The Fourth Online NGFP Course
Between Tradition and Modernity; Can Jews Live in Two Worlds and Still be Distinctive?
Moderated by Professor Michael Rosenak, Mandel Professor of Jewish Education at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education of the Hebrew University (Emeritus)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Can Jews live as active participants in the modern age and yet maintain a binding connection to the Jewish tradition that, perhaps alone, can assure the existence of the Jews as a significant collective? Or must they choose, between modernity and tradition?

In this mini-course, this key question is briefly explored, in five units:

1. Can Jews have their cake and eat it too, remaining loyal to tradition and holding on to a national and religious distinctiveness even as they live modern lives in contemporary environments? We shall examine two views of this question, of two twentieth century thinkers, Martin Buber and Mordecai M. Kaplan.  
   
2. Can there be a life of norms, specifically, mitzvot, in an age of crisis, change and autonomy? We will present two approaches, first, a theoretical one, of a sociologist in conversation with a theologian, second, a neo-Orthodox approach, that of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
   
3. Can texts remain sacred in an age of scientific inquiry? Biblical research seems to undermine, some would say, destroy, the foundations of the belief that God gave the Torah, which is “from Heaven” to Moses? We present three approaches: first, that of Yitzchak Breuer who claims   that science cannot “deal with” revelation at all; second, that we must now reject the traditional view and re-interpret our biblical tradition, the view of the educator, Moshe Goithein,   and third, the position that traditional approach may still be accepted though it must reflect modern scholarship, a view taken by the thinker, Franz Rosenzweig.
   
4. What are Jewish Values? Two views of what we mean by the term, “values”: Rabbi Eliyahu E. Dessler, a prominent thinker of “the Yeshiva world” and Michael Rosenak (the author) “in conversation” about what we mean by absolute values and where to find them in the modern world.
   
5. The Jewish “worlds” of two covenants: “fate” and “destiny” Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik, for many years the spiritual mentor of American modern Orthodoxy, suggests a scheme for different groups of Jews to maintain a common identity in the modern world while the traditional community, “of destiny” remains true to its traditional vision. But with a difference?