Authentically Orthodox by Zev Eleff;

Author:Zev Eleff; [Eleff, Zev]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS022000 History / Jewish, REL040070 Religion / Judaism / Orthodox, REL033000 Religion / History
Publisher: INscribe Digital
Published: 2020-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

The Dean’s Reception Affair

The Stern College campus did not solve matters. In February 1966 controversy over fraternization once again erupted at Yeshiva College, an affair that was remembered as “famous in Orthodox circles” for years to come. The commotion centered on the Dean’s Reception, a scaled-down replacement for the erstwhile Class Nite social. Compared to other college campus events, the Dean’s Reception was a “mild, drab affair, with nonalcoholic punch.”84 Despite the dearth of pomp and circumstance, Yeshiva College students looked forward to the Dean’s Reception, describing it as the “social highlight of the year.”85 With significant reluctance, the YC student council canceled the event as a “favor” to Rabbi Soloveitchik, the most respected rabbinic figure on campus. The event had caused much consternation among students; “slander” and “warring” had spun discussion about the social out of control.86

More than a dozen years earlier, Soloveitchik had adopted a more relaxed stance toward these sorts of socials. Informed of his earlier position, some students wondered how “after 20 years the Rav suddenly awoke to the realization that a Dean’s Reception is improper or out of place.”87 If Soloveitchik’s position had changed, so had the conditions at Yeshiva College. By the 1960s the student profile at Yeshiva was more complex. Whereas Soloveitchik had once thought it helpful for young women and men to court one another by more socially conventional means, he held no such faith in the later generation of Yeshiva undergraduates. Some students felt betrayed by Soloveitchik’s newfound “closemindedness.” They wondered aloud why he had joined with “right-wing faculty members” to denounce the event “on the grounds that it was inappropriate for a school of religious education.”88 This group did not speak for the entire student body, however. For instance, the student newspaper congratulated Soloveitchik for settling the debate over coeducation on the men’s campus. “The firm leadership of the Rav in this matter,” an editorial read, “has put an end, for a while, to the growing rift among students concerning the propriety of the Dean’s Reception.”89 Another student agreed, suggesting that those in favor of the Dean’s Reception overestimated the “sexual behavior of Orthodox Jewish youth.”90

The Dean’s Reception affair added to the exacerbated tensions at Yeshiva College. That same year, Rabbi Irving Greenberg publicly called on Orthodox rabbis to “promulgate a new value system . . . about sex.”91 Coming from a Harvard-educated PhD and charismatic teacher, Greenberg’s words were potent and, to many on campus, undermined the prevailing Orthodox sentiment.92 His interview published in the student paper touched the very sensitive nerve of traditional yeshiva comportment. In turn Greenberg’s provocative statements compelled vociferous responses from the Yeshiva rabbinic faculty. The most public criticisms were levied by two of Soloveitchik’s relatives, both members of the Yeshiva rabbinic faculty. His brother, Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik (he spelled his surname slightly differently), decried Greenberg’s statements as “lustful” and “parasitic.” For the younger Soloveichik, any deviation from the traditional Jewish approach to sex and marriage represented a move away from his cardinal planks of Torah-minded “devotion.

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