The Midrashiyah: “Once There Was a School” (Column 577)
Last Saturday night the film “The Midrashiyah” was broadcast on television, and the internet and media have been in an uproar. Many alumni feel it is a kind of requiem, a funeral for a glorious institution (“the flagship of the religious-Zionist movement,” yeah, right), and not without reason. One should remember that this institution in fact passed away some fifteen years ago, and the film follows its final years. The questions are: Does the film do the Midrashiyah an injustice? Does it present a distorted picture? Is this a picture of only a few final years, or was this the situation in earlier years as well? What do we have to say about this picture? Was it really the flagship? Is this what a flagship is supposed to look like?
There are quite a few emotions here—some belonging to alumni and admirers whose sentiments (which themselves are a fascinating phenomenon) lead them to paint the past in exaggerated pink and to be angry at the image that looks back at us from the film and at the impression the Midrashiyah receives from it. On the other hand, there are outraged viewers who see the images of terrible vandalism and argue that we must not look at positive aspects, even if there were a few hiding within the storms, because overall this is systemic madness that has no justification and cannot have any. One thing is clear: in all these issues, everyone—on all sides—is very adamant.
A few days ago I was asked on the site for my opinion, and I thought the time had come to write something about it. Many aspects arise here, and I myself, as an alumnus (with sentiments), am of course personally involved in the matter. I knew the Midrashiyah as a student, a bit as a teacher, and also as a member of the governing council, from several angles and in several periods. I initiated and accompanied innovative curricula, and I saw what took place there in different eras. I was in very close contact with Rabbi Yagel (of course only after finishing my studies), and also closely connected with the figures who came after Rabbi Yagel, so I am familiar with what happened then as well. I could write an encyclopedia here on the various aspects of the film and of the Midrashiyah itself, but I will try to fit the important matters into one column.
Background
The Midrashiyah was founded in 1944, and in its early years the situation of the religious public was dire. Until the 1950s, youths wearing kippot could not walk freely in Tel Aviv. More than once they were beaten and cursed, and they preferred to wear a beret rather than a kippah. The feelings of inferiority were severe, and with some justification. The “masters of the land,” the “new Jews,” felt ownership of it (to some extent justifiably, due to their contribution to its establishment) and greatly disdained the “dosim” (religious folks). It is no wonder that the religious public was gripped by an inferiority complex and lost many of its best sons. It was not comfortable to remain part of this miserable, humiliated public, especially in the face of the dizzying success of secularism and modernity.
Yisrael Sadan, chairman of Mizrachi Youth (=Na’am), decided to act. He invited Rabbi Yehoshua Yagel to join him in establishing a high school yeshiva that would change this situation: “Midrashiyat Noam.” They dreamed that its graduates would compete with the finest youth in every field and even surpass them in science and technology, academia, Torah learning, physical culture, the army, the arts and culture, the media, and so on. Do not belittle the pioneering spirit of this enterprise, which may sound trivial to many of us. It was a project to change a generation’s image and to create a model of a (religious) Jew entirely anew. The ideas may have been in the air, but I think these two individuals were the first to formulate them and try to turn them into a practical plan.
Even before the Midrashiyah there was the yeshiva of Kfar HaRoeh, founded by Rabbi Neria, but that was an agricultural yeshiva, and it seems that at least over time its goals were a bit different. They were mainly along the lines of pioneering (i.e., settling the Land of Israel in its classic sense—echoing the words of the Chatam Sofer about agriculture in the Land of Israel), contributing to society, and realizing the vision of Rabbi A. Y. Kook and his son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook. That was not the goal of Sadan and Rabbi Yagel. They spoke of a new Judaism integrated into all areas of life, not of another niche. Later, the yeshiva in Kfar HaRoeh became a high-school yeshiva, and in that sense the Midrashiyah was the first high-school yeshiva. As noted, in my understanding its vision was fundamentally different from that of Kfar HaRoeh and Rabbi Neria.
Their model was the agricultural schools, in the style of Kadoorie. From there emerged a generation of secular leaders, and Rabbi Yagel and Sadan aspired to create a “Kadoorie” for the religious public. Even the terminology was borrowed from there (“Alifim,” etc.). The oath ceremonies, the traditions, the students’ independence and education toward initiative, the high expectations, the slogans, and so on. And of course also the wildness and lack of boundaries.
One must admit that this enterprise succeeded. Many followed in its wake, and thus the situation familiar to us today came to be: graduates of religious education are integrated into all fields. This may seem self-evident to many of us, but to a great extent it is the result of that same bold vision and project. To this very day, additional tasks are added in the same direction: the army, media, academia and economy, art, and more. All these areas are slowly entering the sphere of relevance for the religious person. Even today there are fields where this is not self-evident and certainly not complete, and therefore—regardless of debates about who came first—it is important to understand the pioneering spirit in the vision of these two figures. Yisrael Sadan’s pathos when he spoke of “flagships” and “the elite of religious Zionism,” and other phrases that sounded fairly amusing to us—and sound even more so today—were in fact not ridiculous at all. This was a far-seeing vision by a man who, in my judgment, did not receive sufficient appreciation. I think the vision belonged mainly to these two, though its realization happened thanks to many other people and institutions.
If you ask today who effected the revolutions in religious culture that we witness to this day, very few will point to Sadan, and even fewer to Rabbi Yagel (who is viewed as Haredi, not entirely justly). Most of the public does not know them at all. They will speak to you first of Rabbi Neria and Rabbi Kook, and afterward of Uri Orbach (media), the early Gush Emunim (settlement and pioneering), Rabbi Eli Sadan (army and pre-military academies), Rabbis Goldvicht and Amital (hesder yeshivot), and more. But without drawing comparisons and without detracting from any of these figures, in my opinion Rabbi Yagel and Yisrael Sadan were, in a certain sense, the two founding fathers of this vision, and their contribution to its realization was decisive. All these later developments were built upon their vision and continued it in different directions. We must understand that they did not envision an institution, but rather a different kind of Jew. The institution was merely the means. Therefore, judging them through the institution is a fundamental mistake. One should judge the realization of their vision, even apart from the success of the institution (which I will address).
As an anecdote, when Rabbi Yagel passed away, I thought there would be an earthquake: conferences, books, endless meetings and TV programs. But in practice there was mostly a thin, small voice. To the extent that the only significant eulogy written about him (as far as I know) was an article of mine in a local paper in Petah Tikva (edited by Moti Zept, “Dalet Sheli”). Years later some book came out that I don’t know who has heard of, and there were a few gatherings—truly minimal. From time to time I discover, to my amazement, that when people want to quote something written about Rabbi Yagel, my words are what appear. This is quite astounding if one considers this man’s contribution to the religious and Israeli public in general, to all of us. And I have not yet spoken about Yisrael Sadan, whose memory has almost evaporated from the Israeli—and even religious—collective memory.
The Midrashiyah
Rabbi Yagel was a very non-conventional person. Stories of the early years tell of wild motorcycle riding and joining in fights with street toughs in Pardes Hanna. But what I myself encountered with him was decidedly unusual as well. He gave students a rather long leash, usually in the form of prohibitions with a wink. The rules were at most recommendations, and their enforcement was very weak. Class committees were a significant decision-making institution in the school. Even in our time the students were very independent and wild. We too had escapades and strikes like those seen in the film, and of course a bit of vandalism and fights (albeit at a very different level than what the film shows). I assume that the character the Midrashiyah took on was certainly influenced by Rabbi Yagel’s personality and by his educational approach and conduct.
Our conduct—and that of the administration (which turned a blind eye and allowed many things)—was very irresponsible, and it amazes me that the film shows only two who drowned and another who was paralyzed in the lower half of his body. From familiarity with how things were done, I would have expected much broader and harsher outcomes from the band of rascals who behaved there as if the place were their own. But this is a result of independence and initiative.
The Midrashiyah accepted students from all strata of the population (contrary to the myths, it was not very hard to get accepted to “the Oxford of the religious public,” “the flagship,” etc., yeah, right). Many received there an opportunity they would not have received in comparable institutions. No one made an issue of Sephardi or Ashkenazi among us. It simply played no role whatsoever for us, and this was reflected in the student body. This was very unusual compared to what was then common (and apparently even today the reality is not yet complete in this regard). My good friend, Rami Buchris z”l (killed as an armored corps officer in Sinai), an impressive and talented young man with an amazing personality from Kiryat Yam, and of course of Mizrahi origin, told me that he was not accepted to “Netiv Meir,” and you surely won’t be surprised that they didn’t quite bother to give him explanations.
Rabbi Yagel’s motto was study partners (havrutot) for all studies, including general studies. We did not leave the weak by the wayside, and there was built-in assistance for anyone who needed it (sometimes by non-conventional means, as was our way). The film also showed the mutual responsibility of these “wild men” for their friends. This was truly a supreme value—and not only for doing harm. The values that governed the institution’s conduct were personal independence, student autonomy along with constant struggle against the administration, initiative, camaraderie and mutual aid, social cohesion, social awareness (though not necessarily more than elsewhere). I must say that studies—both secular and sacred—were not an essential part of being there. Someone in the film said he was not a student at the Midrashiyah but a resident, and it reminded me that when I’m asked whether I studied at the Midrashiyah I always say that I resided there for about four years. But one should know that even those who did study (the nerds) did not violate the basic values: accepting the authority of the democratic majority. If it was decided to run away or strike—everyone was in.
One must understand that such conduct has significant costs. When you give authority and open possibilities to wild kids, you sometimes get severe storms, rampages, and sundry “attacks.” In the end you also arrive at a complete loss of control, as happened in the later years. But we must not belittle the benefits of this policy. As the film discussed, the Midrashiyah brought out of most of us something that could not have emerged elsewhere. It allowed us to bring out everything, with all the attendant costs. I know that I myself held simultaneously two utterly different personas and modes of conduct, one at home in Haifa (and in Bnei Akiva there) and the other at the Midrashiyah (and in Bnei Akiva there). It was something entirely different.
As for the product of the institution, I think it has several characteristics. In the end, the vast majority of these “wild men” became fairly bourgeois people (as someone in the film put it), decidedly normative and productive. I am not impressed that more criminals or more violent and less moral people came out of the Midrashiyah compared to other places. Those stormy years did not truly build problematic elements within us for the long term, but they did contribute unique contributions to our personalities that appeared later, most of them for the good. Just an anecdote: in our cohort in the army, of all the hesder soldiers in the armored corps (and the overwhelming majority then served in armor), 12 guys went to officers’ course. Of them, 11 were from the Midrashiyah. I think our percentage among all the hesder guys surely did not exceed 10%. I don’t think that’s mere coincidence.
That said, it must be honestly stated that in my estimation the myths about the prominence of the alumni in Israeli society are greatly exaggerated. In my view there are institutions whose alumni stand out far more in every field (such as “Netiv Meir”), whether in Torah, academia, public life, or the army. The institution was also accused of not leading an ideological stance. The ramim (faculty rabbis) were more diverse than in most other places, and the fact is that both they and their students underwent processes in all directions. There was a myth that they tried there to “burn” students toward the Haredi direction, but the truth is that anyone who knew Rabbi Yagel understood that this was not his issue at all. He wanted the students to study Torah, and it mattered little to him whether that was in Ponovezh, Hebron, a hesder yeshiva, or Mercaz HaRav. So looked the ramim he brought in, although among them there were indeed those who tried to “burn” students. Everything went there, and each one pushed in his own direction. There was no line dictated from above.
This does not mean there were no fierce debates—as is the way of teenagers—but ideology was not an educational issue in the institution. In a certain sense one can say that the value the institution instilled was the absence of ideology. Study Torah, be a good person who contributes to society and succeeds in his field, and all is excellent. I don’t care how you relate to Rabbi Kook or which party you vote for. When I was on the governing council, the parents (who, in principle, had no representation there)—some of whom looked like classic Mizrachi-types—tried to influence us to appoint a Haredi rosh yeshiva, as opposed to a candidate who taught at a hesder yeshiva. For me, that was a formative event. In my eyes this is a unique and very important message that you will not find elsewhere. The signal emanating from every corner was that ideologies and politics don’t really interest us—only substance. So when people say the Midrashiyah had no uniqueness (see for example here), I think that was its uniqueness. All the yeshivot with “great uniqueness” are, to me, very un-unique. There is no shortage of yeshivot painted in clear ideological colors (the “Line” yeshivot). There are thousands of those. In my view it is precisely here that the lack created by the Midrashiyah’s closure is felt. A color is missing in today’s educational landscape.
Dukov, in his article, argues that this means there was no message and therefore no significant influence on society, but I think he is wrong. Indeed there was no “line,” but that itself was the message, and this “line,” as noted, was decidedly unique—far more than any rigid ideological line. In my impression, Midrashiyah alumni are very rare in the world of “the Line,” certainly in its rabbinic leadership. The Midrashiyah’s contribution is not measured by this or that ideological line, but that is not what it sought to create. It sought to contribute to society in every field and every shade, and that it did. I personally miss this very much today.
By the way, as part of that same policy, a situation arose in which different people holding very different views (not just “seraph” versus “super-tzaddik”) feel part of the same family—with great commitment and deep connection to their friends—and with the strongest sentiments toward the institution, toward Rabbi Yagel, and of course toward their cohort. I think this was created there thanks to that policy and that lack of a “line.”
It cannot be denied that this too has costs. First of all, our ability to sit and learn in the post-high-school yeshiva was not among the most splendid (I think Yeshivat Har Etzion regrets to this day that it accepted such a number of Midrashiyah alumni. The Netiv Meir guys our age founded the hesder yeshiva in Ma’ale Adumim). Beyond that, the rate of becoming secular among Midrashiyah graduates was relatively high, since there was no ideological indoctrination. Everyone was accepted and contained, and Rabbi Yagel upheld a policy of not expelling anyone (except in extreme cases where great harm was caused to others). The alumni belong to all sorts of strata in the population, outlooks, occupations, and affiliations, and I gather that the distribution is broader than is usual in other institutions. In Dukov’s piece you can see the list of rabbis he brings from Netiv Meir, and you can see that the quantity is large but the variety is quite limited. As I wrote to someone, the differences are mainly in questions like whether Rabbi Kook was a seraph or merely a supremely exalted tzaddik—shades this way or that, between Har Etzion and Mercaz HaRav and “the Line.” In the Midrashiyah, by contrast, most of the rabbis who emerged became Haredi. There was no ideological line.
From this it follows, as I explained above, that when examining the institution’s and its founders’ contribution, it is a mistake to look only at the alumni and what “color” they have (if they have a color at all). As I explained above, this was a pioneering institution, and as such all the products of the high-school yeshivot are, to some extent, products of Rabbi Yagel’s and Yisrael Sadan’s vision. The impact of these two figures on society should be measured far more broadly than by the place occupied by the alumni, or by whether they created this or that specific ideology. They created a platform upon which numerous, diverse ideologies could be cultivated (some of which, I assume, they would not have agreed with). Most of these colors were present within the institution itself, but certainly were not excluded by it. This is an entirely different measure.
The Film’s Portrayal
The film addresses all these aspects—the lights and the shadows—and in my opinion conveys them faithfully. It certainly raises difficult questions, but the picture it presents is credible and representative. The thesis arises there that the situation changed following Rabbi Yagel’s replacement, but I do not think that is the point. He himself was replaced in part due to the sense that control was being lost. In other words, the loss of control was the cause, and Rabbi Yagel’s replacement was the result—and not the other way around. One can attribute the loss of control to many things, some of which are raised in the film. I do not think Rabbi Yagel’s absence was very important in this regard.
All the phenomena I have described thus far were well presented in the film. And they existed in our time and probably before us, and did not begin with Rabbi Yagel’s departure. On the contrary, as I explained, many of these aspects were created by him and under his inspiration (though they sometimes went too far). Apparently, such independence for young students, irresponsible conduct, and an emphasis on originality and initiative ultimately lead to a loss of control. The images shown in the film are shocking—systematic and gratuitous destruction of property, terrible disrespect toward teachers and rabbis—at levels we did not know in our time. But these are differences in intensity, not in essence. The elements that led to it were all present earlier. They are embedded in the institution’s DNA.
One can see this by way of an anecdote. When I joined the governing council—a formal body full of very important and well-known figures—the first thing I said at the meeting, to the astonishment of all the celebrities there, was that this institution has no right to exist and should be closed. Needless to say, everyone hushed the cheeky youngster—but to my credit, after not many years (about twelve), everyone understood that I was right, and that is exactly what happened. Incidentally, when I said this (around 1994) it was not because of the situation at the Midrashiyah at that time, which I did not really know, but in light of what I knew from my own time. This teaches that the change of recent years was not essential. The problems were there all along.
The feeling among many alumni that the film presents a biased and unbalanced picture is, in my view, mistaken. It stems from the fact that the visual dimensions of the vandalism in recent years are so strong that they overshadow all the other aspects—good and bad alike. If you ask someone who watched the film, he will usually tell you that the film is nothing but a collection of wild rampages in the style of “Lord of the Flies.” But that is simply not true. The power of those scenes captures all attention and does not allow people to notice the other aspects presented there and to understand that the picture is more complex than a set of scoldings and expressions of shock that you can read in the press these days. Most of what I have written so far also appeared in the film, but it is not seen amid the storms and plumes of smoke.
Needless to say, in the general press there were those who linked this to the settlers’ recent rampages; others sharply criticized the elitism and the rowdiness. Many feel that this institution was a prolonged damage. Here the roots of right-wing and religious wildness were exposed. Each one hung his own notions on this film—needless to say, without real justification. On Facebook I read assertions rejecting the claim that those who “weren’t there” cannot understand. “You see the film and you understand everything.” It’s a collection of creatures who would have been better off never created, period. Well, that critique is rash and unserious. In my opinion you really cannot understand—certainly not just from watching the film—but of course that does not mean one cannot critique what was in the Midrashiyah and what is shown in the film.
Now I would like to touch on several questions that arise from watching the film.
A. On the Value of Cohesion and of Vandalism
As noted, social cohesion was a very central value (with clear encouragement from above). Even after we finished our “statute of rampage,” we all have a very deep sentiment for the institution and for our friends, and also for the rest of the alumni of all cohorts. Each of us knows the situations in which you encounter a Midrashiyah alumnus somewhere—from any cohort you never heard of, with decades of age difference—and you need only ask which cohort he is from and with whom he studied, and there is a good chance you will receive enthusiastic help and VIP treatment. Our family connection is not confined to those like us—those who think like us or live like us. It is a kind of family, and therefore it is not dependent on ideologies and outlooks (as noted above). Even in the film you could see that once an alumnus hears that this is about the Midrashiyah—and especially if the filmmaker is making a film about the Midrashiyah—he immediately pitches in. But only if the director portrays the Midrashiyah well, of course. He must not show images and videos unfit for the sensitive eyes of a Jewish mother, even if that is the unvarnished reality. The concern for the Midrashiyah’s image and the deep sentiment toward it are shared by alumni within and outside the film.
Someone wrote to me that cohesion—and certainly sentiment—is not a value but a means, and it has little meaning if it serves negative ends. I replied that I disagree, for several reasons. First, it is not true that cohesion served only negative ends. Many very beautiful phenomena took place there, and without the value of cohesion they would not have occurred. Beyond that, the same questions can be raised regarding vandalism. If this vandalism did not yield problematic long-term outcomes (in terms of the alumni’s personalities), can we condemn it and claim there is no justification for such an institution? Perhaps it helped generate positive outcomes that would not have occurred without it?! It’s true that the guys took out their fury on trees and stones, but that too was only a means. Ultimately, the educational product is no less important.
I am not claiming that vandalism is marginal or unimportant—only that it cannot be judged in a one-dimensional way, solely from the emotional turmoil created by watching those shocking scenes. Here we have an institution that took risks and created results that, in my eyes, are very significant and very unique. A dangerous approach like this has advantages and disadvantages, and I have already stated my claim that it lacks justification (and therefore I recommended closing it), but to look at that approach and judge it through the prism of what happened within it, without reference to the educational product, is in my eyes a superficial judgment. It seems to me that the “square” nature of religious and yeshiva education is among its inherent weaknesses, and therefore one should indeed appreciate an institution that takes upon itself to deviate from it, despite the risks involved in such extreme deviations.
The judgment of positive values like cohesion and of negative values like vandalism is not one-dimensional and not as simple as it seems at first glance. The story is more complicated.
B. “Lord of the Flies”
It is hard to ignore the association with the phenomena of Lord of the Flies. When a group of children finds itself in some closed, isolated space, very extreme phenomena develop there. Part of the point is that completely normative children can arrive at very extreme behaviors. That is what happened at the Midrashiyah. Most of us (including yours truly) were good Jerusalem kids, and anywhere else we would have grown up conventionally—square and ordinary—doing our matriculation, going to study accounting, and that’s it. Without breaking any fluorescent lights along the way, without throwing burning cars off the roof, without breaking bones and paralyzing a boy, and without killing a few kids by drowning.
This is a fascinating phenomenon, and one should pay attention to it. But we must understand that this behavior does not necessarily reflect evil. There is an eruption of youthful mischief to extreme levels and without the responsibility and understanding of adults to balance it. I do not think there were phenomena of essential evil there, and I believe our future lives as adults prove that. Therefore, as I explained above, while there is room to judge these phenomena in themselves, it is important to take perspective into account.
For example, Rabbi Bloch, the last rosh yeshiva (a friend of mine), appears in the film as a weak man grievously hurt by students who disrespected him. But from personal acquaintance with him and with the situation, I know the reality is exactly the opposite. He is a charismatic person whom the vast majority of students adored. To this day alumni of all kinds—secular and religious, Haredi and otherwise—make pilgrimages to him. And despite the admiration and great love for him, you can see in the film what they did to him. From this you can understand that these were acts not arising from true deliberation. These are youths who do not truly control their urges and boiling blood. They do non-normative acts that are, even in their own eyes, irrational. Such are the ways of youth, and when they act without bounds—the sky’s the limit, for better and for worse. This brings me to the question of herd behavior.
C. The Individual and the Herd
Another facet of “Lord of the Flies” is herd behavior. What causes normative teenagers to descend into such abysses is the herd. Watching the film, the experience is one of a rampaging herd trampling the individual in its path. Everyone looks like a collection of rampaging clones, and you wonder where the differences in personality have gone. I already mentioned that collective decisions were respected by everyone, including the “squares” (geeks/nerds). Seemingly extreme collectivism. But at the same time, the speakers in the film said something entirely opposite: that the Midrashiyah brought out of them whatever was inside them—on condition it was authentic. It sounds as if it encouraged extreme individualism, with its lights and shadows. It reminds me a bit of Monty Python (see column 249), in the scene where the whole crowd shouts “We are all individuals!” while one marginal fellow whispers, “I’m actually very conformist.”
In my experience too, the Midrashiyah certainly encouraged individualism. Surprisingly, that brazen herd behavior and collectivism does not contradict the individualism inherent in it. A person comes to expression within the collective, and it is precisely this that allows him to bring out very individual dimensions. The question is what place he occupies within the collective, which directions he pushes, how creative he is, and so on. Everyone is invited to lead the collective in his own direction, to propose ideas, to ask for backing, and so forth. Any initiative is welcome, and there will always be some who will work to promote it. If it catches on, it will receive backing and the whole cohort will join. If not—then do it alone. And if they send you home, don’t worry: the class committee will threaten that the entire cohort will leave and “you won’t see us here anymore.” We won’t leave you alone.
Somehow, the individual found maximal individual expression precisely within a rampaging collective. It may sound very “Kook-ist,” but the experience from the Midrashiyah is exactly that. All those rampages were the convergence and integration of a collection of extreme individualists—even though one might mistake the overall image for a herd of clones. If I may recall the claim from Facebook that an outsider can understand it—I repeat: absolutely not. An outsider truly and sincerely will not understand it. Watching the film is very misleading in these aspects, and those who did not experience it from the inside will indeed reach mistaken conclusions.
D. The Role of a High School
Another question that arises is the extent to which a high school is an educational (academic) institution. Most of us did not study much there, but we made up the gaps rather easily (with the help of friends and mutual responsibility). We invested our energy and time in entirely different aspects of life. Did we lose something? If we had all behaved nicely, then we would likely have engaged in orderly, intensive study. What exactly would have come of that?
This raises the question of whether the time has come to re-examine the role of the school. A boarding school is a kind of laboratory preparing us for life, and basing everything on studies misses something very fundamental. It suppresses initiative, responsibility, and friendship—though of course it leads to calmer, more peaceful outcomes. The disturbances and “pogroms” you saw in the film were indeed acts of horror, but they had significant results, even if not measurable.
E. The Status of Students in School
There are different models that give students status in school. There are democratic schools, and there are various institutions that place trust in students, and so on. The Midrashiyah had something of this, but in a different form. In a democratic school you give students status, but you steer them to make the “right” decisions (there are well-known tricks to achieve this. This is the art of a democratic school principal). But this is a simulated, somewhat fictitious democracy. The reason is that full independence and true status for students is dangerous—certainly when dealing with those you cannot truly trust. But it is an experiment whose risk carries the potential for very different achievements. The administration there knew that recognizing the students’ status could lead them to act against it. It is not clear that it knew, but it turned out quickly that it could also lose control over them, as indeed happened in the end. Even so, it is an educational experiment whose value and significance I would not dismiss.
This independence and sovereignty have ramifications that build something very deep within the student, and the fruits can be reaped later on. I am not here to decide whether it is right to do this. On the contrary, in my judgment it is not right and not responsible to do so (as I also declared in the governing council). And still, when judging it one must take into account the positive sides as well. As is known, in economics, profit is directly proportional to risk, and without risk there is no great profit. Sometimes it is not right to take the risk, but taking risk is something to be appreciated. It has potential for gain that will not be achieved otherwise. Many of us—alumni and others—owe thanks to this bold experiment, even if, in a broader view, it failed or at least lacked justification.
Conclusion
I think the judgment of what the film describes is very complex and, of course, influenced by biases and conditioning—by sentiments, by love or hatred, and the like. It is certainly influenced by visual biases (the force of graphic scenes). In practice, it is a very complex matter, and it deserves a judgment that is likewise complex. There are lights and shadows here, and I am trying—despite the sentiments that I too have—to judge matters as balanced as possible. Not only because I have sentiment for the people and the place, but because that is proper. The “tut-tutting” at the sight of the film is natural and easy and seemingly entirely correct. These are indeed acts of horror, and in some cases they had severe consequences. And still, we should not be captivated by a shallow, initial gaze.
It is hard for me to ignore my anarchistic temperament (which is probably not unrelated to my experiences at the Midrashiyah), and it is quite clear to me that this is part of my indulgent attitude toward these appalling phenomena. But I think anarchism has positive sides even from the perspective of those who are not anarchists. It is worth thinking about it from time to time a bit more sympathetically, even if one ultimately decides to reject it. And certainly perspective never harmed anyone. Ben-Gurion was a dictator who perpetrated atrocities, but it is doubtful whether without that temperament and conduct we would have a state today. This does not mean I will justify his every act, but my judgment of him must be complex.
Discussion
As for the heights achieved by the yeshiva high schools, it seems to me that you are exaggerating.
Rabbi Yogel, to the best of my knowledge, did not study in Novardok but in Kletsk (with R. Aharon Kotler, with whom he remained in contact even after the founding of the Midrasha).
I believe the level of Gemara learning at the end of yeshiva high school is lower than it was back then.
Pathetic. Shallow. Probably extra-Haredi.
Hi,
Thank you for the detailed and in-depth article.
**** A personal and unreasoned remark. In my opinion also incorrect. Deleted by me (M.A.)****
They say that someone came to the Chazon Ish for advice. He said that the community rabbi had traveled abroad, and they asked him to substitute for the rabbi and give a class between Mincha and Ma’ariv. That man was a gifted speaker, and the householders sat enthralled every day and did not want the class to end…
In the meantime the rabbi returned from abroad and resumed giving the class.
The householders went back to catching up on sleep…
Now the “substitute rabbi” came to the Chazon Ish to ask whether it would be proper for him to give a separate class for the householders so they could go home with one more little piece of Torah.
Or should one worry that the regular rabbi would be hurt?
The Chazon Ish asked him whether he was paid for the class. Was there any “livelihood” in it? The rabbi answered, “Nisht, nisht, nisht. It is only for the sake of Heaven.”
The Chazon Ish replied: If it is for the sake of Heaven, run from it like fire.
Although this is not the rabbi’s way, I will add: “Be careful with their glowing embers lest you be burned.”
Your Honor is a Midrashist? Now a few things have become clear to me…
The scenes of violence and vandalism in the film are shocking (I always knew the Midrashists were “wild beasts,” I just didn’t know how far it went). But more than anything I was horrified by the scene in which the “educational” counselor (yeah, right) is seen mocking a student who came to complain to her about humiliation and violence he had experienced. The almost official backing for sadism (including the sadistic “oaths”) and the mockery of its victim reminded me of things I read many years ago about German boarding-school education more than a hundred years ago, and I will stop here—and the discerning will understand.
A substantial portion of the money Michi made in his life is public money (academic institutions are funded by the state).
You are more than welcome to point out Michi’s substantial contributions to the world of Judaism and to the world of physics, after so many fat salaries (and pensions, training funds, gifts, meals, benefits, and more) that Michi received over decades in academia.
And no, teaching courses to undergraduate physics students, writing negligible articles that nobody really looks at, and writing all kinds of nonsense and drivel on this blog here, or giving negligible courses (Torah study, my foot) in Judaism—that does not count.
It was not worth what the state invested in him.
Michi is a parasite and a freeloader.
For a change (and I think for the first time), I sign my name to every word in an article by R. Michi.
My two cents on the film, as a graduate of the Midrasha, is that every second of it is accurate.
Including what was noted above about reviews saying, “Aha, here we see the roots of settler violence,” which is so far-fetched, because (from my acquaintance with the classes around mine) the Midrasha’s product divided into three: religious bourgeoisie (in the Givat Shmuel and Ra’anana style), secular Israelis, and a handful of Haredim who got burned out (in the earlier classes—apparently more, and in the later ones—less).
*
Another side note on something else that was said (in the film itself), where one fellow there said he “regrets” that girls were not incorporated into the Midrasha, and that this is what led to the anarchism.
As I see it, on the contrary: true, the absence of girls may perhaps have fanned the anarchism, but since we are aware that this was embedded (at some intensity, and as the article suggests) in the institution itself—it is better that there were no girls there, because who could foresee the outcome? In that sense, in comparing the Midrasha to Kaduri, one should compare the atmosphere to some extent to a kibbutz, and if we go further afield (not so far, considering that the Midrasha itself was founded before the establishment of the state), to the unruly character of the Palmach (as described in books that dare criticize it). The result was liable to have been disastrous, and it is good that the founders did not break that religious taboo of a yeshiva-without-girls.
[In parentheses, and from a more “frum” perspective: as someone who afterward, by virtue of my work, came into contact with students at the Midrasha’s daughter institution in Kfar Saba, which had always been considered “calmer” and “paler” compared to the Midrasha in Pardes Hannah (even after it closed)—precisely there there were stories (not necessarily severe in the moral sense, but definitely in the religious sense) involving girls, etc.]
The “yeah, right” scene you saw—it was a scene from a “coronation” video.
But on second thought, what is the point of noting that—after all, only recently we saw how conclusions are drawn from coronation videos (cf. the blackface incident at Ulpanat Horev, though distinctions must be made, and further examination is required).
The phenomenon of Haredi roshei metivta, in my opinion, stemmed from the perception that they knew how to teach Gemara better; you emphasized that advantage in the article, in the lack of clear ideological coloration. Of course there was also a price to this, in the form of internal contradictions, some of our friends becoming Haredi and going off to “black” yeshivot without enlisting, in a way that harmed the declared ideology of Midrashiyat Noar Mizrachi (Noam). But the phenomenon of a Haredi educator for a religious-Zionist public was very widespread then, in our generation, in yeshivot and ulpanot, and according to your method it should have produced the individualism in question—except that this did not happen. As is known, in our ulpana too, Kfar Pines, in those same years the prominent figure was Rabbi Baharan, who came from a Jerusalem Haredi background, and as one of the commenters above noted, with him too, again, as in the other yeshiva high schools (except for Ulpanat Amana in Kfar Saba), there was a background and emphasis on the Mussar movement. Of course, he had his own problems, but there truly was an advantage to his Haredi-ness, which balanced the rush after Gush Emunim and Rabbi Kook. Most of the ulpana students idolized Hanan Porat, who, as a son of Kfar Pines, came quite often to give classes and talks to whoever wanted. Rabbi Baharan always made a point of cooling ideological trendiness, showing the opposite pole, and reminding us not to get carried away—not by him and not by anything else. (He took us to demonstrations against Kissinger, but also to the opera at the Tel Aviv Opera House, though that is probably a topic for another discussion.)
Perhaps. But there is still a great distance from that to impressive peaks and achievements.
Mordechai, you did not understand the context. She was not mocking him at all. It was a staged clip done in cooperation with him.
I actually think girls could have had a moderating effect. That seems quite clear to me. This does not mean that the absence of girls is the reason for the chaos, but their presence would have moderated it. But this is not meant as a recommendation for a mixed yeshiva boarding school. It is a valid observation in itself, without leading to a practical conclusion (for other reasons).
Well, comparing it to an ulpana is really absurd. With girls it works differently. In other institutions there were Haredi educators, but it is not true that ideology was absent there—either Haredi ideology or some other ideology. Their presence was the result of necessity. In the Midrasha it was not. Therefore, in the Midrasha, in my opinion, ideology was not present at all.
You wrote, “Without the Midrasha most of us would have gotten a matriculation certificate… without throwing burning cars off the roof, without breaking limbs and paralyzing boys, and without killing a few children by drowning”—and you yourself prove why the film sins against the truth. You cannot take scenes that the creator admitted were completely staged, naturally put only those in all the film’s promos, together with the adjacent news intro about the ‘terror of the settlers,’ and think that people who know nothing will come away with a nuanced view of the institution rather than, “Here is the root of all the troubles of our entire country.” Why was Bakhar unable to find difficult scenes from his own year? Lack of money? Of course, given the budget he received, it was very clear to him what kind of product he was expected to deliver. [And a phone call where you hear someone who doesn’t want to provide dirty material? Don’t worry—the second friend provided exactly the same material, and we merely profited by making the viewers think it was even more horrifying…]
(This does not contradict the fact that there was a drowning after graduation and that a person jumped off the roof and became paralyzed—not as you phrased it at all.)
—You wrote nicely about the institution’s success, but this is really not clear to the viewer, even aside from the glaring imbalance.
—Admission to the institution in earlier years, from what I heard, really was difficult.
—You did write about the solidarity, but the viewer does not at all understand what was positive about that solidarity beyond pleasant company!
—Ideology: from Rabbi Bloch’s time there was a change. A rabbi who tells his students that he read “The Generation” and it is all nonsense—that is different from your experience. (And on the other hand, the young rabbis who came from the Mercaz HaRav direction also had an influence.) And perhaps this is a far more important point than all the other reasons for the dramatic change in the institution.
—When I went for a yeshiva week at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav, I was received by the rabbis there like royalty (and of course there was no need even for an admissions interview). That sounds different from your experiences, especially since I saw there the standout students from the Midrasha.
The classes of Rabbi Bloch, and of course of Rabbi Yogel, were of a higher level than in most Zionist yeshivot. Of course in the twilight years study depended on one’s own will.
And now it is time to ask—couldn’t you find even one rabbi who was a graduate of the place to interview? Did you not hear about the educational experiences of Rabbi Elisha Vishlitzky when he was on the class committee? Did you not see Rabbi Ariel Adri hanging out warmly with his classmates at a reunion? Are there not important rabbis missing—dayanim and roshei yeshiva?
(The rosh yeshiva of Shavei Hevron from “the Kav” is an interesting anecdote to mention, when he did not agree with his teacher Rabbi Tzvi Tau in supporting Bennett, and regretted it afterward.)
You are expecting a film to be a research study. That is irrelevant. And even if one scene was staged, it does not change the essence (though I did not know it was staged). When I write that there would not have been deaths or burning cars, the meaning is clear.
Rabbi Bloch’s claim about “The Generation” is completely legitimate. Why does that mean he has some problem? Because he thinks differently from you? That honesty is very educational, unlike the rigidity of ideologues.
A reader of Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham’s blog did not understand that he was being played by the film. Draw your own conclusions.
You do not stage things and call it documentary, and it is absolutely not just one scene but the central scenes.
I did not claim that he was forbidden to try to educate, although cynicism like, “How is your spiritual Mizrahization this morning?” in my opinion did not contribute to his educational success, in addition to the fact that he truly opposed any sort of freedom. I wrote this in response to your claim that there was no ideology.
Also note that in the film Rabbi Bloch even dares to claim that Rabbi Yogel had no educational path; if from the blog you deleted a similar comment about him, then in the film you presumably would have removed that too.
Likewise I will add that you opened with the statement, “All sides are very emphatic,” and indeed the many reactions of “Here is the exposure of the source of evil in the country” were emphatic, but it is precisely the Midrashists who are not afraid to admit the negative sides—and yet they are the ones attacked for “not accepting the narrative,” when that narrative is based on deception and even falsehood.
If you could also address the rest of my original claims above, I would appreciate it.
The mussar yeshivot in their original form had already closed at the very beginning of the days of the Midrasha and the other yeshiva high schools.
Perhaps you mean their graduates.
As for the reason—I too, like you, would bet on television as the catalyst for the decline (in my second incarnation as a kind of “observer” at the pre-Midrasha program in Kfar Saba [around the time the Midrasha closed], the staff there watched in despair at the effect of the internet—and mobile internet, which was then in its infancy and had begun to become accessible even to boarding students—on the students.
[Part of me wants to look back romantically and say that if it had continued, perhaps Midrashist vandalism would have been a way of ‘living life,’ and television/internet would have spoken less to them. But honestly, it probably would have been the same anarchy, only with documentation and uploads to TikTok…]
Accepted (though I do not remember it being noted in the film; perhaps I missed it). But the question is whether the staged scene reflects reality (even if exaggerated and inflated). To the best of my knowledge the “oaths” are completely authentic, and they express pathological sadism that at least tacitly received the administration’s approval; therefore, even if this specific scene is staged, I still stand firmly by my opinion that as repulsive and shocking as the vandalism scenes are, the sadism is even more shocking.
And now that we have come to this, I myself am a graduate of the yeshiva high school “Pirchei Aharon” in Kiryat Shmuel—another religious-Zionist “flagship.” (One of its famous graduates is “Rabbi” Yona Metzger…) I remember that whenever the Midrasha or Rabbi Yogel was mentioned in the presence of the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Baruch Edelstein zt”l, he would quickly steer the conversation to another topic while failing to hide his embarrassment. Back then we did not understand why.
The transition in Netiv Meir from Rabbi Bina to Kopolovitz (may his name and memory be blotted out) was not due to the spirit of the times but to a more prosaic reason—Rabbi Bina grew old and weak (by the mid-1980s he already had a full-time caregiver).
It is not clear what loss of control there was in Netiv Meir in the 1980s—back then the best nerds still studied there, and the wildest prank was stealing shoes from a rival grade in the month of Adar.
Netiv Meir’s collapse happened because of Kopolovitz’s atrocities (may his name and memory be blotted out) and because the educational staff turned a blind eye and should have understood what was going on in their own house.
In my humble opinion, the education toward obedience and respect for rabbis that was instilled in Netiv Meir’s students was their undoing.
Perhaps if one-sixtieth of the spirit of rebellion of the Midrasha had existed in Netiv Meir, the students would have been able to stop the atrocities and simply say no!
It was not written, and it need not be written. Anyone with sense understands that on his own.
The oaths usually were not pathological. Sometimes a bit wild, and sometimes not even that. Of course, at times they crossed the line of good taste, as children tend to do. This is again an example of outside judgment by someone who does not understand.
And if Yeshivat Pirchei Aharon is also a flagship, then indeed we have gone very far. You reminded me of Rabbi Edelstein recycling for us, with great enjoyment, Leibowitz’s stale joke about soccer players (that they should be given 21 more balls, etc.).
By the way, Kopolovitz was previously at the Midrasha. I do not know whether he committed his deeds there as well, but an agent is presumed to carry out his mission. And even so, I did not hear about the great rebels there who rose up against him. First of all, one does not always hear, and one does not always believe. Beyond that, it is hard to judge boys for what they do in such a situation. It is a very unfamiliar situation, certainly for a religious boy, and he does not really understand what it means (there was also a heartbreaking interview in the film with Haggai Rossenek, who suffered sexual abuse in the Midrasha).
Hello.
You are talking about things of which you understand absolutely nothing. I am also no great expert in documentaries, but I checked and was told that it is common to add atmospheric scenes where authentic material is lacking. Your question as to why they did not present authentic material again indicates lack of understanding (and/or apologetic tendentiousness). There were not always materials, they did not always survive, they are not always made available to the director, and he does not always know about them. The question is whether the scene reflects reality. Unequivocally yes. In this case I also understood that there really was an incident like that of a car being hoisted onto the roof (that of the English teacher Harris), and therefore it is completely legitimate.
It reminds me of the eternal claims of the biblical critics that we have not found the buttons of the Israelites in the Sinai desert, or of Abraham our father in Canaan, and therefore they probably were not there. I permit myself to suppose that your reaction to those criticisms pointed in a somewhat different direction from what you wrote here.
Your comment on my words that there were no cars being thrown off the roof reflects the same lack of understanding. I use materials that were in the film in order to make a point, and you latch onto (incorrectly) a word I used. In light of what I explained above, even the nitpicking is incorrect, but the very nitpicking reflects a lack of understanding.
Your comparison between Rabbi Bloch’s statement and your deleted statement is ridiculous. But I will not delete that one. It is permitted to be ridiculous. It is forbidden to slander without arguments.
The two examples you brought (Etrog and Vishlitzky) are counterexamples in name only. It is a negligible minority in the second-tier leadership, without any real substance of the Kav line, and with one of them there were even Midrashist rebellions (though they were suppressed in the Kav’s usual way). But I really have no interest in entering these foolish polemics. I am speaking about a phenomenon, and you bring me a weak and esoteric example to the contrary.
I found no other argument in your words that requires a response. I am completely done.
My friends, graduates of the Midrasha,
Tal Bakhar was right.
But!!!!! Tal Bakhar is a vile person.
All the acts he describes indeed occurred in the later years.
All the acts that were done are criminal in every respect.
Every class of daletniks wanted to show that it surpassed its predecessors.
Who is to blame for this, plain and simple, is Rabbi Yogel z”l, who failed to stop and prevent the criminal acts.
But Tal, you are despicable.
Not everything needs to be taken outside and publicized to the whole world.
You did not give the right of response to those you slander, Rabbi Yogel ztz”l and Yisrael Sadan z”l.
All the discussions that you Midrasha graduates are conducting are internal discussions.
The graduates’ success in civilian life does not justify these deeds in any way.
Tzvika Melik—Class 20
Tzvika, your protest has been duly noted. In his next film I am sure he will raise Rabbi Yogel and Sadan from the dead in order to give them the right of response.
As for your point itself, if you too agree that everything is true, then why is the right of response so lacking for you? If they had responded, would they have denied this truth? What would have changed? By the way, in the years discussed Rabbi Yogel was no longer the head, and the roshei yeshiva who were serving then (Margalit and Bloch) were interviewed and only backed up the things described.
And regarding taking these matters outside, I am completely in favor. As was said: sunlight is the best disinfectant. It has sparked a discussion that it is very good was sparked, and in fact it would not have happened without this.
By the way, I hope you sent this message to Tal in order to give him the right of response.
It seems to me that it would be worthwhile to get past the nostalgia and give up the bitterness over injuries done in the name of the Midrasha. This film is balanced and reflective and did only good for it and for us.
I regard you as a genius, and therefore I did not understand why you are responding personally after taking my words to places other than what I wrote.
—“Your deleted comment”: I did not write any slanderous comment that was deleted…
—Your reference to “the Kav”: I did not write that I myself am from the Kav, nor that I was trying to prove that Midrashists control the Kav yeshivot. To the best of my knowledge, Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav is not really in “the Kav.”
—The manipulative presentation of staged material: true, like you I have no great understanding of documentaries, but most viewers, at least the religious ones, also do not understand and mistakenly thought it was original. As a religious person I find no license for that. (Even if you try to argue that it fits the narrative.)
You are invited to hear here some of the responses as well. At minute 35, for example, there is an expansion on the emphasis placed on the single sexual abuse story they managed to find from 60 years of the institution.
https://radio.neurim.org.il/podcast/%d7%94%d7%96%d7%a8%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%a8-27-6-23/
To the best of my knowledge, in Kopolovitz’s first 4–5 years at Netiv Meir (may his name and memory be blotted out), he did not commit explicit sexual assault.
He needed time to establish his authority in the yeshiva before he could act without disturbance.
So it is likely that the Midrasha students did not suffer abuse at his hands.
There was a stage when a group of Netiv Meir graduates went up to Rabbi Druckman to complain about that man.
Rabbi Druckman imposed silence on them in order to prevent a desecration of God’s name.
Seemingly, what desecration of God’s name is there in one rabbi having sinned?
The problem is not the one criminal, but that there were dozens of students harmed by him over an entire decade, and not one person arose to stop him or to complain in real time.
The only ones who found the courage to complain did so from a distance, after finishing their studies and after military service.
The silence of the lambs in Netiv Meir is a desecration of God’s name because it showed that the very best education in the religious-Zionist sector produces a flock of sheep that will carry out any instruction given by an authoritative bearded man.
And that is what Rabbi Druckman wanted to hide.
Rabbi Kopolovitz was brought in as an expert in discipline? Where does that come from? I was there when he was brought in (I was a madrikh). He was a weak man, who stood up neither to the students nor to the administration. He accumulated power over the years like any principal, but he did not achieve discipline except at the price of flattering the students. Oh, and Rabbi Bina came from Mir, not from Slabodka.
Sometimes weak people turn out to have methods that people who seem strong do not. His method of using favorites known as Kopo’s boys to break up class cohesion and thus achieve discipline was very effective. He gave them perks, and in return they prevented the class as a whole from sliding into destructive places. Only later did they realize that this was a honey trap in which he expected additional things from them beyond those goals.
Still, does this scene reflect reality? Was there an atmosphere of sadism at the institution? That is the question, not whether it was or was not written that the scene was staged.
If the scene is detached from everyday life at the institution, then this is such wild slander that it is hard to understand why the counselor cooperated with it. But I was not a Midrashist (thank God), so I cannot judge. To the extent that the scene is somehow connected to reality, sadism toward human beings is always more severe than vandalism toward trees and stones.
Rabbi Edelstein zt”l was a Torah scholar and a Jew of great soul and immense love for every person. But I definitely agree that he was unsuited to his role, and also to the one he filled after his retirement, and not because of the humor. (Which, in my opinion, he did not have at all.)
The mussar yeshivot were alive and kicking in the 1940s and 1950s. It was no longer Novardok, but it was still alive and well. The one who in practice dismantled the Mussar movement was the Chazon Ish, with his argument about the influence of the people of one’s place, which obligates a person to flee to the wilderness—that is, to the yeshivot. That argument was directed against involvement in Zionist society, but it was destructive to the Mussar movement because it presented the sociological as overcoming the psychological, and thus in practice dismantled the basic assumption of the Mussar movement people, stemming from Rabbi Israel Salanter, that with the aid of psychological methods they could stand against the modern world. The only ones who stood against this argument were Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Ovadia, who gave their own answer to the Chazon Ish’s argument. In the opinion of the owner of this site, the Chazon Ish’s argument is not really an argument, but at the time the people of the Mussar movement had no good answer to the Chazon Ish, and they fell apart and disappeared.
Interesting to read.
By the way, I noticed that aside from one scene in the film, cases of abuse and bullying are not highlighted there, which is roughly the first thing you would expect to see in a place like that. Did the Midrashists’ solidarity prevent that, or is it simply that it did not come through enough in the film?
I also wondered about that. My impression is that there was no abuse of the weak. I assume the social commitment did not allow it. As for sexual scenes, I also have not heard of a single case, but by their nature these are hidden matters and it is hard to know.
Very interesting!
What was Rabbi Kook’s and Rabbi Ovadia’s answer?
According to Rabbi Kook, the foundation of the people of Israel lies in holiness (including the return of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel), and therefore it is not the secular who define the place but the religious who define the place. The secular succeeded because the religious were too exilic and failed to answer the challenge of returning to the land on the material plane, but in the end the fact that the foundation of the people of Israel lies in holiness means that those who should be troubled by the people around them are the secular in relation to the religious, not the religious in relation to the secular. By the way, in Yoram Kaniuk’s book 1948 a similar conception is embedded. Yoram Kaniuk is completely secular, but he makes a point of mentioning the religious man with the Tanakh who gives religious meaning to the Palmach battles to break through to Jerusalem in 1948, in which Kaniuk participated. He describes how he encountered the verse “In your blood, live” during the battles, and in my opinion that is also the motto of the book. In the end, the secular effort in the war receives its meaning from religion, not the reverse.
Rabbi Ovadia gives a different answer. The Land of Israel is the place of the Rambam and his heirs, Maran the Beit Yosef and Rabbi Ovadia himself. Whoever follows the path of the Rambam and the Beit Yosef is in his proper place, and therefore is not threatened by secularity. Those who are threatened by secularity are only the Ashkenazim who follow the Tosafot, even though the place of the Tosafot is Ashkenaz and not the Land of Israel, and therefore they need to hide in yeshivot so as not to become secular. By contrast, if they followed the method of the Rambam, they would not need to fear secularization. Rabbi Mazuz brought proof for this approach—that the Land of Israel is the place of the Rambam—from the question of the blessing on Hallel on Rosh Chodesh, where ostensibly the Rif and the Rambam disagree with one another (according to the Rif, an individual does not recite the blessing and the congregation does, whereas according to the Rambam nobody recites the blessing), and yet the Beit Yosef ruled like the Rambam and did not rule two against one—Rosh against Rif against Rambam—because the Land of Israel is the place of the Rambam.
Y.D. – did Rabbi Ovadia actually deal with this question and give this answer, or is this the product of your own personal research or someone else’s?
Not only is this not the first thing you expect—you do not expect it at all.
And that is why it was not there. It is that simple.
My own personal research. Rabbi Kook too did not address the problem of the Chazon Ish directly (Rabbi Kook died in 1935). But sometimes it is interesting to think about the issue from this angle.
Both abuse and relations between the sexes (let us call it that?) were addressed in the film. Regarding abuse, one of the graduates who refused to participate in the film was presented in audio, as in: “Oh yes, that, there was also someone who didn’t have a good time, we decided he was the thief, just jokes.” He describes in passing severe abuse such as students beating him for four years, ostracism, and students who urinated on his bed.
On the sexual topic, the film claimed regarding the creator’s classmates that they were so deeply immersed in the group experience that they were not interested in girls, either in the Midrasha or outside it, and in fact they did not go through sexual and romantic maturation at all, at least not in their teenage years. Splendid monks. I think the problem with the absence of women from their lives was not that women would have softened them, but simply that they never had normal sexual and emotional maturation at the age when they are supposed to experience it gradually, and they then had to make up a lot of ground quickly before marriage at age 22–24. Again, in the film’s version only.
As for the fact that they turned out normal and nonviolent later in life: first of all, some of them integrated into the military, which unfortunately has violent and forceful parts within it (among soldiers and officers) that it has not managed to eradicate, so that is not much of a proof and certainly does not indicate anything one way or the other.
But I will let you in on a secret—even war criminals, with a thousand thousand distinctions, who were swept along with their friends in a lawless, dehumanizing atmosphere in enemy territory into committing cruel crimes against innocents, will go back to being “normal” when they return to civilian life, and most of them will not murder anyone again (yes, Arab soldiers too). It is a fascinating phenomenon, how a person disconnects from himself within the crowd. The question will always be: as a society, do we care about the victims or only about the criminals? If the criminals, aside from their crimes, are useful and wealthy citizens, is everything fine?
Out of interest, does the rabbi know democratic schools up close? Or has he studied the democratic-education method?
Also, what he calls “real democracy,” in contrast to “democratic playacting,” is not democracy as a form of political government. It is tribal majority rule. A tribal assembly is held, the tribal chief (who is apparently the strongest warrior) proposes something, the majority decides—whether to migrate north or south, or execute a thief, or kill all the redheads, or all the witches. This is even more ancient and primitive than monarchy; at least the king rules a complex kingdom with a nobility class that disperses authority and splits into smaller fiefs. A tribal council is the oldest, most basic, and most primitive thing there is. There is no justice there, only who is strongest and who will get the majority to support him.
It is very strange to claim that the elite of the sector thinks, according to the article, that “real democracy” is only unrestricted tribal majority rule, and yet that this has no connection to the hilltop youth. As if the hyssop on the wall does not look at the cedars and learn from them… or try to resemble them… or radicalize what the cedars say more politely…
Teenagers are teenagers, and they really cannot live alone and run themselves without adults who support, teach, and guide them. The kibbutzim discovered that, the boarding schools discovered that. Do not blame the students of Netiv Meir for not resisting the sword of Kopolovitz; Ezra Landauver easily seduced boys from all the yeshiva high schools in the country, and also some Haredi boys, many Bedouin youths, and Nepali street children.
Perhaps the expression really is exaggerated. What can nevertheless be said is that until the 1980s there was alignment between the students’ expectations and the system’s expectations, including at the Midrasha. Even if not all the institutions were run in the same way, it was still clear what a yeshiva high school was about and what it was trying to achieve (Torah study with an emphasis on Gemara on the one hand, and a good matriculation certificate on the other).
Since the 1980s it has converged less, and this was reflected in the collapse of yeshiva high schools such as Netiv Meir, the Midrasha, Nehalim, and others. So what happened since then? Was it because white-shirt roshei metivta entered the yeshivot in place of the Haredi roshei metivta who had been there until then? Or was it because of television? The matriculation exam in Gemara? The disappearance of the Mussar movement? Or all the answers together? What happened?
One can list several factors, but the main one in my opinion is that this method was not right from the outset for the general public. It is not clear how anyone thought that studies until evening, including half a day of Gemara, should be the default for the religious student.
In this context I will mention what I once wrote here about Avi, who became principal of the technological school at Bar-Ilan. He saw that Yiddishkeit was lacking, and to my astonishment decided to reduce the weekly Gemara hours. He explained to me that if people hate Gemara, adding hours only causes damage. Better that they study one hour with good taste than six with bad taste. In the long run this will bring more Torah and more Yiddishkeit.
“Refused to participate in the film”—oh, come on. Did you think that a person from the Midrasha who was caught red-handed stealing from his close friends would come and tell how much he stole and what he did with all the money?!
That is the director’s way of feeding you the story. And along the way letting him invent a “tradition of finding a thief.”
“In passing he exposed four years of abuse”—are you kidding? He neither lived through nor exposed that; he left the institution on the spot (once he grasped his miserable situation, combined with the acts of a few isolated boys). There is no justification for it, but enough distorting. (By the way, usually we are talking about three years.)
As for your words about war criminals, of course there is no need to respond; I join the reasons so many people, from the Midrasha and outside it, think the film is unworthy.
I was at the premiere screening of the film.
In the first two weeks, like many graduates, I felt awful.
I was very angry about the director’s basic lack of integrity, about the distortion of reality, the tendentiousness, the deliberate emphasis on the bad…
I too used phrases like: this is not the Midrasha I knew, this is only Class 50 and up, with us it really was not like that, and so on and so forth.
After two weeks it hit me—the penny finally dropped—for the benefit of those who did not study at the Midrasha.
.
The guy is nothing less than a genius at marketing.
He taught us how marketing is done, how you take a pretty nice product and turn it into something half the country is talking about.
He opened the instruction manual for marketing in the modern age and did not skip a single clause.
First of all, he found a “sacred cow” that matters deeply to a lot of people.
If you ask a Midrasha graduate what place affected him most in life, where he understood the meaning of the value of friendship, he will answer: the Midrasha.
Ask him what period in life he enjoyed the most, and he will likely answer that it was the Midrasha.
If you ask a Midrasha graduate what he thinks of Rabbi Yuval z”l, he will answer that the man was a giant, a genius in Torah, an educator ahead of his time, a person who influenced religious Zionism more than anyone else; he will also tell you about an educator who loved his student with all his soul, and he will go on and on.
He took the brand “Midrashiyat Noam,” with all its significance—namely, the sacred cow—and decided to slaughter it, burn the body, and hang what remained in the center of town.
He mixed physical violence and pathological vandalism with Kristallnacht and its historical significance.
Dark urges of sexual harassment with abuse of a classmate who never forgave.
Mistreatment of the weak (jamils and below) with deep contempt for educators and roshei metivta.
He told of the contempt and disdain the students felt for the madrikhim.
My late father Chaim was a madrikh at the Midrasha for years.
I was and still am very proud of the fact that he was a madrikh at the Midrasha. Graduates appreciated him and loved him greatly. They loved him and they loved the Midrasha. When I met graduates who had been his charges, they always told me what a special madrikh he had been; they certainly did not disdain him.
My father was not the only madrikh of whom people thought good things.
Adolescent antics of living on the edge mixed with students drowning.
Images of a student smashing a car in a frenzy and burning cars being thrown off the roof and crashing, together with an amazing Purim production.
A little Sayeret Matkal, Shin Bet, uniforms, exploding hormones, and girls.
Take all of those, mix them together hard, cook over a low flame, create expectation—and there you have the publicity, there you have the fame.
That is how you turn yourself from a relatively anonymous director and creator into someone appearing in prime time
on television, in articles in Haaretz and Makor Rishon, and a central topic of conversation in graduates’ WhatsApp groups, at the Shabbat table, and in the synagogue.
Mati my dear, you are one of the best marketing and branding people in the country. Take this case study and make a course out of it, write a book about it—it will surely be a bestseller.
Well done, dear director, you succeeded, you became famous, now you are a celeb; it is just a great shame that you made this whole round at our expense, the graduates of the Midrasha.
I like what is written and the analysis. There are two additional explanations that were not written (which may explain something, though certainly not everything):
1. The pre-Midrasha program in Kfar Saba was an institution with very strong discipline and no respect for the students. It seems logical to me that in the years it existed, it influenced the boundary-breaking at the Midrasha.
2. The fact that there was an ideological/religious gap between the rabbis, who were Haredi (later hardal), and the students may also have had an effect. Students could not see the rabbis as figures one could trust and follow. Rabbi Yogel is somewhat exceptional—because he belonged to an earlier generation and was not connected to that politics.
Accurate words. I am from Class 21, and I told my children that I am ashamed of the film.
I knew your father, and I remember him very favorably as a madrikh.
As an outside observer, and reading the reviews here and there, I truly had no way to decide. Until, to my astonishment, I discovered that most of the archival materials are simply on YouTube, available to anyone, in their full versions. So first of all, this is an indictment of the research. Second, out of enormous curiosity, I began watching dozens of YouTube videos uploaded by students and graduates, without blurred faces and without chopped-up excerpts, and I was amazed by the gap.
For example, there is a scene in the film shown several times that makes it look as though the beit midrash is burning and fireworks are flying into the sky. In the full film, you see that it is part of the Purim celebration. The boys light fireworks on the roof and then all run into the beit midrash to dance in circles. Because of the poor quality of the recording and the nighttime filming, the frame overexposes, and this creates the illusion that the roof is burning and that there is also fire inside the beit midrash. In addition, the frame is cut right after the fireworks are lit, and you hear roars of running. The connection between a burning beit midrash, students running and roaring—creates a horrifying impression. If he had left even 20 seconds of footage, one would have seen a classic sight of yeshiva boys dancing in circles for a long time, like nerdy yeshiva boys. The gap between the dance circles and the somewhat naïve fireworks and the appearance in the film is unfair. And this pattern repeats itself. There is hardly a single moment of sanity in the film: students studying, a rabbi giving a talk (aside from small prayer clips, which can also be found online at length). A sane picture of a yeshiva.
In general, when one sees full-length documentation of the “vandalism,” it turns out that for the most part it was part of Hanukkah and Purim events—which yeshiva does not have such things?—and sometimes there was even an audience of hundreds of spectators with security personnel and the like. Not at all as it comes across in the film. Clearly the director chose specific excerpts for a cinematic purpose (at best), and less for a documentary one.
In addition, the film’s theme is very shallow. There is no even slightly deep analysis of the reasons for the downfall, and from a plot standpoint there is no explanation for the meteoric rise. Things are said describing the grand aspirations of the founders, but aspirations do not produce success. Regarding the downfall too, it is said again and again that the lack of rules spiraled out of control. But there is no explanation how it remained under control for so many years. And I am talking about a somewhat in-depth explanation, perhaps by an outside expert interviewee and not only by the yeshiva graduates, and not only statements that are probably fairly self-evident to the yeshiva graduates.
In short, the film is an internal product of the yeshiva’s interviewees with a director who is himself a graduate of the yeshiva, and perhaps this is the director’s way of continuing the NMPaH tradition, or of making up for some sense of lack after two decades—surpassing in wildness everything that came before him. Beyond the successful vandalism the director carried out, there are holes in all the other aspects:
From a documentary standpoint, he edited the video clips in a way that does not reflect reality at all (as stated, see YouTube).
From a plot standpoint, the connection between the rise and the fall is unclear. What was the original strength of this vandalistic yeshiva? What was the secret of its charm? Why are its graduates so attached to it, and why are most of them unwilling to speak ill of it? Repeating the word “solidarity” many times does not provide an explanation. Clearly the administration had a role in this “solidarity,” and it is not clear how it accomplished this so successfully (yes, Rabbi Yogel. A bit more explanation would not hurt).
From the standpoint of the theme, it is not clear what break occurred and what caused it. As stated, there are statements by the interviewees, but there are no causal statements that make enough sense at a reasonable level (I am not talking about deep psycho-sociological research). And I am sure one could investigate extensively what went on there and derive meaningful insights from it, but the naïve viewer (like me), when shown testosteroned boys, yeshiva and religion, young age, hormones, shattering glass, burning buildings, and a resentful staff member—and all this on loops and with excellent cinematic music—the connection made is shallow and natural: aggressive adolescent high spirits, which is basically something we all know in miniature from our own lives when we were young, or from our own young children, what everyone does at certain ages and in a certain period. But that apparently misses the Midrasha. There seems to have been something distinctive there and less instinctive, and that is a shame.
Do you really know the story and know that it was not as bad as all that?
That really sticks a pin into all the talk about “solidarity” being so meaningful and serious when there are casualties like these…
Very nice article. Thank you.
It seemed to me from the film that there were too many graduates without kippot there.
Is that true? Is it connected to the Midrasha, or more generally to dropping out in the religious community?
First of all, an important principle in critical viewing: when you see several people, there is no necessity at all to assume this is a representative sample. It is the director’s choice. Even if he makes it for reasons relevant to the film (for example, because in his opinion these are the people with the information or the interesting things to say), it still does not necessarily represent the graduates as a whole.
Second, there really is a fair amount of secularization. In our time, as far as I know, secularization in the Midrasha was at a significantly higher percentage than in other yeshiva high schools (as was becoming Haredi). I do not know what the situation was in the final years of the Midrasha’s existence. Clearly, in the religious public as a whole there is also dropout, and at least its visible forms are of greater scope than among the Haredim. I do not understand the question, since this is a simple and well-known fact, and I have already dealt quite a bit here on the site with it and its implications.
You wrote, “Ben-Gurion was a dictator who committed atrocities…”—which atrocities are you referring to?
The Altalena. The persecution of Irgun and Lehi members, and denial of work and health services to them. Wiretapping and use of the Mossad for his political needs. Need more?
The Altalena people were rebels against the crown.
There was no sovereignty against which one could rebel (at least not in the halakhic sense). The weapons were meant to be distributed to the Etzel in Jerusalem (in Jerusalem there still was no IDF) according to Begin’s agreement with Ben-Gurion, which Ben-Gurion violated. Of course there is also the question whether Ben-Gurion had ulterior motives when he fired on the Altalena, for example motives connected to Begin…
Rebels against the crown precisely in the halakhic sense.
See Hilkhot Gezelah va-Avedah, chapter 5, halakha 18:
“When does this apply? To a king whose coin circulates in those lands, for the inhabitants of that land have accepted him and relied upon him as their master, and they are his servants.”
Since already at that time the currency of Ben-Gurion’s government had been accepted as legal tender (Yanai Spitzer wrote about this recently), he had the status of a king, and the Altalena had the status of rebels against the crown.
So maybe we should fire cannons at the opponents of the reform, because they are rebels against the crown?
The refusing pilots are certainly rebels against the crown, but they found a legal loophole by which to evade the definition, claiming that they are volunteers and not legally obligated. But truly, under the strict law, the government is permitted to put them to death as rebels. And in military law there is a concept of summary field judgment, one of whose punishments is death.
The director admitted that this is the story.
What is interesting is that Netiv Meir, despite all the differences, followed a fairly similar path. Rabbi Bina was a great personality in his own right—a scholar, pioneer, and fighter in the Brigade—who pushed the students as high as possible, but in the 1980s the place gradually lost control. The students began running wilder and wilder, and Rabbi Bina was unable to rein them in. Then they decided to bring in Kopolovitz (from Midrashiyat Noam, I think), who was none of those things but was known as a compromise between the blacks and the whites (they called him “Krembo”) and as an expert in discipline. Then it turned out that something else was hiding behind that discipline, and the ship sank. His methods succeeded in bringing discipline to Netiv Meir, but it turned out he also used them to obtain personal favors for himself (in parentheses, this suddenly reminded me of Rabbi Avraham Stav’s column about Moses striking the rock: https://www.inn.co.il/news/605405).
There was something in the 1980s that caused the classic model of the yeshiva high schools to spin out of control and crash. Was it the decline of the mussar yeshivot, which had been the intellectual rear guard of those distinctive roshei yeshiva (Rabbi Yogel from Novardok, Rabbi Bina from Slabodka, Rabbi Avraham Zuckerman in Kfar HaRo’eh, and others), or was it the arrival of television in religious-Zionist homes that caused the students to lose all restraint?
This is a fascinating sociological question to which, in my opinion, we still do not have a good answer. All we have is a faltering educational system that has not managed to reach the heights that the yeshiva high schools reached up through the 1980s.