Respect & Venting

Firstly, for those who are interested in YU - particularly its day to day running - there is a wonderful blog entitled The YU Vent. It is quite respectful while tackling issues that they feel YU should be addressing - and they give reasonable recommendations for implementation that would solve some of those issues. Some issues they've touched on before: The (lack of) accessibility to President Joel; why shouldn't YC keep halacha; lack of organization/resources in the library; etc. The authors can be e-mailed with posts by others at theyuvent@gmail.com.

*Full disclosure - two of the authors (Noah & Ben Greenfield) are cousins of Serach.

Second, I thought this letter written by Shlomo Mostofsky, President of the National Council of Young Israel, in response to criticism from the YU Commentator, was excellent. Without taking sides as I only skimmed the article in the Commentator, I thought this was an excellent point:

While the Commentator article mentioned a memo I wrote to Young Israel branch synagogues, the author never contacted me for my comments. My law practice is listed and the NCYI Web site has a direct link to my email address.

One must also question the absence of any comment by Yeshiva University President Richard Joel, a member of Young Israel of North Riverdale, NY. Nor, for that matter, did the article contain any comments by Rabbis Zevulun Charlap, Mordechai Willig (a member of the NCYI Vaad Halacha,) Kenneth Auman, Reuvain Fink, Shmuel Hain, Shlomo Hochberg, Ari Jacobson, Yaakov Lerner, Aaron Levine, Marc Penner, or Eliyahu Boruch Shulman who serve as Young Israel rabbis and are employed by Yeshiva University.

How can the Commentator not have asked any of the readily available sources for comments?