it. Both groups have continued the age old effort of adapting Judaism to a new culture, a task which has a long and honored history among us.
Mitzvot were observed, but their rationale questioned. There was intense debate about what was actually required and early rabbinic debates were reopened. At times those who discussed the details of the mitzvot also provided a rationale for them. That was not necessarily so. In the Middle Ages the Jewish thinkers most involved in the mitzvot themselves were sometimes also the philosophers who provided a rationale. Saadia and Maimonides , as well as a few others among the Sephardim followed this route. More often, the philosopher and the poseq went down different roads and were not particularly concerned with each other’s efforts. This has been equally true in modern times. At the beginning of the modern period, Moses Mendelssohn sought an entirely new approach to halakhah from a philosophical point of view, but was not particularly concerned with the detailed exposition of the mitzvot in the form of responsa or codes. Perhaps the only exception in the last century to this rule was the Orthodox Samson Raphael Hirsch who sought to provide both an Orthodox rationale and dealt with the system of observance in his various works, sometimes not consistent with his Orthodoxy,(3) however, we will not deal with the figures of the last century, 7 but turn to a selection of those who made their 3 leading contributions in the twentieth century or| whose influence has been felt primarily in our century. We realize that both roads are of vital importance for the modern Jew who needs to find some spiritual moorings. We might expect the modern westernized Jew to place more emphasis on the rationale of the commandments and less on the details of observance, that actually is not so.