“Shame on You, YU”
On Rabbi Blau and YU being MIA in the Center of the Jewish Future
“Shame on You, YU.” That was the phrase chanted by disgruntled clerical workers of Yeshiva University on the picket line in Washington Heights when I was a student there back in the eighties and early nineties. The catchy slogan – “Shame on You, Why You” – is one of those chimes that just sticks in your head. That, along with the funny stories we had about YU-contracted security guards being mugged at their posts along Amsterdam Avenue while purportedly protecting us – together make for a comical backdrop to my formative years and what has turned out to be a rather monumental period in the Jewish experience overall.
I first arrived at YU in the mid-80s, just as the Rav – Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveichik – had essentially, if not officially, traversed from his role as the undisputed leader of what was then called centrist Orthodoxy – into the twilight of his activity, leaving a void at the helm felt to this day. I vividly recall the student uprising that friends of mine spearheaded to save the Revel Graduate School as much as I remember giving the late Rabbi Israel Miller a hard time myself for YU’s pass at flying the Israeli flag on campus and completely ignoring Yom Yerushalayim.
I understand that YU makes quite the point of flying the Zionist Standard on campus these days and makes a rather vociferous display marching up Fifth Avenue institutionally wrapped in Blue & White for what was once called the “Israel Day Parade.” Much as fervor for Israel defines the American Modern Orthodox community in 2025, it seems to have become a core tenet of the YU identity. At least theoretically.
Indeed, from my Yeshiva College peers who graduated between 1991 and 1993 – a rough majority of the student leadership and campus rabble rousers from those years now live in Israel (you know who you are). I suppose its too bad our crew wasn’t around to “Save Einstein” the way it “Saved Revel.” But one thing I would bet most of us lament is that YU didn’t follow us on Aliyah to impact the Jewish future where it actually counts in the manner that its Oleh graduates try to do.
Back in the nineties you could still argue that the center of the Jewish world was New York. Fast forward to 2025 and that nucleus has unquestionably shifted Eastward. But YU is not part of that conversation. Yeshiva’s feeble attempts to partner with Israeli institutions yields zero impact and miniscule influence on the conversations that take place in Israel defining contemporary Jewry and its future. Not a word from YU, spiritual nor ideological nor philosophical – or even scientific – about Judicial Reform; or Haredi military enlistment (this while the Lakewood/Monsey/Brooklyn axis has been hyper-active on the topic); or the need for Israel’s military to self-manufacture weapons; or the wholesale demonization of Jewish peoplehood. Little to nothing on these and a whole plethora of topics, all the while the likes of Israel’s secular – and disconnected from Jewish tradition – universities have lots to say, for better or for worse.
Aside from the fact that I wish there was a YU – a real YU – in Israel to send my own children to (and no, Machon Lev doesn’t fit the bill and Bar Ilan is but a plain old university that happens to have religious leadership – neither offers the synergy of Torah U’Mada that Rabbi Norman Lamm professed for decades from the Fifth Floor of 500 West 185th Street) – YU needs to have a seat at the table and be part of that conversation. We need YU in Israel to push back against the ultra-progressive Israeli academic world that holds traditional Talmudic study to be “treif” and unworthy of an academic label. How ironic that whereas American law schools view Talmudic immersion with awe and seek YU scholars educated on a foundation of the synthesis of Torah U’Mada as the best raw material out of which to sprout the finest jurists, Israeli academia showers only disdain for such core foundational Jewish skillsets. We also need YU to push back against the otherwise Haredi worldview coming not from the Hareidi community but from all too many “religious Zionist” rabbis and “educators” in Israel who often relate to higher education with only lip service, as a necessary evil and not as an objective to embrace and encounter from the perspective of Jewish tradition. A far cry from the yeshiva wherein you can’t study for semicha until you first earn a bona-fide academic degree.
Yes, there are sprinklings of the YU style here and there (the yeshiva in Gush Etzion and its offshoots in places such as Yerucham) – but nothing of the magnitude of Yeshiva University which is desperately needed to be part of that conversation which led to the crescendo of the American Jewish experience. There is a void waiting to be filled. But YU is AWOL in the tug of war over the Jewish future underway in the cradle of Jewish civilization. What a wasteful shame.
Where has YU nevertheless had an accidental and unfortunate impact?
Enter Rabbi Yosef Blau and his now infamous letter.
I remember Rabbi Blau well – perennial “Mashgiach Ruchani” at YU since forever. Back in my YU days I actually interfaced with him quite a bit. I knew him to be nothing less than a proud Jew and Zionist stalwart.
Thus, the shock and stabbing pain I felt when I read his “Call for Moral Clarity” in which he fell – hook, line and sinker – right into the brilliant, ruthless, devious and knowingly untruthful campaign of anti-Semitic fabrication that makes Roman Emperor Hadrian look like an amateur.
“Profound suffering of Gaza’s civilian population.” The only weighty issue regarding Gaza’s population is that it willfully and overwhelmingly voted-in, supports and celebrates the radical Islamic Jihadi dictums that are Hamas. That’s the trap. Right there. What’s good enough for Dresden is good enough for Gaza. In YU we were taught that there is right and wrong in this world. Good and evil. NOT that morality is relative or dependent on your narrative.
That Rabbi Blau would have the audacity to assist in the propagation of the “starvation” myth, or the “extreme settler violence” lie, or just repeating the unfounded death toll numbers as recorded by homicidal terrorists themselves – is frightening and painfully insulting to his former students. That he doubled-down on his remarks that many of us so desperately wanted to attribute to his old age just exacerbates the outrage.
Far worse is that were it not for Rabbi Blau’s association with and tenure at Yeshiva University, the “Call for Moral Clarity” wouldn’t have drawn much attention, being that the rest of its signatories are but the usual suspects of the left-fringe Orthodoxically Challenged ilk. All the coverage about this “letter” is a result of the association of its author with YU.
Not only ought YU officialdom disavow the shame of Rabbi Blau’s “Call” and ensuing comments; the YU leadership ought to use the opportunity to not simply create daylight between the Zionist fervor that is a cornerstone of YU 2025 and Rabbi Blau’s shameful spewing from and abuse of YU’s pulpit, they should not only show YU’s unbridled support for its thousands of graduates whose son’s risk their lives – and all too many have given their lives – so that Rabbi Blau can pontificate – from liberated Jerusalem (oh the irony) – about bogus moral balancing; YU can – and should – not just retract the platform that these “rabbis” stand upon: Yeshiva University should join the conversation about the Jewish future in the locale of that future by embracing the truth represented by its own people, living by virtue of YU’s own moral projection. That Israel’s cause is just. That there is good and evil in the world, contrary to the moral relativism being propagated by Progressives who are in turn being manipulated by sophisticated Jihadists. That indeed, the moral truth, no matter how unpopular on the world scene, nevertheless remains eternal just like Israel and the Jews.
