, simplified and perhaps misunderstood. See John Wilcox, “The Beginnings of l’Art Pour l’Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11, no. 4 (June 1953): 360–77.
40. M Avot 1:3.
41. See Hayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh ha-Hayyim, ed. Yissakhar Rubin (Benei Berak: 5749=1988–1989), 209–12, Sha‘ar 4, chapters 2–3.
42. Joshua 1:8.
43. BT Berakhot 27b–28a.
44. BT Berakhot 27b–28a.