Reconsidering “Rupture and Reconstruction”
“Zealous to continue traditional Judaism unimpaired, [today’s] religious Jews seek to ground their new emerging spirituality less on a now unattainable intimacy with Him, than on an intimacy with His Will […] Having lost the touch of His presence, they seek now solace in the pressure of His yoke,” wrote Prof. Haym Soloveitchik in concluding his now classic essay, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy (TRADITION, Summer 1994), which appeared in our pages exactly 25 years ago.
To mark the half-Jubilee of this landmark essay TRADITION will run a symposium in our forthcoming Fall 2019 issue. In the meantime, now’s the time to re-read “Rupture or Reconstruction” (or encounter it for the first time), to consider how it has served as a lens through which contemporary Orthodoxy has viewed itself this past quarter-century.
Click here to read “Rupture and Reconstruction” in our archives.
Contributors to the symposium will include: Nechama Barash, Gedalyah Berger, Atara Eis & Laurie Novick, Adam Ferziger, Elli Fischer, Efrem Goldberg, Michael Harris, Lawrence Kobrin, Daniel Korobkin, Ilana Kurshan, Elazar Muskin, Yehoshua Pfeffer, Sarah Rindner, Chaim Saiman, Rivka Press Schwartz, Chaim Strauchler, and Heshy Zelcer.
Published August 19, 2019