Dear Rabbi Lamm, I am an alumna of YUHSGM and TIH, now a proud Jerusalem housewife. I believe that I owe my presence here and much more to YU. I am also a great and longstanding admirer of your written and spoken words, and I thus feel obligated to comment on your address “Radical Moderation” – a copy of which just arrived in my mail. The glorification of moderation and abhorrence of extremes are appropriate for Americans Butler and Twain. Not being heirs to the word of G-d, they are confronted in this world with many possible truths. It is reasonable for them to advocate a middle course. Our position, epitomized for us just now in פרשת נצבים, is altogether different. For us, the course to follow was laid out clearly, visibly: “החיים” says the verse. (30:15) “…life, and good; death and evil.” Choose. Surely it was not the intention of your address to recommend that we walk a middle path between these two choices. Yet, that is what your words suggest. My education – mostly in YU – taught me an approach more like this: Where a policy for our people in our Land is an application of Torah, it should be supported – wholeheartedly. Otherwise, a course which leads with maximum efficiency to the Torah view should be pursued. Always, our behavior should be an expression of consummate כלל ישראל. Our goal should be unqualified: perfection, “והלכת בדרכיו ועשית הישר והטוב בעיני ה׳.” If the words I use are made synonymous with “extreme” and if this is a dirty word, that does not mitigate our obligation. Not the נביא nor any other Torah source I learned gives a basis for the extension of the middle-way idea to areas outside character traits. Quite the contrary. I strongly suspect that the actions of יהושע and the command which gave יהושע such a hard time would be dubbed “destructive extremeness.” Nevertheless, this was the will of G-d at the time. In the absence of prophecy, we must use alternative methods of determining His will today. But we must be unrelenting in the search, …