In addressing this topic, I make certain assumptions which it is best to declare at the outset. I speak of “Torah Education” as it is known and practiced in Centrist or Modern Orthodoxy. This means Jewish education in that community which subscribes to Torah U’Madda as a desideratum and not a concession, to tolerance and moderation, to the State of Israel, and to the unity of the Jewish people. But these admirable qualities and values are ancillary to the primary principle of Torah as the very source of our lives, both individual and communal, and the study of Torah as the pre-eminent mitzvah of Judaism. My remarks might be viewed as self-critical, negatively constructive. Although I dwell upon our faults and failures and flaws, and forgo self-gratulation, do not conclude therefrom that we are inherently inadequate and doomed. Quite to the contrary: if I am critical of our educational efforts, perhaps harshly, I ask you to attribute the public airing of my misgivings as a sign of collective self-confidence and strength. Were I less confident of our past achievements and future triumphs, I would not risk exposing our weaknesses. I shall cluster my remarks about two poles or centers of concern: Torah and Mitzvot. Why, after all, should a young person study Torah when it is so easy to be accepted, successful, and recognized without a whisper of Jewish literacy? The Torah component in the theme of “Torah Education at the Crossroads” may be divided into a discussion of motivation, continuity, and axiology (or: the role of Torah in the hierarchy of values). Motivation: one of the most fundamental, difficult, and persistent questions which Jewish educators have to confront is that of the motivation to learn. This is universally the case, but it is especially nettlesome for children or adolescents of our community who are exposed to the whole gamut of contemporary experience in which Torah learning is not a prestige item. The perennial problem is getting more difficult of late. Why, after all, should a young person study Torah when it is so easy to be accepted, successful, and recognized without a whisper of Jewish literacy? It is even possible to attain eminence in national and international Jewish leadership while remaining profoundly ignorant of Jewish classics, practice, or values; or worse, one can be married out and aggressively assert that the dogma of “pluralism” qualifies the ignorant, the Jewishly illiterate, and the intermarried to be “Jewish” leaders equal with all others. Why study Torah when it hardly articulates with anything familiar in secular life, when it has barely any resonance in the general studies which a child undertakes for all of his or her youth in our society? For most of the ’70s there seemed to be certain segments of Jewish society for whom this question seemed less acute. This was the era of the Counter-Culture, when many young Jews rebelled against the Jewish “establishment” and its insensitivity to cultural and spiritual values by seeking out Jewish study in one form or another. This was the period of ethnic self-assertion, of the proliferation of Jewish studies courses in universities throughout North America, and a conscious rejection of many of the symbols and institutions of our technopolitan society. That period, however, quickly passed away — and I rue its untimely demise. The ’80s generation on our campuses has been as humorless, as intensive, and as grimly serious as the ’70s generation — but about altogether different things. They are over-concerned with their vocations, their professions, their security, their social acceptance. With the shift from marijuana to booze has come the change from Marcuse to money, from society to self and status, from the New Leftist to the All Rightnik. Our tasks, therefore, promise to be more difficult, not less so. With the obsession with vocation and money-making seeping down to high schools and even lower, culture as such is in eclipse, and Jewish learning especially threatens to become the private reserve of a priestly class — once rabbis, now mostly roshei yeshiva and, in other circles, university professors of Judaic studies: the new monastic order, the Essenes of the Academy. But that, of course, jeopardizes the existence of Torah which must be moreshet kehila tYaakov, a possession of all our people. Continuity: the criterion of success in Torah education is not how much or how well our pupils learn in their schools, but how much and how often they learn after they leave school, when they are at work and building families and running businesses and raising children. Of Torah we say daily ki hem hayenu v’orekh yamenu — “They [the Torah and its commandments] are our life and the length of our days.” The test of whether we are truly committed, of whether Torah is really “our life,” is whether or not it is indeed “the length of our days.” If you want to know if Torah is central to your life — ki hem hayenu — check to what extent you turn to it in v’orekh yamenu, after your formal schooling is over. How often do you open a Gemara or Humash or attend a regular shiur? The test results for most of us — most of us Orthodox Jews, let alone the others — are probably quite dismal. And that means that we must take an honest look at the educational system which produced us, as well as our society in general. I submit that to improve this situation, to make sure that, to the maximum extent possible for us, Torah becomes a part of our adult lives, we must make a serious attempt to induce and inspire the best and brightest of our high school students to continue their full dual curriculum of Torah and general studies into their college years. In elementary Jewish schools, we teach skills and love. In high schools, we teach ideas and ideals. But it is primarily Torah study on the level of higher education that can succeed in encouraging the study of Torah as a lifelong occupation, as an act of the love of God expressed in the idiom of the intellect. Regular Torah study on the college level is critical to developing the habit of Torah study for the rest of one’s life. Only if Torah education is continued on a higher level for an ever-larger number of Centrist Orthodox Jews, can we hope to achieve credibility — in our own eyes — as an authentically Orthodox voice, and thus validate our approach to secular studies and the Gentile world and the non-Orthodox communities and the State of Israel. Axiology: the question of axiology is that of the scale of values, and what role we assign to the study of Torah, what emphasis we place on it vis-à-vis other activities. The Mishnaic teaching v’talmud Torah kneged kulam means that Torah study outweighs not only all the other mitzvot but, remarkably, even non-mitzvot, such as vacations, entertainment, proficiency in every conceivable sport, and so on. To the largest extent, this emphasis on Torah as the chief value of life and of Judaism is transmitted, or not transmitted, to our charges in indirect as well as direct ways: not only by construction of curriculum, but also by our own conduct as parents and teachers, our tone of voice, our body language, and the clues and hints they pick up from us and from their fellow students. We must beware of reducing Torah to a “course” or subject or discipline or field of knowledge alone. Torah is and must always be presented as a deeply religious and spiritual enterprise. The Sages taught that Torah study by man is an act of imitatio Dei: we imitate the Creator who spends most of His time studying Torah. And God learns Torah; He doesn’t just “take a course” in Torah in His heavenly Yeshiva Day School. I am not advocating that we teach only Torah. I am philosophically committed to Torah U’Madda. I do not expect or want all boys to become rabbis or roshei yeshiva and all girls teachers (although we could use many more recruits to both callings). I want our children to be proficient in all their secular studies too. But I want all of them, no matter what careers they will pursue, to keep Torah as their prime spiritual commitment and talmud Torah as a regular and ongoing part of their lives. That, I maintain, must be the end-product of our form of Torah education: greatness as human beings, but always as great Jews. And that cannot happen without the proper emphasis on the primacy of Torah as a lifelong enterprise of the first importance. No form of Orthodoxy can flourish without that emphasis. Mitzvot: we turn now from the question of the study of Torah to that of shemirat ha-mitzvot, the problem of the observance of the commandments, and thus the whole “lifestyle,” as it is now called, of our school population both during and after their years of formal education. When I do so, I refer not only to the matter of “observance” in a way that can be quantified and projected in a sociologist’s survey: how often do you lay tefillin? How often do you light candles? I am concerned by the quality of the observance, the emotional dimension of our shemirat ha-mitzvot, the investment of our deepest feelings, the enthusiasm we bring to our religious acts, the faith in the transcendent One which must always underlie our expressions of Jewish living.