On Rationalist Judaism, R' Natan Slifkin has opened up a pro-con discussion of the so-called "charedi/ yeshivish/ traditionalist approach" with the academic approach. I myself have been discovering more about this and related fields (such as biblical criticism) over the past year or so. In counterpoint to this discussion, I think it's worthwhile to note that some do not recognize the academic approach at all. For example, in November, 2003, I was in attendance at a shmues of my then-Rosh-Yeshiva, R' Naftoli Elzas, where he altogether discredited it. I will quote two excerpts below; I think it would be worthwhile to see the whole thing transcribed, but it's a very poor recording, and thus slow going.
I think this shmues has particular significance to R' Slifkin's post, as it's my personal belief that the shmues was prompted at least in part by a gift of two of R' Slifkin's books by the author to the yeshiva, which I had delivered after a Shabbos visit. R' Elzas refers to R' Slifkin in another part of the shmues, though not by name. IMO this is a good pre-ban example of anti-Slifkinish rhetoric.
Note: I have rendered the Hebrew that the speaker used in a particular way for consistency and clarity; it does not exactly reflect the way R' Elzas speaks.
There is a breath of unfresh air which blows into the olam ha-Torah from the academic olam, from what we would call the olam of the university; and people who are basically university-trained people who either have become baale teshuvah, or [?] become baale teshuvah, or somewhere in the middle.
And the problem is that they utilize the analysis system of the outside world on ma'amare Hazal without knowing the analysis system of [tape change]
[...]
There is probably one of the biggest hurbanot of our generation, and even bigger, the hurban of the English part of the generation: one the one hand, the ba'al teshuvah movement is so flourishing, it's a gevaldike brachah [?] it's bringing ever more [?] people who came from the other side of the Iron Curtain, and other curtains, and baruch Hashem, they've become shomer Torah u-Mitzvot, yare shamayim and lamdanim; but at the very same time, there has infiltrated a tremendous lot of [?] deot kozvot [?] opinions which blow from the Western society [?] haskalah into the English Torah.
And that creates hurbanot kede-en [?] with no intent whatsoever. I saw an English commentary with my own eyes, I'm not going to say which one at the moment, on a particular point [?] Ya'akov Avinu, Hashem yerahem; I think that the person who writes that and said that is probably en lo helek ba-olam ha-ba. Why? He didn't do anything wrong. He learnt a piece, he did his analysis, he came out with a conclusion, very logical; but it wasn't Torah. Do you follow? It wasn't a shtikl Torah, it wasn't an analysis which he learnt in yeshivah; it was an analysis which he learnt in a different system. You can't learn Torah with that system! You come out with wrong conclusions; his conclusion was wrong.
It's still unclear to me exactly what sort of analysis R' Elzas is discounting. I presume all academic methodology; if so, why should empirical truth not exist in Torah, i.e. Torah metastudies? I have heard mysticism-y explanations, but never anything particularly moving to me.
