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FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER 211990
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Orthodox Struggle
With Right And Left
353-3146
‘I,
AIVIERICAN
CANCER
Help us keep winning.
hatever happened
to Saturday night
dances at the
neighborhood Young Israel,
where the girls wore pink
taffeta and the boys their
best blue blazers, where
young Orthodox Jews drank
punch and danced the fox-
trot to the tunes of Frank
Sinatra and Cole Porter?
You won't find a teen-age
dance at a Young Israel syn-
agogue these days. In fact,
you would be hard-pressed to
find mixed dancing, much
less mixed seating, at an Or-
thodox wedding today.
Things have changed in
the modern Orthodox
movement in America, with
the emphasis shifting from
modern to Orthodox. And
while some rabbis question
whether the changes are go-
ing too far, others contend
they are not going far
enough.
"There is a new force in
the Orthodox Jewish com-
munity," said Rabbi Pinchas
Stolper, executive vice pres-
ident of the Union of Or-
thodox Hebrew Congrega-
tions of America, the con-
gregational arm of the Or-
thodox movement.
"It's a force that's pulling
the movement not so much
to the right as toward con-
sistency," he said. "Public
deviations from the very na-
ture of the synagogue as a
sacred institution can no
longer be tolerated.
"You can't make your own
rules and call yourself Or-
thodox anymore," he said.
"We expect the affiliates to
tow the line."
But some modern Or-
thodox rabbis think the
trend to the right is not as
much an indigenous force
within modern Orthodoxy as
a show of force by a minority
of fundamentalist rabbis
within the Orthodox Union
and the Rabbinical Council
of America, the movement's
rabbinical arm, who are
bullying the movement to
take more right-wing pos-
tures.
"Moderate views have
come under increasing at-
tack from the surging right
of Orthodoxy," Rabbi Irving
(Yitz) Greenberg, founder of
CLAL, the National Jewish
Center for Learning and
Leadership, writes in the
June issue of CLAL News
and Perspectives.
Rabbi Lamm:
Under pressure.
"Classic modern Orthodox
views have been rolled back
or eroded. Some modern Or-
thodox leaders have shifted
positions. Others have
become silent," he writes.
"Nothing less than a
struggle for the soul of
modern Orthodoxy is now
raging."
Similar warnings were
sounded in mid-June at the
RCA's annual convention in
the Catskills.
"The way of moderation is
open to attack by ex-
tremists," Rabbi Norman
Lamm, president of Yeshiva
University, said in a speech
to the convention. "We must
not be intimidated, nor must
we compromise on principle
or policy."
Rabbi Lamm explained
later that "subtle pressure"
is coming from all sides: the
left, meaning Reform and
Conservative Judaism, as
well as the right, by which
he means more traditional,
European- style Orthodoxy,
as represented by Agudath
Israel of America.
Rabbi Lamm admits,
however, that the "majority
of the pressure" he faces to-
day at the university "is
coming from the right."
The focus of the conflict is
epitomized by the univer-
sity ' s slogan, "Torah
U'Madda," emblazoned on
the school's crest. It is a
philosophy that espouses the
synthesis of a religious and
secular education, the study
of both Talmud and non-
religious texts.
Elements within Agudath
Israel have questioned the
effectiveness and the
prudence of such an ap-
proach, insisting that the
lures of secularism will en-