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This chapter focuses on the rabbis in Russia in the 1860s and 1870s who, with a measure of enlightenment, aspired to reform Jewish society. In this period, the gap between maskilim and traditional Jews was not as wide as is usually thought. The chapter then cautions against a simple dualistic view of the relationship between Haskalah and tradition, describing a group of Lithuanian rabbis who were involved in demands for reform in the spirit of an Enlightenment which turned Zionist in the 1880s. Like the moderate maskilim in eastern Europe, these rabbis tried to fuse Enlightenment and tradition. Ultimately, they can be regarded as the source of modern Orthodoxy in Israel and the United States.

This chapter talks about the central role of Maimonides in the life and thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, which was attested as a moving autobiographical passage in his work titled And from There You Shall Seek. It describes Rabbi Soloveitchik as an independent thinker who had been deeply involved in European intellectual life before the Second World War but had not blindly adopted Maimonides' philosophical positions. It also mentions how Rabbi Soloveitchik agrees with Maimonides but presents his thought in sharp terms that often evoke resistance among his more traditional readers. The chapter reviews Maimonides' interpretation by Professor Isadore Twersky, Rabbi Soloveitchik's son-in-law. It analyses how Rabbi Soloveitchik presents Maimonides in a language acceptable to contemporary traditional Jews.

This chapter illustrates how Heschel became the most visible traditional Jew in the anti-Vietnam war movement. Like thousands of Americans, he opposed U.S. military support for the corrupt Saigon regime, but his dissent had no institutional backing. He was not associated with Reform Judaism, whose leaders were in the vanguard of social action, civil rights, and the antiwar movement. Orthodox rabbis, closer to his observance, either rejected political protest or upheld the government's prosecution of the war. A majority of JTS faculty dissociated themselves from Heschel's involvement. Although some detractors and friendly conservatives considered him politically naive, he kept himself well informed of events. He read the New York Times every day, followed other news sources, and studied books on the international situation. He chose to judge events according to sacred values. He entered the antiwar movement in 1965, after an inner struggle that led him to conclude that the U.S. assault on North Vietnam was “an evil act.”