“When the general knowledge of the Jewish intellectual is on a university level, and his Jewish knowledge is on the grade-school level, his Jewish knowledge cannot compete and it will always cause some kind of a rift and some degree of self-contempt.
Because you cannot live with an abnormal rift like this; you cannot work with it.
It is not only a matter of learning Jewish studies, but also of trying to see things Jewishly — in a thousand different ways.
When we speak about ‘Jewish myth’ for example, and we discuss whether it is a good or a bad thing, this in itself shows that we accept the outlook of the world around us.
Indeed, we don’t look at our history and life from our own point of view, but from without, like strangers — and this is a symptom of the spiritual malady we are suffering from.”
From On Being Free, p.47, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz