How Zionism Prevented Mixed Dancing…

Excerpt from Mishpacha:

In September 1956, Rabbi Stolper accepted a position as director of Young Judea’s Long Island Region. Young Judea was a Zionist youth movement, and although its national director at the time was Amram Prero, a reform rabbi, he never interfered with the way Rabbi Stolper ran the region. There were no active Orthodox youth movements on Long Island, so Pinchas’s job was to have Young Judea serve the youth of all the synagogues —Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, which created obvious difficulties.

One major challenge was mixed dancing, which was a routine part of social events for Jewish youth in those days. He knew that if he tried to invoke halachah as the basis of his objections to social dancing, he wouldn’t get anywhere, so instead, he talked about the Zionist spirit of the organization, arguing that the organization should only have chalutz [Israeli style] dancing, which was done in separate circles. The youth commission agreed — on condition that Rabbi Stolper would have to convince the kids. He did. As a result, at a time when almost all Jewish youth groups were holding mixed dances, the religiously neutral Young Judea of Long Island, under Pinchas Stolper, wasn’t.

Not a joke; think about it.