One People, Two Worlds: A Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide Them

Ammiel Hirsch

Yaakov Yosef Reinman

2002

February 9, 2000

Dear Ammi,

It was a pleasure meeting you in person last week. […]

I wonder what the staff and the other patrons thought about the two of us sitting there, me with my beard, peyot, and long caftan and you beardless and bareheaded. […] I’m sure it never occurred to them that we were discussing some of the fundamental issues that divide…

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Creator Bio

Ammiel Hirsch

b. 1959

Ammiel Hirsch is the senior rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. He earlier served as executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America. Hirsch also earned a law degree from the London School of Economics. 

Creator Bio

Yaakov Yosef Reinman

Yosef Reinman is an Orthodox rabbi, historian, and translator, living in New Jersey. His study of Talmudic contractual law is a standard yeshiva text. Under the name Avner Gold, Reinman has also written the Ruach Ami series, on the lives of Jews in the seventeenth century.

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