“There is no real reason for Modern Orthodoxy to be, in any way, connected to Brisk”

There is no real reason for Modern Orthodoxy to be, in any way, connected to Brisk. It just so happens that the two dominant religious figures of our movement in the past eighty years happen to be Briskers. There was a time when Rabbi Soloveichik, who wrote Halakhic Man, when you could argue that Brisker learning had a particular affinity with a particular kind of philosophy that was dominant in academia. But I don’t even think that was true in America. I think that was true of Berlin in the 1930s and so, there was a certain extent to which that kind of analytic philosophical movement made it over to the States and so a really narrow group that had value. So I think it’s just a mistake to believe that Modern Orthodoxy has to have any connection with a particular דרך הלימוד.

I think that that accident that our dominant institution has been a Brisker institution and our dominant figures are Brisker figures has led us to the belief that there should be some kind of connection between them. There isn’t.

Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, “Is There Such a Thing as Modern Orthodox Psak?”, Lincoln Square Synagogue (5 May 2015) [Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKJXkKGSpys]