Question

To Rabbi Abraham, may he live long and well,

Introduction
There are many phenomena that the yeshiva world tends to ignore. Many formerly religious people come out of the yeshiva world, and many yeshiva graduates are, to put it mildly, far from punctilious in observance. In the yeshivot’s defense, education does not rest solely on the content and experience absorbed in the higher yeshivot, but also on the educational foundation from home, so the yeshivot cannot be blamed entirely for the phenomenon. Still, alongside the intra-sector discussions about the various issues surrounding formerly religious people, there is silence מצד the yeshivot, and that raises many questions. Beyond the question of why some yeshiva graduates are not careful about Jewish law and commandment observance, the question I want to ask is this: why is the yeshiva experience so temporary? How is it that a student leaves yeshiva and forgets his Torah so quickly?
There are various answers and theories to this question, but from my personal experience, and from familiarity with the experiences of friends from other yeshivot, I want to focus on one point—the emotional challenges built into the experience of Torah study in yeshiva.
I should emphasize in advance that this article is not scientific. I did not conduct a study checking what percentage of formerly religious people come from yeshivot, which yeshivot they come from, how many graduates are “very religious,” and how many do not pray three times a day or put on tefillin. I want to present a phenomenon for which there is all sorts of evidence on the ground. I know the phenomenon from my own personal experience, from the yeshivot where I studied, from my friends’ yeshivot, and from my friends themselves. There is no attempt here to present facts and lay out data, only to spark discussion, to provoke thought. I assume there will be things here that naturally invite criticism—as though this is a marginal phenomenon, isolated and unimportant cases, just stories and not reality—but in my opinion, even if this is not a representative phenomenon, it is not a negligible one. And again, my intention is only to raise points for the reader’s self-examination.
The yeshiva trap—the gap between the student and the yeshiva
The story begins even before yeshiva. Today, in significant parts of the Religious Zionist public, the norm is to send young men to hesder yeshivot or higher yeshivot. The rabbis in the yeshiva high schools push students to go to yeshiva and try to steer them to the place that, in their view, suits them best. Over the years, a norm has developed according to which the better students go to yeshiva.
If we look at the religious teenager in 2020, we see a figure that doesn’t really match the image of the “yeshiva guy”: the average teenager spends quite a few hours a day on social media like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (with content that is “borderline” from a Torah perspective), follows reality shows, dances at mixed weddings, goes to bars and parties—so the world of the average teenager is pretty far from the yeshiva world in Torah terms. Once he enters yeshiva, the gap between yeshiva and “life” is felt very quickly, and each student reacts differently—some take a step back from their “previous world,” some never really get into things, and some manage to find healthy balances.
Be that as it may, this experience of the gap is completely denied. It seems that the yeshiva assumes everyone “falls into line,” behaves according to the norms, and abandons the various interests they brought in “from outside.” The problem is that in practice that is not the case, and the repression of the gap creates a great deal of conflict and tension between the “outside world” and the yeshiva, a gap that needs to be addressed. The ignoring of the “outside world” directly harms the effectiveness of the learning—this ignoring creates an identity tension within the student himself (who is he really—the “yeshiva guy” or the Bnei Akiva counselor?), because it creates a dichotomy between the worlds. The dichotomy causes a short circuit in communication and prevents the values of the yeshiva from flowing into the “real world.” In the past, before the cellphone era, a student would enter yeshiva like Noah’s Ark[1], truly taking upon himself the yoke of Torah, and he would remain a “yeshiva guy” even when he left it. Nowadays, a student can be a “yeshiva guy” while studying in yeshiva, and on Thursday night go out to parties, smoke, and drink. The gaps between yeshiva and the “outside world” only keep widening as the student spectrum keeps widening, and this deserves proper attention.
From the perspective of the yeshiva as an institution, there is an expectation for God-fearing students who want to deepen their religious world. The yeshiva is not interested in dealing with “meta” questions like why study Talmud, etc., but simply in teaching Talmud. It seems that the yeshivot understand that there is no chance of changing the students’ lifestyles, and if there are some for whom the content unfortunately “won’t speak,” the hope is to influence those who do manage to connect.
It seems there is a trap here: on the one hand, many students want to study in yeshiva. On the other hand, there are very large gaps between the students’ way of life and the world of the yeshiva, and that can harm the effectiveness of the learning. The yeshivot continue to accept everyone, and the students come even if the framework does not suit them (and perhaps can even harm them, as will be seen below), and from there the road is short to the sad results of large numbers of formerly religious people and the like among the graduates.
Interim summary:
We have before us three problems: a. the existing norm in the yeshiva high schools of going to yeshiva ultimately harms students. b. The yeshivot accept all students who want to come (screening only happens if the number of students exceeds capacity). c. There is no adaptation that makes it possible to contain students who seemingly do not fit the framework.
My claim is that if the yeshiva world cannot deal with the first two problems, it must deal with the third, and narrow the gap between the students’ world and the study hall. At the very least—to listen to the students’ world, and I will expand on that in the following points.
The problem of learning Talmud and the fear of asking questions
With some rough generalization, the main occupation in yeshiva is learning Talmud. The Talmud is a difficult and complex text, and not only because of the Aramaic. It is no revelation to say that the Talmud deals with microscopic matters that are not necessarily relevant to life in any way; the way questions are asked in the Talmud often seems forced, and many passages end in a way that does not lead to practical Jewish law. This text is not supposed to be self-evident, and when a student approaches the study hall, the place where the Talmud stands at the center, many things seem unclear to him. The student does not always consciously ask himself these questions, but the questions are there “in the air.” Assuming the student knows how to ask the hard questions, it is pretty frightening to ask so openly such “heretical” questions, questions that do not take the Talmud and what is written in it for granted. Someone who asks such questions will be perceived as ‘weak’ in Talmud study. And I am not sure the rabbi will know how to answer those questions in a deep and broad way.
If there were not such a large gap between the students’ real world, the one outside the yeshiva, and the world of the yeshiva—these problems might disappear thanks to emotional identification with the yeshiva world. But since that is not the situation, these problems become acute.
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And we still haven’t talked about “beliefs and ideas”:
A yeshiva takes in a student and, for some reason, assumes that the young man arrives with an established religious world. To be fair, I don’t know any 18-year-olds with an established religious world, and every child needs answers to the fundamental questions. To his sorrow, he quickly discovers that there will not be in-depth discussions about the existence of God, what divinity is, why one should keep the commandments, what providence is, the problem of evil, and many other essential issues that stand at the basis of our religious world. There cannot be a religious world in which we do not have the tools to deal with these questions.
The result is that a student sits in a Talmud/Jewish law/Hebrew Bible class and leaves aside all the questions and difficulties that he is afraid to express. There is almost no such thing as a group of students sitting with the rabbi in class, in completely free and open conversation—raising the most complex and fundamental issues, and discussing all the hard questions deeply without fear of “how will I look” if I ask about the existence of God, without being afraid to ask “heretical” questions. There is a feeling that it is “not done” to ask such questions in ‘faith’ studies in yeshiva. But the need to study these topics in ‘thought’ is a basic need for every religious person, whoever he may be. Delving into sources cannot just mean piling up books by Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Soloveitchik (and of course books from the generations before them), which contain a great deal of content, but do not necessarily overlap with what troubles the students. More than that: even if these books occasionally deal with fundamental questions, can we really expect the learner to accept the ideas simply because that’s what is written in books? Knowing the content is not enough. Every book needs to be read in an orderly way, together, while asking: do I identify with what is written? Does what is written seem true to me? What would someone who disagrees say? Are there other ways to look deeply at the issue? And so too Talmud should be learned—free and honest learning. That is also how the learning can become deep and meaningful for students—learning that occupies them, and not something simply placed on them and imposed on them.
The effectiveness of learning shows itself in the years after yeshiva. When the student is in yeshiva he can be engaged and enjoy it. But all that is worth nothing if it does not cross the boundaries of the study hall.
The student’s expectations
It seems that the students too have a part in their disappointment with yeshiva. Many enter yeshiva without having worked out for themselves a clear system of expectations and matched it against what the yeshiva world offers. A clear set of expectations should stand before the student when he is at the stage of choosing a yeshiva. I would suggest a few guiding questions—

• What kind of response am I expecting to get from the yeshiva:

Do I want to study Talmud? Am I expecting answers to questions of faith? Am I expecting to find religious meaning in yeshiva? Do I want to go to yeshiva in order to broaden my knowledge? Am I going for the religious/intellectual experience? What content interests me? What speaks to me?

• What hidden (or visible) needs are drawing me to study in yeshiva:

Do I really have a desire to be connected to Torah? Maybe a desire to belong to a community, to identify with the religious public? Is it only the desire to stay “on track,” to be like everyone else? Or perhaps the desire to be appreciated (if I study in a ‘serious’ yeshiva, or one considered to be such, with intelligent students)?
These are questions for self-reflection. First of all, these questions are important for self-clarification in general. In addition, they can help us examine our choices, our actions, and learn from—or avoid—mistakes.
The emotional difficulties
As I noted at the beginning, the gaps (gaps of culture and content) between the student’s world and the yeshiva create tensions, and those tensions give rise to emotional crises. True, detachment from the “outside world” also has positive sides—when a person clears space for himself he goes through processes that strengthen him, and he becomes a better and deeper person; but today, when it is very hard to disconnect because everyone has a smartphone in his pocket, the gaps and tensions are an emotional burden. With the conflict come questions and difficulties, and not everyone has the courage to turn and ask for help, because when I ask for help, I label myself as ‘weak,’ as a student who is not really “in the game.” These questions and difficulties are legitimate things, but they come to seem negative and damaging.
The learning in yeshiva is a medium that contains a lot of self-criticism: how much did I learn today; was the learning meaningful; did I manage to understand the passage? But when the answer to these questions is negative—when we don’t meet the learning goals we set for ourselves, when we don’t understand the lecture, when we don’t learn properly—the endless, Sisyphean chase after learning can lead to extreme situations: students don’t sleep or eat properly, don’t sit with friends, only want to keep learning, disconnect from the world in a kind of asceticism, all because of their inner struggle to attain something unattainable. They punish themselves, sometimes out of inertia and from an unconscious place. At some point the bubble bursts, when they go into the army or finish yeshiva (or sometimes just suddenly in the middle of their studies), and their connection with the world is renewed, and a very difficult crisis arises—questions come up about the relevance of the learning, and a great deal of self-directed anger accumulates, along with endless doubts about their very time in yeshiva.
The frustrations are often directed at ourselves, but there are those who blame the yeshiva, the friends, the whole world: because they had a bad experience in yeshiva X, they run to yeshiva Y, and so they wander around like abandoned boys without finding their place. All these phenomena come from one place—a lack of awareness of our needs. And in order to be self-aware, one has to go through a grueling maturation process, one that not everyone can manage alone without help. The first step in the process is trying to listen to ourselves. When something weighs on us—to give it expression. And the greatest burden is that there is no place for our inner world, when we feel exceptional and alone. When a student experiences emotional turbulence, and has hard questions about the Talmud, about religion, about life, and has no way and nowhere to express that—he automatically labels himself negatively as weak, as a failing student, as an irrelevant, unwanted student. But the truth is exactly the opposite—precisely when there is turmoil, that is the place from which learning should come. One does not learn “because one has to,” but because it comes from within. As long as the learning does not come from those places that are storming within the student, the student will not get the best out of the learning, if anything at all.
Repair
Besides the proposal for self-reflection on the part of each student, I would also suggest some solutions for the yeshivot. I will not get into admissions considerations, since that is not necessarily the yeshivot’s exclusive responsibility. But if so many students are already arriving, the gaps must be understood. The cultural gaps and the content gaps must be recognized. It is immoral to ignore this.
We must get rid of the notion that there are questions that are “not appropriate” to ask. In yeshiva one must ask e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. This is the first place in the religious teenager’s life where people deal with the essence and foundation of things, and it is forbidden to ignore the topics that genuinely touch the student. When the students’ inner world has no stage, that becomes a trigger for emotional crises, which every student experiences at different periods during his years in yeshiva (or afterward), and this can create aversion to the Torah world.
The study of ‘thought’ needs to change its definition. Studying ‘thought’ does not mean getting to know books, but study no less deep than Talmud study. I have seen only a tiny handful (I wish I knew more) in the yeshiva world who knew how to learn that way, with breadth of mind. This is critical for establishing the religious world, on which all the other floors are built.
And on a more practical level, a yeshiva needs the involvement of an educational counselor/professional therapist. As in every school, yeshivot need a professional who knows how to accompany students personally. Yeshiva students are not psychologically immune, and they are human beings just like school students. In yeshiva there is time for many questions about life, and there needs to be someone who knows how to help, someone accessible to the student. It is a terrible distress when there is no one to turn to.
Students need guidance and direction. They need the rabbi who will learn with them one-on-one, who will awaken the learning, who will give motivation, who will accompany each and every student, and not merely give lectures. This is not an academic institution where one merely acquires education. Guidance should be an inseparable part of the homeroom rabbi’s role. We are not talking about a rabbi who has deep soul-conversations until dawn—that is not the demand. Students need a figure they can connect to, draw values and content from, and that can be achieved through closeness in learning. Without that closeness, the student does not feel he belongs, and thus the sense of belonging to the religious world is also damaged.
In conclusion
I’ll say this openly: this subject weighs on me. I meet quite a few yeshiva graduates, and I see again and again frustrating stories, students for whom the study hall left a painful memory. I hope that through this article I will succeed in sparking a substantive discussion, even though I did not write it in an “official” objective way, and even though the topic may be extremely sensitive for certain people. With the hope that Torah study will contribute and not damage.

Ariel Youngster,
Graduate of a hesder yeshiva, social work student at Bar-Ilan University. This article was written במסגרת the course “Welfare Policy and Social Services.”

[1] A metaphor that my teacher Rabbi Yair Dreyfus, may he live long and well, likes to use.