To the Editor:

The following is in response to HaRav Aharon Lichtenstein’s review of my book,

“The Eye of the Storm,” in the recent edition of Jewish Action.

Dear Reb Aharon: The warm and friendly comments at the end of your intelligently
wrought review which were written directly to me, compel me as well to address
you in the same way.

I enthusiastically accept your invitation to go sledding, or at least meeting together,

once again. You deplore the fact that a wall separates us which does not make this
possible. I think you are being overly pessimistic.

If the wall consists of your criticisms of my book, I do not think this will be much of a
problem. After all, there were only two faults that you found with my book. First, in
my article on feminist Halacha, you object to my statement that Halacha solely
depends upon the accepted decisions of previous generations, as “apodictic.” You
argue that there have been exceptions to this rule, such as the Shaagas Arye,
where later generations did not accept the rulings of previous generations. I accept
your criticism and agree I should have worded my statement to include these
exceptions; however, I have no doubt that you will agree (and you say as much in
your review) that the weak piskey halachos of the book in reference are not quite in
the same league as the exceptions which you cite. You have other minor criticisms;
otherwise you tend to agree with the rest of my article on this subject, as well as my
conclusion that women should not wear tefillin. This can hardly constitute a wall.

Secondly and more vigorously, you disagree with my contention that there is
nothing Jewish about the ideology of secular Zionism. This may be a formidable
wall, but one that can be dismantled, once we get together to talk.

When we do, I promise to speak in a calm voice- which I thought I employed in my

book, but which you claim is filled with “anger,” something of which I have yet to be
accused (with respect to my book, that is). Forgive me, however, if I will speak with
passion, for I am quite passionate about my contention- ki aichocho uchal veraisi
be-ovdan moladti. I believe that it is this passion which unfortunately you (and the
headline writer who trumpeted your words) mistook for anger.

Even though I agree, as you argue, that the Zionists utilized the wholly Jewish traits
of self-sacrifice and chessed to build the State, it is a non-sequitor to conclude that
because of this, their definition of the Jewish People is correct. This definition makes
no room for G-d or for Torah in Jewish life. Building the Jewish State with this
definition, is the equivalent of rebuilding the Jewish body while attempting to
remove its head.

The Gaon Rav Yitzchak Hutner, your “mori verabi” as well as mine, told me that he
feared that the Jewish people will be taken to task for having concluded in the wake
of the success of the Six-Day War that the Zionists were right all along. (Of course,
forty years later no one entertains such thoughts.) This, Rav Hutner explained, is
because the Zionist ideology is, in his words, “pure apikorsus”. This view, as you
well know, was shared by the vast majority of gedoley yisroel of the past hundred
years. You own esteemed father-in-law, the GaonRav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik said, “I
remember my father used to say, ‘leum’us [Zionism] is apikorsis’” (taped
conversation in Holzer, “The Rav Thinking Aloud,” p. 174), and, in his own opinion,
that “to equate Judaism with statehood is blasphemy” (ib. P.178). And yet what they
all considered beyond the pale of Judaism, you describe as “certain lapses in
religious motication.” This is quite a wall.

Nevertheless, I still believe we will be able to overcome it. Both of us grew up and
have been nurtured in the laps of gedoley yisroel. Both of us have spent our
lifetimes in a quest for the truth of Torah. How long can this wall withstand such
force?

In the meantime I am looking forward to our meeting.

With affection and deep respect,

Aharon Feldman