Over the past year, the Torah world has been plunged into crisis. Having succeeded in “rebuilding the Torah world destroyed in the Holocaust,” it now finds some of its sons branded deserters by the Jewish state.
Some will see this as a fulfillment of the Zohar’s teaching that, on the eve of redemption, adversity will befall the tamkhin de-oraita—those who sustain the Torah. Yet the crisis may also be an invitation to turn our gaze inward and reconsider how the central value upon which this world rests is realized today: Torah study.
This value shapes both the personal world of the Haredi individual, who is educated to regard Torah study as his primary vocation, and the self-understanding of Haredi society as a whole, which sees itself as a kind of “Tribe of Levi” serving all of Israel. On this view, Torah study is indispensable to the existence of the Jewish people, and indeed of the world itself: “If not for My covenant by day and by night, I would not have established the laws of heaven and earth.” The justification for the “society of learners” thus rests upon a theological claim: Torah study is not merely a personal good, but a national function entrusted to the “Tribe of Levi” of our generation.
This justification took shape as Haredi society developed into a large and diverse sector within Israel. At the founding of the state, the exemption was presented as a temporary measure intended to restore the Torah world destroyed in the Holocaust: the Chazon Ish, together with other rabbis and public figures, asked Ben-Gurion to exempt a small group from military service for this purpose. As the number of learners grew, however, the role acquired an additional dimension, and Torah study came to be understood as providing protection for the Jewish people. This conception is embodied in the institutional structure of the “Torah world,” with its two principal layers: the yeshiva for unmarried students and the kollel for married scholars. Together, they comprise the Haredi “Tribe of Levi”—a world founded upon the ideal of Torah’s supreme importance and upon a framework designed to make that ideal possible.
My purpose in this essay is not to propose a concrete policy addressing the sociopolitical implications of the issue. Such a proposal would also have to consider other values, including the role these institutions play in enabling a broader strategy of social separation. Rather, I wish to lay a conceptual foundation for a future discussion of the place of Torah study, in its ideal form, within the life of the Jewish people. Such clarification will be necessary if Haredi society is to participate in building the next stage of Jewish national life, when the conditions for doing so have matured.
I will approach the question from two complementary directions. First, I will offer a sociological analysis of the institutions of the Torah world, pointing to a categorical transformation that has taken place within them in recent years. I will then turn to a theological analysis of Torah study itself and ask how it serves the Jewish people as a whole. By examining the relationship between the sociological framework and the theological ideal, I hope to suggest a renewed way of thinking about the subject.
The Yeshiva: Between a “Lighthouse” and “Noah’s Ark”
There have always been individuals among the Jewish people who devoted their lives to Torah study, just as there have always been significant centers of Torah learning. In earlier periods, however, study took place primarily in communal batei midrash. Over the past several centuries, a new model emerged: the yeshiva—an institution that gathers the whole of a young man’s life within itself, with fixed study schedules, dormitories, and a distinct social world that separates him from the outside environment. It seeks to shape the learner’s spiritual character while also ordering his material existence.[1]
This institution embodies two principal purposes that developed over time.[2]
The first purpose, which guided Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin in establishing the modern yeshiva, was to create a Torah center that would preserve, develop, and disseminate Torah for the entire generation.[3]The same purpose animated the Ponevezher Rav when he established his yeshiva after the Holocaust: the restoration of the Torah world destroyed in Europe.[4]We might call this the “lighthouse” model. The yeshiva serves as a workshop for the formation of Torah scholars who will later become centers of Torah influence for the Jewish people as a whole.[5]
The second purpose conceives of the yeshiva as “Noah’s Ark”: an environment that insulates the learner from the outside world, protects him from its influences, and enables him to build his spiritual character through immersion in Torah and holiness. This understanding is reflected in the Chazon Ish’s response to the Satmar Rebbe, who asked why Torah students did not fulfill the Rambam’s teaching that a person living in a corrupt environment must flee to the wilderness. The yeshivot, the Chazon Ish replied, are the “wildernesses” of our generation.
The first model seeks to produce Torah scholars who will act as “agents of Torah” in the wider world. The second seeks to create a protected space that serves as a spiritual refuge for the learner.
The first model seeks to produce Torah scholars who will act as “agents of Torah” in the wider world. The second seeks to create a protected space that serves as a spiritual refuge for the learner. Both conceptions were carried into the world of kollelim, which developed after the establishment of the State of Israel on the institutional model of the yeshiva.
Historically, at least until Haredi society began to consolidate, the yeshiva leaned more heavily toward the lighthouse model, producing Torah figures of stature who influenced the wider public. In recent decades, by contrast, the Noah’s Ark model has grown increasingly dominant, emphasizing protection from the secular environment. This change can be understood against the background of both the dramatic growth in the number of learners and the cultural and technological transformations of the surrounding world.
The same development helps explain the changing rationale for exemption from military service. At the founding of the state, the claim rested primarily upon the need to rebuild the Torah world. Today, it rests increasingly upon the incompatibility between the yeshiva world and the Israeli melting pot.
The “Torah World” as a Sociological Function
The common denominator of the models described above is that both place the formation of the individual at the center of the yeshiva. In recent years, however—partly because of the enormous growth in student numbers—the institution appears to have undergone a fundamental change.
In the past, whether the yeshiva functioned as a lighthouse or as Noah’s Ark, its central concern was the individual: either the student destined to become a Torah scholar and influence the wider community, or the student whose spiritual world needed to be preserved within a protected environment. Today, the principal object of concern no longer seems to be the individual himself, but the institutional framework as such.
This change is visible in the spread of quiet disengagement within the yeshiva system and, above all, in the dwindling number of singular figures once found within it—students of whom it might be said that “the entire yeshiva is worthwhile if it produces this one person,” and who displayed extraordinary breadth and depth in Torah. The yeshiva world remains full of excellent students, but distinctive individuals of this kind have become rare.
The phenomenon reflects a broader transformation in the yeshiva’s internal structure. It can be seen in the increasing number of students in each class, in the intensifying competition among yeshivot, and in the demand that every individual conform to a prescribed curriculum—generally the orders of Nashim and Nezikin—even when his personal inclination draws him toward other areas of Torah.
These features mark a shift away from the student’s individual development and toward his treatment as one component of a broad institutional structure. Within that structure, his contribution is measured less by his personal distinctiveness than by his successful belonging.
These features mark a shift away from the student’s individual development and toward his treatment as one component of a broad institutional structure. Within that structure, his contribution is measured less by his personal distinctiveness than by his successful belonging.[6] The same logic shapes education: systemic considerations take precedence over the student’s particular good. Individuals must study the same material, look the same, and aspire to the same destiny. Rather than discovering their own portion in the service of Hashem, students are channeled toward a uniform, industrial model of lifelong kollel membership.
This may be understood as another expression of a broader transformation within Haredi society:[7] a transition from a communal-ideological structure, in which institutions existed to serve a Torah ideal embodied in the yeshivot, to a sociological structure in which the preservation of the institutions themselves becomes the central concern. The yeshiva is no longer only a place that shapes the learner; it has become part of a wider mechanism for the systemic preservation of Haredi society. The process is also expressed in cultural markers—clothing, language, and patterns of behavior—that signify a person’s degree of yeshivishkeit and function as part of the same mechanism of preservation.
Sociological Torah and Autonomous Torah
A further source of the gap between the Torah purpose of the yeshiva and its present reality is the lack of sufficient conceptual clarification of the ideal of Torato umanuto—Torah as one’s vocation.
Haredi discourse concerning the “Torah world” contains two distinct understandings of Torah study.
The first concerns what Torah means for the person who studies it. It regards learning as an existential ideal: the individual seeks to shape his entire life around attachment to Torah. The second concerns what study means for Torah itself and for the Jewish people as a whole. It regards learning as a national vocation: the learner is entrusted with preserving Torah and sustaining the people.
Together, these two dimensions constitute the Haredi conception of the “Tribe of Levi” and underwrite the justification for the “society of learners.” Yet they are distinct and must be examined separately.
One common response to the Haredi Torah world is that sifra vesayifa—the book and the sword, Torah study and practical life—can be combined. But this response misses the way Torah study is understood within Haredi thought. The ideal is not merely to fulfill the mitzvah of Torah study, nor even to acquire knowledge of Torah. It is to realize the very form of Jewish life: “You shall meditate upon it day and night.”[8]
This conception treats Torah study as a total mode of existence, demanding that a person reshape his conduct and even his relationship with the mundane. This is the deeper meaning of the yeshiva expression “to shtayg”: not simply to add hours of study, but to ascend in every dimension of life. The ideal therefore requires complete devotion to the labor of Torah[9] and seeks an insulated environment capable of preserving the learner’s spiritual world and identity—an existence not easily reconciled with integration into modern practical life.[10]
A community can educate its members to recognize the importance of Torah, but it cannot manufacture complete existential devotion where that devotion does not arise from an inner choice.
Yet the contemporary reality—in which many yeshiva students are not fully immersed in the “world of Torah,” while others experience a growing sense of dissatisfaction—shows that total devotion cannot function as a social default. A community can educate its members to recognize the importance of Torah, but it cannot manufacture complete existential devotion where that devotion does not arise from an inner choice.
This, it seems, is the force of the Sages’ observation concerning the path of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who advocated total devotion: “Many acted in this manner, but did not succeed” (Shabbat 33b). The statement does more than acknowledge that the standard is too demanding for most people. It points to the character of devotion itself: such a life requires an autonomous decision by the learner and cannot be produced by cultural channeling alone.
The Sages’ assumption that a life wholly dedicated to Torah is not the proper path for everyone appears to arise from the distinctive structure of the mitzvah. Halakha affirms Torah study as a constant and supreme obligation, yet does not require it to displace the ordinary necessities of human existence.[11]
The ideal of Torah study, it seems, reflects a higher spiritual plane, something akin to the World to Come.[12] Precisely because this attachment is so elevated, it cannot become a collective demand severed from the conditions of actual life.
In this sense, dedicating one’s life to Torah is not an obligation in the ordinary sense, but a calling. The individual who seeks to answer that calling fully must do so through autonomous choice.[13]
Moreover, Torah seeks to be a Torat Chaim—a Torah of life. It does not stand apart from reality, but forms the human being’s relationship with it.[14]Withdrawal from the world may sometimes be necessary, not only out of fear of secularization but also because of the conditions of attachment and devotion that Torah itself demands. Even then, however, it cannot be a uniform posture imposed from without. The choice of a Torah life is an existential decision made by the learner himself. He must determine how to balance his spiritual world with practical life in accordance with his character, his personal portion in Torah, and his stage of life.
Education can begin this process, but ultimately the individual must acquire this orientation for himself.
Between the Torah of Issachar and the Torah of Levi
Alongside the understanding of Torah study as a personal-existential ideal, Haredi discourse contains another dimension: Torah study as a national vocation. On this view, the value of Torah is not exhausted by the spiritual world of the individual learner. Torah contributes to the very existence of the Jewish people, for “Torah protects and saves,” and “the world exists only on account of Torah.”[15]
The Torah world is therefore regarded as a kind of “Tribe of Levi” for our generation:[16] a group charged with studying Torah on behalf of the entire Jewish people. Its learning is consequently not only a private choice, but a public task and a distinctive national mission.
These two approaches may be termed the “Tribe of Issachar” model and the “Tribe of Levi” model.
The Tribe of Issachar model represents the Torah study of the individual. It is grounded primarily in personal choice and, as noted above, its practical realization depends upon the learner’s own circumstances. It is against this background that halakha recognizes the Issachar-Zevulun partnership, in which one individual dedicates his life to Torah study while another supports him financially. It is a partnership between individuals.
The Tribe of Levi model, by contrast, concerns a group that bears responsibility toward the Jewish people as a whole. Levi was entrusted with the Temple service and with teaching Torah to the nation: “They shall teach Your ordinances to Jacob and Your Torah to Israel.” In wartime, the tribe was also charged with strengthening the nation’s spiritual identity,[17] as reflected in its role of carrying the Ark of the Covenant within the camp.[18] The common denominator of these functions is responsibility for the sacred character of the nation.
The Torah of the Tribe of Issachar is rooted in the mitzvah of Torah study as an expression of personal attachment. It is therefore the “Torah of the individual”—a mitzvah incumbent upon each person according to his ability. The Torah of the Tribe of Levi, by contrast, concerns the bearing of public spiritual responsibility.
The Torah of the Tribe of Issachar is rooted in the mitzvah of Torah study as an expression of personal attachment. It is therefore the “Torah of the individual”—a mitzvah incumbent upon each person according to his ability. The Torah of the Tribe of Levi, by contrast, concerns the bearing of public spiritual responsibility. It therefore belongs to the laws governing the sacred service of the community: the teaching and development of Torah for the Jewish people as a whole.
The distinctive status of the Tribe of Levi—its exemption from warfare and its right to be sustained through the priestly and Levitical gifts of Israel—did not derive from the private mitzvah of Torah study. It derived from the tribe’s responsibility for the collective “sacred service” of the nation. This national mission was expressed, on the one hand, in Levi’s lack of a territorial inheritance, symbolizing a degree of separation from material life,[19] and, on the other, in the tribe’s dispersal among all Israel, reflecting its task of shaping the nation’s spirit. It was this mission that conferred upon Levi its distinctive status.[20]
The distinction also clarifies how Torah benefits the Jewish people. Its contribution need not be understood primarily as a metaphysical force or a “spiritual weapon.” It lies first and foremost in preserving the nation’s connection to the sacred.
The “Society of Learners”: Preserving the “Torah of the Individual”
It is clear to any fair observer that the contemporary Torah world realizes the Tribe of Issachar model far more fully than the Tribe of Levi model. The Torah of the individual inhabits the “four cubits of halakha”: the learner’s private world and his personal spiritual development. The Torah of the Tribe of Levi, by contrast, is the “Torah of the collective”—a Torah that shapes the spiritual life of the nation and addresses its existential questions. Levi’s function is not exhausted by the act of study; it lies in creating such a Torah.
The contemporary “society of learners,” however, is devoted primarily to the Torah of the individual—to an inward scholarly discourse oriented toward the internal halakhic world. In this way, the “Torah world” preserves a communal and exilic form of study, developed during an era in which the Jewish people did not exist as a sovereign nation and maintained their religious identity within a limited communal sphere set apart from material and political life.[21]
The transition to national existence therefore calls for a corresponding transition to a “Torah of the collective”—a Torah that enters into dialogue with the life of the nation and thereby constitutes its spiritual identity.
This inward concentration was necessary in the lands of our dispersion, for it enabled the preservation of the Oral Torah tradition.[22] Yet Torah is ultimately meant to shape reality itself. The transition to national existence therefore calls for a corresponding transition to a “Torah of the collective”[23]—a Torah that enters into dialogue with the life of the nation and thereby constitutes its spiritual identity. Such Torah also gathers the distinct spiritual qualities of each tribe around a shared center. This is reflected in Levi’s position at the heart of the Israelite encampment: Torah stands at the center of the nation and binds its disparate forces together.[24]
The conservatism of the “society of learners” in maintaining its inherited form of study—shaped, among other things, by its relationship with the state—combines with its character as a self-preserving sociological framework. The result harms not only Torah’s national function but also its inner development. Torah is meant to illuminate life; instead, it becomes an enclosed system that does not encounter life. Its discourse grows rigid, trapped within narrowing internal boundaries.
The problem is visible in an increasingly familiar feature of the Torah world: a proliferation of Torah scholars and extensive engagement with every part of the Oral Torah, accompanied nonetheless by a sense of stagnation. This is expressed in an inflation of pamphlets devoted to empty pilpul and in a yeshiva discourse that can spend hours upon analyses sometimes detached from the substance of the question itself.
* * *
In conclusion, dedicating one’s life to Torah requires autonomous choice, not merely sociological belonging. At the same time, the “society of learners” now struggles to realize the mission of the Tribe of Levi in a form appropriate to that mission. The “Torah world” functions increasingly as a sociological framework, and the learner is turned into a function of the system. A Torah that seeks to carry national meaning cannot confine itself to inward-facing scholarship alone.
Torah is the spiritual, cultural, and moral heart of the Jewish people, and Haredi society is today the principal bearer of this value. Precisely for that reason, we cannot afford to avoid the question of how this Torah might once again become an integral part of building the life of the Jewish people in its land.
[1] The Sages’ statements that “a yeshiva never ceased to exist among the Jewish people” and “What should a person do in order to become wise? He should increase his sitting in study” do not describe a particular institution. Rather, they interpret Torah study as a structural element of Jewish life: not merely the acquisition of knowledge, but a form of learning that shapes every dimension of life.
[2] These concepts are common in contemporary discourse; see, for example, here and here [Hebrew].
[3] As he wrote in a letter printed in Derashot Maharach, his purpose was to magnify Torah, whose prestige had declined and which had begun to be forgotten. This was in addition to his understanding of the yeshiva as a response to Hasidism and the Haskalah.
This role contains two dimensions: developing Torah for the sake of the Jewish people, and developing it for the sake of Torah itself.
[4] For this reason, he named the yeshivot he established after their counterparts in Europe.
[5] His students subsequently formed the foundation of yeshivot such as Slabodka, Telz, Mir, Kelm, and Novardok, all of which engaged in the development of Torah and of the human personality.
[6] The Chazon Ish already remarked that “the yeshivot saved the average students but harmed the exceptional ones.” The distinction drawn here describes a further stage, in which the yeshiva no longer serves even the average students.
[7] See further in this article of mine [Hebrew].
[8] This conception was developed primarily through Nefesh HaChaim and today constitutes a basic foundation of Haredi self-understanding.
[9] As the Sages stated, “The words of Torah endure only in one who kills himself over them.”
[10] The element of withdrawal here functions as a condition of total devotion to Torah. It is not required by the strict law and applies only to one who dedicates his life to Torah. It is distinct from the additional claim that religious life in a secular environment can be preserved only through social separation.
[11] Halakha establishes that Torah study—unlike a mitzvah that cannot be performed by others—is set aside both for ordinary bodily needs and for the performance of other mitzvot.
[12] This is the terminology employed by the Maharal in his writings.
[13] In practice, Torah study contains several components:
(a) Study for the purpose of knowing how to observe halakha. Everyone is obligated in this form of study, since it is a prerequisite for performing the mitzvot.
(b) The distinctive mitzvah of Torah study, which every Jewish man is required to fulfill, although its minimum required measure is limited.
(c) Torah study as an end in itself. This is not an obligation, but a mitzvah kiyyumit—a mitzvah whose fulfillment depends upon autonomous choice and upon recognition of Torah’s categorical superiority.
[14] The inward withdrawal that characterized exile was a necessity imposed by historical reality.
[15] Torah reflects the central purpose of the creation of the world, and its importance derives from this fact.
[16] The expression is taken from the Rambam, who compares a person who devotes himself to Torah to the Tribe of Levi. A basis for the idea may also be found in the Sages’ teaching that gifts intended for the poor should preferably be given to Torah scholars.
[17] The Maharal and the Netziv explained that the Tribe of Levi went out to the war against Midian because its Torah study formed part of the battlefield.
[18] It is interesting to compare this with the Sages’ explanation that Moshe raised his hands during the war against Amalek so that the Jewish people would “look upward and subject their hearts to their Father in Heaven.”
[19] An illuminating insight emerges from the distinction between the sanctity of the Land of Israel and the sanctity of the Temple. The sanctity of the Land concerning the mitzvot dependent upon it rests upon the sanctity of the physical territory. The sanctity of the Temple, by contrast, depends upon the indwelling of the Shekhinah and therefore remains intact even during exile.
This expresses the difference between the sanctity of action, which is connected to the Land and therefore depends upon physical conquest, and spiritual sanctity, which remains connected to the Temple even in the absence of its physical structure. We may therefore understand the Tribe of Levi, whose place is in the Temple, as bearing responsibility for spiritual sanctity.
[20] This also resolves the difficulty raised concerning the Rambam’s ruling that it is forbidden to derive one’s livelihood from Torah study. The support of the Tribe of Levi was not charity, but provision for the fulfillment of a national function. Compare also the fact that during the Egyptian exile, the Tribe of Levi did not participate in the forced labor.
[21] The Vilna Gaon referred to this form of study as sefichin harishonim—the “aftergrowths of the earlier authorities.”
[22] Exile may be understood as a period of inward consolidation that enabled the development of internal Torah scholarship.
[23] I do not use the term “Torah of the collective” here in the sense in which it appears in Religious-Zionist discourse: a Torah arising from the sanctity of the Land of Israel and therefore requiring a fundamental spiritual renewal. I use it in a technical sense—the transition from private life to collective existence, in which a society faces political, economic, national, and military decisions. Such a collective entity could, in principle, exist within any other political setting as well.
[24] This insight also appears in Kabbalistic literature. Each tribe is associated with a different permutation of the letters of the four-letter Divine Name—twelve permutations corresponding to the twelve tribes. The Tribe of Levi, which is the thirteenth tribe, has no separate permutation of its own, but encompasses the names of them all.
