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Two Rabbis Face The Juggernaut
NEW YORK -- In the Orthodox civil war -- in which right-wing rabbis equate their left-wing colleagues with biblical monsters and the issue of women's prayer has become an ideological litmus test -- two rabbis bear watching.
One is Jacob J. Schacter, the leader of The Jewish Center, a large, mainstream Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side and a historian whose work elucidates intellectual trends in Orthodox Judaism. The other is Daniel Landes, head of the Pardes Institute, an influential institute of higher Jewish learning in Jerusalem with a largely Orthodox faculty but an unorthodox style.
Both rabbis stand against the right-wing juggernaut that is rolling over Orthodox Judaism, alienating non-Orthodox Jews and liberals within Orthodoxy with its harsh rhetoric and polarizing moves. The success or failure of these two men, who work at institutions where Orthodoxy shows its most open and accommodating face to the non-Orthodox world -- in the former case, to the New York Jewish community; in the latter, to the seekers who have come to study Judaism in its capital -- will show whether Orthodoxy will enrich the entire Jewish world or whether it will remain the inward-looking...