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Lawrence Grossman, "Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945-2025" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
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Lawrence Grossman
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Lawrence Grossman
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
Hello and welcome to the New Books and Jewish Studies channel of the New Books Network podcast. I'm your host, Rabbi Mark Katz, author of Yohanan's Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life and Today. I'm here with Lawrence Grossman, who is the author of the new book Living in Both Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945-2025. In America today, Orthodoxy is the fastest growing movement. However, Orthodoxy is anything but monolithic. In his newest book, Lawrence Grossman explores a piece of that Orthodox story, that of Modern Orthodoxy. Now, for those who may be unfamiliar, Modern Orthodoxy affirms the traditional tenets and practices of Orthodox Judaism while at the same time maintaining an openness to contemporary culture and intellectual developments beginning in the post World War II era. Living in Both Worlds shows how a fledgling Modern Orthodoxy carved out an identity separate and apart from unacculturated Ultra Orthodoxy to its right and Conservative Judaism to its left, and follows its development through the first quarter of the 21st century as new divisive issues such as feminism and LGBTQ rights and the spread of academic biblical scholarship challenged its coherence and rejuvenated Ultra Orthodoxy contested its religious legitimacy. This is a book that not only records history, but challenges us to think deeply about questions of how modernity and tradition intersect, exploring the delicate dance that we have to both the past and the present moment. So welcome. So I want to begin with our standard first question on this podcast. So tell us about yourself. Who are you and why did you write the book?
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Lawrence Grossman
Well, I'm a native New Yorker, born in the Bronx at the very time that this book begins, a few days before the end of World War II. And I grew up in a modern Orthodox family, modern Orthodox community, went to Modern Orthodox synagogues as well as other types of Orthodox synagogues. I attended Jewish day schools, then Yeshiva University, where I received ordination. I also am a historian. I have a PhD in American history. And I worked first 10 years as a college professor and then the rest of my career at the American Jewish Committee, where I basically did writing and research. I was director of publications, editor of the American Jewish yearbook, retired in 2019, right before COVID which was serendipitous. Over the course of my active career, I've also done a lot of freelance writing, a lot of book reviews, a lot of articles, and I've always maintained an interest in my community of the modern Orthodox, published a number of essays on particular events and trends in that community, and eventually coming to the conclusion that, wow, no one has ever done a full scale history of it, tracing it from World War II till today. And I think an advantage that I have in doing this is that while I am from this community and part of this community, I am not affiliated with or a member of any of its institutions other than my local synagogue, which I think gives me a certain objectivity that I've tried to preserve in writing this book.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
So before we get into the history that you explore so well in the book, let's do some level setting. So how would you describe the current state of modern Orthodoxy in America? Tell me about the key institutions, players. Maybe some numbers help us understand the picture of where we are before we understand how we got to where we are.
- [06:12]
Lawrence Grossman
Okay, let's start with the numbers, which are a little bit misleading. The US Census does not have a question about religion, so that if we want to know how many of any particular religion live in the United States, we we have to rely on polling firms. Pew has done several recent national polls of Jews. It finds 5.8 million Jews in the United States. But that is misleading because only 4.2 million of them say they're Jews by religion. The others are Jews by culture or interests or cuisine or whatever. So if we Talk about the 4.2 million who are Jews by religion, 12% of them call themselves Orthodox, which is about a half million. Of those two thirds are not modern. They're what we call Haredi or ultra Orthodox or unacculturated Orthodox, so that only one third of them would be considered modern Orthodox, which is about 160, 170,000. So we're not talking here about a very big conglomeration of people. Now, the major synagogue organization of modern Orthodoxy is corporately known as the OU, the Orthodox Union, which began in 1898. It's well known for its kashrut supervision. Then there is a younger and smaller network of synagogues, the National Council of Young Israel, which began on the Lower east side in the early 20th century. Now, in terms of rabbinical organizations, the major modern Orthodox organization is the Rabbinical Council of America, or RCA, which began in the 1930s. Basically rabbis ordained by Yeshiva University and Hebrew Theological College in Chicago. More recently, as I get to in the book, with the rise of so called open Orthodoxy, there's Yeshivat Chovav Etorah, which is more liberal in a number of ways, was founded by Rabbi Avi Weiss, who also founded a women's seminary, which of course is not necessarily accepted by other Orthodox institutions. Yeshivat Maharat, he calls it. Now, in terms of rabbinical schools, Yeshiva University, of course, is the granddaddy of all of them. It's been around for over a century, but Rabbi Weiss's Yeshiva, Chobba Vay Torah and Hebrew Theological College still exists, and also Turo University. Let's see, in terms of leadership, that's an interesting story in the book. There were very well known leaders, Rabbi Soloveitchik is probably the best known of them, had a tremendous influence and plays a major role in the story I tell in the book. Rabbi Emmanuel Rachman, another well known person. Now, it's very difficult to discern leading individuals in the movement, but that's true of all the denominations. I remember when everyone knew who the head of the Reform movement was or the Conservative movement was. Now these personalities aren't around anymore. I don't know what the reason for that is, but these institutions now seem to be running on their own speed without necessarily having charismatic leadership. And I think that's certainly true of Orthodoxy.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
Yeah, I hear you on that. And part of it could also be the democratization of leadership, the fact that anyone can have a platform with the Internet. And we'll come back to that. I'm sure, because you do talk about that a lot toward the end of your book. But I want to back up and go to the very beginning now of your book. So tell us a little bit about the birth of modern Orthodoxy in America. And you spent a good amount of time at the beginning of your book talking about the fact that there was. There was a blurring of line between modern Orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism. And then eventually modern Orthodoxy finds its way out of that blurred line. And I'm wondering if you could talk about that process a little bit and how modern Orthodoxy kind of came into its own in the post World War II period.
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Lawrence Grossman
Yes, there was a time, let's say before World War II, when it was very hard to discern any difference between modern Orthodoxy and conservatism. And often conservative rabbis, conservative groups, even use the term modern Orthodox for themselves. If you went into a Conservative synagogue or an Orthodox synagogue, you would find basically the same thing. There would be English readings, men and women would sit together, people would drive to shul on Shabbat. There wasn't anything that could really give you a sense of these are two separate things. What happened after World War II was that conservatism developed a unique place. It moved away from Halacha. In 1948, it established a Committee on Law and Standards. And there was a big debate there whether this committee should be bound by halacha, by Jewish law, and they decided not to put that in. And this marked the beginning of the Conservative movements freeing itself from traditional halacha. And indeed, two Years later, in 1950, it pronounced a rule that one could now drive to the synagogue on Shabbat. The prohibition against using a car, turning on the motor and all of that. That would not apply if you're going to do a great mitzvah of going to shul. Now this was at a time when American Jews were moving to the suburbs. So you no longer had little neighborhoods where you lived across the street from the shul or a block away. People had to drive. So the Conservative movement said, if we want people in shul, we've got to let them drive. Now they were also driving to the Orthodox shuls. But Orthodoxy never said, you can. It said, well, we're not going to say anything. You certainly can walk into the shul and pray here even if you drove, but we're not going to say it's all right. So there already you see a fundamental difference, that whereas the Conservative movement was open to change because of social development, that people don't live near shuls anymore. Orthodoxy said, no, we can't do that. We are going to stick with the halacha as it is now. In addition to that, after World War II, there was a large migration of very Orthodox Jews, Holocaust survivors from Europe. These were people who would never have come to America had they not been forced to by Hitler. Basically, the Orthodox Jews who came earlier tended to be those who were least tied to the old ways of doing things. But now you had these newcomers who took their Judaism very seriously and felt that the Orthodox who were here already weren't serious enough and had given in too much. And these more serious Orthodox Jews, more observant Orthodox Jews, had an effect on their neighbors who suddenly see, hey, you know, these are people who are really serious about the Judaism. And this too pulled modern Orthodoxy away from the Conservative movement.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
One of the things you do really well in the book is you start talking about that shift to the right that you just indicated, and you bring in any number of case studies about how it is that Orthodoxy does shift to the right. The fact that women didn't cover their heads to the extent, you know, pre migration of those Jews than they did afterwards. The glat Kosher revolution that people didn't cover. Check the lungs in the same way before and after those Jews came over. I'm wondering if you want to talk about one or two of those areas of change that you found particularly interesting. And I'll point the listeners to the book to find any number of other examples that you won't talk about today.
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Lawrence Grossman
Okay, let's take a couple you didn't mention. One is social dancing. This is a fascinating thing. Back before World War II, and indeed back even in Europe with more of the secularizing Jews in Russia. In Germany, social dancing became a thing because non Jews were doing it. It was a way to meet members of the opposite sex if you were single. Many Orthodox synagogues in the United States had dances because they wanted their young people to meet. Young Israels had them. Even the Young Israels in their charters said that there had to be a barrier between men and women during services, that to be an officer of Young Israel, you had to be a Sabbath observer. They had mixed dancing in the shuls, which drove the newcomers, the post World War II Orthodox, Crazy. How can you call yourself an Orthodox shul if you have mixed dancing? Over time, the modern Orthodox synagogues got rid of mixed dancing to the point where, as an incident I mentioned in the book, the Young Israel movement was having its annual dinner and they were going to honor all of their former living Presidents and one of their former living presidents, a very, very eminent person, refused to come and get his award because he wouldn't be allowed to dance with his wife anymore. So this really showed the influence of the very, very, what we call the. From people that mixed dancing is out. The other one I'll mention, which I think is the most important one, had nothing to do with ritual or behavior, but rather the idea that in the perfect world, all Jewish men should be devoting full time to studying the Talmud. The idea of a Kollel. Kollel means full time learning supported by the community. Now, there were a few of these in Europe, but it was simply economically not viable to have it on a very large scale. People had to go to work in America, though with relative prosperity. The first Kollel was set up by Rabbi Aaron cutler in Lakewood, New Jersey during the 1940s. And the idea of it caught on that, wow, to be a really good Jew and to be a really authentically learned Jew, I should spend all of my time learning. And the word learning meant learning Talmud. This started to pervade even the modern Orthodox sphere. And Yeshiva University started a kolel in the early 1960s. Rabbi Soloveitchik was not happy with this. As the lead rabbi at Yeshiva, all of his students who later wrote their memoirs about their relationship with him, they said when they would ask him for advice, you know, what should I do when I graduate? He told them, go to graduate school. He didn't tell them to spend all your time learning. But he was on the wrong side of this issue because this became very pervasive. I'll tell you another anecdote. A number of years ago, I was visiting an old friend of mine from my Yu days, and we were reminiscing about the 1960s, what life was like. Modern Orthodox students at Yeshiva University in 1960, and his son was there. His son was a full time learner. And listening to us, he turns to his father and says, dad, face the facts. Back in your time at Yeshiva, you weren't really Orthodox. So I decided to have a little fun. I told him, did you know that Rabbi Saloveisha didn't send his own son to Yeshiva University? So he said, where did he learn the mirror? I said, no, he sent him to Harvard. That illustrates in a nutshell, the tremendously different way that younger Orthodox Jews look at what the good life is supposed to be. Rabbi Soloveitchik thought it was, yes, knowing how to study and to be an erudite Talmud chacham, but also being Secularly educated, having a career. This now is gone or almost gone.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
I was literally talking about that the other day. I was telling my father in law about your book and praising the book. And I was. And we were discussing the fact that there are very few people, whether you call it Torah Umada or Torah in Derek Eretz, the people who have both the Jewish chops and the secular chops, right, who can talk equally about Immanuel Kant and who knows what's on page 17B of Brachot. And there are just very few people nowadays that can do both at the same time. I'm curious if you can reflect a little bit on that phenomenon and if you think there are people in the Orthodox world that have that Soloveitchic vision of learning that you're talking about here.
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Lawrence Grossman
It'S very few and far between. Luckily, my local rabbi is one, because I found him, we were visiting Chicago and he was there, an assistant, and I heard him speak one day and I thought, my God, if we could get him to come to my neighborhood. And sure enough, we had an opening for a rabbi and I gave them his name and he is now our rabbi. And everyone is thanking me whenever they hear him speak. But there are very, very few.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
So let's shift then to talk about why you which is the place of learning for Jews. And I would say you had a lot of characters in your book, but I would say why you as a character might have been the most prominent character in the book. And so I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about why you, how it's changed. What place does it have for Orthodox Judaism? Like reflect a little bit on. On that central character of your book?
- [23:39]
Lawrence Grossman
Yes. Well, I'll give you another anecdote to encapsulate that based on two conversations I had with two of my grand nephews who were students there. One of them was someone who was quite a Tamil chachem. And when he was there, the Yu basketball team was doing great and they wanted everybody to come down to a certain game that they were going to play. But this created a controversy because it would interfere with what is called Nightsadr. Now night seder means that after you eat dinner, you don't do your homework, you come back to the Beit Midrash, the study hall, and you study till midnight. This was picked up up from the Israeli yeshivas that the boys will go to now post 1967. So I asked him what's going on there, this conflict over nights versus going to the basketball game. And I Said, you know, in my time at yu, there was no nightsater. He didn't believe me. He didn't believe me, but I was telling him the truth. No one was in the study hall at night. And my other grand nephew, he was in the YU Business School, the Tsai Sim School of Business. And I said, I hear that most of the students now are in the business school and not in the liberal arts college. So he says, yes, I'm shocked when I meet anyone who's not in the business school. So I said, did you know that when I was at yu, not only was there no business school, there wasn't a single business or accounting course? He didn't believe me. So Those were the two changes that happened in the 1970s. The pensions for going off to Israel to study for a year meant that they came back with this notion of full time study as the most important thing. And the collapse of the economy in the mid-1970s, the Arab oil boycott meant that many families were insisting that their kids come out of college being able to make a living, which basically destroyed the liberal arts. When I was there, let me tell you, I wanted to major in history, so I took the required history course in my freshman year. My sophomore year, wanted to register for an advanced course. Sorry, it's full. I had to get special permission from the professor to get in. There were so many history majors, now there's barely one. They're all business majors and they learn. So this is the thing, Torah and business, that's the way to make it in America. And it's a very different institution than it was when I was there.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
So I'm curious if you can help unpack the term Modern Orthodox. And I'll explain what I mean by this. At the end of your book, you cite the idea of family resemblances for the label of Orthodoxy. The idea is that there's lots of different kinds of Orthodox and they all kind of look like each other, but there's not really a whole one Orthodox way of being in the world. And in the book you end up citing all these movements to redefine what modern Orthodoxy is. It's Modern Orthodox, or it's Centrist Orthodox, or it's Open Orthodox, or it's Mainstream Orthodox. And my wife grew up in Englewood and we often talk about the difference between Englewood Orthodox Judaism and Teaneck Orthodox Judaism, which both are versions of Orthodox or of Modern Orthodox Judaism, but actually feel quite different from one another. Is there such thing as Modern Orthodox? And you know, what are the operative terms to use to describe the phenomenon that you're talking about in your book.
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Lawrence Grossman
Well, there, there was something called modern Orthodox, certainly the late 1950s and 1960s. It meant someone who was learned, who was seriously observant, but also well educated in an all around way. That was the personality that we all strove to be. Since that time, things have happened and there have been sort of spin offs or new terms used. For example, centrist Orthodoxy. That was mid-1970s Rabbi Norman Lamb, who felt that the word modern sounded too uppity, that we're modern, we're the latest, right? We're great. So he thought centrist was better. It meant moderate, moderate. Not very, very fanatical, not very, very secular. But by the end of his career, he retracted that. He said, I'm really modern Orthodox. You know, the centrist thing, I didn't really mean it. But people still go around using the term if they don't want to call themselves modern. Because there are many people today who don't think modern is very good. We want to be authentic the way they used to be, not the way, the modern way. And then there's the open Orthodox. That's Avi Weiss, you know, we're open to women, we're open to gays. Open, open, open. Then another interesting one is social Orthodoxy, which I mentioned in the book. There was an article in Commentary magazine of a man who said, I love being Orthodox. I love all the aspects of it, Shabbat and the holidays and going to shul and learning. I love it, I love it, I love it, I want to be part of it, but I don't believe in the theology of it. So I guess I'm a social Orthodox. And he said, I bet there are a lot more like me who aren't talking about it. So there you get another spin off. Then you have Charles Liebman, who plays a major role in the book, people don't remember him today, who decided he couldn't really be Orthodox because he couldn't believe the theology underpinning it. But he says, I'm philo Orthodox, means it's good, I like it, I love it. So all these things are out there now. What they have in common, what the family resemblance is, is a desire, a need to live a structured halachic life, to do all of the things you're supposed to do, whatever your theological preference is. But you follow what the community does. You study. When the rabbi gives a class, you go, you take it seriously. And if you have that as your anchor, you can be a modern or Centrist or social or whatever, and still be considered part of this, what I would call non haredi Orthodoxy.
- [31:41]
Rabbi Mark Katz
Another thing I found interesting about your book was toward the end, you talked about the role that academic scholarship played in shaping Orthodox consciousness. And I was very surprised as I was reading the book because as a Reform rabbi, I was always taught that the kind of great, let's call it ossification of Orthodox theology happened in meeting Reform Jews in Germany. Right. There's a reason it's called Orthodox Judaism, not orthoprax Judaism, that it was based around the idea that the Torah was given on Mount Sinai. But I was surprised by the number of statements that didn't mention that idea until Jews in the, you know, late 20th century started coming up against biblical scholars, specifically in the modern Orthodox milieu, and then they needed to then put a stake in the ground and say every word is divine in the Torah. I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about that phenomenon, because it was fascinating the way you spoke about it.
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Lawrence Grossman
Oh, yes. Well, even in medieval times, there are biblical commentators like the Ibn Ezra, the Rashbom, who seem to have no difficulty explaining certain verses in the Bible by saying, well, this was put in later or it reflects a later period, and it didn't really rouse any opposition. These things were simply, you know, assumed. Okay, you know, you say that fine. You know, good. You know, we. We go on observing. But as you say, once you get into the, say, 19th century, where Bible criticism becomes a field, and when we have, you know, Wellhausen and others who pick apart the whole thing, this was very, very threatening to Orthodox leadership. And this was something that we simply can't accept. But that has changed. When you get to the late 20th century, you start finding Orthodox scholars.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
Who.
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Lawrence Grossman
Wear kipot, one of whom teaches at Harvard. I want to mention his name, very eminent person who explains in the introduction to all of his books that he won't write out the tetragrammaton, the name of God, because Orthodox Judaism says you can't write out the name of God. But in the book he's doing biblical criticism, pointing out, you know, different. The different sources and how they came together. Now there's a very popular website, TheTorah.com which anybody can go on. It's free. And every week there are new articles by scholars, basically from the Orthodox traditional communities, explaining difficulties in the particular Torah reading or in the holly that's coming up using a critical approach. And it was founded by a former outreach rabbi, a wonderful, devoted man who put his life into this and sort of discovered this. And he surrounded himself with scholars and they put this out constantly. And since a wonderful resource. So I think certainly in the modern Orthodox community, much of it is now very open to a more critical approach to the Bible and also more critical approach to Jewish history generally to see that it was not one specific or Orthodox tradition that was carried through the ages, but rather that Orthodoxy itself developed and changed and is changing now. There used to be a quip that people used. The Orthodox say halachah never changes. Jewish law never changes. Conservative Jews say halachah always changes. The modern Orthodox say halakha used to change, but it doesn't change now. I think now Orthodox Jews too are understanding that it indeed does change.
- [36:41]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So in addition to scholarship, there's lots of other outside forces that have acted on Orthodoxy in the latter part of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st century. I'm curious, would you highlight maybe one or two of those forces and talk about how they played a role in your book?
- [37:00]
Lawrence Grossman
Well, obviously the most important is feminism. This has had a very powerful impact.
- [37:08]
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- [37:23]
Lawrence Grossman
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Lawrence Grossman
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- [38:10]
Lawrence Grossman
I start the story in the early 1960s with Betty Friedan's book. Betty Friedan, of course, was Jewish, but not Orthodox. Many of the early second stage feminists were Jewish and reflected their own discomfort with the way they were brought up in sort of traditional Jewish homes. And there was a phenomenal anger that developed among many rabbis when Orthodox Jewish women started talking about, hey, you know, we got to change things. These rabbis made fun of them and said, you know, God created you differently. Men and women are very different. Men are supposed to be doing the. The rituals and all of that. Women are the ones who raise the kids. But over time, that changed too, and increasingly, modern Orthodoxy became open towards a greater role for women. The key figure here was Blue Greenberg, whose book on the subject really changed minds. Of course, it made other people even more adamant against it. But now, even within more traditional Orthodox communities, women are given a greater role, if not in ritual, then in management of the synagogue, in organizing things. Of course. Now, as I pointed out in Yeshiva Maharat that Ravabi Weiss began, when women are being ordained and are acting as rabbis, some of them, they don't use the word rabbi. They call themselves maharat or rabbanit or whatever is in Israel. There are plenty of them, too. So that's one element. Another that's been very, very influential and very divisive at this point is the new approach to lgbtq, gays, transsexuals. This whole thing has become very, very explosive. In fact, again at Issue University, for years now, there are students who have been trying to create a gay club, as are on many campuses. Well, how do you do that at an Orthodox institution? Now, the fact is that back.
- [41:01]
Rabbi Mark Katz
A.
- [41:01]
Lawrence Grossman
Few decades ago, when Rabbi Soloveitchik was still around, Yeshiva University, in order to get New York State funding, legally separated its rabbinical school from the rest of the university with a separate board of trustees. So now it's difficult to say that the secular Yeshiva University, which has spun off his rabbinical school, should be considered a religious institution and not have to have a gay club. I trace this in the book, and this has been going on even as we speak. The rabbis have adamantly opposed any such thing, unless it could be a club where the rabbis would be in charge, and it would be to get the students not to act out their gay proclivities. Well, this is not what the students want. So that remains very much up in the air. And I'm sure as time goes on, we're going to see more and more developments in American society that are going to have to be addressed by religious authorities of Orthodoxy.
- [42:19]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So let's play that out. If someone updated your book 20 years from now, what do you see being the major change that took place over that 20 years that maybe we aren't talking about now as much, or that hasn't really come into play in the past 20 years?
- [42:38]
Lawrence Grossman
Well, I would suggest something that is happening right now, which is the place of Israel in the Judaism of American Jews. How shall American Orthodox Jews, let's say modern Orthodox Jews, who are in the real world and also in the Jewish world. How should they react to what Israel has just gone through, the Gaza war, with all of the controversy it has aroused in the world and in the United States. Now, most modern Orthodox Jews are tremendously pro Israel and I'm sure if a survey were taken, they would absolutely support everything that Israel does. However, it is not unanimous. There is an organization called Smol Emuni, the Left Faithful, or the Faithful of the Left, which is very unhappy about what Israel has done and believes that Orthodoxy has to consider precious the lives of non Jews, including the thousands who lost their lives in Gaza. Some 80 such rabbis signed on to a statement written by a rabbi who used to be a faculty member at Yeshiva University, someone I know and I knew, very serious, observant, learned man who simply could not stomach what he saw as the lack of humanity that he felt so many Israelis are guilty of towards the Gazan Palestinians. Now this, in turn, this letter caused a tremendous backlash with people saying, these people signed the letter. These aren't really Orthodox people. They're not Orthodox rabbis. They're fringe people, not to be taken seriously. But I think that the whole role of Israel is going to become more and more a subject of discussion in Orthodox circles, of course, depending upon how this. We're speaking on October 9th, when a peace agreement has been announced, though not exactly ratified yet in Gaza. But I think that as this plays itself out and we'll have to see how Israel's foreign policy develops further, just how and in what ways this will impact American Orthodox Jews.
- [46:01]
Rabbi Mark Katz
That's fascinating in part because I felt like watching this war unfold, there wasn't a lot of daylight between, you know, the Orthodox congregations that I knew, between their Judaism right. And their Israel ness, their connection to Zionism that they were almost. Zionism almost became a tenant of one's religious faith in a way that I had never seen. But you're right, there are definitely some outliers and those some of those 80 rabbis were pretty heavy hitters on that letter, I think. So, yeah. I want to actually talk about Israel for a second. This is a book about American Orthodoxy, but Israeli Modern Orthodoxy has their own unique flavor, their own unique style. Now, it's not like the two communities never touch, right? A huge percentage of American Modern Orthodox Jews will go to, you know, their gap year program before college in Israel. And so as you mentioned, there is some interplay between the two. But I am wondering, is there a difference in timber between American Orthodoxy and Israeli Modern Orthodoxy, whatever that equivalency on the Israel side really looks like.
- [47:21]
Lawrence Grossman
Oh, yes, there's definitely a difference, because Israeli Modern Orthodoxy, which is basically religious Zionism, their modernity is very much taken up with how do you adjust halachic Judaism to the needs of a Jewish state and the Jewish army and the Jewish economy, Like how to adjust it to a sovereign Jewish entity. We don't have this in the United States. Here it's much more a matter of, say, how is my religious experience to be understood from a humanistic perspective vis a vis a Jewish perspective? Now, since 67, so many of the Yeshiva high school graduates spend a year or more, even two years in Israel, so they pick up a lot of that Israeli style. Also, with the Internet, you have instant access to everything going on in Israel, and Israel has instant access to everything going on here. We know what the Israeli rabbis are saying. They know what the American rabbis are saying. This wasn't the case in the 1960s. It wasn't such a close arrangement. So you'll see towards the end of the book, I deal with a couple of Israeli figures who've had a great impact on America. Tamar Ross, the brilliant Orthodox feminist, and Rav Shagar, the brilliant Rosh Yishiva Talmud Hakham postmodern approach, have both had impacts in the United States. Now, there's another aspect to this too. American Orthodox leaders who move to Israel. There is a book, I don't know if it's Out Already or Coming Out Already, by Adam Furziger, where he talks about, I think, five, a handful of American rabbis who've had an impact on Israeli Modern Orthodoxy. And he tries to show that they've had a moderating effect on what could otherwise be more radical Israeli Orthodox approaches.
- [49:58]
Rabbi Mark Katz
One has to imagine probably Hartman is in that category, right?
- [50:01]
Lawrence Grossman
Oh, yes. Well, he left many years ago. Of course, his son Daniil is now in charge of that. Yes. Hartmann is an example of Modern Orthodoxy that's become almost post denominational because I don't even think it calls itself Orthodox. You know, he of course, is Orthodox and many of the figures there are, but it's really open to all. It has many, you know, non Orthodox people involved there. So that that's one direction that Orthodoxy has taken in Israel to service the broader, not the specifically Orthodox community.
- [50:43]
Rabbi Mark Katz
And I imagine also like Aaron Lichtenstein and others like him as well, correct?
- [50:48]
Lawrence Grossman
Well, look, I deal with all of these people. They're all different. Lichtenstein was certainly not post denominational or post Orthodox, but he was a very open person. He had a PhD in English literature from Harvard and he was Rabbi Saloveitchik's son in law. He is a very broad minded person, but also very, very conscious of not splitting the community. I remember people would ask him, can I do this, can I do that? And he always said, well, it's halakically okay, but don't do it if it'll cause a split within your synagogue. Remember his daughter once described, described how she asked her father whether it was okay to have a woman give a dvartorah after services from the pulpit. So he said, well, it shouldn't be immediately after. Could you like wait five minutes till after the service is over before she goes up? So he was, he also, he always tried to not create divisions within the community, but rather to handle these things in a smooth way.
- [52:09]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So we always end the same way, which is to ask you, what else are you working on?
- [52:14]
Lawrence Grossman
Well, now I'm working something that's even harder than this book. Little did I realize and I finished the book and I took on something that I did for many years at the American Jewish Yearbook, which is writing the article on Jewish communal affairs for 2025. For the yearbook. In other words, what were the issues and the divisions and the discussions among American Jews during this year? Little did I realize what's going to happen this year. I'm going to have to write about Donald Trump and the Jews, about the Gaza war and American Jews. The divisions really, I would say vicious about this, the rise of anti Semitism. Again, whoever thought that this would happen? And I'm going to have to write about this in like a 25, 30 page article. God help me.
- [53:27]
Rabbi Mark Katz
Well, we look forward to reading it.
- [53:29]
Lawrence Grossman
Oh, thank you.
- [53:30]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So once again I'm with Lawrence Grossman, the author of the extraordinary, well researched and thoughtful book Living in Both Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945-2025. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much, Sam.