Social Activism and R. Haskel Lookstein (From Rav Chesed: The
Life and Times of Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, page 55-56) Political
or social activism was hardly the hallmark of American Orthodox
rabbis in the 1960s. While a number of Conservative and Reform
rabbis participated in the civil rights movement or protested
U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, their Orthodox counterparts
typically regarded such causes as too far removed from Jewish
concerns to justify their involvement. Haskel Lookstein, while
not personally active in those battles, early on recognized a
connection between traditional Jewish concepts and modern social
struggles. In a May 1966 sermon, which was the subject of a
sizable article in the New York Times, he argued that the Talmud
advocated principles similar to that of the civil rights
movement. "It is the Talmud that says that no man is free if he
must live in a segregated community, whether that segregation is
the creation of law or the result of informal social consensus,"
he declared. "It