Some Thoughts on Critique And Ideological Rigidity

One of the problems of being a Centrist MO Jew in academia is that the overhwelming majority of professors (esp. philosophy) who deal with Jewish subjects are doctrinally LWMO and beyond. My problem is not with the positions per se, but with the ideological monotony that results. Academia claims to be a place for the free flow of ideas, but I have difficulty taking this seriously when most walk in lockstep with liberalism to the exclusion of all else. Anyone who holds different positions (i.e. to the right) on issues of religion immediately feels the need to hide them and follow the herd.

This results in a glaring academic double standard. Rav Kook, for instance, is often the subject of withering critique. Even Rav Soloveitchik can be treated with fresh eyes. In the meantime, however, LWMO heroes like Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Rav Hayimm Hershinzon and Eliezer Goldman are treated too often with fawning adoration that borders on sycophancy. I've lost count of "academic" books on HaKibbutz HaDati that felt like they were written by the Kibbutz HaDati academic fan club. To read some of the pieces on Leibowitz, you'd think the author of the piece was a chossid writing about their Rebbe. If the work done on Goldman so far is to be believed, he was the most brilliant, flawless thinker since the Rambam. Religious academics rightly decry fawning hagiography of "gedolim" in right-wing circles, yet they seem blissfully unaware when they do the exact same thing to their own people.

My point in all this is that there may be diversity in MO, but it is of an increasingly sectarian nature. RWMOs and LWMOs mostly talk amongst themselves, make arguments that could only convince the convinced and in general do not really try to seriously engage other ideological or religious camps. They each have their own institutional strongholds - for RWMO it is usually yeshiva, for LWMO it is university. The seperation is so thorough that there isn't even a "dialogue of the deaf". I don't think anyone benefits from this intellectual and ideological stagnation. Surely it would be better if more public debates and discussions, face-to-face and in print, took place than the present territorialism.

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