Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy - by Adam Ferziger & Miri Freud-Kandel & Steven Bayme (Paperback)

About the Book

Offering a critical engagement with the thought of Rabbi Dr. Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, one of the most earnest voices to emerge from within American Orthodoxy, this volume examines his lifelong and complex encounter with the Modern Orthodox stream of American Judaism and the extent to which his teachings functioned as "the road not taken."

Book Synopsis

This volume offers a critical engagement with the thought of Rabbi Dr. Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, one of the most thoughtful and earnest voices to emerge from within American Orthodoxy. It examines his lifelong and complex encounter with the Modern Orthodox stream of American Judaism and the extent to which his teachings functioned as "the road not taken."

Review Quotes

"This work provides an excellent introduction to the critical issues surrounding Modern Orthodoxy's encounter with the rapidly changing contemporary world."

-Randall C. and Anne-Marie Belinfante, AJL Reviews

"The book mirrors the man. Like Rabbi Irving Greenberg, Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken is scholarly yet accessible, critical yet constructive, focused yet with broad sensibility. The newly published essay collection critiques the rabbi's ideas while appreciating their redemptive qualities. It charts the twists and turns of Modern Orthodoxy since the 1950s and explores Greenberg's up-and-down relationship with established Orthodoxy. The book also casts a wider light on issues that have exercised American Jews during that time: fitting into American culture, religious pluralism, feminism, the Holocaust, Zionism and modern sexuality. It's the story of American Jewry coming of age, with perceptive commentary on its sociology, theology and ethics."
- Eugene Korn, The Jewish Week

About the Author

Adam S. Ferziger is an award-winning scholar of modern and contemporary Judaism. He holds the S.R. Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah with Derekh Erez Movement in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, and is head of its Center for the Study of Judaism in Israel and North America. He is a senior associate at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford, UK, and is co-convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism.

Miri Freud-Kandel, a scholar of the theological development of modern and contemporary Judaism with a particular focus on Orthodox Judaism in Britain, is Fellow in Modern Judaism in the Faculty of Theology & Religion at the University of Oxford. She is also co-convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism.

Steven Bayme serves as National Director of the Contemporary Jewish Life Department, American Jewish Committee and as Director of its Dorothy and Julius Koppelman Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations. He is also Visiting Faculty, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in Riverdale, NY.