As I ponder the essence of Judaism, and how Orthodoxy has evolved since I was a student at Yeshiva University, I hear two distinct voices that emerge from those 11 years (1962–1973) spent at several schools of YU. I hear a voice of love and a voice of fear, mixed together, and an underlying tension that was inevitable in a clash of these two powerful energies.
Emily K. Alhadeff is the editor of Jewish in Seattle magazine. Her writing has appeared in Conversations, Tablet, The Times of Israel, Religion & Politics Magazine, and Moment, and she writes regularly for Microsoft/stories. She lives in Seattle with her family. Thanks to Al Maimon for his assistance with this story. This article appears in issue 25 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
Rabbi Hayyim Angel is National Scholar of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. He serves as Rabbinic Scholar of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York, and also teaches Tanakh at Yeshiva University. A masterful teacher, his classes, lectures and writings reach many thousands of people throughout the world.
To our members and friends,
Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of thirty-five books, including about a dozen on the Aramaic translation of the Torah called Targum Onkelos, about a half-dozen commentaries on biblical books, about a half-dozen that offer rational approaches to Judaism, and three books on the twelfth century philosopher Moses Maimonides, published by Gefen Publishing House in Israel. His website is www.booksnthoughts.com.
Rabbi Joseph Radinsky, of blessed memory, was one of the outstanding rabbis of the American Orthodox rabbinate. Since 1963, he had been a pulpit rabbi, 13 years in Lafayette, Indiana, and 40 years in Houston, Texas. He had served on almost all the boards of the Jewish organizations in Houston, and authored a number of books and articles. This article appears in issue 25 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. Sadly, Rabbi Radinsky passed away before his article was published, and we post it on our website in his memory.
Rabbi Hayyim Angel
To our members and friends,
Not long ago someone near and dear to me asked me what I was working on. I said that I was writing a book proving that for Rambam Gentiles as well as Jews are fully created in the image of God. I was met with the amazed response: "Do you really believe that?!"
Yes, I really believe it, and so did Rambam. [1]
I was born into a first-generation American family of very ethnic but non-observant Jews in the then Jewishly dense West Philadelphia neighborhood of Wynnefield. My parents assumed that I would attend Hebrew School after public school, hate it, and, like their peer’s children, suffer with Jewish learning for five arduous years, endure the bar mitzvah ordeal, then quit Hebrew school. They expected that as a young adult I would marry an ethnic but not inconveniently religious Jewish woman. My parents’ social circle was entirely Jewish—totally secular—yet socially Jewish.
In assessing the future of Orthodoxy, it is important to remember we are considering only 10 percent of the American Jewish population as of the latest American Jewish census.[1] Orthodoxy is no larger than it was 15 years ago at last official count.[2] The only historical antecedent that American Jewry has in terms of assimilation and the rise of modern Jewish denominations in a Western country was pre-War Germany.
In a deeply personal account of the impact of Donald Trump's presidential candidacy upon his network of professional and social relationships, the conservative academic Tom Nichols leveled an eyebrow-raising assertion. "Trump is worse than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama," Nichols wrote [1] . "Their policies are liberal, even leftist, often motivated by cheap politics, ego, and political grandstanding. But they are policies, understandable as such and opposable by political means."