I thank the editor of Chavrusa for affording me the opportunity of offering several alternate ideas on the subject raised by my brother in the previous issue. First, there is nothing world-shaking about the problem of whether the name of authentic Judaism in our contemporary, confused age be called "Orthodox,” "Traditional" or anything else. There is nothing particularly sacrosanct about the name "Orthodox" or any other such appellation. Ideally, our attitude should be that no adjective is the best adjective. We are Jews, and our faith and practice is Judaism, unqualified, uncompromised, undiluted. Once we agree to an adjective of any kind before the name Judaism, we have willy-nilly implied our assent to the co-validity of other "Interpretations" of Judaism. The acceptance of an adjective means that there are many kinds of Judaism and that ours is only one special kind, perhaps the kind with most chumrot. This is a concession we must grant the dissenters, as Wouk calls them. They will give us and forgive us anything and eveiything as long as we grant them a hehksher of equal validity based on the spurious and overworked thesis that there "are many roads to the same goal.” And this is the one concession which, if we grant it, we have lost our very souls, no matter what else we have won.And yet, this too, is no solution. Our numerical weakness, our antagonists' claims to historical authenticity as the legitimate heirs of the past and the nebulous, confused ideas which go into the making of the current consensus, all conspire to make the term "Judaism” as such, fairly meaningless. It, therefore, behooves us to specify who and what we i are. The very fact that we are adjectively J־ different in name can, by means of public education, be used to drive home that,/ we repudiate the "equal validity" thesis and claim exclusive legitimacy as the Jewish faith, authoritarian as that may sound in this age of religious euphoria. If we reject an adjective we may find ourselves b…

This is an exciting period for a thinking Orthodox Jew. It is a dangerous time too – when faith threatens to be swept away in the wildly whirling intellectual currents of the times. But the danger enhances the excitement and highlights the opportunities. Rarely before have we been faced with such an array of challenging, stimulating, and provoking ideas. And yet, rarely before have we reacted to such stimuli so passively, so defensively, so apprehensively, so uncreatively. What does the Torah have to say about the great issues that confront modern man and the modern Jew? Unfortunately, I do not know. My training has left me largely unprepared for them. I have even had to overcome powerful inhibitions in order to reach the stage where I am not suspicious of the very question. Assuming that by the "battle of ideas” we mean something that transcends the petty concerns of institutional rivalry, all I can say is that – to borrow a phrase from the Zohar—the Voice of Torah today is koi heli dibbur, it is inchoate: a voice without words, a general cry not yet reduced to clear speech. In an age which stresses the importance of communication, we have not yet developed clear guide-lines, not yet formulated convincing approaches, not yet spoken lucidly, to the cardinal issues of our century. I have faith that there are clear views and answers within Torah; but we have largely failed to express the koi Torah in dibbur, to articulate the vision of Torah, to spell out the im-plications of our tradition. Too often we have even refused to acknowledge the existence or the validity of the questions. I am therefore dispirited and vexed by our apparent unwilling-ness to engage in the Battle of Ideas, but optimistic as to the ultimate out-come if we finally do begin searching out the judgment of Torah and com-municating it effectively.THE RANGE of intellectual prob-lems that today confronts a think-ing Jew—especially a young one—is quite impressive. What is the meaning of chosenness in …

The facts about our community, as represented by the Orthodox Union, are rather encouraging. Numerically and institutionally, in terms of youth and influence, we are a significant group in this country. But we are beset by many problems. And our thorniest and most disabling problem is, curiously, an “identity crisis” – perhaps a sign of our youthfulness as an ideological movement. Objectively examined, what binds us together as a separate entity is our full commitment to the Torah tradition and our openness, at the same time, to the wider culture of the world about us. To use the two dreadfully inadequate words which normally describe us as a distinct group, we are both “modern” and “orthodox.” I shall be using these terms only with the greatest hesitation. “Orthodox” is almost pejorative; it implies a stifling and unthinking narrow-mindedness. And “modern” is amusingly pretentious; it adds nothing to the validity or invalidity of a proposition. Jacques Maritain recently referred to this as “chronolatry,” the idolatry of what is newest or latest in time. But while this observation is true enough as it goes, it does not go nearly far enough. Merely to describe what we are is not a sufficiently convincing reason for being what we are or for persuading others to acknowledge our rightness and join our ranks. The great problem of modern American Orthodoxy is that it has failed to interpret itself to itself. This failure, which reveals itself in many ways, derives from a remarkable intellectual timidity which we should have long outgrown. One should not be too harsh in judging the past. There were reasons – good reasons – for our apologetic posture. But it was humiliating. In confronting the outside world and those to the left of us, we seemed to be saying that while we hold on to the practices and doctrines of the Jewish tradition, we are really just like everybody else, perhaps even more so. We appeared to be whispering, in unbecoming shyness, that we were not really …

According to Rabbi Norman Lamm, one of the leading young scholars of Orthodoxy in the United States, modern Orthodoxy is going through a largely unnecessary “identity crisis,” deriving from its failure to work out a successful synthesis on strong theological grounds between its “two Orthodoxies.” This failure “to interpret itself to itself,” Rabbi Lamm said, “derives from a remarkable intellectual timidity, which we should long ago have outgrown,” towards the positions of those both to the Left and the Right of modern Orthodoxy in the United States. Rabbi Lamm, the spiritual leader of the Jewish Center of New York and a professor of Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University, sharply criticised the “humiliating apologetic posture” of modern Orthodoxy towards those to the Left of the movement. “We seemed to be saying that while we hold on to the practices and doctrines of the Jewish tradition, we are really just like everybody else, perhaps even more so. We appeared to be whispering, in unbecoming shyness, that we were not really foreign or dirty.” At the same time, he continued, modern Orthodoxy has been “almost masochistically apologetic” towards the Right wing of Orthodoxy, which disapproves of its educational policy of engaging in secular studies. To this group, he said, modern Orthodoxy has presented “the lamest of apologies – vocational necessity.” Thus, “our whole existence is based on a practical economic concession – the need of a college degree in order to get a better job,” instead of on sound halachic grounds. Rabbi Lamm said that the problem of modern Orthodoxy is that it has not yet itself accepted “openly and directly on the basis of our major contribution to Jewish life in this century: that it is our religious duty, our sacred responsibility, to live the whole Torah tradition in the world, instead of retreating from a world in which there is literally no longer any place left to retreat to. As long as this condition of spiritual and intellectual diffi…

Sir – A news report in your August 1 issue concerning my views on “Modern Orthodoxy’s identity crisis,” was accurate in summarising my position on the need for “Modern Orthodoxy” to interpret its outlook religiously and unapologetically. Your editorial on the subject, however, misstates my view’s vis-a-vis the differences of opinion that prevail in England. While I appreciate your flattering remarks, I fear that your concluding paragraph vitiates the kind things you said about me. Any objective person who is acquainted with my views and those of Rabbi Louis Jacobs will be astonished to learn that “Rabbi Lamm’s thoughts are almost a paraphrase of the approach of Dr. Jacobs which made him unacceptable to our Orthodox Establishment.”I suspect that Dr Jacobs will take exception to this assertion equally with me. I have consistently in- sisted that Judaism must be based upon the halachic commitment and the acceptance of Torah min ha-shamayim, and have opposed Franz Rosenzweig’s approach per- mitting a subjective selection of which laws and observances to per- form. For this reason I am clearly “ Orthodox,” and am so affiliated, whereas Dr Jacobs has apparently abandoned this position and has so indicated by his membership in the Conservative movement’s Rabbini- cal Assembly.There is no need to belabour the issue. To be critical of Orthodoxy does not and should not make one’s Orthodoxy suspect, nor is it grounds for declaring one’s views a “ paraphrase ” of one who is dissociated from this community. Indeed, without in any way com- mitting Dr Jakobovits to prior approval of my opinions, I feel that the Chief Rabbi would not dis- agree with my contention that our engagement with the world, and particularly our involvement in higher “ secular ” education, should be based- on a solid reli- gious basis rather than on undigni- lied vocational excuse.I regret that my views, which you apparently found worthy enough to bring to the attention of your readers, should have been obf…

The French Catholic thinker, Jacques Maritan, has coined a new word which deserves wide currency: chronolatry, the worship of what is latest in time, the idolatry of “modernity.” That such chronolatry is an unspoken presupposition of our culture is self-evident. And it is an irritating phenomenon at best, and a dangerous one at worst. I beg the indulgence of the reader for sharing with him my allergy to the word "modern." I find infuriating the smug and complacent am ha-aretz who says: "How can you be Orthodox when you so modern? How can you refrain from smoking or driving on Shabbat, or eating non-kosher good, or fasting on Yom Kippur, in this 20th century." I am similarly annoyed when I hear people saying, "He is re-ligious-ligious but modern," in almost exactly the same tone as one would say, "He is slightly insane but sincere" as if modernity can save the benighted religious soul from the damnation to which the unsophisticated are foredomed. I even confess that I am uncomfortable with the title "Modern Orthodox". There is an arrogance about this assertion of modernity which should give offence to any in- telligent and sensitive man. There is no better term that I have By Rabbi Norman Lamm found, but I shudder when pronounce the words. Campus Shul: The Technion Israel Institute of Technology, has a new campus synagogue. It was dedicated recently at a festive ceremony at Technion City. youth-orientated or secularistic or "with it". Beyond time Judaism maintains that truth does not depend on time. The Maharal of Prague observed that the festival of Shavuot, unlike all the others, is not appointed by the Torah to a special date on the calendar. It is only in-rest of us are benighted, we are behind the times. Most religious folk labour under the heavy burden of an inferiority feeling because they are not sufficiently modern. This should not be taken to imply that all that is modern is bad, and that as observant Jews we are against modernity. That would be as absurd …

Orthodox Judaism is an "in" topic nowadays. Respectable journalists devote major reports to it, sociologists analyze it, learned societies invite scholarly papers on it. A movement that, fifteen years after the start of this century, was widely expected to fade away and become a relic of interest only to historians and antiquarians, is, fifteen years before the end of this century, full of life, vigor, dynamism — and problems.The problems largely center on the nature of the Orthodoxy or Orthodoxies that are emerging and their relations to each other. None of them has yet received adequate scholarly attention. The proliferation of "right wing" yeshivot and communities has not been sufficiently documented and, certainly, we do not possess enough competent analysis of this phenomenon. The few articles and works that have appeared are only a beginning, especially if one excludes polemics and apologetics.The story is no different with Modern or Centrist Orthodoxy (the labels are notoriously short-lived and singularly insignificant). Those of us engaged in the enterprise of leading it, fashioning it, teaching it, and elaborating it are too preoccupied, and lack the proper perspective, to see it in its historical setting and to appreciate the continuities and discontinuities in its development.It has remained, therefore, to an Israeli scholar familiar with the European antecedents of the modernist wing of Orthodoxy to lay bare the background and thus illuminate the foreground of contemporary centrist Orthodoxy. Zvi Kurzweil makes no pretenses to comprehensiveness. He could hardly do so for a movement which is very much in flux and which requires not only theological but social historians as well to do it justice.Our author's goals are limited to the ideological roots of the modern impulse in traditional Judaism. This he has done in both a competent and interesting manner, one that will engage the attention of both scholar and layman. Unquestionably, there will be those wh…

Carl Becker, the great American historian, once said: “It is important, every so often, to look at the things that go without saying to be sure that they are still going.” I would add the need for intellectual vigilance to this reminder for practical caution by paraphrasing his aphorism: “It is important, every so often, to look at what we are saying about the things that go without saying to make sure we know what we are talking about.” In reflecting on some of the foundations of our Weltanschaung, I do not presume to be imparting new information. The task I have set for myself is to summarize and clarify, rather than to innovate. Dr. Johnson once said that it is important not only to instruct people but also to remind them. I shall take his sage advice for this discourse. We seem to be suffering from a terminological identity crisis. We now call ourselves “Centrist Orthodoxy.” There was a time, not too long ago, when we referred to ourselves as “Modern Orthodox.” Others tell us that we should call ourselves simply “Orthodox,” without any qualifiers, and leave it to the other Orthodox groups to conjure up adjectives for themselves. I agree with the last view in principle, but shall defer to the advocates of “Centrist Orthodoxy” for two reasons: First, it is a waste of intellectual effort and precious time to argue about titles when there are so many truly significant issues that clamor for our attention. In no way should the choice of one adjective over the other be invested with any substantive significance or assumed to be a “signal” of ideological position. This article is based upon an address at the Conference of the Educators Council of America at the Homowack Lodge, Spring Glen, N.Y., October 26, 1985. TRADITION, 22(3), Fall 1986 © 1986 Rabbinical Council of America 1 TRADITION: A Journal of Orthodox Thought We are what we are, and we should neither brag nor be apologetic about it. These days, we do more of the latter than the former, and I find that repreh…

A wave of extremism is sweeping the world. America and the American Jewish community – to say nothing of the Israeli community – have not remained unaffected by it. Indeed, the pressures of a resurgent extremism affect every facet of our lives – political, social, religious, educational. In this dangerous climate we must ourselves become radicals and reassert our Centrist position with all force and vigor. What Yeshiva University has taught – the joining of Torah learning and Western culture under the rubric of Torah u’Madda; openness to the environing culture; ahavat haTorah plus ahavat Yisrael; the appreciation of tolerance and the abhorrence of bigotry; a critical but loving commitment to the State of Israel – all this is a deliberate philosophy of life, not a compromise foisted upon us. In the language of halakhah, this approach is le-khatḥilah and not be-diʿavad. As a le-khatḥilah we must project ourselves as the standard bearer of moderation in Jewish life. We must stand not only for Torah u’Madda – a broader and more comprehensive vision of Torah as expressed in a particular curricular philosophy – but also for sanity and for moderation; for the conviction that Maimonides’ “middle way” applies not only to personal dispositions and character traits, but also to communal conduct and public policy; for an appreciation that life is filled with ambiguities and complexities and resists black-and-white simplism.We of the Centrist community are often chided that our policy of Centrism and our philosophy of moderation contain implicit hidden dangers. This is true; the study of worldly culture can sometimes lead questioning young people astray. An openness to non-observant Jewish neighbors, or to non-Jews, implies that they are as human as we are, and that can sometimes have a negative effect on our attempt to maintain our traditions. Agreed. But all life is dangerous, and unless one is determined to raise one’s child in a hermetically sealed Skinner box, safe from ge…

Critics of the name “Centrist Orthodoxy” assume that it indicates that we locate ourselves mid-point between Orthodoxy and assimilationism and claim that territory as our religious home. That, of course, is nonsense – such an implication would effectively be tantamount to abandoning Torah Judaism in favor of some compromise of basic principles. Only slightly less absurd is the idea that Centrist Orthodoxy is the “center” between Satmar and the few intellectuals who presumably constitute the Orthodox Left. It is no compliment to our intelligence to imagine that in the name of Centrism we advocate walking about the religious terrain with a yardstick, calipers, and a pocket calculator, measuring the exact distance between Neturei Karta and “Humanistic Judaism” in order to locate the exact middle or “center.” We are not, and do not aspire to be, ideological geographers or spiritual surveyors who search out the exact point between right and wrong, religious and non-religious, mitzvah and aveirah, and settle upon that center as our religious goal. Centrism may be wrong-headed, but it is not that spiritually simple-minded or religiously asinine. Whatever one may think of the term “Centrist Orthodoxy” and its merits relative to “Modern Orthodoxy” or “Dati Orthodoxy” (a designation that has much to commend it) or no name at all, what it says is something vastly different from the infantile inference I have described. I begin with these prologomena about our identification not because I attribute any significance to it per se, but because the name does indeed indicate a definite point of view, and that is the question of moderation which I take to be so fundamental a characteristic of our hashkafah that we can rightly refer to it as “moderationism.” Of course, one of the difficulties with this self-definition is that the crown is claimed by many pretenders. Most religious movements in our contemporary Jewish community consider themselves moderate and can point to rival posi…