[Avodah] YU and Torah U Madda today

[Ben Bradley]

Reposting on avoda:

[Micha, on Areivim, about questionable material being taught in YU's
secular studies colleges:     -mb]
> This is a topic RYBS addressed, and came out in favor for. More than
> once he objected to the idea that YU might become a "Catholic College".
...
> To RYBS, it seems "Torah uMadda" (not that he ever used the idiom) would
> mean learning how to live with and even when necessary *despite* the
> conflict, not a synthesis that isolates the student from the challenges.

There seem to be three distinct models of learning Madda.

1. TIDE of R Hirsch, who advocates learning chol from the vantage
point of Torah. Kind of being mekadesh the chol. But always very clearly
distinguishing between kodesh and chol

2. RYBS with his dialectic tension / "never the twain shall meet" approach

3. Torah u'Maddah of R Norman Lamm with its synthesis approach which
seems to put the two more on a par of importance according to his book.

What's interesting is that of these three the far and away most popular
amongst those who have an active ideology on the matter is R Lamm,
rather than that of the two more senior scholars' (I think it's fair to
say) opinions. Second is R Hirsch, and almost no one seems to actively
espouse RYBS's shita on this, rather just to see it as an interesting
aspect of his hashkafa. Probably because it's so hard to actually think
that way. Also interesting is that people almost universally associate
the shita of R Lamm with RYBS, despite them being radically different,
and that R Lamm's historical place as the originator of the approach is
very largely overlooked.

DOI: I'm a Hirschian in this regard and many others. I'm actually quite
repelled by R Lamm's approach. But that's by the by.

Ben