Haredi Isolation in Changing Environments: A Case Study in Yeshiva Immigration

In this generation . . . following the destruction in Europe, when the Torah centers were destroyed . . . the lofty task of rebuilding the ruins falls on the Jews of America and the Land of Israel . . . They must create an atmosphere of dedication to the Torah . . . without involvement in any external and tangential things. ¹

—Rabbi Aharon Kotler (c. 1943)

Haredi Judaism works hard to isolate itself from the non-Haredi elements in modern environments. Indeed, Haredi Judaism may be accurately defined by social and intellectual isolationism combined with strict adherence to halakhah, Jewish law. Obviously, this isolationism is not an all-or-nothing affair. Haredi communities are isolated from their cultural contexts to greater or less degrees, depending on how well they succeed in creating a social environment free from the outside influences they consider dangerous. ² Both ideological as well as social factors affect the extent to which a given Haredi sub-culture finds extreme isolation both desirable and feasible. Haredi sub-communities develop in different cultural contexts. Hungary of the mid-nineteenth century, where Haredi Jewry first concretized its ultra-conservative ideology, differs significantly from the United States in the middle of the twentieth century, where many Haredi refugees fled from the Holocaust, which differs significantly from Meah She'arim or Bnei Brak in the independent State of Israel. In each context Haredi Jews may see the environment as threatening to a greater or lesser extent; they may see greater or lesser value in influencing "wrongdoers" outside their narrow community; they may be more or less successful at developing a social and economic infrastructure which allows for isolation. To more fully understand the social and religious history of Haredi Jewry, we must identify the ways in which differences in social and cultural contexts affect the contact which Haredi Jews have with non-Haredi people and ideas.

This essay will examine two yeshivas, both led by the staunchly Haredi R. Aharon Kotler, and the ways that social and ideological factors influence the relationship between the yeshiva and the given Jewish social environment. ³ Despite obvious similarities between the two institutions, they isolated themselves from their environments in different ways. This reflects crucial structural differences between Jewish society in Kletzk, Poland and that of the United States. We shall see that as the yeshiva moved from the relatively integrated and more organically Jewish towns of Eastern Europe to the more pluralistic and less traditional atmosphere in the United States, it tended toward greater isolation.

R. Kotler was the rosh yeshiva of two major yeshivas, 'Etz Hayyim in Kletzk, Poland and Beth Medrash Govoha [sic] in Lakewood, New Jersey. Both yeshivas followed the model of R. Hayyim Volozhin's Lithuanian yeshiva, originally founded in 1803. At that early date,R. Hayyim could not have predicted the severity of the religious and social crisis that would plague traditional Judaism later in the century. ⁴ He did not know, nor could he have known, that Haskalah, Zionism, socialism, and the modern social changes that helped support these ideologies would gradually push the majority of Eastern European Jews away from traditional halakhic behavior. In this changing environment the Lithuanian yeshiva became a most effective tool in the Orthodox battle against what it perceives as the corrupting influences of modernity. The yeshiva socializes teenage students into a powerful Orthodox atmosphere, and during this critical stage in the development of personal identity and sense of self, seeks to isolate them from the perceived dangers of the outside. It inculcates Orthodox attitudes and patterns of behavior, which many students take with them when they leave, and which they may then pass along to their own children and students. The yeshiva education grants students competence in the vast and highly complex world of Talmud and Rabbinic literature, while depriving them of systematic general or vocational education that might help them succeed outside of a rabbinical profession. Yeshiva graduates are likely to be Orthodox, and remain Orthodox their...