Rav Uri Cohen - "Imagine God in Torah"

Rabbi Uri Cohen teaches at WebYeshiva and Midreshet Moriah. He received Semikhah from RIETS (YU) and Yeshivat Hamivtar. He also holds Masters degrees in Medieval Jewish History and Jewish Education from Yeshiva University. Through Torah MiTzion, he and his wife Dr. Yocheved Engelberg Cohen served as the first members of the Syracuse Kollel, and later as the first couple of the Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC) at Princeton University. They now live in Ramat Beit Shemesh. His eclectic lecture topics have included Talmudic Misogyny in Context, Harry Potter and the Value of Fantasy, Contemporary Orthodox Responses to Homosexuality, and How Not to Do Outreach.

1. What was a place, person or event that transformed your ideas, thinking, or perspective?

When I was in the overseas program at Yeshivat Sha'alvim, one Shabbat we had a guest speaker – Rav David Samson. He spoke several times about Halakhic and Hashkafic aspects of Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael. His last session was about the imminence of Geulah, and he concluded with the plea, "Don't go back! Stay in Israel!" It was electrifying. Well, we did all go back, but that was when I decided that I *must* make Aliyah. I don't think it's a coincidence that a relatively high percentage of the students that year made Aliyah.

2.  What Jewish message does the world need to hear?

Every human being – including everyone we dislike – is created in the image of God. If we internalized that, there would be all sorts of implications for how we treat other people. (Rabbi Yitz Greenberg elaborates here: https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/judaism/2000/03/living-in-the-image-of-god.aspx)

3.  What was a turning point in your life that led you to your current path?

The summer after 9th grade. One of my teachers, Rabbi Yaakov Heisler, had encouraged us to go to an Orthodox summer camp. (Until then, I had brought my own kosher lunch to non-Jewish day camps that specialized in science or computers.) My parents showed me the booklet of sleepaway camps funded by the Jewish Federation, and I chose the only summer program that offered activities but didn't force you to do any of them! That turned out to be Camp Avraham Chaim Heller, which was for teenage boys from black-hat yeshivas. (I was a student at HANC, a coed day school.) Once I was going there, I asked to be in its Masmidim program, which had an extra couple of hours of Torah learning. And that was my entry into "the Torah world" where Tefillah, Torah, and Mitzvot were taken seriously. For years afterwards, I continued studying in Modern Orthodox yeshivas while dressing Charedi. And more substantively, I became more interested in Torah learning and decided to go into Chinukh. The question is: Would that have happened had I gone to any other camp right after 9th grade? (See my answer to the next question.)

4.  If you were to give advice to your younger self, what would it be?

"Go to Morasha Kollel after 9th grade!" That summer program was a yeshiva that felt like camp in the best way. All three of the rabbis who gave Shiurim there – Rav Yitzchok Cohen, Rav Mordechai Willig, and Rav Yeshaya Siff – were exemplars of Torah and Middot. The kollel guys were students (in high school and college) who loved Torah and Mitzvot, and many of them would become Modern Orthodox leaders. It turned out that Modern Orthodoxy had its own Torah world. Who knew? Not my high school teachers, anyway. They were black hat rabbis who knew black hat institutions. It wasn't until I visited Yeshiva University in 11th grade that I heard about Morasha Kollel (from David Pahmer, an alumnus of my high school who was showing me around YU). I ended up spending the next five summers in Morasha Kollel. It was my favorite place, and I met amazing people there. In retrospect, it's too bad that I didn't know about it in 9th grade. Then I could have avoided the confusion of my Charedi wannabe years, and gone directly to Modern Orthodox Torani, which is clearly the best fit for me.

5.  What is one way that you spoil yourself a little?

Dessert cereal, sometimes. Who said that dessert can be only after lunch and supper, not breakfast too?

6.  How do you get back on track if you have had an unproductive or distracted period?

Even when I'm distracted, what I'm usually doing is reading, which I consider to be productive. A win-win situation!

7.  What is the best advice you ever received?

"You should be looking everything up." That was the advice of my favorite English teacher, Mrs. Judy Lynch. I was already big on reading, but now I'm big on researching too.

8.  What do you consider as your biggest achievement in the last 5-10 years?

I don't usually think in terms of achievements. I suppose it would be my "Best of Both Worlds" course. The worlds are Torah and pop culture. (You can find the source sheets and videos of the shiurim at WebYeshiva.org, divided into three mini-courses: The Best of Both Worlds: Heroes and Icons; Religion in Pop Culture; and Middot and Pop Culture.)

9.  What area do you see that Rabanim/teachers do not stress enough?

We focus so much on the Torah that we tend to neglect our relationship with Hashem, and how the Torah is supposed to reflect what Hashem wants. There's a story that someone overheard the great Rav Yisrael Salanter learning the beginning of Bava Metzia a bit differently from everybody else. The standard translation has: "If two people came to court holding a garment, and the first litigant says 'I found it,' while the second litigant says 'I found it' . . . they divide it." But Rav Yisrael paraphrased the end of the Mishnah: "HaKadosh Barukh Hu says they divide it." It's easy to lose sight of God behind the Sefer when we learn, behind the Pesukim when we listen to Kriat HaTorah, and even in front of us when we Daven. Imagine God in Torah! It's easy if you try...

10. What part of Jewish learning is your main focus or favourite? How would you recommend people to get more deeply into it?

I like researching individual topics (whether in Hashkafah, Halakhah, or Tanakh), getting a sense of the big picture, and then choosing the most important sources to present on a source sheet. Even if you don't have the textual skills to tackle the primary sources, you can still find a lot of secondary-source material on the internet. I'd recommend doing searches in English as well as Hebrew. We are blessed to live at a time when more Torah is at our fingertips than ever before.

11. I have often thought that we in the modern orthodox community are walking a tightrope between different worlds both of which we want to belong to and be active in which may detract from our full attention to one or the other particularly to the Jewish side. Can you give some ideas or direction how to connect more deeply to the Torah and Hashem? (Books, ideas, programmes, activities)

When I was a freshman at Yeshiva University, they handed out a spiral-bound publication called Torah U’Mada Reader (Experimental Edition II). It included a talk by Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, the third president of YU (from 1976 to 2003). He recalled when he was a student and confronted Rabbi Dr. Samuel Belkin, who was the second president of YU (from 1943 to 1975). Here's the dialogue:

When I was a student and complained, "Why don’t you tell me how to combine the two worlds?", Dr. Belkin, of blessed memory, told me, "Our job is to give you the materials, your job is to let them interact within you." I disagreed then. But I agree now. You simply cannot spoon-feed a way of life. You can give the ingredients; the cooking – the internal fermentation – has to be done by the person involved.

Those few sentences have meant a lot to me. Like Rabbi Lamm, I disagreed then, but I agree now. (Perhaps it's the difference between youth and middle age.) Living in two worlds can be easy, as long as you compartmentalize. But compartmentalization is problematic on multiple levels. Rather, the ideal is *integration* – not necessarily in the classroom but in your personality. In the words of Professor Richard Joel (the fourth president of YU, from 2003 to 2017), "Fortified with Torah, you see life through a different lens, full of wonderful ideas and ideals. I use the term 'integrated life' rather than 'synthesis.' We should aspire to shleimut (wholeness), integrating into your life the foundations of Torah."

I like the metaphor of seeing life through a different lens. You could also say that each of us has bifocals (or multifocals), with the option of looking at any given thing with one lens or the other. Switching back and forth when appropriate can bring us closer to an integrated life.