Tuesday 5 October 2010

An Interview with Rabbi Dr. Moshe D. Tendler

Hamevaser recently presented an interview with Rabbi Dr. Moshe D. Tendler. This interview is available at
http://www.kolhamevaser.com/2010/08/an-interview-with-rabbi-dr-moshe-d-tendaler/
and is worth reading for many reasons.

You get glimpses into the world of the Lower East Side in the early part of the 20th century, Rav Moshe and the workings of the Jewish world amongst many other insights. But what hits me most about the interview is the directness and honesty of Rabbi Tendler. He seems to speak without an agenda; he is not trying to sell Orthodoxy as is so often the case whenever we hear of anyone talking about the Orthodox world. He is simply calling it as he sees it -- still with a clear voice advocating for Halacha over, what he terms, "frumkeit". The strange thing is that while I do not read in his words an attempt to 'sell' over simply speaking the truth, his presentation of the truth is perhaps the most powerful selling point of Orthodoxy in any event. He simply presents the serene grandeur of Halacha.

Rabbi Ben Hecht

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The interview is must reading for all orthodox jews across the religious spectrum. His comments about his shver reading newspapers and the revisionist history espoused by some is especially poignant and eerily similar to issues raised a number of years ago regarding the reading of newspapers by the Netziv, zs"l.