Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Forget the teeth-gnashing already
occasioned by a new study on Jewish identity in the U.S. by the
Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project. The only thing
every generation of Jews has in common is the conviction that it
will be the last. What matters for the continuity of Jewish life
is quality, not quantity. And in today’s America, Jewish
intellectual, cultural, spiritual and religious life is
flourishing. Case in point: Beth Medrash Govoha of Lakewood, New
Jersey, known as BMG or simply “Lakewood” -- one of the two
biggest yeshivas, or Talmudic colleges, in the history of the
world.
At Lakewood, 6,700 undergraduate and graduate students
pursue a curriculum focused on the Babylonian Talmud, the
compendium of legal argument and ethical narrative that has
informed traditional Judaism for a millennium and a half. Even
at the height of the golden age of yeshivas in pre-war Europe,
it is doubtful if that many people were studying the Talmud full
time. The once-famed yeshiva at Volozhin (modern Valozhyn, now
in Belarus), the progenitor of the modern yeshiva movement, had
no more than 300 students, and perhaps as few as 150; only 60
were officially registered.
