Lawrence Grossman’s Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945 – 2025 providesa definitive account of the Modern Orthodox denomination, which seeks to balance commitment to Jewish learning and practice with engagement with the modern world.
Grossman paints his well-designed picture by placing it within the unlikely survival of Orthodox in America generally. Many of the millions of immigrants to the US around the turn of the twentieth century dropped their traditional ties in an effort to embrace Americanism. For the first few decades, the Reform movement was ascendant, and the future of Orthodoxy seemed to be questionable. Yet, current surveys show that in the coming years, Orthodox Jewry will constitute the largest denomination within the Jewish American scene. How the script flipped is a large part of the tale Grossman tells.
Living in Both Worlds credits rabbinic leaders and a revived religious spirit in America following World War II. Scholars like Bernard Revel and Samuel Belkin, who set Yeshiva University on its course to be the preeminent Modern Orthodox educational institution, as well as pulpit rabbis like Leo Jung and Norman Lamm (the latter of whom would later serve as president of YU) helped steer popular New York congregations through the challenging waters of assimilation. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, though he never identified explicitly as Modern Orthodox, stood as a model for the movement for decades, bearing a PhD in philosophy alongside vast talmudic erudition. America as a whole looked towards religion for comfort and community following the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Thus, when Joseph Lieberman ran for Vice President of the United States in 2000, he was roundly respected for modelling faith in the public square.
Grossman documents the societal and educational challenges the movement has encountered, including women’s leadership roles, biblical criticism, and LGBTQ issues. Though he is pessimistic on occasion regarding Modern Orthodoxy’s ability to fully adapt to the questions they raise, the reader can’t help but admire the storms Modern Orthodoxy has weathered. The accomplishments of Modern Orthodox Jews include establishing a school system that instills in its graduates vast Torah knowledge as well as a level of general knowledge high enough to get into top American universities and achieve professional successes on par with any American. A chairperson of a major law firm who learns daf yomi is not hard to find, nor is a venture capitalist who writes Torah commentaries during their spare time.
While the movement is constantly pulled both to the right and to the left, American Modern Orthodox Jews have turned these tensions into opportunities as they seek to engage with and contribute to wider society through the wisdom their loyalty to their faith has granted them.
Dr. Stu Halpern is Senior Advisor to the Provost of Yeshiva University. He has edited or coedited 17 books, including Torah and Western Thought: Intellectual Portraits of Orthodoxy and Modernity and Books of the People: Revisiting Classic Works of Jewish Thought, and has lectured in synagogues, Hillels and adult Jewish educational settings across the U.S.
