“The Workshop for the Nation’s Soul” vs. “A Rabbi Factory”—Contrasting the Lithuanian Yeshiva with the Rabbinical Seminary

Abstract

The central institutional model that served Jewish Orthodoxy in its struggle with the threat to the tradition of the modern era and from which grew its intellectual leadership was ultimately the model of the Lithuanian Yeshiva. However, from the second half of the nineteenth-century, new models of Jewish higher education institutions emerged and were even adopted by Orthodox circles. How, then, did the trustees of the Lithuanian yeshiva model see the new institutional models? Our discussion will focus on the modern yeshivas and rabbinical seminaries that accepted the Orthodox halakhic view, including the Tahkemoni rabbinical seminary in Warsaw, the Hildesheimer Seminary in Berlin (1873–1938), and the Seminary for the Diaspora in Jerusalem (1956). The Lithuanian rabbis held to the supremacy of the Lithuanian Yeshiva model. However, until World War II, they saw the Orthodox rabbinical seminary as an institute suitable to its time and place—Germany, most of whose Jews were liberal—and did not consider it able to produce a Torah scholar worthy of his name. They opposed the establishment of rabbinical seminaries in Eastern Europe and the Land of Israel, and after the war, when the issue of establishing a rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem was raised, they rejected the Orthodox rabbinical seminary outright and no longer recognized its contribution to its time and place—Germany.

1. Introduction

The central institutional model that served Jewish Orthodoxy in its struggle with the threat to the tradition of the modern era and from which grew its intellectual leadership was ultimately the model of the Lithuanian yeshiva [a higher Talmudic education institute], which has become a significant research topic since the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The Volozhin Yeshiva was established in the Russian empire by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin at the beginning of the nineteenth century and represented a new model in Jewish public life. It was established in order to assist young men, as much as possible, to uphold the ideal of Torah study, according to the study method of Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (the Vilna Gaon), the rabbi of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, which was different to the study method of the old yeshivas. Its influence spread across all of Lithuanian Jewry and beyond. For the first time in Europe, a yeshiva model was founded that had economic independence, was not dependent on the local community, and attracted select students from all four corners of the earth. These differences were also reflected in its large number of students (Stampfer 2012; Kalibansky 2022). The yeshiva was a place for pure Torah study, not an institute that trained rabbis or Dayanim, based on the value of learning for its own sake, which intensified in nineteenth-century Lithuanian Orthodoxy (Etkes 1988). The pure scholarly character of the yeshiva was reflected in the study schedules and the peripheral place of the lecture in the yeshiva. Most of the day was dedicated to independent study of the Talmud, which was studied from beginning to end. Almost no other subjects were taught, except for a certain period when a lesson in Halakha (from Shulkhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah) and a weekly Torah portion lesson were provided by Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv), who headed the Volozhin Yeshiva in the second half of the nineteenth century. The heads of the yeshiva firmly opposed the inclusion of secular studies, such as science studies and the state language, in the yeshiva’s curriculum, despite the Russian authorities’ demands to do so. They were able to get away with this, thanks to lobbying and by paying bribes.

In the mid-nineteenth century, cultural, social, and economic changes took place among the Jews of the Russian empire as a result of reforms enacted by the authorities on the one hand, and the infiltration of the Haskalah [the Jewish Enlightenment] movement, which challenged the rabbinic leadership and the educational tradition, on the other hand. Bolstering and establishing the Lithuanian yeshivas was part of the struggle against the threat to tradition posed by modernity. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as the Musar movement spread throughout Lithuania, a new type of Lithuanian yeshiva began to grow, one which also emphasized the study of ethics and character development. But even in these yeshivas, such as Slabodka, Telz, and the like, the unique core of the Lithuanian yeshiva, as a place of study where the theoretical study of the Talmud is the main activity, was preserved, and secular studies were not included (Stampfer 2012; Kalibansky 2012). In the period between the two world wars, following political changes that took place in the sphere that was formerly the west of the Russian Empire, most Lithuanian yeshivas found themselves in the territory of the Polish Republic, while only four yeshivas remained in independent Lithuania.

However, in Germany and Austria, where, in the eighteenth century, many of the local community rabbis were originally from Poland, in the era of emancipation, the nature of the rabbinate and the training it required changed. The traditional rabbinic-scholarly elite gradually shrank in Germany and, concurrently, also lost its prestige. This process was caused by increasing state intervention in communal autonomy and reduction in its powers alongside the accelerated acculturation of German Jews, which led to a devaluation of Halakha, in which rabbis specialized, in the eyes of their community. Consequently, there was a demand for a new type of rabbi who, in addition to deciding Halakha, would also engage in ethics and theology and elevate the spiritual level of their community through appropriate sermons. The old yeshivas could not provide the training suitable for these new roles demanded by the public from its spiritual leaders. At that time, several rabbinic luminaries arose, influenced by the spirit of the era, in an attempt to base Judaism primarily on the principles of faith and ethical behavior at the expense of focusing on the particulars of Halakha. These began to take an interest in the model of the Protestant Christian clergy on one hand (Brämer 2001), and on the other hand, devoted a significant portion of their time to academic studies in philosophy and philology (Schorsch 1994). However, the independent paths found could not provide a systematic response to all these requirements and were not suitable for all those preparing themselves for the rabbinate. Some even emerged “perplexed” from their encounter with the academic approach they acquired at the university from Christian professors, which led to doubts about traditional conventions and unresolved philosophical questions. Therefore, the need was felt to create a systematic Jewish institute for training modern rabbis.

Another reason was the desire of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement—the scholarly study of the Jewish religion and people, which originated in the 1820s in Germany—that began to achieve significant accomplishments in the second quarter of the nineteenth century to gain institutional-academic recognition and become a field of research in every respect (Thulin and von der Krone 2013; Yedidya 2008).

In the second half of the nineteenth century, several rabbinical seminaries were established in Europe, the most prominent of which were the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, the Jewish Theological Seminary of Vienna, the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, and the Orthodox rabbinical seminary of Berlin. The first three were associated with the Breslau School, founded by Rabbi Zachariah Frankel, while the Hochschule was associated with liberal Judaism.

The following table (

Table 1. Jewish higher education institutions.

	Lithuanian Yeshiva	Rabbinical Seminary	Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary
Entrance requirements	Knowledge of Talmud	Knowledge of Judaism and a matriculation certificate	Knowledge of Judaism and a matriculation certificate
Curriculum	Talmud, halakha, and musar	Halakha, Talmud, Wissenschaft des Judentums, and an academic degree	Halakha, Talmud, Wissenschaft des Judentums, and an academic degree
Study method	Theory and halakhic pilpul, focus on hevruta studies	Philological and halakhic, focus on lectures	Theory and halakha, focus on lectures
Additional requirements		Certification exams	Periodic exams and certification, and a commitment to Orthodoxy
Management	Rosh Yeshiva, traditionally a hereditary position	Seminary Director/Rector appointed by the Board of Directors	Rotating academic rector and a director of the Hildesheimer family
Study duration	Unlimited	Between 5 and 7 years	Five years
Student origin	Primarily Lithuania, a minority from other European countries	Primarily Germany, a minority from Poland and Hungary	Primarily Germany, a minority from Poland, Russia, and Hungary
Student support	From the institute	Tuition and internal funds	Tuition and internal funds
Gender	Boys	Boys and girls	Boys

) summarizes the differences between the Lithuanian yeshiva model and the rabbinical seminary model and between these two and the Orthodox rabbinical seminary of Berlin, which was in effect mid-way between the other two models (Yedidya 2010a).

In 1920, the Tahkemoni rabbinical seminary was established in Warsaw by the religious Zionist Mizrachi movement in Poland. It, too, was Orthodox and, in effect, was mid-way between the two different models: the yeshiva vs. the rabbinical seminary. How, then, did the trustees of the Lithuanian yeshiva model see the new institutional models and how did this approach affect the development of Orthodox institutes of higher learning?

2. The Two Institutional Models as Viewed by Supporters of the Yeshiva

The supporters of the yeshiva saw the institutional model of the yeshiva as almost perfect and as the main source of Jewish spiritual life. The positive image of “the workshop for the nation’s soul”, attributed to the yeshiva world, was actually penned by Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934), who left the yeshiva world, but the image was welcomed by the members of the yeshiva circle who added the image of the “workshop for the nation’s soul” (Bialik 2004, p. 121). For instance, that is what Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg (1884–1966) called the yeshivas in an article he wrote in 1916, which appeared in the Orthodox journal Jeschurun, published in Berlin: “The yeshivas are the fortresses of Judaism and their students are their only defenders” (Weinberg 1920, p. 2). Rabbi A. Y, Kook (1865–1935), in his speech in honor of the opening of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925, called the yeshivas, “the fortresses of the soul of Israel”. The negative image of “a Rabbi Factory” (Kook 1984, p. 307) attributed to the rabbinical seminaries, is also prevalent among members of this circle. Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevy (1847–1914) used the expression, ’factory for creating rabbis’, as early as 1880 in relation to the rabbinical seminaries in Russia, in an article he published anonymously in the newspaper, HaLevanon, in which he opposed the idea of establishing the rabbinical seminary in Russia (Halevy 1880). The factory imagery is cold and alienated, and foreign to the spiritual essence of the Jewish nation.

These two images derive from the scholarly ethos of the yeshiva circle in the 1860s, which was sharpened following the opposition to the rabbinical seminaries in Vilna and Zhitomir (Dohrn 2001; Melamed 2001). Yaakov Lifshitz of Kovno expressed this ethos well in his book “Zikhron Yaakov”:

The true Talmudist is the student who swims in the sea of Talmud, and who sharpens his mind on the Gemara, the Tosafot, and the commentaries, so that his studies become like an ever-increasing font […] that from the scope of his study that is deep and complex, his knowledge expands in all subjects, to learn the obscure from the explicit, and to understand one thing from another […] Yet not so one who learns the rulings of Halakha, he is only as one who does not forget, who knows only what he has taken in from the laws, without any power of innovation, and his knowledge will remain limited. Of course, it is not possible for “such learners” to influence and expand the knowledge of the Torah—and so in this way the Torah may God forbid be forgotten by Israel.

(Lifshitz 1924, p. 173)

The scholarly ethos of the yeshiva circle, and the negative image of the rabbinical seminary model, which began with the opposition to the rabbinical seminaries of Vilna and Zhitomir, were the background of the approach toward the rabbinic seminaries in Germany and Austria, even before their careful examination.

3. The Yeshiva Circle’s Approach to the Modern Yeshiva Model

Even before we discuss the approach of the yeshiva circle to the rabbinical seminary model, another institutional model that emerged from the world of Lithuanian yeshiva should be mentioned, and that is the modern yeshiva model. This model is actually a combination of the yeshiva Gemara study with secular studies. It resembled the yeshiva in its study method and the centrality it placed on Talmud studies and differed from it in secular subjects, which were added to the curriculum. However, students were not required to acquire an academic degree and did not undergo a special training course for ordination to the rabbinate, as was conducted in the rabbinical seminaries. The few modern yeshivas, established in Lithuania and Poland between the years 1882 and 1939, were identified with the religious Zionist Mizrachi movement. In 1882, Rabbi Yitzhak Yaakov Reines (1839–1915) founded and headed a modern yeshiva in Švenčionys, Lithuania. He included secular studies in the curriculum, including math and the state language. The main goal of this step was to provide basic training for practical life. The yeshiva did not last long due to opposition from key figures in the yeshiva circle, who frightened the donors, and it was closed two years later (Salmon 1971). In 1905 Rabbi Reines established the Lida yeshiva for young students who supported the Zionist movement, and for that reason, were edged out of the old Lithuanian yeshivas. In this yeshiva too, secular studies were provided, adapted to the curriculum of the general education system, and added to the Torah, Hebrew, and Jewish history lessons. However, most of the time was devoted to studying the Talmud in the yeshiva method, and the yeshiva was headed by Rabbi Shlomo Polachek (1877–1928)—the Meitscheter Illui—a student of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk. Despite opposition to the yeshiva from key figures and haredi rabbis, the yeshiva prospered and flourished and only closed due to external factors related to the First World War (Salmon 2014).

The modern yeshiva, founded by Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer, in Eisenstadt, Hungary, should also be mentioned. It was active during the 1860s and combined the study of the Talmud with the study of mathematics and classical languages and was condemned by local Orthodox rabbis. This yeshiva was the first stage in the development of Hildesheimer’s educational approach and preceded the rabbinical seminary of Berlin, which included a much more extensive and challenging curriculum (Breuer 1995; Bechtoldt 1995). Also, as Yoav Sorek has shown, the Oberland Jews in Hungary were more similar in their culture and education to German Jews than to Russian Jews, and therefore, this institute should not be seen as a model for an Eastern European institute of higher Torah education (Sorek 2019). Several important leaders of German Orthodoxy originated from Oberland and were naturally integrated into this religious stream. Among them were rabbis David Zvi Hoffmann, Markus Horowitz, and Joseph Nobel, who studied with Hildesheimer in Eisenstadt, Solomon Breuer, Mordechai Amram Hirsch, Chanoch Ehrentreu, and others.

Another institute that was situated between the modern yeshiva model and the rabbinical seminary model was the Tahkemoni Rabbinical Seminary, founded in Warsaw in 1920, and it, too, was identified with the Mizrachi movement. Tahkemoni was established to meet the needs of growing sections of Polish Jewry, who had undergone a modernization process, for modern rabbis who would, literally, speak their language, and would represent the Jewish communities faithfully before the Polish authorities. Rabbis with a national, Zionist awareness understood the spirit of the times and the demands of the younger generation. The studies at the institute were divided into two main types: Torah studies and secular topics. The secular curriculum was parallel to the government high school curriculum in Poland and included the study of the Polish language. These studies occupied some forty percent of the study hours. However, Tahkemoni students were not required to attend university and obtain a doctorate. Torah studies, which occupied the rest of the time, were based on the yeshiva-style study of the Talmud, the Shulkhan Arukh, and the traditional Torah commentaries. To this were added lessons in Jewish history, Hebrew literature of the Middle Ages and of modern times, Jewish philosophy, and the Hebrew language. After completing the curriculum, the students underwent rabbinic certification exams by the rabbis of Warsaw and also received an official government certificate (Mishael 1956; Aleksiun 2009). It is true that non-Zionist Orthodox elements, mainly Hasidic rebbes from Poland, opposed this institute on various pretexts, but due to its location in the heart of congressional Poland, it did not threaten the hegemony of the Lithuanian Yeshivas, and the yeshiva circle’s arrows of criticism were not especially directed at it.

Rabbi Yitzhak Nissenbaum (1858–1942), who was a graduate of the Volozhin Yeshiva and a leader of the Mizrachi movement in Poland, was a partner in the establishment of the Tahkemoni rabbinical seminary in Warsaw but had an ambivalent approach towards this institute. On the one hand, he recognized the concrete need for such an institute in independent Poland. On the other hand, he was raised on the model of the Lithuanian Yeshiva and the negative image of the rabbinical seminary. In his autobiographical book, Alei Heldi, he expressed his complex approach to Tahkemoni as follows:

The institute was called, the Rabbinical Seminary, but I myself was always careful not to call Tahkemoni by such a name. The rabbinate, in my view, is not an art, to be studied such and such hours, within such and such years. The rabbinate is not bought only by this and that knowledge, by proficiency and sharpness and the like. It depends very much on the qualities of the student’s soul and his natural religious feelings, and therefore Tahkemoni was important to me, not as a factory for creating rabbis, but as an institute of higher learning, which will provide us with young sages, learned and educated, who love their Father in heaven and their people on earth and the land of their people and all its sanctuaries, that they may later occupy a place in the social ladder whatever they occupy. I always called it by the name: High Beit Midrash for the Torah of Israel and its wisdom.

(Nissenbaum 1969, p. 341)

Like him, Yehoshua Heshel Farbstein (1870–1948), one of the leaders of the Mizrachi movement in Poland and the main promoter for the establishment of the institute, emphasized that this was a modern Yeshiva and not a rabbinical seminary (Aleksiun 2009). Even those among the members of the yeshiva circle who believed that reforms should be enacted in the yeshiva model and additional subjects should be brought in, including secular studies, as well as new arrangements of orderly and measured halakha study, were deterred from the rabbinical seminary model and preferred to stretch the yeshiva model as much as possible and even call it a “modern yeshiva”.

4. The Yeshiva Circle’s View Regarding the Rabbinical Seminary

Regarding the seminaries of the liberal (reform) movement and the Breslau school, the opposition was first and foremost due to the halakhic view, which was in principle contrary to the orthodox view. For example, Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Halevy wrote, in 1880, about the initiative of the Company for the Dissemination of Haskalah in Israel to send students from Russia to study at the rabbinical seminary in Breslau and finance their education:

Where are the places that were established there the rabbis, students of the seminary in Breslau, who returned their congregation members to the bosom of their faith and Holy Torah. Where is the one of whom the seminary in Breslau can boast that the Light of the Torah within him has reformed those who, despite having sinned, are of Israel, until they educate their children from the religion of Moses and Israel. To this day these people have not shown their strength and bravery but to shorten the prayer to bring an organ into the House of God and to bring there chants and games that are not of the covenant.

(Halevy 1880, p. 273)

Even if Halevy’s words were general and imprecise, this was Lithuanian Orthodoxy’s image of non-Orthodox seminaries. Our discussion will focus on the rabbinical seminaries, which accepted the Orthodox halakhic view of them, including the Hildesheimer Seminary in Berlin and the Seminary for the Diaspora in Jerusalem. The Orthodox American Yeshiva College institute, which over the years became Yeshiva University, is not a rabbinical seminary. In fact, it is an autonomous Lithuanian yeshiva, with a full academic curriculum, in which the academic side does not interfere in the yeshiva’s curriculum and in the selection of its teaching staff. It is not for nothing that the motto of the Orthodox rabbinical seminary of Berlin was “In all your ways, know him”, while the motto of Yeshiva University is “Torah and Science”, so that the “and” is found between the two separate worlds.

Although in the early years of the institute, its founder, Rabbi Bernard Revel (1885–1940), sought to create a modern yeshiva that adopted part of the curriculum of the rabbinical seminary, which created tensions between the yeshiva rabbis and the institute’s Bible, Hebrew language, and Jewish history teachers; in the end, the complete separation of the two parts of the institute was established (Gurock 1988; Rottkoff 1972). Most of the references are to the Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Berlin (1873–1938), which existed for sixty-five years. The seminary was founded in 1873 by Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer (1820–1899). In addition to the need to train modern Orthodox rabbis, emphasis was placed on the need to build an Orthodox alternative to the Wissenschaft des Judentums of competing movements. Therefore, a team of teachers was chosen for the yeshiva that fit this perception. The intention was to establish a research school that would undermine the rift that was widening between the Wissenschaft des Judentums and traditional Judaism (Yedidya 2010b; Wiese 2004). Rabbi Hildesheimer saw great importance in the complete identification of the teaching staff with the goals of the seminary and in their readiness to commit to the institute to the extent of paying a personal price for the realization of these goals—similar to the seminary in Breslau and in contrast to the Hochschule in Berlin, where the teaching staff was characterized by a wide variety of political-religious opinions, which did not necessarily reflect the character of the institute and the perspective of its head (Ellenson 1998; Meyer 2006).

At the center of the program stood the study of the Talmud and the poskim: these subjects were allocated more than half of the lessons and were intended to provide the institute the character of a yeshiva, as opposed to non-Orthodox institutes. Rabbi Hildesheimer himself, in one of his halakhic responses, explicitly argued that the rabbinical seminary deserves to be called a yeshiva, and therefore, its students could benefit from charity funds donated for yeshiva students (Breuer 1995).1 Thus, the most important condition for acceptance into the institute was sufficient prior knowledge in the field of the Talmud. Also, the Talmud exams were the central and decisive element in the exam system; they took place at the transition from the first cycle of studies to the second and were a condition for advancement. In addition, monthly and semester exams were held, especially in the justification of rulings in halakhic decisions; the exam in Gemara, Rashi’s commentary, and Tosafot required full mastery in explaining a Talmudic sugya along with its commentators and served as a condition for the final ordination exam in the poskim. In accordance with the scientific spirit of the institute, other areas of study were added to the traditional study of the Talmud, such as Mishna, Midrash, Responsa of the Geonim, the history of prayer, Masorah, and Aggadic literature. The study of Talmudic literature was a historical and linguistic, academic subject, complemented by history, geography of the Land of Israel, Semitic languages, and Oriental studies. Special significance was given to the study of the Bible, and an important role was played by apologetics against modern critical Bible scholarship. At the center of the teaching of this subject was the Chumash in a broad scope of study, combined with traditional commentary and linking matters with the study of the Oral Torah. Jewish philosophy was also taught at the seminary, not as a subject with ideological significance, but in a scientific manner accompanied by comparative textual analysis, similar to history and literature (Stern 1978). In addition, the rabbinical seminary students were required to complete academic studies at the university before their ordination to the rabbinate. Most of them studied at the University of Berlin.

When the Lithuanian Orthodox leadership, who were committed to the Lithuanian yeshiva model, encountered the new Orthodox institutional model in Berlin, which aspired to a pan-Jewish influence and was perceived by its leaders as a continuation of the yeshiva institution, despite some similarities, such as adherence to Halakha and attempts to stem the anti-traditional tide, there were significant differences between the institutes in other areas, such as study schedules, teaching methods, the inclusion of secular studies in the curriculum, and the goal of rabbinical training. Due to the geographical distance, the rabbinical seminary did not pose a direct threat to the Lithuanian yeshiva, and therefore, Lithuanian rabbis were not compelled by potential students or fellow rabbis to express their opinions about the new institute. However, the issue was brought to their attention under various circumstances, and their response was based—beyond principled positions—also on several practical reasons.

Since these were the two main models that served Orthodoxy in its social-intellectual struggle against modern currents, the Lithuanian rabbis’ stance towards the rabbinical seminary holds particular importance for understanding the relationship between these two Orthodox approaches in relation to modernity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth century.

As we have seen, the Lithuanian rabbis held strongly to the educational ideology of devoting the best years of youth to learning the Torah for its own sake through the framework of the Lithuanian yeshivas. On the other hand, they saw the rabbinical seminary as an institute suitable to its time and place: Germany, most of whose Jews were liberal, and which they did not consider capable of producing a Torah scholar worthy of his name.

One of the trends that continued throughout the seminary’s existence was suspicion towards the very idea underlying the seminary, of combining the Torah and science, and opposition to defining it as a yeshiva, and even more so to its imitation elsewhere outside of Germany. This trend was shared by two of the most influential rabbis of that generation—Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810–1883), who was active in the first decade of the seminary’s existence, and Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski (1863–1940), who was active until the final years of the seminary.

In the summer of 1879, the founder of the Musar movement—Rabbi Israel Salanter, who left Lithuania in 1857 due to illness and moved to Germany, refused at that time to write a letter of support in the rabbinical seminary (Etkes 1993). In a letter he wrote to Rabbi Hildesheimer, he detailed the reasons for his refusal:

To his honor Rabbi Dr. Hildesheimer, may he and the members of his household live and be blessed with goodness: I have received the letter from the honorable Gaon written on the Eve of the Sabbath… but I am unable to fulfil the request of a great man such as he—may the likes of him multiply in Israel. The rabbinical seminary of the honorable Torah personality is a great thing, beyond all praise, for strengthening Torah and the fear of God, and it is located in Germany. But in Russia the situation of the rabbinate is still based upon the old system, and we hope that it will so continue for many years, with God’s help. For thank God, there are many who devote themselves to Torah exclusively, and are prepared to become gedolim (may they multiply). And I fear to represent his bet-midrash, in which science is the main thing and Torah is secondary, as a model for them, lest I perform a sin, Heaven forbid. Generally speaking, there is no legitimate reason for one to speak of temporal life as a good thing.

(ibid., p. 285)

Rabbi Salanter argued that the method of study in Lithuanian yeshivas was preferable to him over the method in the rabbinical seminary, as in Lithuania the study of the Torah is the main focus, whereas in the rabbinical seminary, the study of sciences is the main focus, and he was likely referring to studies at the University of Berlin, which some of the seminary students attended concurrently with their Talmudic studies at the seminary. Since, in his opinion, maximum devotion to the study of the Torah is a necessary condition for becoming great in the Torah, there is a substantial disadvantage in the seminary model. Additionally, contrary to Rabbi Hildesheimer’s view, he believed the seminary had value only from a local perspective as an institute needed for the preservation of religious life in Germany, and nothing more. This statement was not made merely out of politeness, as Rabbi Salanter was familiar with the religious situation in Germany and the need for Orthodoxy to curb the drift toward liberal streams. However, he saw the possibility that his support might imply agreement to the introduction of secular studies into Lithuanian yeshivas as sinful, and therefore, he refrained from publishing a letter of support. Moreover, in his view, a seven-year trial is not enough to evaluate the success of the institute. He himself tried to strengthen religion among German Jews in more traditional ways, according to his belief that the lifestyle of Eastern European Jews was more suitable to pre-modern traditional Judaism than that of German Jews (ibid.). In addition, Salanter was concerned that the donations to the rabbinical seminary in Berlin would be at the expense of donations to the Lithuanian yeshivas, which he preferred.

More than fifty years later, after Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, the director of the Rabbinical Seminary, Rabbi Dr. Meier Hildesheimer, attempted to relocate the seminary to the Land of Israel. His plan met with strong opposition from the heads of yeshivas in the Land of Israel who feared competition between the various institutes, and they enlisted Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski from Vilna, who was the head of the Yeshiva Committee and the prominent leader of Lithuanian Orthodoxy at the time (Hoffmann and Schwartz 1991; Shapiro 1999). Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski tried to exert his influence and persuade those supporting the plan to transfer the seminary to the Land of Israel to withdraw their support. For example, he wrote to the Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, A. Y. Kook, on 17 December 1933:

In my previous letter, I hinted to the honorable Rabbi regarding the desire of my friend, Rabbi Dr. Meier Hildesheimer of Berlin, to transfer the seminary to the Land of Israel, and I heard that he is striving to realize his goal in Tel Aviv. In my opinion, this would be an irreparable mistake if, God forbid, he succeeds. When his esteemed father, of blessed memory, founded the seminary in Berlin, his entire intention was for the sake of Heaven, to compete with the Reform movement. It was necessary for the Orthodox communities to also have rabbis with higher education. This was a need of the hour, place, and time. But how can one conceive of establishing such a factory for rabbis in the Land of Israel, where there are great yeshivot and eminent rabbis who are scholars and pious? To choose new rabbis for whom secular knowledge is primary and the Torah secondary is an alien plant in the vineyard of the House of Israel in the Land of Israel. Planting the German culture there, which has caused many casualties, and we have seen what has become of them.

(Shapira 1990, pp. 457–58)2

Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski recognized the local value of the Rabbinical Seminary as a competitor to the Reform movement in Germany. He too believed that the seminary’s priorities were mistaken, where the study of sciences is primary and the study of the Torah is secondary. However, unlike others, his words also express disdain for the religious fervor of the seminary’s students, vividly demonstrated by the term “a factory for rabbis”, which creates an association with the rabbinical seminaries in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century.

This position stemmed from the general Orthodox fear of Haskalah and resistance to innovations, as well as from the resemblance to the non-Orthodox seminary in Breslau. It is worth noting that this position can be looked at from the broader perspective of the significant difference between Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe and Neo-Orthodoxy in Germany. However, those who held this position actually collaborated with the circle of Rabbi Hirsch in Frankfurt-am-Main, who opposed the Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Berlin (Breuer 1992).

However, over the years, a new trend developed among Lithuanian Orthodoxy, which advocated a moderate combination of the Torah and science. This trend viewed the fundamental idea of the rabbinical seminary favorably. However, the supporters of this trend still criticized the actual implementation of the above-mentioned idea and its distance from the Lithuanian model. These, such as rabbis A. Y. Kook and Y. I. Halevy, supported further training in a seminary for rabbis only after or in the case of the students from Germany—only on condition—that the students also studied in a Lithuanian yeshiva for several years.

For example, Rabbi Kook recommended to a student in Boisk from that period, Moshe Seidel, to study at Rabbi Hildesheimer’s Rabbinical Seminary because, based on his knowledge, this institute succeeded in aligning the needs of the time with the Torah and reverence, a goal that this student wished to achieve. In a letter Rabbi Kook wrote to him in the summer of 1906, he wished him:

And I hope that you too will follow this path, and embrace the virtues found in these precious brethren of ours, the pioneers of the defense of God’s covenant in Germany. Combine the supreme qualities that only through our education we could attain together with theirs. From this lofty union, you will have before you a precious, original, and organic model that integrates and unites sanctity, wisdom, and strength, the hope of justice and truth, and the radiance of life.

(Kook 1985, p. 107)3

In Rabbi Kook’s view, someone who has already built his Torah personality in a Lithuanian yeshiva, according to its way, can also benefit from the advantages of the Rabbinical Seminary in the field of integrating the Torah and science without compromising Orthodox values. However, the personality of an ideal Torah scholar would not be shaped by this institute alone.

In the last years of the seminary, this trend was reflected in the cooperation between the seminary in Berlin and Lithuanian rabbis A. E. Kaplan and Y. Y. Weinberg, alumni of the Slabodka yeshiva, who were called to join the seminary’s teaching staff, due to a lack of scholars of their stature among German Jewry. They tried to create a more successful synthesis between the Lithuanian yeshiva and the rabbinical seminary that combined the Torah and science.

For example, despite Rabbi Kaplan’s clear opinion regarding the superiority of the Lithuanian method of study, he agreed with the fundamental approach of the Rabbinical Seminary that on the basic component of yeshiva Torah study, another component should be added, that of scientific study:

A bad reputation has arisen among scholars regarding the students of the old Beit Midrash, that they are not seekers of truth, but seekers of dialectic; and a bad reputation has arisen among the students of the Beit Midrash regarding the scholars, that they are only seekers of conjectures and not seekers of truth, merely skimming the surface and not delving deeply into investigation. Thus, ‘the Talmudist’ and ‘the Scientist’ distance themselves from one another, completely discrediting each other without remedy. If only we could bring both to a common inn with the intention that each would learn from the other what is good and beneficial—undoubtedly, each would achieve greater success.

(Kaplan 1988, p. 67)

Rabbi Avraham Eliyahu Kaplan (1890–1924) saw the harmony between the two in the figure of the Rabbinical Seminary students, who combine Lithuanian yeshivas and German universities and oppose the halakhic pilpul that has no element of seeking truth.

Like Rabbi Kaplan, Rabbi Weinberg, his successor in teaching Talmud at the seminary, also strove for harmony between the scientific method and the Lithuanian method of learning.

Even in the future, there is a significant need to engage in Talmudic and Halakhic questions according to the accepted principles that have been tested and proven in the work of disciplined thought. However, any influence or instruction from the exact sciences must also be considered. Since the subjects of Talmudic and Halakhic research are very ancient texts, it follows that, as with any linguistic research, the existence of an authoritative manuscript is a primary prerequisite.

(ibid.)

He proposed a way to combine these two methods. First, philological research should be conducted, revealing the precise formulations and the original historical meaning of difficult words. Only then should the halakhic-legal concepts be clarified and defined based on all the implications for deriving practical laws. This approach is a moderate version of the scientific study of the Talmud and is essentially an attempt to create a synthesis between Lithuanian scholarship and scientific rigor.

Thus, this was the perception that Rabbis Kaplan and Weinberg sought to introduce into the Rabbinical Seminary, where they saw the embodiment of the harmony between the Lithuanian method of study and the scientific research method. Like Rabbis Kook and Halevy, they favored the superiority of the Lithuanian yeshiva and its necessity in building the personality of a Torah scholar, yet they recognized the value of integrating the Torah and science and its successful application in the Rabbinical Seminary. Both, alongside their criticism of the Rabbinical Seminary, tried to influence and reshape its character according to this approach.

Ultimately, the suspicious trend prevailed, not only helping to prevent the transfer of the Rabbinical Seminary to the Land of Israel but also setting the uniform character of the post-Holocaust Orthodox yeshiva world, both in Israel and the United States—a world where, for now, there is no place for an institute like the Rabbinical Seminary.

5. The Attempt to Establish a Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem in the 1950s

The yeshiva leaders viewed, and still view, the Land of Israel as an Eastern European territory. The attempt to find a rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem, in the style of the Hildesheimer Seminary, in the 1950s, was also met with strong opposition from the leaders of the Lithuanian yeshivas, which ultimately contributed to the decision to close the institute.

In 1956, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, under the leadership of Minister Moshe Shapira (1902–1970) and his deputy Zorakh Warhaftig (1906–2002), together with the Jewish Agency’s Department of Torah Culture under the leadership of Rabbi Ze’ev Gold (1889–1956), established a rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem, in a format similar to that of the then rabbinical seminary in Berlin, for students born abroad, who were intended to serve as rabbis in their communities after the end of their studies. The curriculum of the institute included the following subjects, in addition to the teaching of the Talmud: Bible, Hebrew, Jewish philosophy, Jewish history, introduction to the Talmud and the poskim, introduction to Jewish Studies, introduction to general philosophy, psychology, education theory, sermon theory, the geography of Israel, Jewish demographics, basics of social work, Hebrew cantillation, and Aramaic grammar (Yedidya 2009).

As soon as word of the feverish preparations for the opening of the rabbinical seminary became known, objections began to appear from all directions. Rabbi Grodzinski’s arguments, from the 1930s, against the establishment of a rabbinical seminary in Israel, began to be repeated. Rabbi Yitzchak Ze’ev Soloveitchik (HaGryz, 1886–1959), former rabbi of Brisk, who lived in Jerusalem at the time, worked to thwart the establishment of the institute. The influence of HaGryz, who was known as a fierce opponent of the Zionist movement in general and of religious Zionism in particular, on yeshiva circles in Jerusalem increased with the passing of Rabbi Yeshaya Karlitz (the Chazon Ish, 1878–1953) in 1953. Between the years 1943 and 1953, he was at the head of some of the struggles of haredi Judaism against the leaders of the Yishuv and the state, among them, the issue of the education of the Children of Tehran (1943) and the law on conscription of girls into the army and national service (1951–1953). He also objected to yeshivas receiving government support. Among other things, he tried to recruit his nephew Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (1903–1993) from Boston4 to his fight against the seminary. Like him, yeshiva leaders from Eretz Yisrael who feared the new institute tried to leverage the influence of the Association of Orthodox Rabbis of the USA and Canada, which wrote to the chief rabbis of Israel at the end of 1955 that they must do everything in their power to prevent the foundation of a “seminary for modern rabbis” in Israel, since “the rabbis of the type that the institute will educate will be as thorns in the eyes of the traditional rabbinate and the establishment of the new institute carries within it seeds of danger to the existence of the yeshivas”.5

Rabbi Ze’ev Gold, a graduate of the Mir yeshiva, who, being a rabbi in various communities throughout the USA between 1907 and 1935, was one of the founders of the Rabbinical Association of the USA and Canada and a member of its executive committee, wrote an angry letter to the association’s director, Rabbi Meir Cohen, in which he rejected the attack on the rabbinical seminary and expressed his wonder, “How it could occur to someone, that in the Holy Land I became a “Sadducee”, heaven forbid, a sinner and one who causes others to sin and who plots evil against the traditional rabbinate and together with the Ministry of Religion, which is the main combatant against the establishment of Reform and Conservative synagogues in Israel, want to establish an enterprise that will raise modern rabbis and strive against the traditional rabbinate or against the yeshivas in Israel” (see note 5). He went on to detail the chain of events that led to the need to establish the seminary and emphasized its traditional nature.

On 3 February 1956, the leaders (Dov Weidenfeld from Tshebin, Eliezer Yehuda Finkel from the Mir Yeshiva, Akiva Sofer from the Pressburg Yeshiva, Yehezkel Sarna (1890–1969) from the Hebron Yeshiva, and Yehezkel Abramsky (1886–1976) from the Slabodka Yeshiva in Bnei Brak) of prominent yeshivas in Jerusalem gathered at the home of HaGryz with the aim of thwarting the establishment of the rabbinical seminary. The timing was supposed to be close to the planned meeting of the Chief Rabbinate Council regarding the seminary, which was scheduled to take place three days later. The goal was to pressure the Chief Rabbinate Council to refuse the establishment of the seminary. At the end of the gathering, the rabbis issued a letter of protest, in which they attacked the institutional model of rabbinical seminary, which “was banned at the time by the gedolim of those generations, and experience has clearly shown how much these institutes have spoiled and destroyed the House of Israel as far as the Torah and Judaism are concerned…“. In their sweeping discreditation of all rabbinical seminaries and their graduates for generations, they did not exclude the Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Berlin, as Rabbi Grodzinski, who recognized its importance for German Jewry, had. In contrast, they claimed that yeshiva graduates were the only ones who could serve as rabbis:

The very establishment of an institute, the purpose of which is to train rabbis in Israel—is wrong, and essentially absurd, and is like a bitter pole in the body of Judaism. Only those who studied in yeshivas and were rooted from their youth in the Torah and reverence for God and who killed themselves in the tent of the Torah, studying and thinking of it bravely without considering compensation—from them came the great men of the generations, rabbis and Geonim and teachers, and they brought glory and blessing to Israel even when they speak of secular matters, by leading their congregations in a worthy way that Israel can boast of. This was the way of the rabbinate in Israel, and this is how it will remain until the coming of our True Redeemer soon in our time. And without studying the Torah and laboring properly with all their might and being, there can be absolutely no way that of them will come any rabbis worthy of teaching and of leading their congregations on the basis of holiness.6

Like Rabbi Grodzinski at the time, these rabbis also held to the supremacy of the Lithuanian yeshiva model and rejected the Neo-Orthodoxy’s ways of dealing with modernity. They firmly refused the introduction of new subjects such as biblical studies, Jewish thought, and Jewish history into the yeshiva curriculum and advocated a maximum focus on the study of the Talmud and its interpretations. This position was even more extreme than the position of Rabbi Salanter and Rabbi Grodzinski, in that it rejected the rabbinical seminary outright and did not recognize its contribution to its time and place—Central European Jewry. This position was in fact accepted by the Haredi public in Israel and the USA.

6. The Success and Diversity of the Lithuanian Yeshiva Model

The Lithuanian yeshiva model remains the central and most widespread higher institutional model among all streams of Jewish Orthodoxy, both in Israel and abroad. The original and positive romantic image, which attributes to this model an inherent correspondence to the spiritual essence of the Jewish people, on the one hand, and the alienated and negative mechanical image of the competing rabbinical seminary model, on the other, contributed to this result. However, in the more modern parts of Orthodoxy, religious leaders, while maintaining the core of the Lithuanian yeshiva model, have been wise enough to add secular education and/or extra-halakhic religious education, whether through a modern yeshiva model or through the yeshiva-university model, which combines two separate and autonomous educational institutional models under one roof, with two separate curricula and educational goals. In doing so, they sought to cultivate the image of a religious leader who had modern tools to deal with the challenges of the times, in addition to the traditional Torah foundation acquired in the Lithuanian yeshiva (Jacobson 2016).

The religious Zionist community in Israel, which in addition to advanced (Lithuanian) yeshivas, also founded Hesder yeshivas that integrate a reduced military service within the yeshiva studies, accepted the continuation of Rabbi Reines’ enterprise as the expansion of the fields of study at the yeshiva.7 Some of the Zionist yeshivas are modern yeshivas, which combine additional fields of study in addition to the study of Talmud and Halakha (Abramovich 2019). It must be kept in mind that most graduates of these yeshivas have state high school matriculation certificates. Many yeshivas have included the study of Jewish philosophy in their curriculum, following the step taken by Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook in the 1920s in the Central Universal Yeshiva (“Merkaz HaRav”), which he founded in Jerusalem. Several yeshivas, most notably the Har Etzion yeshiva in Alon Shevuot, included biblical studies prominently in the yeshiva’s curriculum. In other yeshivas, classes are held in Jewish history (Har Bracha Yeshiva), creative writing (Birkat Moshe Yeshiva in Ma’ale Adumim), Hassidism (Otniel Yeshiva), and more. In many yeshivas, there is an organized program for Halakha studies, the purpose of which is to prepare the students for the rabbinic ordination exams of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. In some yeshivas, there are affiliates of teaching colleges, which allow students to receive a teaching certificate recognized by the Ministry of Education and even an academic degree equivalent to an undergraduate degree.

However, it was in a certain circle within this public that the stretching of the scholarly ethos and the strength of the resistance to change in the character of the yeshiva reached new extremes. In 1997, a group of rabbis and students withdrew from Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva against the background of the management’s intention to introduce a teacher training institute into the yeshiva’s framework. The intention was that the studies of the Talmud, the Torah, and Jewish philosophy would be recognized as equivalent to the mandatory diploma studies courses, and on Fridays and during the semester holidays, educational supplements would be introduced in various subjects: pedagogy, didactics, psychology, the Hebrew language, and more (Rozen-Zvi 2003; Fuchs 2016). The group headed by Rabbi Zvi Yisrael Tau published a clarification, justifying its opposition to the move:

“We believe that the introduction of a teaching institute into the yeshiva diminishes its image, harms the independence and freedom of Torah, which cannot make a spiritual partnership with any other party… The excellent ones from such a yeshiva cannot be average, that they are like a cauldron neither warm nor cold, each brave as a lion in the war for the Torah and filled with a desire to exalt and glorify it on the holy land, not for any request and purpose of the rabbinate or positions but each one because of the love of God blessed be He, the love of the Torah, the love of Israel, and the love of the Land of Israel that burns in their midst with the flame of a holy fire.

And if it be so, God forbid, and a plan is introduced—this niddah to the holy place and this sheretz into the temple—with this, its glow is turned, its grandeur is turned, the glory has turned away from our holy yeshiva…”8

Even within the national-religious community in Israel, the struggles over the nature of the yeshiva are conducted within the limits of this model, after its superiority over the rabbinical seminary was, in effect, determined. However, from time to time, elements of the training process of the rejected model enter the expanding framework of the Lithuanian yeshiva.