Which Way for Traditional Jewish Learning in America? (1968)

May 5, 2017

This episode, originally broadcast in June 1968, presents excerpts from a paper entitled "A Century of Traditional Jewish Higher Learning in America" delivered by Dr. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein on May 12th, 1968 at the Open Session on Jewish Social Science as part of the 42nd Annual Conference of the YIVO. The paper was summarized in the June 1968 edition of Yedies, YIVO’s newsletter:

[Dr. Rabbi Lichtenstein] defined traditional Jewish learning as study focused on the traditional Jewish texts: Bible, Talmud, taught by traditional methods and within a specific conceptual system, which sought to foster in the student a certain attitude toward the Jewish past of given elements in it. Dr. Lichtenstein then dwelt on the difference in approach between this type of learning and Jewish learning as propounded in the school of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. The latter is historically oriented; it attempts to place a text in a given milieu and context. The traditional approach is analytic; it aims to grasp the nature of Jewish and general existence from the text under perusal. The lecturer then drew attention to the fact that within the realm of traditional Jewish higher learning itself there were fundamental differences. In the Hungarian yeshivas the stress was on quantity, familiarity with many texts. Whereas in the Lithuanian institutions the desideratum was profundity, the creative but thorough mastery of few texts. He concluded by pointing to the crisis confronting traditional Jewish higher learning in America. Should it be exclusivist, in total isolation from the general culture of the country or should it go out and become a participant in the "secular city"?

From 1963-1976, YIVO had its own program on WEVD, the radio station established by the Socialist Party of America in 1927 (its call letters stand for the initials of American socialist leader Eugene V. Debs), which was purchased by the Jewish Daily Forward in 1932 and became a major venue from Yiddish programming.

YIVO used its spot on WEVD for Yiddish-language interviews and discussions with leading New York Yiddish cultural figures, as well as for reporting on its own scholarly and cultural work.

A new podcast of this program in the order in which it was originally broadcast will be posted here every two weeks.

Series curated by Matt Temkin, YIVO Sound Archives.

Listen to the program

[This program is in Yiddish.]

For a translation of Rav Lichtenstein’s speech, please click here.