290 Zev Eleff Modern Orthodox Judaism Is Invaluable for Its Primary

290 Book Reviews Zev Eleff Modern Orthodox Judaism: A Documentary History (Jewish Publication Society, 2016), 520 pp. $40.00. Modern Orthodox Judaism is invaluable for its primary source extracts of the most famous, far-reaching, and significant writings of the key religious thinkers and figures in modern American Jewish history. The book is an eclectic compilation of a mosaic of Orthodox Jewish concepts by leading religious per- sonalities, with an introduction to each original excerpt by the compiler, Rabbi Dr. Zev Eleff, with the scope and fairness of a scholar whose record speaks for itself—chief academic officer and dean of the Hebrew Theological College, author of five books (including one published by Oxford and one as editor of a book on the iconic Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik), and author of more than thirty scholarly articles. Throughout Jewish history, there have been competing schools of thought, ranging from traditionalists (akin to the current American politicians and jurists now known as “originalists”) to more creative thinkers who take liberties to keep up with changing trends in their respective communities (akin to today’s “progressives”). In the past century or so, however, the differences have become increasingly nuanced, even, or perhaps especially, within the “Orthodox” community. Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, of Haifa, in a new biography (Urim, 2016) is quoted as commenting to Rabbi Norman Lamm that until he came to America, he never knew he was “Orthodox.” He just knew he was Jewish. Now, even those who call themselves “modern” Orthodox have many nuanced differences, from the world of Yeshiva University to Touro, and, most recently, the adherents to the new variation of modern Orthodoxy known as “Open Orthodoxy,” championed through the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah by the iconoclas- tic Rabbi Avi Weiss, building on the ground broken by his fellow Riverdale rabbi, Yitzchak Greenberg, and the latter’s wife, Blu. With tremendous restraint, Eleff scrupulously avoids taking positions on the most passionately debated of topics. Since the beginning of the previous century, there has been no shortage of rabbinic titans claiming to have it both ways, as traditionalists and as reform- ers within the traditional camp. Mordechai Kaplan, of course, went in many ways all by himself, over the years, as he evolved from a student so traditional that he criticized those who dared to teach in a language other than Yiddish, to rabbinical positions in two of the leading Orthodox synagogues, to a leading pillar of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, to the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. What fires up the passions of most Orthodox Jewish theologians and laymen—and women—alike today are the debates about the emerging way of © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2��6 | doi �0.��63/�5700704-�234�334 Book Reviews 29� life known as “Open Orthodoxy,” which has been defined by its founders Rabbis Avi Weiss and Dov Linzer (“Open Orthodox Judaism,” 2003, pp. 409–410) as “an Orthodoxy that is open intellectually and expansive and inclusive in practice” (p. 409) where “religious growth comes not through dogmatism but through questioning and struggle” (p. 410), a claim made ironically by more traditional Jews through the ages, but Open Orthodoxy strives “to expand and enhance the roles of women in religious leadership, the halakhic process and ritual” and to engage all Jews “not with the goal of making them Orthodox, but rather to ignite in them the spark of Jewish consciousness and inspire their spiritual striving.” Most of the last few chapters of the book seek to place “Open Orthodoxy” in perspective and to place in perspective its implicit claim to being the logi- cal heir to or true expression of centrist or modern Orthodoxy. In a way this whole book serves to put Open Orthodoxy in perspective, but Rabbi Eleff takes pains not to take sides, but to let the thinkers and the movers and the shakers of “modern” or “centrist” Orthodoxy speak—or write—for themselves. Most Jews have not chosen to be or remain Orthodox, centrist, modern, or other- wise, all of which do not grant the freedom to pick and choose which laws to observe, but rather differ as to how to observe them. At the same time, most viewers inside and outside of the Judeo-Christian community believe that the Jews either were or remain “the chosen people,” a choice the Heavenly grant of which many Jews grapple to defend, often apologetically. One of the major thinkers of the Jewish world, respected both within the confines of his religion and beyond, tackles this topic with an eloquent defense. Chief Rabbi Jakobovits, in “The State of Orthodox Belief” (1966, pp. 260–263) provides an incisive defense of the concept of the chosen people as not being chauvinist or racist. Rather, “The Jewish ‘chosen people’ idea has nothing to do with national or racial superiority as currently understood. The idea never jus- tified, or led to, discrimination against strangers in Jewish law, expansionism or political domination in Jewish history, or conversionist aspirations in Jewish theology. It was invariably directed at exacting greater sacrifices from the Jew, not at imposing them on the non-Jews” (p. 263). In “The Letter and the Spirit of the Law” (1962, pp. 270–273), Jakobovits provides an appreciation of the letter of the law, that Orthodox Jews follow more than most other Jews, as well as the spirit of the law, in the following anal- ogy: “The concrete letter of the law is more apparent than its abstract spirit … Jewish law … abhors the vacuum of abstractions; yet it aims at their definition by erecting a legal structure around them. We may compare it to a building. Only the concrete walls and floors are visible; yet these exist only for the sake of the empty space encompassed by them, the ‘abstract’ shelter provided in the building’s rooms which in themselves contain no intangible matter” (p. 271). The Review of Rabbinic Judaism 20 (20�7) 279–297.

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