This summer, I attended the Morasha Kollel camp, a learning camp geared towards MO kids who like learning. It was three sedarim a day, every day (which is signifigantly more learning than most “yeshivish” camps have, I might add). The camp is run by Rav Yitzchak Cohen Shlit”a and Rav Mordechai Willig Shlit”a. On Shabbos, after the se’udah, all the boys would go to the beis midrah and engage in a Q&A with Rav Willig. One of the questions asked was why Rav Willig once taught a gemara shiur to girls. He answered by saying that A) gedolim like the Chavetz Chaim have qualified prohibitions against women learning torah shba’al peh (such as those of the shulchan aruch) to be situational, not a blanket issur, which is why the Shulchan Aruch makes an exception for Pirkei Avos. He also said that, nonetheless, he was not sure it was the correct move. I highly recommend you read his article, Trampled Laws. Over the course of the answer (which lasted 45 minutes) he made sure to let us know, in no uncertain terms, that Open Orthodoxy was nor Modern Orthodoxy. In fact, he went as far as saying that OO was worse than Conservative and Reform Jews because of misconceptions like the one being propagated right here — that is, that MO and OO are one and the same. The hate against MO is, I think, mostly either because people are confusing them with OO or they are resistant to change, for example the legal clause written into some MO marriages that demands the husband give the wife a get if he is abusive or something similar under penalty of facing significant monetary penalties. The “yeshivish” argument against it is that the husband has to give the get willingly but the beis din used to beat the husband until he gave a get in the time of the gemara! How is that more willing than this? There are giant gedolim who have emerged in the MO world and many, many upstanding, Torah-observant Jews. I think it is a mistake to let that get blotted out by those who seek to twist MO, be it purposely or accidentally.
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