the strength of moderation, in opposition to the extremes of our time

Daniel S. Nevins was born 1966 in River Vale, New Jersey. There are some fairly well off white folk who live in those parts. Mostly fiscal conservatives, Republicans, yet comedian Bill Maher grew up there too.
Nevins went to the Frisch school, also located in Bergen county, a post-high school Orthodox Yeshiva. Then he went to an Orthodox Yeshiva outside of Jerusalem, Efrat, settled since the Bronze Age about four thousand years ago.
Then he became a rabbi in Farmington Hills, Michigan, a wealthy suburb of Detroit. He'll shortly be moving to back east to be the new Dean of the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a major institution in Conservative Judaism.
Conservative Judaism differs from Orthodox in that Conservative Judaism (or some prefer Masorti meaning 'tradiltional' Judaism) allows for change with the times, if need be, a little flexibility. They have organisations -- like the Jewish Theological Seminary, that make up the practice, kind of like lawyers building a case for a Judge. You know who the Judge is -- God, or the Messiah, in some mixture. It was just a couple of years ago that Nevins, along with two other Rabbis, wrote a paper that espoused a more open understanding of homosexuality and homosexuals, that didnt condemn them. The paper narrowly won a majority of supporters from the JST, and became part of their law. But it was a divisive issue, and almost fifty perfect of people were opposed -- and no doubt upset about it. And everyone should remember that when 'the center will not hold', then there's danger of wars among tribes. I note that those that the majority of Jews were Masorti fifteen years ago; Reform Judaism has been diminishing quickly. Now the Orthodox have come in the lead. We know that the Orthodox are the most inflexible by definition. Not to condemn, just to say, I think if Daniel were in charge there'd be more middle ground. He's been educated in all Orthodoxy, he knows it -- but check out the rest of the world, he's saying, sometimes if the shit don't work, change it.