Ask the Rabbi, Part 24

(These are questions I answered in the Jewish Press forum entitled “Is It Proper?” All the rabbinic responses and more can be read at Jewishpress.com)

Is it proper for the average person to learn Kabbalah?

The popular notion of Kabbalah – the Kabbalah of red strings, holy water, and incantations – has attracted a following in recent years among Hollywood celebrities and others. This type of “Kabbalah” resembles self-help, pop psychology and other quick fixes to one’s personal problems and is wholly unrelated to Kabbalah as traditional Jews understand it. Nevertheless, it does induce searchers and simple people, and has often parted them from their money.

Traditional Kabbalah is, essentially, a look behind the mask of the physical world in order to gain deeper insights into creation, G-d’s Providence, and even our fundamental obligations. Because it employs graphic, anthropomorphic imagery, it can easily mislead the average person into misconstruing G-d’s nature, something that borders on idolatry and is a cardinal sin. As such, the Shach (Yoreh Deah 246:6) records the well-known opinion that one should not study Kabbalah until at least age 40.

Nevertheless, Rema (Yoreh Deah 246:4) cites Rambam’s famous statement that “a stroll through the orchard” – i.e., the study of esoteric areas of Torah – should not be undertaken until after the student “has filled his stomach with meat and wine,” meaning a complete understanding of the basic laws of the Torah. (Interestingly, Rambam actually states “bread and meat” – real Torah substance – rather than just “meat and wine.”) The “full stomach” provides not just a grounding in the sources and a concomitant commitment to Torah and mitzvot but also presupposes that one has acquired proper methodology of thought.

Both are indispensable to understanding Kabbalah – and both are generally not the provinces of the average person. Thus, little will be gained from the study of Kabbalah and much can be lost. It is much more effective and meaningful to focus on the revealed Torah, whose “measure is longer than the earth and broader than the seas” (Iyov 11:9) and could not be fully grasped if we lived several lifetimes.

Is it proper to listen to secular music?

Music taps into a dimension of the soul that might otherwise not be reached, a sensual experience that ideally serves a spiritual function. Music, as the Vilna Gaon was quoted as saying, can open for us new vistas in Torah. Such is its power. And therein lies the problem.

There are halachic prohibitions that are implicated regarding secular music, in terms of provocative content, dissemination of poor values, performers with depraved lifestyles with whom the listener might identify, kol isha, and the general issue of music after the Churban. Modern music, for the most part, is a cultural wasteland. To the impressionable, secular music can be devastating.

Yet, the landscape is not totally bleak. I don’t know much about secular music today but in a more innocent time there were songs that reinforced good values. I recall one song from the 1970’s, Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” about parents and children not spending enough time with each other. At first, the young son says, “When you coming home, dad?” and the father responds, “I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, you know we’ll have a good time then.” By the end of the song, the aged father pines for a visit from his grown son, and says, “When you coming home, son?” and the son answers, “I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, dad, you know we’ll have a good time then.”  And then it dawns on the father, “And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me, he’d grown up just like me, My boy was just like me.”

I’ve listened to that song as a child, father, and grandfather, and it never fails to move me. That is good mussar regardless of the source. And if all secular music were like that, there would be no concern at all.

Is it proper to attend a non-Jewish university?

My alma mater – Columbia – has been in the news recently. (Both the billionaire Robert Kraft and I have halted our donations, although presumably Columbia will suffer more because of his decision.) Certainly, the overt and dangerous Jew hatred that prevails on many campuses today should weigh heavily in any decision, but my discomfort with secular college preceded the latest contretemps.

Simply put, parents who send their children to secular colleges are endangering their spiritual survival, and this is true even with the Jewish programming, organizations, and activities that try to fill the gaping void. Some students emerge unscathed; many, maybe even most, do not. It is like bungee jumping with a frayed rope. I lived off campus, so I was spared some of the tawdry excesses of the 1970’s, which in any event would be considered prudish, even monkish, by today’s standards.

College today is a moral cesspool and the cathedral of wokeness. It is a place where religion is mocked and tradition is ridiculed, where shattering norms is encouraged and challenging the world view of one’s parents is expected. Add to that today’s violent assault on Jewish identity and the increased presence on campuses of groups that openly hate Jews and Israel and face little or no consequences for doing so and it is clear that attending a secular college – for most people – is irrational and quite hazardous, spiritual and physically. We can try to construct a Jewish cocoon but in most cases that will not succeed.

Alexis de Tocqueville said it best: “The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.” College today has no religion and no morality, and thus no law, no security, and no freedom. It is true that in the past a degree from an Ivy League school had cachet and made connections. Parents, and employers, should wise up and realize that today, in large measure, it denotes closed-mindedness, moral obtuseness, intellectual laziness, and a rejection of all that is holy and virtuous.

Is that worth an annual tuition of $90,000? Hardly.