We are living in the most religiously crowded and spiritually leaderless era in Orthodox Jewish history.
There are more rabbis than ever, more roshei yeshiva than ever, more kollelim, more batei medrash, more seforim, more shiurim, more conferences, more proclamations. And yet, there is less leadership than ever.
Because leadership is not measured by how loudly one can forbid. Leadership is measured by what one is willing to confront. And nothing real is being confronted.
The Orthodox world today has authorities. It has committees, letterheads, signatures, bans, and gatherings about smartphones, internet filters, artificial intelligence, tznius, music, wigs, and hemlines. But it does not have a single figure willing to stand up and say: we have built a system that is collapsing under its own dishonesty.
No one is addressing the economic suffocation of families crushed under tuition and housing while being told this is the ideal Torah life. No one is addressing the institutionalized dependency created by the “learn forever” model that was never meant to be universal, never meant to be permanent, and never meant to be financed by magical thinking.
No one is addressing the thousands of young men quietly drowning in a system built for the elite but forced upon the masses. No one is addressing the girls raised to marry learning without being told who will pay the rent. No one is addressing the silent crisis of men who feel like failures because they cannot live up to a model that was never realistic to begin with.
No one is addressing the rabbinic culture of pretending everything is working, because admitting it is not would require moral courage. Leadership would mean saying: we made mistakes. And that is something today’s Orthodox leadership cannot afford to say.
So instead, they manage optics. They manage narratives. They manage image. They manage their millions of dollars in tax free real estate!
They fight the internet because the internet exposes reality. They fight AI because AI exposes questions. They fight anything that allows ordinary Jews to think without permission. But they do not fight the one thing that is destroying the community from within: the myth that this system is sustainable, honest, and ideal for everyone.
In previous generations, rabbinic leaders confronted reality. The Rambam fought the misuse of Torah. The Vilna Gaon fought corruption. Rav Hirsch rebuilt Torah with dignity inside modernity. Rav Shraga Feivel built institutions that prepared Jews to function in the world, not hide from it.
Today’s leadership fights Wi-Fi. Because Wi-Fi is easier than truth.
You can ban a device. You cannot ban a question. You can sign a letter. You cannot sign away reality.
You can gather thirty rabbis to discuss the dangers of artificial intelligence. You cannot gather one rabbi willing to discuss the dangers of intellectual dishonesty. And so we have entered an unprecedented era: an era where Torah scholarship is abundant, but Torah leadership is absent.
Torah leadership requires risk. It requires the willingness to be hated for telling the truth. It requires the willingness to lose honor, lose donations, lose control, lose myth. It requires saying to a generation: we must course-correct.
Instead, we are told everything is fine. Just learn more. Give more. Obey more. Ask less. And the community feels it.
The young feel it most of all. They are not rebelling because they hate Torah. They are suffocating because they do not see honesty. They do not see adults willing to admit complexity. They do not see leaders willing to speak plainly. They do not see anyone willing to say that Torah and reality were never meant to be enemies.
So they leave. Or worse, they stay and go numb. This is not a crisis of faith. This is a crisis of credibility.
Orthodox Judaism does not suffer from a lack of observance. It suffers from a lack of courageous rabbinic integrity. The tragedy is that everyone knows it. The donors know it. The parents know it. The rebbeim know it. The roshei yeshiva know it. And the students know it.
But no one at the top can say it, because saying it would require leadership. And leadership today is replaced by administration. Administration preserves systems. Leadership reforms them.
We have administrators. We do not have leaders.
And until someone with rabbinic stature stands up and says publicly and unequivocally, “we must rethink the model—not the internet, the model,” this era will be remembered as the strangest chapter in Orthodox history: When Torah was everywhere, and leadership was nowhere.
REPUBLISHED
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