NEW JERSEY
Forward
June 27, 2017
Mike Moskowitz
COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTOR
Since I became observant in high school, I’ve been asked, “How can religious people act that way?” by non-Orthodox friends and family more than I would like to remember… and they are asking a good question.
I have had the privilege of spending the decade after high school in full-time learning in two of the largest yeshivas in the world, one in Lakewood, N.J., and one in Jerusalem. Sitting in a room with 800 other young men learning, speaking and breathing the texts that have been part of our tradition for 3,500 years, the Torah looks alive and very well.
Yesterday I saw several of those young men being arrested by the FBI for fraud. We were taught to be Talmidei Chachamim – practitioners of the Torah’s wisdom. The goal was to minimize, and ideally eliminate, the space between the ideal Torah-centric life and the actual way we live our lives.
Unfortunately, the void between the two is vast, painfully disappointing and continues to widen. The world and our communities are changing, perhaps faster than ever, but spiritual practice is often frozen in time. There is complex tension between innovation and tradition that requires collective rabbinic skill to address. But instead of being present for the holy labor of asking what God expects from us now, the pause button was pressed and the need for updated answers avoided.
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