Torah U'madda.

BOTH OF THESE RECENT WORKS OF MODERN Jewish thought share much in common. Their authors occupy prominent positions at leading rabbinical seminaries and are addressing rabbis and future rabbis in terms of the contemporary ideological encounter with secularism. Each author also directs himself to the educated lay reader in an attempt to engage synagogue members ideologically. Both works are informed by considerable scholarship and philosophical learning, although neither work amounts to a work of philosophy per se. Each in its own way seeks to redefine programmatically the nature of Jewish identity today. Each author inclines to a traditionalist perspective, articulating the beauties of Jewish tradition for contemporary thinking Jews. Finally, and most importantly, both of these books amount to major restatements of the tensions between Jewish tradition and modern culture -- seeking to incorporate the claims of modernity and its ethos of secularism, autonomy and personal conscience, and democratic norms within the rubric of Jewish tradition and to communicate the values of tradition in ways that will be salient to Jews living in the modern world.

Yet, if both works share similar points of departure, they clash sharply over conclusions, definitions, and understandings of Jewish values and identity. These differences far transcend the usual distinctions between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism. Rather, they amount to statements of profound conflict and a parting of the ways over the nature of authority in Jewish tradition. In that sense, to the extent that each author writes from the perspective of his own movement -- Lamm that of Orthodoxy and Gillman that of Conservative Judaism -- although neither claims official status as movement spokesman, these books communicate the impression that the gulf between Conservative and Orthodox Judaism has widened considerably.

As President of Yeshiva University, Lamm sets forth to explain the mission and motto of the institution that he heads. Long considered the flagship of Modern Orthodoxy, Yeshiva mandates a dual curriculum of religion and secular studies. In the 1960s, Yeshiva felt little compulsion to justify secular education as a worthy pursuit. On the contrary, its leaders and faculty boldly proclaimed the excitement of synthesis -- integrating the best values of Torah and western culture. This synthesis sharply distinguished itself from both those who rejected secular values entirely, save for vocational purposes, and from those who embraced uncritically all facets of contemporary culture. Rather, Yeshiva sought to develop an integrated Jewish personality -- one at home both in the world of the Talmud and in that of Kierkegaard, and struggling to determine what, if any, relationships existed between the two.

However, as Lamm notes in his Preface, the idea of Torah U'Madda (Torah and secular knowledge) has come under increasing attacks in recent years. The intellectual climate within American Orthodoxy often restricts the desirability of secular education to the strictly utilitarian purposes of enabling one to earn a living. Lamm seeks to engage these right-wing critics of Torah U'madda and to restore a sense of mission and excitement to Yeshiva's ideals.

His point of departure is Jewish law, which remains binding as the core aspect of contemporary Jewish identity. To be sure, Lamm understands halakhah as, at best, minimum Judaism. However, the halakhic framework is essential for maintaining Jewish tradition and identity in the modern world.

Within that primacy of Torah and halakhah, Lamm mounts an eloquent plea for the role and place of secular education. Heavily influenced by Maimonides and the hasidic doctrine of Divine immanence permeating all of Creation, he argues that Torah knowledge includes secular knowledge, which is all a part of the cosmic Divine holiness. Although this argument closely parallels Maimonides' elevation of secular education, or, specifically, the study of general philosophy, into a religious imperative, Lamm is perhaps most brilliant and original in evoking mystical and hasidic sources to address these issues.

Given his defense of secular education within Torah, he proceeds to outline three possibilities for the outcome of the encounter between Torah and Madda. Following Samson Raphael Hirsch, we should strive for co-existence -- with little interaction between these two types of knowledge. Ze'ev Falk argues for a Hegelian synthesis, in which the theory of Torah and its antithesis of Madda will clash in a higher understanding, or synthesis, of Judaism and modern scholarship. Lamm himself prefers a model of symbiosis in which each world will enhance the other but will stop short of significantly altering its counterpart.