December 18, 2014

Dear Fellow Modern Orthodox Idealist,

I want you to dream with me for a few minutes.

Five years from now, women will – for the first time – have the opportunity to learn and contribute to Talmudic and Halakhic discourse at the highest post-semikhah yeshiva level. They will write articles about topics that have no significantly gendered content and they will have influence commensurate with their knowledge, creativity, and character.

They will be hired to teach students like themselves, and a virtuous cycle of Torah will commence.

Five years from now, American and Israeli halakhic scholars will directly discuss the key issues of the day, rather than responding to media reports or negotiating with the Chief Rabbinate. Israelis will learn about the American experience of minority empowerment, and Americans will learn from the Israeli experience of majority responsibility. Israelis will learn about the costs and benefits of denominationalism, and Americans will learn about the costs and benefits of religious monopoly in a pluralistic society.

They will create a halakhic discourse that learns from everything human and that is a constant sanctification of the Divine Name.

All of this will take place in the context of Modern Orthodoxy at its best – rigorous scholarship in an intellectually open atmosphere, full recognition and deep appreciation of the Tzelem Elokim in every human being, full commitment to and deep responsibility for Torah and Halakhah.  

If you share this dream, please support the Center for Modern Torah Leadership with a generous contribution.

So how do we get from this dream to reality?

The Center for Modern Torah Leadership has a proven educational formula. We take enormously talented participants, help them generate an amazingly intense Torah environment, and empower and obligate them to produce rigorous and deeply felt original Torah. We’ve done this for eighteen years in our Summer Beit Midrash. And since September, we’ve been growing by leaps and bounds.

We’ve reached out to the over 150 alumni of the Summer Beit Midrash, and begun building them into a community of leaders. We’ve had a successful first alumni shabbaton, and a successful first online alumni shiur; we’ve created an active listserv for alumni of the past five years; we’ve published an alum’s dvar Torah every week, and we’ve made our Facebook page a platform for alumni writing. We ran Pride without Prejudice, a colloquium for rabbis and educators that included presentations by several alumni.

We modelled passionate, respectful, authentic Torah disagreement for our alumni in our series on Partnership Minyanim, which received over 12,000 blog reads. Our weekly Dvar Torah reaches more subscribers and is featured on a major listserv for Jewish educators, and we’ve made it printer-friendly for shuls. Since October, I’ve been to Columbia, YU, Stern, Yale, and Princeton teaching new and old students, building broad excitement about CMTL’s vision for Modern Orthodoxy. Please check our website and like our Facebook page for more information and regular updates.

But all this is just the beginning.

Next semester, while building on those accomplishments and preparing for the 2015 Summer Beit Midrash, we’ll hold a series of public conversations on Modernity and Halakhah with Rabbi Dov Linzer, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, and we expect to follow that with a series featuring roshei yeshiva from Yeshiva University. We’ll publish responsa from the 2014 Summer Beit Midrash on disability and Halakhah, as well as proceedings from our colloquium, and research papers on conversion procedures and approaches to resolving agunah cases. I will be scholar in residence at synagogues and campuses from NY to Washington to LA as well as sharing our Torah online and in person with high school faculties across the country.

We’re doing all this because we believe that halakhic leadership does not develop in a cultural vacuum, and halakhic leaders do not flourish without like-minded peers, wise mentors, and supportive communities. So if we want our alumni and alumnae to succeed, we need to make sure they have those peers, mentors, and communities.

We also know that there is much more to be done to reach our five-year dreams. We won’t find enough women capable of learning Torah at the highest level unless women are consistently challenged to the utmost at every level of their Torah education. So if we want the change our program embodies, we need to improve high school Torah education, challenge gap year programs to demand more, and ensure that women keep learning intensely during their college years.

Supporting the Center for Modern Torah Leadership’s growth is an investment in the development of Torah, Torah leaders, and Torah communities that recognize, accept, and make us more capable of fulfilling the infinite responsibility that the Jewish people accepted at Sinai. If you resonate with this mission, please donate generously.

Bivrakhah v’hakarat hatov,

Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, Dean

P.S. Please consider donating $1800 to sponsor a Summer Beit Midrash Fellowship, $2500 to sponsor a Senior Fellowship, or contact us with specific dedication ideas. We also welcome multi-year pledges.  Donations are accepted online via Paypal or can be mailed, and are fully tax-deductible.