Yitzchok Adlerstein - Controversies

Controversies

He has often been quoted or a participant in controversial debates that have relevance to Orthodox Jews and their world outlook:

• During the Slifkin controversy over how Orthodoxy views Evolution, Adlerstein was quoted in the New York Times supporting Rabbi Slifkin who faced intense pressures from Haredi rabbis to withdraw his books:

In the days after the ban, Rabbi Slifkin's publisher and distributor dropped the three books mentioned in the open letter. He himself lost several speaking engagements and saw his own rabbi pressured to expel him from his synagogue. "He was crushed," said a friend, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, a professor of Jewish law and ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "Do you know what it's like to walk through the street and see posters branding you a heretic?"

• Rabbi Adlerstein is an outspoken opponent of the "Bible Code" and has both written articles and given lectures together with Barry Simon, another noted "Codes" opponent, on the topic.

• In a public forum Adlerstein criticized the methods and notions behind the workings of the Kabbalah Centre:

But Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Project Next Step, warned of the dangers of polytheism within the Jewish faith. "God doesn’t like mistresses," he said. "Not that it matters to Him, but in our relationship with Him, which is what will give us happiness as Jews, putting our focus elsewhere is not going to cement our relationship with Him."... Adlerstein believes that this kind of dual citizenship is bad for the Jews. He placed the blame for it on a lazy approach toward religion resulting in pop spirituality. "Part of what we’re looking at are the same reason people turn to the Kabbalah Centre," Adlerstein said. "It’s like fast food spiritualism — getting it without the work, the counterculture part of it."

He often writes on complex current events issues in respected journals:

• On the make-up of the Supreme Court in Israel:

" In other words, it's an inside job. There are no open hearings, nor does the public have the opportunity to review the record and legal philosophy of the candidates. A liberal secular elite continues a self-serving tradition of choosing candidates from within its own ranks, to the consternation of much of the country."

• On Zionism:

"If disbelief characterized your response to the stories about the controversial new history textbooks in Israel, pat yourself on the back. You were right to trust your instincts...If Israeli kids are going to continue believing in an inalienable right of the Jews to their land, they are going to have to sink roots in a history that goes back much further than ’48 or the travails of the Diaspora. For millennia, Jews predicated their tie to the Land upon confidence in the veracity of the Biblical narrative and their Divinely ordained mission to the world. Ironically, it may have to be religion that saves secular Zionism."

• On genetic engineering:

"A Brave New World is coming soon to a medical genetics emporium in your neighborhood. And it will end life as we know it...Leon Kass always makes us think, but his latest contribution is downright painful. "The Moral Meaning of Genetic Technology" (Commentary, Sept. ’99) is not only enlightening, but humbling to many of us who have danced around the periphery of the problem. We discover that we have all missed the boat of sound thinking. The problems, he shows, are far more serious than we realized..."

• On embracing the thought of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch:

"We believe that there are truths to be discovered by exposure to general culture. We reject the notion that beyond the perimeters of our community is a vast cesspool. There is much depravity, to be sure, but there is also much good. We are grateful to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for having given us a Torah that provides us with the tools to make the proper selection. We have discerned in our own lives that the Torah has much to offer the rest of humanity, not just with the advent of Mashiach, but even today."

• On racism:

"Some people, regrettably, are racist in the true sense of the word. Perhaps they should devote more study to the fullness of Torah concepts like tzelem Elokim - the image of God - and the robust nature of individuality. They should have another look at the Netziv's introduction to Bereishis, where he opines that it is called Sefer Hayashar - the Book of the Upright - because of Avraham's treatment of even the most despicable of his contemporaries. Despite his rejection of their ways, "he dealt with them with love, and was concerned for their well-being." For the true racists, the neshamos they should worry about are their own."