Hershel Schachter on Hilkhot Covid-19

As part of their important role in servicing rabbis and Jewish communities throughout North America and the world, the Rabbinical Council of America, publisher of TRADITION, convened a special conference call with Rav Hershel Schachter for the organization’s member rabbis on March 16, 2020. During the call Rav Schachter, Rosh Yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, fielded questions on an array of topics concerning halakha in a time of coronavirus—from pre-Pesach preparations, to communal prayer, to mikva observance, and more. Listeners will recognize and appreciate Rav Schachter’s renowned erudition, and his deep concern for the supreme importance of protecting human life and health as a central value in Judaism’s moral and legal tradition. 

The conference call was meant to serve as a resource for communal rabbis who are facing unprecedented challenges in leading their synagogues and pastoring their flocks, and we thank the RCA for sharing it with readers of TRADITION and listeners of the podcast. Obviously each individual should consult with his or her own halakhic authority concerning specific questions. The conversation was convened and moderated by Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive director of the Rabbinical Council of America (www.rabbis.org).

On May 22, 2019, Rabbi Daniel Korobkin and Imam Abdullah Antepli sat down at the annual convention of the Rabbinical Council of America, in Stamford, CT, to discuss the current state of Muslim-Jewish relations. Instead of dancing around the hot-button issues, they directly addressed the issues of Zionism and Israel and the parallel and opposing narratives harbored by Muslim and Jewish communities regarding the past 70+ years in the Middle East. They also discussed Imam Antepli’s work for the Muslim Leadership Initiative of the Shalom Hartman Insititute, which brings out a cohort of Islamic leaders every year to Jerusalem to discuss the Zionist narrative and provide a deeper understanding of both sides. The Imam and the Rabbi further explored what progress is currently taking place in North America in improving relations between Muslims and Jews and what further are necessary for the future.

Imam Abdullah Antepli is on the faculty at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and at Duke’s Divinity School, where from 2008-2014 he served as the university’s first Muslim chaplain, one of only a handful of full-time Muslim chaplains at U.S. colleges and universities. He is also a Senior Fellow on Jewish-Muslim Relations at the Shalom Hartman Institute and Co-Director of its Muslim Leadership Initiative. 

Rabbi Daniel Korobkin is the rabbi of the BAYT, Beth Avraham Yoseph of Thornhill, Ontario, and is the President of the Rabbinical Council of America.

A common theme through TRADITION’s recent symposium on Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction: On the Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy” is how the encounter with the essay in 1994 caused readers to understand transitions within the Orthodox world to which they were witness in their own lifetimes. For a change, we thought it would be interesting to hear the voice of youth—the “Generation Z” members of Modern Orthodoxy; people who were born into a world where Soloveitchik’s insights were already accepted as a given. Jeffrey Saks recently spoke with three American students from Midreshet Amudim who are studying in Israel for the year after high school – Elisheva Ezor of West Hempstead, NY; Shayna Lopatin of Detroit; and Ruthie Vogel of Silver Spring, MD. These bright young women were born into a world that had been ruptured and reconstructed long before they were born, yet one which they seem to intuitively understand is always undergoing some form of transformation.

 

Among the more well-known features of Prof. Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction” is its description of the shift away from a mimetic tradition, in which people are socialized into a religious community through observation and “imitation” (the same root as mimetic), toward an often more stringent text-based authority. Soloveitchik contended that this was accompanied by a concomitant shift from the community and communal rabbi as role models to a reorientation of the center of gravity around yeshivot and Roshei Yeshiva.

To help us understand this phenomenon and how it plays itself out today, TRADITION’s associate editor, R. Chaim Strauchler chatted with R. Efrem and Rebbetzin Yocheved Goldberg of the Boca Raton Syngogue. They spoke about R. Goldberg’s contribution to our symposium, and Rebbetzin Goldberg’s recent essay about the contemporary role of the rabbi’s wife and family as communal role models. They consider challenges to a “centrist Jewish life”—both from the right wing’s supra-halachic modesty stringencies and the left’s so-called “reverse-engineered pesak halakha.” They argue that the modern rabbinic family and, in their terms,  a vibrant “community of  halachic normality” have the potential to provide a new form of mimesis with which to energize Jewish life.

The TRADITION podcast continues to explore topics from our symposium on the 25th anniversary of Prof. Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy.” Soloveitchik’s essay was a rare case of a work of scholarship having a breakthrough to the popular life and imagination of a religious community. But, like most classics, “Rupture and Reconstruction” is known mostly for a boiled-down version of its famous central thesis, and for a few choice terms or concepts such as “mimesis” and “text culture.” It may not even have been read by many who nevertheless have been informed by it, use its ideas to interpret communal phenomenon, or to advance an argument or agenda.

To help us better understand “Rupture and Reconstruction” and the and theories behind it, Jeffrey Saks sat down with Adam Ferzifger, a social and intellectual historian and one of the contributors to our symposium. He provides us with a valuable “Rupture and Reconstruction” primer.

Professor Adam S. Ferziger is Rabbi S.R. Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah with Derekh Erez Movement in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Bar-Ilan University, and Co-Convener of the Oxford Summer Institute for Modern and Contemporary Judaism.

The TRADITION podcast continues to explore topics from our symposium on the 25th anniversary of Prof. Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy.” Soloveitchik’s essay was a rare case of a work of scholarship having a breakthrough to the popular life and imagination of a religious community. But, like most classics, “Rupture and Reconstruction” is known mostly for a boiled-down version of its famous central thesis, and for a few choice terms or concepts such as “mimesis” and “text culture.” It may not even have been read by many who nevertheless have been informed by it, use its ideas to interpret communal phenomenon, or to advance an argument or agenda.

To help us better understand “Rupture and Reconstruction” and the and theories behind it, Jeffrey Saks sat down with Adam Ferzifger, a social and intellectual historian and one of the contributors to our symposium. He provides us with a valuable “Rupture and Reconstruction” primer.

Professor Adam S. Ferziger is Rabbi S.R. Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah with Derekh Erez Movement in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Bar-Ilan University, and Co-Convener of the Oxford Summer Institute for Modern and Contemporary Judaism.

The TRADITION podcast continues to explore topics from our symposium on the 25th anniversary of Prof. Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy.” In this episode two contributors to the symposium sit down to discuss each other’s essay. Rabbi Daniel Korobkin is the rabbi of the BAYT, Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto, and is the President of the Rabbinical Council of America. Rabbi Chaim Strauchler leads Shaarei Shomayim, in Toronto, is also an RCA officer, and recently joined TRADITION as an associate editor.

Rabbis Korobkin and Strauchler sat down together to discuss aspects of “Rupture and Reconstruction” that resonate in their own lives and work –- the methods by which faith can be taught and how they as community rabbis face the challenge of “disillusioned” orthopraxis. They debate faith’s historical fragility within the Jewish people and whether so-called Social Orthodoxy might classify as a type of mimetic tradition (that term which Haym Soloveitchik helped introduce into the Modern Orthodox lexicon a quarter-century ago).

Read the symposium in TRADITION’s Fall 2019 issue here; reread “Rupture and Reconstruction” at bit.ly/2nTkH6S

 

 

The TRADITION podcast continues to explore topics from our symposium on the 25th anniversary of Prof. Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy.” In this episode two contributors to the symposium sit down to discuss each other’s essay. Rabbi Daniel Korobkin is the rabbi of the BAYT, Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto, and is the President of the Rabbinical Council of America. Rabbi Chaim Strauchler leads Shaarei Shomayim, in Toronto, is also an RCA officer, and recently joined TRADITION as an associate editor.

Rabbis Korobkin and Strauchler sat down together to discuss aspects of “Rupture and Reconstruction” that resonate in their own lives and work –- the methods by which faith can be taught and how they as community rabbis face the challenge of “disillusioned” orthopraxis. They debate faith’s historical fragility within the Jewish people and whether so-called Social Orthodoxy might classify as a type of mimetic tradition (that term which Haym Soloveitchik helped introduce into the Modern Orthodox lexicon a quarter-century ago).

Read the symposium in TRADITION’s Fall 2019 issue here; reread “Rupture and Reconstruction” here.

 

[Published on November 12, 2019.]

In this new episode of the TRADITION podcast, editor Jeffrey Saks chats with Atara Eis and Laurie Novick about their essay “Reconstruction in No Man’s Land.” Eis and Novick are both certified Yoetzot Halacha, and wrote as part of our upcoming symposium marking the 25th anniversary of Prof. Haym Soloveitchik’s landmark essay “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” considering its enduring relevance for women’s way of Torah study and halakhic observance. Look for the symposium in our upcoming Fall 2019 issue; reread “Rupture and Reconstruction” at bit.ly/2nTkH6S

In this inaugural episode of the TRADITION podcast, editor Jeffrey Saks sits down with renowned posek Rav J. David Bleich to discuss his multi-decade work authoring the journal’s “Survey of Recent Halakhic Literature” column. Rav Bleich is a Rosh Yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and professor of law at YU’s Cardozo Law School.