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I think I went to school with this guy
Dec. 27th, 2007 12:44 pm 'Things Once Taken For Granted Are Now Considered Unacceptable'
By: Elliot Resnick, Jewish Press Staff Reporter
By: Elliot Resnick, Jewish Press Staff Reporter
Marc B. Shapiro, a Judaic Studies professor at the University of Scranton, is a mine of information and a lightning rod for controversy.
A summa cum laude graduate from Brandeis University and the last person to receive a Ph.D. from the late Harvard Judaic Studies Professor Isadore Twersky (son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik), Shapiro has authored and edited five books and more than 80 articles and book reviews.
His Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884-1966 and The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised were both National Jewish Book Award finalists.
The Jewish Press recently spoke with Shapiro about his writings and his views on the Orthodox community.
The Jewish Press: In your opinion, what would Rabbi Weinberg, author of the Seridei Eish and the subject of your first book, think of the Orthodox Jewish community today?
Shapiro: He’d think what a lot of gedolim would think from that generation. They would be very surprised that things they took for granted are now considered unacceptable – that the yeshiva world today in Israel, for example, sees something wrong with earning a living.
I think the frumkeit would surprise them. For example, the turn to glatt kosher as a standard, as well as the number of chumrot. This would surprise them only because part of traditional Judaism is reliance on the gedolim of the past and it’s very unusual for a tradition that regards itself as following the past to reject what previous standards were.
You write that Rabbi Weinberg didn’t support the Agudah. Why was that?
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