The Jewish Telegraphic Agency profiled TRADITION’s Rabbi Jeffrey Saks upon his appointment as the journal’s sixth editor. Journalist Sam Sokol writes:
American Modern Orthodoxy is in many ways an ongoing argument between Jewish tradition and modernity. Leaders and followers prefer to call it a balancing act, involving everything from how to read the Bible to agreeing on the borders of a Jewish state to whether to ordain female clergy. That argument, or balancing act, has taken place for six decades in the quarterly journal of the Rabbinical Council of America, aptly named Tradition.
The journal recently announced the appointment of Rabbi Jeffrey Saks as its new editor, choosing an American-born educator who has lived in Israel for the past quarter century. Saks succeeds Rabbi Shalom Carmy, assistant professor of Jewish philosophy and Bible at Yeshiva University, who held the position for 15 years.
“Ideas and action are essential to the life of a thoughtful, engaged religious and spiritual community,” said Saks, “and there are many ways into that conversation. Tradition has been for 60 years a very significant platform for that kind of interaction. And we hope to raise that and we hope to expand it through the benefits of new media, but to continue to do that. In that regard, we are still quite as relevant as ever.”