Places to study
September 01, 2005
Mobius recently posted a link to the new website for Yakar, a yeshiva in Jerusalem which calls itself "a center for education, social concern and spiritual expression which reaches out to all." (The organization's full name is Yakar Center for Tradition and Creativity. I like how they neatly harness the tension between those two opposites by linking them.) Their ads intrigued me, so I clicked over to check them out.
The first thing I saw on their site is one of my favorite Rav Kook quotes, about those who sing the song of their own lives, and those who sing the song of their people, and those who sing the song of humankind, and those who sing the song of God, and those who sing all of these songs. It says something good about Yakar, I think, that those are the words they chose for their index page, the first face they present to the online world. On the About Yakar page, they write:
Today we need to develop a language of Torah that can heal both the individual and society. A Torah which engenders a sensitivity towards the other. A Torah that hears the cry on the street. A Torah which is inclusive, not exclusive, whereby identity becomes a means of understanding, not of rejecting.
Identity politics can easily divide people and communities, which seems counterproductive to me (more and deeper divisions are just not what the world needs), so I like the idea of a language of Torah which subverts that insider/outsider dynamic. And in their insistence that our Torah hear "the cry on the street," I see an emphasis on the Jewish call to justice, which I applaud. I can't speak to Yakar's programs from firsthand experience, but I'm impressed with how they describe themselves and what they stand for.
Any yeshiva which takes the image of Jacob wrestling with the angel as a reminder that we are all called to grapple with our tradition in order that we may be blessed: that's the kind of place where I could not only study but learn. Now if only they'd open a western Massachusetts branch...