At the age of 37, Jason Arday became the youngest Black professor in the history of the University of Cambridge. Three years later, he resigned from his position amid serious allegations concerning his academic work and details of his biography. Just days later, at the beginning of this week, Arday was found dead at his home in South London. He was only 41.
It is a tragic story, and one that raises a broader question: What happens when an institution gives a person a place larger than his actual stature? Does it elevate him—or does it place him in danger?
The question may have relevance for us, too, in Haredi society.
The Story of Jason Arday
Arday was born in 1985 to a family of Ghanaian origin in the Clapham neighborhood of London. In 2015, he completed a doctorate at Liverpool John Moores University, and later taught at Durham and Glasgow. His research focused on race, inequality, and the British education system. According to Arday, he was diagnosed with autism as a child, did not speak until the age of eleven, and did not learn to read and write until his late teens.
When he was appointed a professor at Cambridge in 2023, his personal story was central to how the appointment was presented: the youngest Black professor in the university’s history, a man who had overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles on his way to the summit of British academia.
Then questions began to emerge. It was alleged that numerous passages in his doctoral dissertation and other writings bore substantial similarities to earlier publications, and doubts were also raised about elements of his biography and achievements. Arday denied fraud or deliberate plagiarism, maintaining that mistakes had been made in his work. When journalists sought to investigate the allegations, he turned to the British police, who intervened and investigated for months, eventually acknowledging they had erred.
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Cambridge initially defended him and criticized his detractors, but as more information emerged and media investigations surfaced, the university opened an inquiry into both his academic conduct and the circumstances of his appointment. Arday resigned his post, and ultimately took his own life.
My focus in this column is not Arday himself; fraudsters are hardly a rarity. My focus is Cambridge, one of the world’s great academic institutions. Presenting Arday as an academic prodigy points to a serious failure of judgment. More troublingly, in its desire to satisfy the prevailing demands of moral representation in academic institutions, Cambridge tailored for Arday an academic robe far larger than his actual dimensions. In doing so, it wronged other candidates and students—and, ultimately, played a part in his sad demise.
What, then, can we learn from this?
Knowing One’s Place—or Wearing a Robe Too Large?
In the sixth chapter of Pirkei Avot, one of the qualities through which Torah is acquired is being “one who knows his place.” A person must know where he stands: his strengths and his weaknesses; what he has already achieved and what he has not; what position he is worthy of occupying and what position he has not yet grown into. In a similar spirit, the Baraita in Taanit states, according to Rabbi Meir: “Not everyone who wishes to make himself an exceptional individual may do so” (Taanit 10b). Not everyone is entitled to assume a title and status that are not his.
Sometimes the greatest kindness we can do for a person is precisely not to give him the title he seeks. Not every closed door is an injustice; sometimes it is a necessary encounter with reality.
The principle is straightforward. A person may receive a title, occupy an office, wear a robe, and be surrounded by people addressing him with honorifics. But a deep gap between the title and the person, between status and ability, endangers both the individual and society. Sometimes the greatest kindness we can do for a person is precisely not to give him the title he seeks. Not every closed door is an injustice; sometimes it is a necessary encounter with reality.
Yet, the Gemara tells a story that seems to point in almost the opposite direction.
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi once came to the town of Rabbi Elazar son of Rabbi Shimon and asked whether that righteous man had left a son. The townspeople replied that he had indeed left a son—but one whose conduct was very far from righteous. The Sages describe him in strikingly harsh terms: “Every prostitute who hires herself out for two hires him for eight” (Bava Metzia 84a).
What did Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi do? He ordained the young man, bestowed upon him the title “Rabbi,” clothed him in the robe appropriate to a scholar, and entrusted him to Rabbi Shimon ben Isi, his mother’s brother, to teach him Torah.
The young (Rabbi) Yosi repeatedly tried to return to his former life of dissipation, and Rabbi Shimon would tell him: Look at yourself. They have made you a sage. They have spread a golden robe over you. They call you “Rabbi.” And after all this, you want to go back there?
The method worked. Rabbi Yosi remained in the beit midrash, studied Torah, and eventually became worthy of the title he had been given. The Sages conclude the episode with the verse: “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise.”
At first glance, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi violated the very principle of “knowing one’s place.” He took a man who was far removed from the world of Torah and placed him somewhere else entirely. He gave him a status he had not earned, a title he did not yet justify, and a robe that did not fit his dimensions.
But here lies the crucial distinction. There are two ways of placing a person somewhere he does not yet deserve to be. One can give him the position as a substitute for growth, or one can give him the position as an agent of growth.
One can say to a person: You are already worthy, because you belong to the right group, carry the right identity, or satisfy an important institutional need. And if there is a gap between your abilities and the status you have been given, we will simply ignore it.
Or one can say something very different: I see something in you that you do not yet see in yourself. I am therefore giving you, for now, a place larger than your present dimensions—and from this moment on, you bear the responsibility to grow until you become worthy of it.
What Do We Want From the State?
This line of thought is essential for considering policies directed toward groups.
I am not arguing that there is no place for group rights. A just society should remove barriers, combat discrimination, allow people to preserve their faith and way of life, and provide tools to those whose circumstances have denied them a fair opportunity. All of these are legitimate. But there is an enormous difference between opening a door and awarding the place on the other side of it.
When identity becomes a currency with which status can be purchased, we commit a double injustice. We harm the institution by causing it to abandon its standards, and we harm the individual by sending the message that his achievements need not stand on their own merits.
We Haredim are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a group. There are good reasons for this. Haredi society does indeed possess a distinctive way of life, an independent educational system, particular religious and cultural needs, and institutions of its own. But group thinking easily spills over into the political arena. We vote for “our” representatives and tend to measure their success by how much they have managed to bring home “for the community”: how many budgets, positions, allocations, grants, quotas, and preferences.
It is time, however, to change the question. Instead of asking how much the state gives Haredim, we should ask how many opportunities it opens before us. The difference is profound.
It is time, however, to change the question. Instead of asking how much the state gives Haredim, we should ask how many opportunities it opens before us. The difference is profound.
I do not want to receive a job because I am Haredi; I want to ensure that I am not rejected from a job because I am Haredi. I do not want a public institution to hand me achievements in the name of “Haredi representation”; I want it to remove unnecessary barriers that prevent me from competing for them.
In other words, we need less of a politics of group outcomes, and more of a politics of individual capacity.
The task of our representatives is not to guarantee us benefits. It is to ensure open doors: an education that enables choice; opportunities to make up educational gaps; professional training; access to higher education for those who seek it; diverse avenues of service and contribution; an open and accessible labor market; and the ability to choose from as broad a range as possible of tracks both good and faithful to Torah.
Once the door has been opened, we must walk through it ourselves.
Growing Into the Place
Perhaps this is the deeper lesson of Rabbi Yosi’s story.
There is great virtue in “knowing one’s place.” A person who refuses to acknowledge his limitations lives a lie. But there is another virtue as well: knowing the place one is capable of reaching.
Sometimes a teacher, rabbi, parent, or leader sees more in a person than that person sees in himself. Sometimes one must even give him the robe before he truly fits it, so that he can see what he might become. But there is one condition: the robe must never become a substitute for growth.
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi did not say to Rabbi Yosi: You come from the right family, and therefore you deserve to be called “Rabbi.” He said, in effect: I see in you the possibility of greatness, and now that I have given you the title “Rabbi,” it is your responsibility to become a rabbi in truth.
We do not want pity or lowered expectations. We want open doors, proper tools, and high expectations.
That is also the relationship we should seek from Israeli society, and the standard we should demand of ourselves. We do not want pity or lowered expectations. We want open doors, proper tools, and high expectations. Do not give us a place because we are Haredi; enable us to reach every place we are capable of becoming worthy of.
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi dressed Rabbi Yosi in a robe that was larger than his dimensions. But he did not do so in order that Rabbi Yosi might remain small.
He gave him the robe so that he could grow into it.
