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November 8, 1992

The Middle Ground (1992)

Passionate Moderation
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Moderation (1988)

The following Citation comes from an article by Judge Learned Hand, published by the Massachusetts Bar Association in 1942.... This much I think I do know — that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish. What is the spirit of moderation? It is a temper which does not press a partisan advantage to its bitter end, which can understand and respect the other side, which feels a unity between all citizens -­real and not the factitious product of propaganda — which recognizes their common fate and their common aspirations -­in a word, which has faith in the sacredness of the individual. If you asked me how such a temper and such a faith are bred and fostered, I cannot answer. They are the last flowers of civilization, delicate and easily overrun by the weeds of our sinful human nature; we may even now be witnessing their uprooting and disappearance until in the progress of the ages their seeds can once more find some friendly soil. But I am satisfied that they must have the vigor within themselves to withstand the winds and weather of an indifferent and ruthless world; and that it is idle to seek shelter for them in a courtroom. Men must take that temper and that faith with them into the field, into the market place, into the factory, into the council-rooms, into their homes; they cannot be imposed; they must be lived.
Passionate Moderation

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On Being Middle of the Road (1988)

Moderation is not identical with the mathematical mean. Adhering to the Golden Mean does not require the services of an ideological accountant. One who practices moderation by always locating himself equidistantly from both existing extremes is not being middle of the road – he is being muddle of the road. Moderation – or the middle of the road – implies a respect for all rational and reasonable opinions, a consideration of conflicting factors in every situation, an acceptance that theoretical consistency must yield to what William James called the stubborn and irreducible facts, and the humility to acknowledge that most of one's opinions and ideas are provisional and open to further exploration. Moreover, as the Rav pointed out many years ago in a famous lecture to the Rabbinical Council of America in Detroit, the “middle way” of Maimonides is a dynamic and not a static state – by which he meant that while the sum total of one’s decisions, dispositions, and ideas may be fairly equidistant from the extremes, each individual choice or idea must be judged on its own merits rather than on a mathematical model.Ask ChatGPT
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Tolerance - The Delicate Balance (1996)

These words on tolerance are totally non-political, and yet it is a sign of the charged atmosphere and the high degree of nervous tension that prevails in both Israel and America, that the very topic is immediately interpreted as a partisan statement – which, of course, it is not. The theme as such is germane both to the Israeli and to the American scenes. And if it was occasioned by the most intolerant act in recent Jewish history, namely, the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the unfortunate reactions to that macabre event, it applies as well to much of the discourse that characterizes what passes for the internal dialogues in both our communities. As a result of the assassination, I appointed a group of scholars and educators, mostly from Yeshiva University faculties but from elsewhere as well, to constitute a Commission on Judaism and Human Values, to study and report on the sources in Judaism on the themes of tolerance, democracy, and the ethics of dissent. I asked that there be no apologetics. The presumption is that our sacred literature speaks in more than one voice, and that while all views be recorded, special attention be paid to those which speak most directly and relevantly to our situation. That commission has been assiduously at work, and its final report will, I expect, prove to be a major contribution to elucidating an authentic Jewish view that can help us resolve our dangerous dilemmas. The present treatment of the subject does not at all pretend to be exhaustive; it is not systematic, and is but a preliminary effort to sketch some ideas on the attitudes to tolerance in the various sources of Judaism.The British historian Toynbee maintained that Judaism, as the advocate of monotheism, was intolerant; its single-minded rejection of idolatry left it with little patience for other forms of worship. Was he right?Yes, partially. For at the outset it should be made clear that tolerance is not an absolute. There are things and ideas tha…
Passionate Moderation