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October 26, 1985

The Contributions of Centrist Orthodoxy (1985)

Modern Orthodoxy General Education Passionate Moderation
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Centrist Orthodox Judaism and Moderationism - Definitions and Disederata (1989)

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…
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Radical Moderation (1988)

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…
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Correspondence

Exchange with R. Charlop about Modern Orthodoxy and the "Middle Path" (1992)

לכבוד ידידי הדגול מאד, ראש ישבתנו ונשיאה הרה"ג ר' נחום שליט"א. רצו"ב הקטע מספרו של הרב מקובנה בעל הדבר אברהם והרב שכטר נ"י הביא ושאודותיו שחחנו אמש בפגישתנו. בהערכה רבה, זבולון חרלפ
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