There’s an interesting debate raging through the imperiled halls of the Ivy League’s humanities departments — and it has special meaning for Modern Orthodoxy as a religious community that has classically valued the encounter with worldly, humanistic wisdom. As the relationship of those two realms of wisdom, often framed around the concept of Torah u-Madda, is receiving renewed ideological and institutional reassessment, this recent TraditionOnline series takes note of trends in general higher education and society. 

Jeffrey Saks: Great Books and “The BEST” Books

Menachem Kellner: Orthodox Humanities?

Chaim I. Waxman: A Bleak Outlook for Orthodox Humanities

Shalom Carmy: Soul on an Ice-Bound Sea 

Yitzchak Blau: The Ongoing Relevance of the Classics

Sarah Rindner Blum: Living Antiquities: Ozick, Great Books & Judaism [Read Cynthia Ozick’s response]

(Additional entries on this topic will be indexed here.)