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…

Dear Moe: I received, just recently, a carbon copy of your letter to Larry Kobrin about the youth problem. I am sorry to hear about "roadblocks" that you mentioned were thrown up by one of the people on the Yeshiva side in the negotiations. I had been under the impression that all was clear and simply awaiting ratification by Mr. Belkin and yourself. I have a strong intuitive feeling that these obstacles are not quite as formidable as they seem. Even if they are, you have overcome far greater difficulties in a brilliant career in public life, and I would strongly urge you to leap over the present "roadblocks" and try to solve the difficulties together with Dr. Belkin as soon as possible. I keep on hearing complaints from many of my colleagues about the cross-purposes at which our groups are working in the Orthodox camp. I feel very strongly that now, and especially now, is the time for action, and that such propitious occasions may not arise as often in the future. One meeting between you and Dr. Belkin may very well unify our forces with regard to youth — an area in which we are sorely lagging behind the Conservatives, no matter how impressive our triumphs heretofore may seem. Warmest personal regards, Sincerely, Rabbi Norman Lamm

Dear Moe: I am emotionally hyper-sensitive to mixing business and advertising with religion. Nevertheless, the enclosed seems to have very respectful sponsors, and since you receive this invitation every year I think it might be good for you to go at least once, Perhaps you will find something of value for Orthodox Jewish life. At any rate, I do not think you have anything to lose. Best wishes for a Happy and Kosher Passover. Cordially yours, Rabbi Norman Lamm P.S. I still have not received your check for Mrs. [redacted].

My dear Rabbi Lamm, In a way I would like to continue our conversation of last time, when we met at your office. The fact is that there are two types of Orthodoxy. For lack of a better terminology, I think we’ll need the “doctors” and the “historians.” Writing to you, I need not elaborate. I feel very strongly – and I hope you agree with me – that the time has come to organize a working group in which the present Orthodox camp is well-represented, in which the great thinkers on its distinctive problems meet to establish its own ideals, and reach a definition of the character and nature and specific purposes it should have. Such a group should be built on the most powerful qualities and personalities we have in our generation. It should include men of the younger generation, who already today are great possibilities, and it should be evident that this group speaks for Orthodox Jewry in its most representative way. I believe many thoughtful younger people will feel themselves much more identified with an Orthodoxy which has a self-clarified and well-articulated position. Next beyond the purely congregational and communal, such a group would also have to provide the background to the undertaking of those essential scholarly programs that are discussed on the occasion of such meetings. Needless to say, not all that needs doing can be undertaken at once. But a beginning must be made. It is long overdue. I plan to be in N.Y. at the week-end of March 19, arriving Friday. If necessary, I may be able to stay to the 22nd. Would you be able to interest a few like-minded people to meet in order to discuss the idea? Shortly, I’ll write and suggest names of people. But if not, almost any time should be convenient for me. I am not writing on similar terms to Rabbi Rackman. Kindest regards, Sincerely, Eliezer Berkovits

Dear Max: I received your sad letter here in Lake Como, Pa., and I am dictating a response which my secretary is typing up and sending to you together with the enclosed letter which I am returning herewith. Your letter, quite frankly, made very painful reading. It looks like a classic example of "hillul ha-shem.” Anything that diminishes Orthodox Judaism, diminishes each of us at the same time. However, quite honestly, I would be most reluctant to attempt either to justify the young man or the daughter of this [redacted]. My own experience in counselling married couples has taught me that there are almost always two sides to every story, and that even when you are aware of both it is exceedingly difficult to assign major blame to one side or the other. Your [redacted] quite understandably blames his son-in-law, and justifies his daughter. Perhaps if you heard the other party speaking, you would get the reverse impression. There is, frankly, very little that you can do to dissuade [redacted] from his generalization that because his son-in-law is Orthodox, and his son-in-law is indecent (according to his interpretation), therefore all Orthodox Jews and Orthodox Judaism is wrong.What should you do? I would suggest writing to him and telling him the following: first, that you are deeply grieved to hear of the unfortunate situation that developed, and that you hope all will go well. Second, tell him that it was his misfortune to have gotten involved with an Orthodox Jew who is the exception rather than the rule. Inform him of your own wide experience, and of the fact that you have rarely come across such a case among commited, Jews, but that no group, nor individual is perfect. I would plead with him not to judge all Orthodox Jews on the basis of the misconduct of one such person, even as we rightly appeal to the non-Jewish world not to judge all Jews because of the misdeeds of one or several Jews.Finally, as to the practical question, I would strongly suggest that he s…

Dear Rabbi Lamm, I want to write to you in order to tell you that I deeply admire your religious convictions, your broad range of learning, and your ability to write clearly with much depth. No one more than I appreciates it since I along with you like to base a personal philosophy of life within the framework of Judaism. I have read your reply to the questions posed in Commentary on the August symposium and have also had occasion to read your lecture Why be Orthodox in which particularistic insights like this in common with those who are firm in Tradition and Jewish life are meaningless. In general I am very happy you have taken this stand because nothing but harm and confusion is produced among those who have long since left Orthodoxy or to those Jews in the United States whose perspective of Judaism is one brought anything but learned and committed minded scholars. As a young man of age 26 and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin in Madison in political science along with having a religious background, I have been influenced strongly by such distinguished Orthodox Jewish writers and Jewish leaders by Leo Jung, Studies in Judaism by Solomon Schechter, Man and Judaism by Eliezer Berkovits, Judaism Eternal by Samson Raphael Hirsch, Judaism, Scholasticism and Islam by Louis Ginzburg, Jewish Law and Jewish Life by Pinchas Peli, The Philosophy of Judaism by Samuel Belkin, Reconstructionism, a Critical Appraisal by Eliezer Berkovits, Judaism, A Historical Presentation by Solomon Freehof, A History of the Jewish People by Max Margolis and Alexander Marx. I have a regular subscription for the past ten years to the Jewish Observer newspaper. I usually do not buy or read Commentary except on special occasions. However I find much dignity and honesty in what is expressed. I have wondered whether there were times when both the Orthodox and the Conservative were when Judaism was being trampled under by the numbers from Eastern Europe to the United States. Certainly West…

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 are rather encouraging. Numerically and institutionally, in terms of youth and influence, we are a significant group in this country. Objectively examined, what binds us together as a distinct 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 movement, 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 phenomenological 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 foreign or dirty.At the same time, we were and still are apologetic — almost masochistically — towards those to the right of us. We send our children to the universities. And we are going to continue to…

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…