Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Yeshiva and Mammon

  In the Pale of Settlement from which all my grandparents came—the broad swath of Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania to which Jews in 19th-century Imperial Russia were restricted—the brightest teen-age boys were sent to yeshivas for higher education.  There they mainly studied the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the Talmud (a voluminous commentary on the Torah and the codified Jewish law derived from it).   Often working in pairs, they diligently parsed and disputed these sources using a dialectic called pilpul.  It is a hair-splitting methodology, which may be the origin of the wisecrack, "Two Jews, three opinions."

  The most accomplished yeshiva buchers (yeshiva boys) were encouraged to continue their studies, some eventually becoming rabbis.  They were admired enough to be sought for bridegrooms, their future in-laws often committing in the marriage contract to underwrite their ongoing education for a given term, as part of the dowry.  That is not to say that secular vocations were frowned on.  The community accepted the talents of all upright men, but perhaps the yeshiva bucher got a little more esteem.

  My maternal grandfather was a yeshiva bucher, graduating from the famed Vilna and Slabodka yeshivas in Lithuania and going on to become a rabbi.  He came to America in 1896 at age 24, after seeing one pogrom too many in the old country.  Finding an excess of rabbis here, and anxious to earn enough money to bring his wife and son to join him in America, he went into business, eventually very successfully. 

  Had he ever read it, which I doubt, I believe my grandfather would have disputed Matthew 6:19-24,  "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth … You cannot serve both God and Mammon."  For one thing, he no doubt would have quarreled with the personification of money implied by the capitalized "Mammon," and also its pejorative connotation.  In the Mishnaic Hebrew of the Talmud, mammon simply means riches, without a disparaging undertone.  My grandfather remained a very observant Jew all his life, and had no difficulty reconciling the Godly strictures of Jewish law with being in business and accumulating his fortune.  (Sorry for putting thoughts in your mind a century after the fact, Grampa, but I think I've got you right.)  Through him, my family received the twin heritages of the intellectual and religious life on the one hand and the world of business on the other.

  In a sense, I myself was a yeshiva bucher until I was 26, although not in Talmudic studies.  I earnestly pursued my education nonstop until receiving my doctorate in electrical engineering in 1956.  On  graduation, I headed to Los Angeles to work at Hughes Aircraft Company.  Although my mother was unhappy that I was moving to the West Coast, she was proud that I was joining industry and earning the then-princely sum of $11,000 per year

  I was invited four years later to join the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley at a much lower salary.  Even though I had been teaching at night at USC and UCLA, I had missed full immersion in the academic and intellectually oriented life, and was excited by the appointment.  When I phoned my mother to announce my coming move, there was a long silence.  I thought the connection had been broken.  Finally, the verdict came:  "You always were a bit lazy!"  It was like being struck by a thunderbolt.

  I've heard this same story from a number of my Jewish friends: the tension between the yeshiva and mammon in the American Jewish world.  Our families wanted us to be intellectually brilliant, but expected us to be successful in the hurly-burly of the commercial world too.  As children, we were pressed for A grades, an achievement assumed to lead to a well-to-do later life in a profession.  Our parents' bragging was often prefaced by "My son, the doctor," or "My son, the CEO," rarely by "My son, the professor."  For an Easterner like my mother, it might have sufficed to say, "My son, the professor at MIT," but "My son, the professor at the University of California" wasn't enough.  (In 1960, her friends would have asked, "Where??")

  It was a remarkable reversal from the ethos of the old country.  There, the scholar was held in greater esteem than the businessman, even if the former may have been ingenuous and the latter worldly-wise.  In America, it's the reverse: we're more impressed by Bill Gates (or a century ago by Andrew Carnegie) than by any intellectual you might name.  The preference here for mammon quickly rubbed off onto Jewish and other immigrants.

  I guess I should have anticipated my mother's verdict.  She had been full of praise when I was a yeshiva bucher, but enough already!  Her frame of reference could not be other than the father she adored, the successful businessman who was still intellectual but no longer a yeshiva bucher.  Why was I sliding back into that status?

  My mother ultimately understood that I was happily following my intellectual star.  After all, throughout my youth she had drilled into me that I should retreat into my intellect whenever I needed sustenance.  "Don't worry about what you think other people think of you when you do so" was her constant refrain.  Although I always sought her approbation, I hadn't fretted about what her response would be before I decided to move to academia.  Intellectuality was one of my twin birthrights.  

  None the less, that "You always were a bit lazy!" rang in my ears for years.