Q:
What’s wrong with being Modern Orthodox?
A:
It’s like saying what’s wrong by not being Orthodox enough. That’s what it means.
If Modern Orthodox means that you are going to send your daughters to college and your children won’t go into yeshivos to learn how to become talmidei chachomim, so you’re not Orthodox. Because ושננתם לבניך means ודברת בם בשבתך בביתך ובלכתך בדרך ובשכבך ובקומך. That’s Orthodox. So you see that big requirements are necessary to be Orthodox; it requires that your children should be bnei Torah.
Now, it doesn’t mean they cannot be professionals. I’m not saying anything about not being professionals. But certainly it’s an ideal for parents to live up to the maximum of making the best they can out of their children.
Like the navi complained – the navi tried to make the Jewish boys into nezirim and he was talking to their parents: ‘And you said to your children, to the nezirim, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t listen to the navi. Disobey the navi. We don’t want our children to be nezirim’” (Amos 2:11-12).
No! Our leaders want the best for us and therefore those who disobey the true leaders and they turn to the paraveh, to the watered down leaders, these people are misled.
And they won’t have much nachas from their children either. You have to see that. The ones who have real nachas are those who bring up their children in the real Torah manner. The black hat community! No question about it. The black hat community gives the most nachas to their parents. Otherwise boys grow up and they take the ideas of the streets, the outside world, and they call themselves Modern Orthodox. The truth is that it’s a big admixture of gentile influence among them and therefore the adulterated form of life can never be successful.
April 1993
