Reply To: Redeeming Modern Orthodoxy

Sam2:

Frum MO have always acknowledged dangers. No one wants their kids to live on a college campus (with a few exceptions). Everyone filters what television and movies and books and such that kids can read/watch. It has never been totally Hefker. With a few exceptions, most are realizing that kids living on college campuses is a bad idea.

I believe there is a substantiative difference between the two points that you are addressing. Filtering the media that one exposes one’s kids (and just as importantly, one’s self) to is a question of removing content that is objectively Halachicly prohibited. And as you’ve pointed out, the Halachicly-observant MO have always done that.

But the question of whether or not living on a college campus “is a bad idea” is not a question of how to deal with objectively objectionable (couldn’t resist;) content. It is a question of whether immersion in the secular culture that surrounds us is a problem in of itself, even if nothing one is exposed to is Halachicly prohibited.

I’m curious as to what the attitudes in the “frum MO” world are about that question, and whether they are changing at all.

As for how to regard Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, while he is undoubtedly on the right-wing of MO, I think (hope?) that he is closer to the “MO ideal” than all of the pants/miniskirt wearing women who self-identify as MO. If he’s not MO, neither are a whole lot of other people who claim to be.