The Frum Prosperity Gospel

When I matriculated at Yeshiva University in the 1980s I found it a place of passionate intellectual inquiry.  The religious underpinnings of secular thought—that philosophy, science, and literature could potentially be elevated to the level of the holy—helped to instill the YU of those days with respect for intellectual inquiry which, I suspect, was more imperative than at other universities. For many of us at YU, secular studies were more than mere edifying intellectual ideas, they were a religious obligation. So it can be easily understood why on the day the University announced that it would be opening a School of Business, I could not fathom what place a business school had on our campus.

Thirty-five years later the majority of undergraduate students in Yeshiva University are enrolled in the business school. Though I only see the alma mater from afar it is hard to imagine that the intense discussions of yesteryear regarding Torah u-Mada can flourish in an atmosphere in which one’s secular studies are utilitarian, and primarily undertaken for the purpose of making a living. In my day, many of YU’s professors of secular philosophy were rabbis with doctorates in the humanities. Will this be the case in the YU of tomorrow? And if not, what has been lost?

Hyim Shafner, Rabbi of Kesher Israel in Washington, DC, considers these transitions and their impact on religious life and values in his response to TRADITION’s special Summit volume on “The Challenge of Material Success” (Spring 2024). Read his essay, “The Frum Prosperity Gospel, Torah u-Madda, and the Need for Jewish Public Servants,” open access in our most recent issue.