Mordechai Pinchas Teitz

An Appreciation of Rabbi Mordechai Pinchas Teitz, zt"l By Rabbi Yaakov M. Dombroff

Rabbi Yehuda Davis zt"l, Builder of Torah and Kiruv in America By Rabbi Zvi Lampel and Mrs. Faygala Safran

Rabbi Moshe Sherer zt"l

Rabbi Moshe Sherer zt"l - A Biographical Sketch By Rabbi Nisson Wolpin Portrait of a Leader: An Appreciation of Rabbi Moshe Sherer zt"l By Rabbi Eli Meir Klugman Remembering Dr. Joseph Kaminetsky z"l By Yonoson Rosenblum

Teitz, the Orthodox rabbi of Elizabeth, N.J., from 1935 until his death in 1995, was a formidable power in American Orthodoxy for much of that period.He was a product of the non-chasidic "Lithuanian" yeshiva world, which prized traditional talmudic scholarship and mussar, Jewish ethics.Though she is surely aware that that culture was collapsing in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century as Jews flocked to one or another version of secularism, Ms. Blau romanticizes the past: The men of her family, along with their friends and associates, were scholars and saints - the women, smart and charming.Teitz, already involved in Jewish education and Orthodox journalism in his native Latvia, arrived in the United States in 1933 on a fund-raising mission for the Telz Yeshiva.In January 1935 he became rabbi of Elizabeth when he married Basya Preil, daughter of the previous rabbi of the city.They were, their daughter writes, the perfect rabbinic couple.

Teitz proceeded to make Elizabeth into a model Orthodox community, often against the opposition of shortsighted opponents.He built the community's first mikvah, arranged for new synagogues as the Jewish demography of Elizabeth shifted, created a massive, high-quality educational system - both supplementary and all-day, encompassing nursery through the end of high school - and helped bring order to the corruption-ridden kashrut industry.He also had a national and international impact, coming up with the novel idea of broadcasting Talmud classes over the radio, which attracted a massive audience, and being the first American Jewish religious leader to gain entrée into the Soviet Union, where he quietly managed to help Jews practice their religion years before there was an organized Soviet Jewry movement.The man appears to have been iron-willed and indefatigable.One wonders if, and how, he had time toBlau, who clearly idolizes the public Teitz, says nothing about him as a father.

The great contribution of this biography is to puncture the myth of an unchanging Orthodox Judaism by showing the shallow historical roots of several central assumptions of Orthodoxy today.For one thing, Teitz's rabbinate harked back to the European model - he was the rabbi of an entire community that consisted of several synagogues and myriad other Jewish institutions.This arrangement had the effect of inducing rabbinic moderation, since the rabbi had to reconcile the disparate interests of his multiple constituencies - which Teitz clearly did.

On the other hand, the current American Orthodox model of a rabbi ministering to a single sect or congregation, often a tiny one at that, is a disincentive to communal consensus and encourages extremism.Thus Teitz opposed the imposition of the glatt kosher norm, a special stringency confined, before World War II, to Hungarian ultra-Orthodoxy.Despite his efforts, glatt won the day as Orthodox balkanization opened the way for extremism to have its way, trumping broad communal considerations.

Also, Teitz came from a traditional world where the heads of yeshivas concentrated on academic erudition and generally left communal policy to practicing rabbis and lay leaders.By the late 1950s in the United States, however, a revolution in authority placed the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, the organization of European-trained Orthodox rabbis, under the control of yeshiva heads, heralding the emergence of such scholars as the unchallenged authorities for Orthodoxy.This so upset Teitz, who believed that many in the yeshiva world lived in an ivory tower and felt no obligation to the communities, that he eventually sought, unsuccessfully, to launch a rival rabbinic body.

In marked contrast to the current image of American Orthodoxy, Teitz did not believe that modern culture or American folkways necessarily threatened Judaism.He used English, not Yiddish, in his sermons; remained beardless in the early years of his rabbinate; dressed immaculately and stylishly; insisted that his school system provide top-quality secular studies, and sent his five daughters to coed Jewish summer camps and eventually to Barnard College (they earned advanced degrees as well).

In fact, on no issue was the rabbi more distant from contemporary Orthodoxy than in his encouragement of women to study traditional Jewish religious texts.

Blau's book tells the story of her father, Rabbi Mordechai Pinchas Teitz, Torah and Talmudic scholar, who founded an orthodox community in Elizabeth, New Jersey.He led the way for the revitalization of Torah life in the United States.He believed that only learning, loving and living Torah could guarantee the future of Jewish existence.