Word: soloveitchik
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Paradoxically, during roughly the same period, assimilation ran into a countertrend. Orthodox and Conservative Jewry experienced a pronounced new growth in the U.S. Orthodox Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik describes the change: "When I came here in the 1930s [from Germany], there was a certain naivete, a great pride, a confidence in the American way of life. I'm not sure what the American way of life was, but everyone?including a great many Jews ?thought it was best. Jews wanted to disappear." That attitude began to shift, first merely in reaction to the Nazi disaster that had befallen Germany...
...Rabbi Soloveitchik, Orthodoxy's most brilliant interpreter in the U.S., in sists that Orthodoxy and modern life can go hand in hand. A pre-eminent Talmudic authority at Manhattan's Yeshiva University, Soloveitchik sees the "divine disciplines" of Orthodoxy as part of "a great romance between men and God." Halakhic Precepts, he argues, are a natural dialectic of "advancement and withdrawal" ? six days of work, one of rest; 16 days of the month when husband and wife can have intercourse, twelve when they cannot because of restrictions surrounding the menstrual period. "Detail is important," says Soloveitchik. "Ethics pays attenion...
...Soloveitchik tirelessly commutes between New York and Boston, where he supervises the enlightened Yeshiva he founded there, the Maimonides School. It is designed to give students from kindergarten through twelfth grade the best in both secular education and Jewish
...tradition. "The American Jew is integrated in American society," says Soloveitchik, "but we have another commitment too, a metaphysical commitment ? a covenant with God. We must burden the child with both commitments." Burden indeed: to accommodate the dual study load, the school day at Maimonides runs from...