Sunday, September 07, 2008

Dr. Berish Rubin: This man may save your child's life

This is one of the captions on the cover of this week's Mishpacha magazine in English. The magazine has a very positive article about Dr. Rubin a molecular biologist who is doing research about genetic diseases that affect Ashkenazi Jews.

Dr. Rubin is Charedi from birth (see below) and went to Torah Vodaas for high school and Beis Medrash.



After reading the article I have a number of questions:

1. From a Charedi Torah only perspective, did Dr. Rubin make the right decision to leave the Beis Medrash and become a scientist?
2. Given the de-emphasis on secular education in Charedi yeshiva high schools and the almost complete prohibition of college, where is the next Dr. Rubin going to come from?
3. How could his parents let him read treif science books which are full of kefira (evolution, the age of the world)? If they hadn't, would he have succeeded and become the scientist that he did?

The Charedi world can't have it both ways. On one hand basically ban all secular studies while one the other hand expecting to produce people like Dr. Rubin.

1 comment:

SpaceFalcon2001 said...

Real (probable) Charedi answers:

1. That's only ok if he was a Baal Teshuva.
2. Baal Teshuvahs
3. They were probably Baal Teshuvas and didn't get rid of all their frei literature, or they didn't control what their kid read (i.e. bad parents).
3b. "Hopefully" not.

BTs are idealized as the answer to most of the progress that charedim want, so they don't have to worry about it.

Even in chabad, why worry about making money and funding your own community when you can rely on BTs and non-BT donors?