By the end of the twentieth century, American Judaism was characterized by diversity of views on politics and social issues, including a return to tradition in worship and sense of identity as a people with a rich culture. But for the most part, American Judaism at the dawn of the twenty-first century was dominated by the adjustments to custom, Jewish law, ritual, and theology that had been carried out by American forebears of the nineteenth century.
Where the American Judaism community takes these changes in the future is uncertain and in flux, with diversity giving way to polarization as Jews struggle to remain unified—the long-pursued but still elusive goal of most of their history in the United States.
Epilogue
AN AMERICAN RELIGION
Jewish immigrants in the nineteenth century clung to a multitude of apprehensions as well as hopes. America beckoned as a place of economic promise and unprecedented religious liberty. But Jews understood that their new land might suffocate the traditions of their faith and obliterate their roots.
“Friends!” a religious teacher in Bavaria wrote in 1839 to Moses and Yetta Alsbacher before they departed for Cleveland, “You are traveling to a land of freedom where the opportunity will be presented to live without compulsory religious education. Resist and withstand this tempting freedom and do not turn away from the religion of our fathers.”1 But turning away would be difficult to avoid. To traditionalists such as Rabbi Bernard Illowy, who emigrated to America from Bohemia in 1848, Judaism faced a moment of maximum peril. Writing to acquaintances in London and Frankfurt, he described the United States as “an unclean land, a land that devoureth its inhabitants, whose people . . . are to be considered dead.”2
The Jews were not alone in predicting that Judaism faced oblivion in the United States. When the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was inspired to write a poem about an old Jewish cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island, he turned it into a symbol of the Jews’ vanished past and doubtful future. The poem echoed his nostalgia over the disappearance of the heroic Native Americans in “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855), but in Newport the derelict gravestones reminded Longfellow of the tablets carried by Moses and the crumbling traditions that Jews carried with them:
But ah! what once has been shall be no more!
The groaning earth in travail and in pain,
Brings forth its races, but does not restore.
And the dead nations never rise again.3
For all these predictions of demise, starting with their arrival as a group in New York in the mid-seventeenth century and continuing through the next three centuries, Jews did more than outwit the pessimists and survive. They thrived, in part by adjusting their religion to their new environment’s demands. Their motives included a need to accommodate the practical necessity of living and traveling in an alien environment. But the Jews also wanted to make Jewish customs more “American” in their own eyes and the eyes of their fellow citizens. Finally, they embraced an intellectual transformation guiding them to rethink and revise ancient laws, practices, and doctrines to keep Judaism alive for new generations awakening and adhering to modern science and intellectual trends. They effectively redefined what it is to be a Jew, and what the purpose of a Jew in America should be.
Judaism’s flourishing in America was not foreordained or inevitable. Neither was it free from conflict and animosity. On the contrary, the disputes among Jews in America were emotional and personal. They were also very American. As Martin Marty has suggested, Jews became pilgrims in their new land, but all religions have made the same pilgrimage and had faced challenges and adjustments. The Jews shaped their experience in America, and they were shaped by the America they found. The push and pull for Jews followed a historic tension. On one side was the American myth that its inhabitants became “new” men and women, evolving into what the critic R. W. B. Lewis called the “American Adam,” untethered to the past and setting out anew, and surrendering to the American “melting pot” in which everyone would become like everyone else. On the other side was the determination of Jews and others not to melt away but to adjust in ways that preserved and even strengthened their identity, heritage, traditions—and even their diversity—to be “a part” of America as well as a people “apart.”
Today Jews in America face new perils and new predictions of their demise. These take the form of warnings about intermarriage, secularization, low fertility rates, conversion, the failure of Jewish education, and the fear of forgetting if not abandoning their history. Jews are further divided over “peoplehood” versus “religion” in their identity—that is, whether Judaism is a civilization and culture based on blood, rituals, and shared ancestors, or defined strictly by religious principles of belief in God. There are also conflicting demands to make Judaism conform to new definitions of social and economic justice, tolerance, feminism, gay rights, government support for religious education institutions, and religious liberty defined by the law. American Jews on opposite ends of the religious spectrum continue to see many other American Jews on the other end as practicing an alien form of their own religion, so different as to be another religion altogether.
Finally, American Jews are divided over Israel, and the extent of their obligations or loyalty to the world’s only Jewish state. They argue over Israel’s security concerns, its treatment of non-Jewish citizens, its conduct toward Palestinians in disputed territories, its relationship with its neighbors, and importantly, over its enforcement of Orthodox norms governing marriage, divorce, conversion, prayer, Sabbath observance, and other practices.
The message of the Jewish journey recounted in this book is that the conflicts of today are anything but new. They are rooted in the disputes of the past, and the counsels of despair and doom can take solace that Jews have faced and overcome such trials in that history. It is important for Jews today to remember that the turbulent history of their religion has always been one of division competing with unity. In ancient times, exile forced Jews to turn to prayer, books, and laws rather than animal sacrifices and other rituals at the ancient Temple of Judaism. They then divided over the interpretation of their laws time and time again. The conflicts between Sadducees and Pharisees, between the Maccabees and the Hellenizers, between the Karaites and their traditionalist antagonists, between followers and repudiators of false messiahs, between the pietistic adherents of mysticism and the rationalists, between customs in the Sephardic and Ashkenazic worlds, and between the modern Haskalah school of interpreters of ancient laws and the literalist believers in God speaking through those laws—all are part of a long narrative of division. The message of this volume is that these conflicts formed the foundation of American Judaism as well. As the religious historian Judah Goldin has noted, “it is impossible to say that the Jewish people were perpetually dominated by this or that single idea from the beginnings to now.”4
But for all these conflicts, what American Jews established in their first centuries in a new land has evolved into what has become the mainstream today, even among many traditionalist-oriented American Jews. Although this book dwells on the period from the mid-seventeenth century to roughly the advent of the twentieth century, the Judaism of today—even after the influx of millions of Jews fleeing persecution and poverty in Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century, and the more modern influx of Jews from Iran, South Africa, the former Soviet Union, and even Israel—rests on the foundation established by the pioneers of this earlier period. And in whatever ways Judaism finds to resolve its contradictory tendencies, the influence of courageous thinkers of the nineteenth century—Isaac Leeser, Isaac Mayer Wise, Gustavus Poznanski, Isaac Harby, David Einhorn, Felix Adler, Alexander Kohut, Kaufmann Kohler, Sabato Morais, and many others—played a central role in shaping the great Jewish community that arose in its new American home.
In exile from their Promised Land for much of the last 2,500 years, Jews have lived through what the anthropologist Melvin Konner delineates as five great “golden ages.” The first brought an outpou
ring of Talmudic scholarship in the “Babylonian Captivity” following the first destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the sixth century BCE. The second was marked by a similar profusion of scholarship and literature in medieval Spain, ending catastrophically with the Inquisition. The third took place as Jews prospered during the Ottoman Empire spanning the Mediterranean. In the fourth, Jews prospered as global merchants and revived their religious teachings in the Netherlands. And the fifth, Konner maintains, with all due respect to the establishment of a thriving modern Israel, has occurred with Jews transplanted in the New World and transforming and indeed revitalizing their faith for the modern era.5
What is that state of the Jewish religion in America today?
In 2013, the Pew Research Center released a lengthy survey concluding that American Jews overwhelmingly feel that they are proud to be Jewish and have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Such surveys are inherently difficult to conduct, and experts disagree over their accuracy. But the Pew surveys taken since 2013 have shown the same trend. Despite concerns of Jews dying out, the number of Jews in the United States is likely growing, from 3.9 million in 2007 to 4.7 million in 2014—and well over 5 million if one counts Americans who consider themselves Jewish by heritage but not belief—though these numbers are in the middle of a possible range, and some experts maintain the growth of the Jewish population is greater than indicated by these numbers. As a percentage of the American population, the Jewish population has remained fairly stable in recent years, around 2 percent, about the same that it has been since 1972.
On the other hand, Judaism is following an American trend, in that the Jewish community is becoming more polarized in its attitudes toward faith and its demands in the modern world. The “center” of Jews finding a balance between extremes is holding, but barely. In 2013, according to the Pew researchers, the Jewish population broke down as followed: 35 percent Reform, 18 percent Conservative, 10 percent Orthodox, 30 percent no denomination identified. The Orthodox branch is clearly growing, but among those raised Orthodox, only half remain Orthodox in adulthood, whereas very few Jews who are raised Reform or Conservative turn to Orthodoxy.
Thus, somewhat more than half of American Jews fit into the mainstream Reform and Conservative branches, and that does not count Jews of little affiliation who are probably closer to those branches than to others. Not only do Orthodox Jews face problems of defection, they are also riven by divisions themselves. “Modern Orthodox” are at one end and are adjusting to contemporary demands in dress, daily rituals, and attitudes toward women. Ultra-Orthodox are on the other end, including the Haredim, who reject modern secular culture, dress, and customs and tend to live among themselves in certain neighborhoods and communities. (Accounting for only 10 percent of the Jewish population, Orthodoxy still has more than 40 percent of America’s 3,700 synagogues) The portion of these ultra-Orthodox Jews is rising, largely because of their high birth rates and marriages occurring at younger ages. On the other end of the spectrum, the number of Jews who identify only through secular culture, and not any denomination, is also expanding proportionately. What the Pew Research Center calls “Jews of No Religion” is higher—close to a third—of Jews born after 1980, the so-called millennials. Thus, one could say that Reform and Conservative Judaism predominate, drawing on the foundations portrayed in this book, but are contracting. There is political polarization as well. Most Jews (70 percent) are Democrats, but most Orthodox Jews (56 percent) are Republican.6
In the Pew poll, some 62 percent of American Jews described their identity as a matter of ancestry and culture, and only 15 percent said it was purely a matter of religion. Many Jews even say it is not necessary to believe in God to be Jewish. Yet tradition does not die. It is alive and well in some ways. Seven in ten Jews said they participated in a Passover meal in the past year, and more than half said they had fasted for all or part of Yom Kippur in 2012. Support for Israel remains fairly and perhaps surprisingly strong, with seven out of ten Jews saying they felt “very attached” or “somewhat attached” to Israel, even while many hold reservations about its policies toward the Palestinians. Large majorities say they remembered the Holocaust.
A central thesis of this book is that after Jews came to the United States, they evolved in the nineteenth century from believing in a messiah who would return Jews to the Holy Land toward a belief in seeking redemption for humanity through good works—specifically by working for social justice and harmony among all peoples. It is thus important that this tradition—this mission—remains central to American Jews, who believe that “leading an ethical life” is essential to American Judaism. More than half of those surveyed said that “working for justice and equality” is crucial to their Jewish identity. (Four in ten said having a good sense of humor was also essential.) The numbers approach 60 percent for Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox Jews. Accordingly, it is not overreaching to say that this aspect of American Judaism—which can be seen in the way Jews vote and the way they march for everything from treatment of other minorities and rights for women and gays to performing service projects for the homeless and refugees—derives from a foundation established in the nineteenth century by American Jews working with similar “social gospel” adherents in non-Jewish traditions.
Intermarriage—a perennial concern among rabbis and Jewish leaders—appears to have been a double-edged sword, if one considers the loss of Jewish identity from mixed marriages to be a danger to Jewish identity. Although many Jews lose their identity when they marry non-Jews, many others do not, and intermarriage has in the process expanded the number of Americans who are related to Jews. Synagogues, especially Reform congregations, increasingly rely on non-Jews to carry out their activities. Some analysts think intermarriage may have a net positive impact on the Jewish population, pointing to evidence that there has been an increase in the number of mixed marriages raising their children as Jews, and also an increase in the share of children of these marriages identifying themselves in adulthood as Jews. Predictably, intermarriage is more of a trend among Reform Jews than all others.
All these conclusions reflect the strength of the heritage American Jews received from their turbulent past. Jews may read and even pray about a Messianic age of redemption. They may say “Next year in Jerusalem!” at Passover. But for the most part, despite a genuine attachment to the state of Israel, they have left behind the goal of restoring the Kingdom of David in the Holy Land and the return of practices associated with the ancient Temple. The transformation of Judaism into a faith that seeks redemption through adhering to core traditions while practicing good works to hasten a “messianic” age of redemption has become the bulwark of their survival in America. The parallel transformation of American Judaism from a rote devotion to ancient rules of conduct in daily life, to a more spiritual devotion to its ethical underpinnings, while respecting the scholarship of the past, has also strengthened the American Jews’ faith in their heritage and their willingness to maintain it.
And it is the determination to survive, more than anything else, that has become the key to understanding the American Jewish experience, as Nathan Glazer in his seminal book American Judaism, many times updated, has noted. Glazer reminds us of the powerful message delivered since the Holocaust by such scholars as Emil Fackenheim, a German concentration camp survivor and escapee, who has spoken of the moral and religious imperative of Jews to commit themselves to survival. Jews, Fackenheim has said, “are commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish.”7
Still other scholars have taken to exploring the meaning of Judaism in the modern world and calling for new commitments to social justice and unity among Jews in the face of threats to their survival. Such threats were underscored by the Yom Kippur War that threatened to wipe out Israel in 1973 and that rise today from Iran and its surrogates in the region.
Despite the attachment to Israel, as American Judaism continues to develop, a striking aspect is the way that, purely a
s a religion, it has grown away from Judaism as practiced in Israel. Although many if not most Israelis have been less than rigorous in practicing religious traditions affecting all aspects of their daily life, the Orthodox rabbinate remains recognized in the Jewish state as the sole authority over many aspects of civic life. The areas where the Orthodox establishment holds sway, in part because of the political arrangements through the Israeli government, relate to such issues as marriage, conversion, enforcement of the Sabbath (through the shutdown of public transportation in Jerusalem), exemptions from military service, and other strictures on civil activities. Many of these restrictions revolve around basic definitions of “who is a Jew.” The barring of women from joining while praying at certain parts of the Western Wall has been particularly incendiary, at the insistence of the Israeli religious establishment, and has divided many American Jews from their Israeli coreligionists. One irony is that ultra-Orthodox Jews more than a century ago were among those skeptical of the establishment of a Jewish state, believing that only God could deliver such an entity at the hands of the Messiah. Today ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel tend to see themselves as the activist agents of God’s will in working through the political system to strengthen the state of Israel, and insist on the authority of the Israeli secular state to enforce Orthodox laws.
In this sense, one could almost say that Orthodox Jews embrace the idea associated with Reformers that it is not enough to pray for results and hope they flow from keeping the mitzvot, but to be actively involved in a political process of bringing them about. A major difference between Judaism in the two countries is that, while American Jews abandoned the European practice of the state enforcing Jewish law, Israeli Jews keep electing governments that favor the state as just such an enforcement agent.
The Chosen Wars Page 32
