The Future of Judaism in America 3031249895, 9783031249891

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Studies of Jews in Society 5

Jerome A. Chanes Mark Silk   Editors

The Future of Judaism in America

Studies of Jews in Society Volume 5

Series Editors Daniel Ross Goodman, Bronx, NY, USA Chaim I. Waxman, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA Editorial Board Members Sarah Bunin Benor, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, CA, USA Matt Bower, Brandeis University, Memphis, TN, USA Jonathan Boyd, JPR, ORT House, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, London, UK Paul Burstein, Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Barry Chiswick, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA Carmel U. Chiswick, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA Sergio DellaPergola, Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Zvi Gitelman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA Calvin Goldscheider, Brown University, Providence, USA Harriet Hartman, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA Samuel Heilman, Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, NY, USA Debra R. Kaufman, Northeastern University, Newton Centre, MA, USA Shaul Kelner, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Performance Studies, New York University, New York, NY, USA Lilach Lev Ari, Oranim College, Kiryat Tiv'on, Israel Judit Bokser Liwerant, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad De México, Estado de México, Mexico Riv-Ellen Prell, American Studies Department, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Uzi Rebhun, Harman Institute Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Jonathan D. Sarna, NEJS, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA Ted Sasson, Mandel Foundation, Brookline, USA Leonard Saxe, Cohen Center/Steinhardt Institute, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA Ira Sheskin, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

Studies of Jews in Society focuses on social scientific studies of Jewry, and takes a broad perspective on “social science”, to include anthropology, communications, demography, economics, education, ethnography, geography, history, politics, population, social psychology, and sociology. Books may rely on quantitative methods, qualitative methods, or both. The series is directed to social scientists and general scholars in Jewish studies as well as those generally interested in religion and ethnicity; academics who teach Jewish studies; undergraduates and graduate students in Jewish studies, sociologists interested in religion and ethnicity; communal professionals and lay leaders who deal with Jewish organizations and individuals. The style, while rigorous scientifically, is accessible to a general audience.

Jerome A. Chanes  •  Mark Silk Editors

The Future of Judaism in America

Editors Jerome A. Chanes Baruch College New York, NY, USA

Mark Silk Director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life Trinity College Hartford, CT, USA

ISSN 2524-4302     ISSN 2524-4310 (electronic) Studies of Jews in Society ISBN 978-3-031-24989-1    ISBN 978-3-031-24990-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

In remembrance of Leonard E. Greenberg (1928–2017) May his memory continue to be a blessing.

Series Editors’ Introduction: The Future of Religion in America

What is the future of religion in America? Not too good, to judge by recent survey data. Between 1990 and 2022, the proportion of adults who said they had no religion—the so-called Nones—increased from the middle single-digits to 30%, a startling rise and one that was disproportionately found among the rising Millennial and Z generations. If the latter remain as they are, and the generation after them follows their lead, over half of all Americans adults could be Nones by 2070. To be sure, there are no guarantees that this will happen; it has long been the case that Americans tend to disconnect from organized religion in their twenties, then reaffiliate when they marry and have children. It is also important to recognize that those who say they have no religion are not saying that they have no religious beliefs or engage in no religious behavior. Most Nones in fact claim to believe in God, and many engage in a variety of religious practices, including prayer and worship attendance. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of Americans continue to identify with a religious body or tradition—Christian for the most part but also Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Baha’i, Wiccan, New Age, and more. How have these various traditions changed? Which have grown and which declined? What sorts of beliefs and practices have Americans gravitated toward and which have they moved away from? How have religious impulses and movements affected public policy and the culture at large? If we are to project the future of religion in America, we need to know where it is today and the trajectory it took to get there. Unfortunately, that knowledge is not easy to come by. For nearly half a century, the historians who are supposed to tell the story of religion in America have shied away from bringing it past the 1960s. One reason for this has been their desire to distance themselves from a scholarly heritage they believe to have been excessively devoted to Protestant identities, perspectives, and agendas. Placing Protestantism at the center of the story has seemed like an act of illegitimate cultural hegemony in a society as religiously diverse as the United States has become over the past half century. “Textbook narratives that attempt to tell the ‘whole story’ of U.S. religious history have focused disproportionately on male, northeastern, Anglo-Saxon, mainline Protestants and their beliefs, institutions, and power,” Thomas A.  Tweed wrote in 1997, in a characteristic vii

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dismissal. Indeed, any attempt to construct a “master narrative” of the whole story has been deemed an inherently misleading form of historical discourse. In recent decades, much of the best historical writing about religion in America has steered clear of summary accounts altogether, offering instead tightly focused ethnographies, studies based on gender and race analysis, meditations on consumer culture, and monographs on immigrants and outsiders and their distinctive perspectives on the larger society. Multiplicity has been its watchword. But as valuable as the multiplicity approach has been in shining a light on hitherto overlooked parts of the American religious landscape, it can be just as misleading as triumphalist Protestantism. To take one prominent example, in 2001 Diana Eck’s A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation called for an end to conceptualizing the United States as in some sense Christian. Because of the 1965 immigration law, members of world religions were now here in strength, Eck (correctly) claimed. What she avoided discussing, however, was the relative weight of the world religions in society as a whole. As it turns out, although twenty-first-century America counts millions of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Taoists, and adherents of other world religions in its population, they total less than 5% of the population. Moreover, Eck omitted to note that the large majority of post-1965 immigrants have been Christian—for the most part Roman Catholics. Overall, close to three-quarters of Americans still identify as Christians of one sort or another. While there is no doubt that the story of religion in America must account for the growth of religious diversity, since the 1970s substantial changes have taken place that have nothing to do with it. There is, we believe, no substitute for comprehensive narratives that describe and assess how religious identity has changed and what the developments in the major religious institutions and traditions have been—and where they are headed. That is what the Future of Religion in America series seeks to provide. For the series, teams of experts were asked to place the tradition they study in the contemporary American context, understood in quantitative as well as qualitative terms. The appropriate place to begin remapping the religious landscape is with demographic data on changing religious identity. Advances in survey research now provide scholars with ample information about both the total national population and its constituent parts (by religious tradition, gender, age, region, race and ethnicity, education, and so on). As a resource for the series, the Lilly Endowment funded the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, the third in a series of comparable, very large random surveys of religious identity in the United States. With data points in 1990, 2001, and 2008, the ARIS series provided robust and reliable data on American religious change over time down to the state level that is capable of capturing the demography of the 20 largest American religious groups. Based on interviews with 54,000 subjects, the 2008 Trinity ARIS equipped our project to assess in detail the dramatic changes that had occurred over the previous several decades in American religious life and to suggest major trends that organized religion faced in the years to come. It also allowed us to equip specialists in particular traditions to

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consider the broader connections and national contexts in which their subjects “do religion.” The ARIS series suggested that a major reconfiguration of American religious life had taken place over the previous quarter-century. Signs of this reconfiguration were evident as early as the 1960s, not until the 1990s did they consolidate into a new pattern—one characterized by three salient phenomena. First, the large-scale and continuing immigration inaugurated by the 1965 immigration law not only introduced significant populations of adherents of world religions hitherto little represented in the United States but also, and more significantly, changed the face of American Christianity. Perhaps the most striking impact was on the ethnic and geographical rearrangement of American Catholicism. There were steep declines in Catholic affiliation in the Northeast and rapid growth in the South and West, thanks in large part to an increase in the population of Latinos, who constituted roughly one-third of the American Catholic population. California now has a higher proportion of Catholics than New England, which, since the middle of the nineteenth century, had been by far the most Catholic region of the country. A second major phenomenon was the realignment of non-Catholic Christians. As recently as 1960, half of all Americans identified with mainline Protestant denominations—Congregationalist, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Northern Baptist. Since then, and especially since 1980, such identification has undergone a steep decline, and by 2015 was approaching 10% of the population. The weakening of the mainline was further revealed by the shrinkage of those simply identifying as “Protestant” from 17.2 million in 1990 to 5.2 million in 2008, reflecting the movement of loosely tied mainline Protestants away from any institutional religious identification. By contrast, over the same period, those who identified as just “Christian” or “non-denominational Christian” more than doubled their share of the population, from 5–10.7%. Based on demographic trends, these people, who tend to be associated with megachurches and other non-­denominational Evangelical bodies, would soon equal the number of mainliners. In most parts of the country, adherents of Evangelicalism outnumbered Mainliners by at least two to one in most parts of the country, making it the normative form of non-Catholic American Christianity. Simply put, American Protestantism is no long the “two-party system” that historian Martin Marty identified a generation ago. The third phenomenon was the rise of the Nones. Their prevalence varied from region to geograpic region, with the Pacific Northwest and New England at the high end and the South and Midwest at the low. Americans of Asian, Jewish, and Irish background were particularly likely to identify as Nones. Likewise, Nones were disproportionately male and younger than those who claimed a religious identity. But there was no region, no racial or ethnic group, no age or gender cohort that had not experienced a substantial increase in the proportion of those who said they had no religion. It was a truly national phenomenon—one that was at the same time more significant and less significant than it appeared. It was less significant because it implied that religious belief and behavior in America had declined to the same extent as religious identification, and that was simply not the case. But that very fact made it more significant, because it indicated that the rise of the Nones had at least

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as much to do with a change in the way Americans understood religious identity as it did with disengagement from religion. In a word, there has been a shift from understanding one’s religious identity as inherited or “ascribed” toward seeing it as something that individuals choose for themselves. This shift had huge implications for all religious groups in the country, as well as for American civil society as a whole. In order to make sense of it, some historical context is necessary. During the colonial period, the state church model dominated American religious life. There were growing pressures to accommodate religious dissent, especially in the Middle Atlantic region, a hotbed of sectarian diversity. But there wasn’t much of a free market for religion in the colonial period because religious identity was closely connected to particular ethnic or immigrant identities: the Presbyterianism of the Scots-Irish; the Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anabaptism of various groups of Pennsylvania Germans; the Judaism of the Sephardic communities in Eastern seaboard cities; the Roman Catholicism of Maryland’s English founding families. The emergence of revivalism in the late eighteenth century and the movement to terminate state establishments after the Revolution cut across this tradition of inherited religious identity. Different as they were, Evangelical Protestants and Enlightenment deists—the coalition that elected Thomas Jefferson president— could together embrace disestablishment, toleration, and the primacy of individual religious conscience and choice. This introduced amazing diversity and religious change in the early nineteenth century, in what came to be known as the Second Great Awakening. Within a few decades, however, ascribed religious identity was back in the ascendancy. By the 1830s, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Disciples, and Episcopalians were establishing cultural networks—including denominational schools and colleges, mission organizations, and voluntary societies—within which committed families intermarried and built multi-­ generational religious identities. The onset of massive migration from Europe in the 1840s strengthened the salience of ascribed religious identity, creating new, inward-looking communities as well as a deep and contentious division between the largely Roman Catholic immigrants and the Protestant “natives.” Moderate and liberal Protestant denominations moved away from revivalism and sought self-perpetuation by “growing their own” members in families, Sunday Schools, and other denominational institutions. And religion as a dimension of relatively stable group identities persisted into the middle of the twentieth century; indeed, after World War II, sociologists saw it as a key foundation of the American way. Will Herberg famously argued that the American people were divided into permanent pools of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, with little intermarriage. Yet by the end of the 1960s, it was clear that the century-long dominance of ascribed religious identity was under challenge. Interfaith marriage had become more common as barriers of prejudice and discrimination fell; secularization made religion seem optional to many people; and internal migration shook up established communities and living patterns. In addition, conversion-oriented Evangelical Protestantism was dramatically reviving, with an appeal based on individuals making personal decisions to follow Jesus. At the same time, a new generation of spiritual seekers was exploring

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religious frontiers beyond Judaism and Christianity as at the end of the eighteenth century, evangelicals and post-Judeo-Christians together pushed Americans to re-­ conceptualize religion as a matter of individual choice. By the 1990s, survey research indicated that religious bodies that staked their claims on ascribed identity—mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics above all, but also such ethno-­ religious groupings as Lutherans, Jews, and Eastern Orthodox—were suffering far greater loss of membership than communities committed to the view that religion is something you choose for yourself (Evangelicals, religious liberals, and the “spiritual but not religious” folk we call Metaphysicals). Within the religious communities that have depended on ascription, that news has been slow to penetrate. The bottom line for the future of religion in America is that all religious groups are under pressure to adapt to a society where religious identity is increasingly seen as a matter of personal choice. Ascription won’t disappear, but there is little doubt that it will play a significantly smaller role in the formation of Americans’ religious identity. This is important information, not least because it affects various religious groups in profoundly different ways. It poses a particular challenge for those groups that have depended upon ascribed identity to guarantee their numbers, challenging them to develop not only new means of keeping and attracting members but also new ways of conceptualizing and communicating who and what they are. Preeminent among such groups are the Jews, whose conception of religious identity has always been linked to parentage; it is only converts who are known as “Jews by choice.” To a lesser degree, Catholics and Mormons have historically been able to depend on ascriptive identity to keep their flocks in the fold. But in a world of choice, American Catholicism has increasingly had to depend on new Latino immigrants to keep its numbers up, while the LDS Church, focused more and more on converts from beyond the Mountain West, has had to change its ways to accommodate “Mormons by choice.” In a wide perspective, what choice has done is to weaken substantially the middle ground between the extremes of religious commitment and indifference. With the option of “None” before them as an available category of identity, many Americans no longer feel the need to keep up the moderate degree of commitment that once assured that pews would be occupied on Sunday mornings. American society has become religiously bifurcated—a bifurcation signaled by political partisanship. Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has increasingly become the party of the more religious; the Democratic Party, the party of the less religious. In order to take account of this growing divide between the religious and the secular, the narrative of religion in America must thus go beyond both the Protestant hegemony story and the multiplicity story. The new understanding of religious identity as chosen, in a society where “None” is increasingly accepted as a legitimate choice, stands at the center of the narrative this series has constructed. Hartford, CT, USA

Mark Silk Andrew H. Walsh

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Christine McCarthy McMorris, administrator par excellence, and to undergraduate fellows Jack Carroll, Alex Lewis, Surya Rai, and Grace Sullivan for their good cheer as well as their editorial contributions to this volume. In addition, the series editors wish to express their deep gratitude to those responsible for creating, sustaining, and enlivening the Greenberg Center for more than a quarter-­ century: Evan Dobelle, Ron Spencer, Leonard, and Phyllis Greenberg, and a wide array of Trinity College faculty, administrators, alumni, and students past and present.

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Contents

 Introduction: Judaism Is Now A Choice��������������������������������������������������������    1 Jerome A. Chanes  The Future of American Jewish Denominations������������������������������������������   13 Lawrence Grossman  Perspectives from Demography and Geography������������������������������������������   53 Ira M. Sheskin Renewal������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   87 Shaul Magid and Jerome A. Chanes  Women’s Active Partnership in Revitalizing American Judaism����������������  109 Sylvia Barack Fishman Jewish Political Involvement ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  131 Marc D. Stern  American Jews, Judaism and Other Faith Communities����������������������������  167 Eugene Korn  Conclusion: Out of Their Comfort Zone ������������������������������������������������������  207 Jerome A. Chanes and Mark Silk Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  215

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About the Editors

Jerome A. Chanes is an adjunct professor at Baruch College of the City University of New York. He was national affairs director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (now the Jewish Council for Public Affairs) and was associate executive director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. He has taught at Barnard College, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Tel Aviv University School of Law, Yeshiva University, and the Academy of Jewish Religion. His books include Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook, Antisemitism in America Today: Exploding the Myths, and A Primer on the American Jewish Community, and he is author of more than 100 articles, book chapters, reviews, and encyclopedia entries on Jewish issues and arts and letters.  

Mark  Silk (Ph.D., Harvard University), co-editor of the Future of American Religion series, is director of the Leonard E.  Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His books include Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II, Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America, and, co-authored with Andrew Walsh, One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. He is a columnist and contributing editor at the Religion News Service.  

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Introduction: Judaism Is Now A Choice Jerome A. Chanes

Nothing endures like change. —Heraclitus

In the 1950s sociologist Nathan Glazer presciently noted that for Jews in America there was a tradeoff of Judaism for Jewishness. Jewishness was defined by the secular culture—which was impossible; but Judaism, reported Glazer, was flourishing, indeed had triumphed. This was a remarkable comment for someone sitting in the United States of the 1950s, a place where antisemitism, although clearly on the decline, was yet a factor, a place where Jews yet felt insecure and defensive. Even as Glazer was aware of the rejuvenation, the renewed energy, of Orthodox Jewry in America, and of changes in other denominations of Judaism in America, it was far less clear to Glazer what Jewishness was—and it is far less clear to us, in the 2020s than it was to Glazer in the 1950s. What we can discuss—and do in this volume—is Judaism in America, a Judaism of wide variety, not without strengths but with a shrinking level of observance overall, and with a growing degree of intra-communal and interfaith strife accompanied by increased concern about antisemitism. There is no doubt that Judaism in twenty-first-century America is in a state of flux. But let us begin by emphasizing that Judaism in twenty-first-century America is not one thing. Even as Jews share a common Holy Writ (the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh—for Christians it is the Old Testament—together with the Talmud and other Rabbinic writings), Judaism in America is divided denominationally into what Jews call “movements,” and the strengths and tensions and struggles between and within the movements are the present and future of American Jewish religion.

J. A. Chanes (*) Baruch College, New York, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Chanes, M. Silk (eds.), The Future of Judaism in America, Studies of Jews in Society 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7_1

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For the Orthodox1—as the traditionally observant are called—this is a period of triumph, indeed triumphalism, but not without its problems. The Conservative movement—a distinctively American movement—faces challenges that go to its core, its very survival as a discrete religious movement. Reform Judaism in America, which is markedly different from its European “Liberal” forebears, is in flux. Not long ago the fastest-growing movement in terms of synagogue membership and congregational growth, Reform is beset with serious problems—not the least of which is how to address mixed marriage, which for the Reform movement is not a normative question but something more serious: In any Reform congregation, who indeed is a Jew? More generally: Is “American Jew” a religious designation indicative of a faith community known as “Judaism”? Is it ethnic? Racial? Linguistic? National? Or some combination of the above? The definitional challenge is as unresolvable as it is intriguing. The purpose of this volume is to parse the nature of Judaism in America in the context of its denominations (“movements”), its numbers, its relationships with other faith-communities, its stance on public affairs—and, perhaps most important, its ability to renew itself in response to pressures from outside and from within.

The American Context Any discussion of the present and future of Judaism in America must be embedded in a context of American religion in general. The broader context includes the rise of the “Nones”—those who when asked “What is your religion?” respond “None.” Survey data tell us that a quarter of the population, and perhaps a third of young adults, are Nones. Consequently, there has been a hollowing out of the religious center in America; the historically substantial lukewarm center is shrinking. True, significant minorities are locked into religion; and there are those who are not observant, but who think of themselves as “spiritual,” and who may or may not belong to religious institutions. A large segment of the American population is indifferent to religious forms, norms, and beliefs. Indeed, over the past three decades Americans have become increasingly disconnected from religion. Conventional wisdom, that America is a huge outlier compared to the rest of the developed world (in most of which worship attendance is very low), appears to be less and less the case, and with a younger generation that has a high degree of disconnect, likely to become more so.2 So what  The term “orthodox” dates back to the early Christian era. Orthodoxy meant adherence to the doctrines of the early Church as defined by Church councils. 2  We ought to note that one of the challenges for researchers in this arena is that of counting religionists. Each religion and denomination has its own approach. Mormons and Baptists push up their numbers; people tend to remain on their books even when they no longer identify and show up. Catholics are more careful in their counting. Methodists charge church dues and fees based on 1

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the Jewish community is experiencing is not unrelated to religious trends generally. Not only is identification down but also affiliation with religious institutions. Alongside the rise of the Nones, there has been a shift in how Americans understand the nature of religious identification. Where religious identity was once assumed to be inherited from one’s parents and retained as kind of a default setting, it is now increasingly conceived as a matter of individual choice, subject to one’s practice at any given time. To be sure, there has always been a substantial element of choice in American religious identification. Through much of the nineteenth century, when the country was overwhelmingly Protestant, many Americans did “come out” of the denomination into which they were born and into another, often joining one or another of the burgeoning evangelical churches that eschewed infant baptism precisely because adherents needed to be of an age where they could make their own “choice for Jesus.” But from the turn of the twentieth century, in a country now comprising large numbers of Catholics and Jews, ascribed religious identity more and more became the order of the day. An American person was assigned (“ascribed”) a religion at birth as a fixed element of his or her personal identity. Indeed, orphanages were organized by religious affiliation, on the assumption that they possessed the religious identity of their now deceased parents. Ascribed religious identity was the norm—one virtually canonized in the 1950s by Will Herberg in his influential book Protestant-Catholic-Jew. Although now much maligned, Herberg’s model of America as composed of stable religious communities had considerable truth to it. Ascription was all about ancestry; your religion was defined by the ancestry of your parents and grandparents. Almost always your four grandparents sat in the pews of the same church: Roman Catholic, one Protestant denomination or another, Evangelical Christian—or Jewish. Today’s reality is significantly different. Sociologists and historians have for decades talked about “ethnic options” and “ethnic choices,” whereby a person is free to choose his or her ethnicity, whatever his lineage. I may have four grandparents: an Irish-Catholic, a WASP, a Jew, a Chinese Christian. “Hmm,” muse I: “I’m Chinese!” and who’s to say I’m wrong?! It’s about choice, not ascription. As with ethnicity, so with religion. Then: “My parents sent me to a Presbyterian Sunday school. Although I don’t really go to church much, put me down as Presbyterian.” Now; “I was sent to a Presbyterian Sunday school, but I haven’t darkened the door of a church in thirty years. Put me down as ‘none.’” The shift toward understanding religion as a chosen part of one’s identity plays out in a particularly dramatic manner for American Jews. Until the late eighteenth century, there was one kind: traditional in form and practice, what has been known for a century as “Orthodox.” (In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they were known as “Traditionalists,” to distinguish the traditionally observant from the emerging Reform.) Jewish religion was ascribed; it was the identity that was

church membership. And in the case of American Jews, counting is fraught with danger: who— social scientists, Jewish communal leaders, professionals—wants to be in the position of declaring, definitively, who is a Jew!

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assigned to the person at birth. Religion was for most people ancestral; one identified with the religion of his or her parents. For many decades, Jews were all the way over at the ascribed end of the spectrum.3 In traditional Judaism, ascription was built in theologically. According to the rabbinic norm (Halakha), you are Jewish if you have a Jewish mother, so long as you don’t make an affirmative choice to convert to, say, Christianity or Islam. In fact, compared to those other two Abrahamic religions, Judaism has historically been as much about ethnic as religious identity—the religion of a people, open to opting in or out but defined largely by lineage. Within the Jewish community, the locution “Jews by choice” is generally understood to refer to converts. But American society now says to Jews, “If you are going to be a Jew in America, you are necessarily a ‘Jew by choice.’” In America, what undergirds the freedom to choose your religion is the belief that a person can achieve socio-economic status on the basis of merit. This “achieved” status is status that is earned, and that status can be chosen on the basis of what he or she has achieved. The history of American society reflects the tension between ascription on the one hand, and achievement and choice on the other. In this regard, an important factor for Jews used to be institutional and societal antisemitism in the United States. Whatever else was going on, the hostility of the outside world toward the Jews helped keep their ascribed Jewish identity intact.4 But as all walks of life have opened up to Jews today, antisemitism has ceased to play that historic role, and Jewish religious identity is increasingly understood as chosen. Under these circumstances, how do Jews handle the reality of religion as free choice, a reality heretofore unknown in their history? We shall see. Since the late nineteenth century, Judaism in America, under the influence of Protestant denominationalism, has defined itself in terms of “movements” or “streams”—Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox.5 None of the movements has suffered from the decline of their ascriptive model more than Conservative, which was invented in America as a halfway house for Eastern European Jews who did not want to live a fully traditional Jewish lifestyle but were uncomfortable with the radical liturgical modernization of Reform—indeed, with the jettisoning by Reform of the halakhic norm itself.6 Ascribed Jewish identity has been the Conservative stock  Even converts to Judaism are identified as “having stood, personally, at Sinai.”  Some analysts suggest, however, that antisemitism as the basis for Jewish identity is the last way station for that Jew on his or her journey out of Jewry. 5  Denominationalism is a term that was first used by dissenting Protestants in the seventeenth century, to distinguish themselves from the Church of England, the State Church. Denominations may differ doctrinally, but share a belief in and commitment to fundamental tenets of Christianity Further, no member of a given denomination would deny the legitimacy as a Christian of a member of a different denomination. American Judaism is not truly denominational. Orthodoxy, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionism are “movements.” 6  An important dynamic in the diminution of a Traditionalist (“Orthodox”) population in the early decades of the twentieth century was that there were almost no “elite” religionists—rabbis and others who were literate in the textual and intellectual underpinnings of Judaism—who arrived in the New Land during the great immigration from Russia, 1880–1920. The overwhelming majority 3 4

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in trade. Reform Judaism has fared somewhat better, through its long history of adaptation to the norms and practices of American society creating a religious entity that has made it attractive to be included in the Jewish community. By contrast, the Orthodox have become bifurcated under the new reality, with the more moderate Modern and Centrist Orthodox7 losing ground to hardliners, who have thrived by raising he standards of strict observance, and appealing to Jews interested in choosing a more traditional Jewish lifestyle. This approach has been fostered most successfully by the so-called Ultra-Orthodox (here, the “Sectarian Orthodox”). Distinct among the latter is the Chabad/Lubavitch sect, one of the descendants of the spiritual revival movement called Hasidism that arose in central Europe in the eighteenth century but which differs substantially from its contemporary peers. Through intense outreach, Chabad has attracted a considerable number of non-practicing or minimally-practicing Jews as well as some Jews from the other streams, who have chosen to be supporters if not adherents. Finally, across the streams there have been various expressions of what has been called “Jewish Renewal.” As with the Orthodox, these embrace religious choice largely by engaging those with an ascribed Jewish identity in a process of internal conversion. They have figured out a way to work in a society that has become conditioned to choice. “I may be a fourth-generation Southern Baptist, but at a certain point I have to say, ‘I take Jesus!’” The bottom line, however, is that outside of the growing and increasingly rigid Orthodox world organized Jewish life in America is shrinking. More and more Americans who identify as Jews have no institutional Jewish attachments. Judaism in America is thus characterized by what sociologist Steven M. Cohen has called “the shrinking Jewish middle,” a middle that “extends from Reform through Modern Orthodox.”8 The reality is that there is a population recession in most forms of organized Jewish life—including in American Jewish religion—outside of the Orthodox community. Cohen suggests that the decline of this middle—that is, those who are actively engaged Jews and who are not Orthodox—is well under way. The nominally Jewish, in Cohen’s taxonomy, are those who may identify as Jewish “but who rarely engage in acts of commitment and belonging.”9 As the Jewish middle—including the denominational “middle”—shrinks, the “Nominally Jewish” is growing, “and the

were “folk” religionists, those who were traditionally observant, literate in Hebrew to the extent that they could recite easily the daily prayers and with a rudimentary knowledge of Scripture, but without the reservoir of learning that could sustain successive generations of vibrant traditional Judaism. Orthodoxy to a large measure disappeared from the American scene during the 1930s and 1940s, only to re-emerge, with energy and vibrancy, with the immigration of the survivors of the destruction of European Jewry. 7  See Conclusion. 8  “The Shrinking Jewish Middle—and What To Do About It,” The David W.  Belin Lecture in American Jewish Affairs (#27, 16 March 2017). 9  Cohen, 8.

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Orthodox numbers are exploding.”10 The bottom line is that the number of Jewishlyengaged Jews from the Jewish middle—Reform and Conservative—has dropped markedly and will continue to drop. Cohen notes that the Total Fertility Rate (T.F.R.) for the non-Orthodox hovers around 1.7—a full half a child below zero population growth (Z.P.G)—“suggesting an intergenerational decline of 19 percent.”11 At the rate the Orthodox are reproducing, at least one estimate holds that, if current trends continue, their proportion of the entire Jewish population in America will grow from a small minority to a dominant majority by the end of the century.12 However the demographics are estimated, the context of this book is the “ascription/choice” dynamic, focusing on how the different streams of Judaism will manage in a world that is less ascriptive but is increasingly informed by choice.

The American Jewish Communal Agenda Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the regnant Jewish position on public affairs was not activism; it was quietude. In 1800, the country’s largest Jewish community was Charleston, South Carolina, with all of 500 souls, and the American Jewish polity had no organizational structure beyond the local synagogue, and few issues beyond local communal matters. The first stirring of a national organizational structure was the organizing in 1859 of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites as a unified response to the Mortara affair, involving the kidnapping of a Jewish child in Italy.13 From the early decades of the twentieth century to the early 1950s there was one issue salient on the American Jewish communal agenda: antisemitism, domestic and—with the rise of Nazism—international. To be sure, the central concern of American Jews—mostly immigrants or second generation— during those years was entering into the institutions of society: employment, housing, education. Getting a job and a place to live. But antisemitism implicated this concern, and was the priority on the communal agenda. From the mid-1950s until 1967, once again one issue was at the top priority of the American Jewish communal agenda: civil rights. Other public affairs issues

 Cohen. The question for demographers is who is exploding. There is no question that the sectarian Orthodox is well above Zero Population Growth (Z.P.G.); but what about the Modern Orthodox? The fertility rate of this community, well under half of the Orthodox in the USA, was under Z.P.G. some years ago, but the fertility rate has crept up. At this point the Modern Orthodox are keeping pace with Z.P.G. A stable population –that is, a population that will not shrink in numbers—requires a birthrate of between 2.1 and 2.2 children per family. 11  Cohen, 11. 12  Ari Feldman and Laura E. Adkins, “Orthodox to Dominate American Jewry in Coming Decades,” The Forward (June 12, 2018). 13  The Board of Delegates was subsequently incorporated into the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the congregational body of Reform Judaism (now the Union for Reform Judaism). 10

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were addressed—immigration reform, church-state cases—but civil rights was absolutely salient for American Jews. Jewish religious organizations, across the denominational board, were active in the movement. It was the prominent Reform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a co-founder of the NAACP, who, before his death in 1949, made the persuasive case to Jews that ensuring civil rights for blacks enhanced the security of all groups—including, and perhaps especially, Jews. The Wise rationale, accompanied with the strategy of the use of law and social action, became the underpinnings of Jewish involvement in the civil-rights movement. In the mid-1960s two things happened that fundamentally altered the communal agenda: the beginnings of the Soviet-Jewry movement in 196314 and the Six-Day War in 1967. Suddenly, the agenda became more particularistic, more parochial, more “Jewish.” The Six-Day War insisted that for the first time Israel would be the priority on the agenda for American Jews. Heretofore Zionism and Israel had been the top concern of the Zionist groups in America—never strong in any case—and not for mainstream Jewish organizations. After 1967 Israel was the priority. Not that the Jewish community had abandoned the total agenda; it had not. But after 1967 Israel and the Middle East held pride of place. The larger agenda returned during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, with its efforts to undo much of the social-and-economic-justice gains since the New Deal, along with the emergence of the religious right in American politics. In contrast to earlier times, however, the 1980s and ‘90  s witnessed the beginning of what now seem permanent divisions over policy priorities, both with respect to social and economic issues and to Israel. Not least, on Israel, the beginnings of what became known as the Settler Movement in the West Bank, with politically radicalized religious families generating new communities in often-disputed territory, polarized the American Jewish community. One principle emerges from this survey: Issues are selected by American Jews for action to the extent that they implicate Jewish security. Some issues—antisemitism above all—are tautologically Jewish security issues. In the Jewish communal world as well as in the Jewish population at large, there has in recent years been heightened concern about a revival of antisemitism on the right, exemplified in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in which 11 worshipers were killed as well as in the widely publicized alt-right claim that rich Jews are involved in “replacing” white American Christians in the workforce with people of color. Moving in concentric circles outward, the next level would include issues related to the Constitution’s ban on religious establishments: there is no surer guarantee in America of security for Jews (not to mention other minority religious groups) than church-state separation. Also on this second level is the security and status of Israel, agreed upon by a consensus of American Jews as crucial to Jewish security. The issue of endangered Jewish communities (less salient in recent  There is much debate around the question of when the campaign on behalf of Soviet Jewry began. For our purposes we will suggest that it was 1963, when Israel (which had for some years been advocating on behalf of Soviet Jews) put pressure on the American Jewish community to get involved in an organized manner on behalf of freedom for Jews in the Soviet Union. 14

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decades, but still a matter of concern) is in this circle as well. Further out, but crucial to security is social and economic justice: Protect and enhance the rights and conditions of populations in general, and you enhance the security and status of American Jews. Further out: Is climate change a Jewish issue? Maybe not so much. But the case has been made that if an issue is good for society in general, it’s good for the Jews.

Plan of the Book The Future of Judaism in America organizes itself around denominationalism in American Judaism, the demographic and geographic picture of Jews in America, Jewish renewal, the role of women, public affairs and interreligious relationships, public affairs, and emerging expressions of Judaism in America. In “The Future of American Jewish Denominations,” Lawrence Grossman provides a road map of the streams of American Jewish Religion. The pluralist nature of American society has informed the institutional structure of American Jewish religion, resulting in the growth, development, and dynamism of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform; and of a smaller movement, Reconstructionism. This chapter reviews the history of these movements, considers the normative differences among them, and examines the changes in each over the past quarter-­century. Finally, it discusses the strengths of and challenges faced by each movement as it looks toward its future. Grossman argues that the denominational structure of American Judaism that established itself toward the end of the nineteenth century and persisted through the twentieth century is unlikely to last long into the twenty-first. Weakened in the post-­ World War II years by the growing socioeconomic homogeneity of the American Jewish community, it has been dealt a serious blow by a general trend in American religion to stress personal spiritual experience and religious inclusivity over institutional identification and the sense of religious obligation. Indeed, Grossman reports that even among those who consider themselves Jews by religion, the fastest growing sector is not any of the denominations or movements, but the category of “Just Jewish.” Specifically, Reform and Conservative Judaism have come to resemble each other as the former encourages the performance of traditional rituals that bring fulfillment to the individual, but that in many Reform synagogues (“temples,” as they are known in Reform) it is difficult to distinguish between Jew and non-Jew; and the latter abandons traditional Jewish barriers to gender and sexual preference, and the line between Jew and non-Jew may be becoming permeable. It remains to be seen whether the sole remaining normative dividing line between the two movements, the status of children of non-Jewish mothers and Jewish fathers—in simple terms, the line between Jew and non-Jew—will be resolved by Conservative Judaism through an at least de facto (and perhaps official?) acceptance of the Reform position that such children are Jews. Meanwhile, even Orthodox Judaism has been

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affected by the winds of change in society at large. Factions within it battle furiously over feminism, exposure to secular American culture, and Zionism. If the non-­ Orthodox movements most likely will merge, the Orthodox are likely to splinter. In “Perspectives from Demography and Geography,” Ira Sheskin tackles the central questions facing American Jewish leadership: Who is a Jew, how many Jews are there, and where do they live? Is the Jewish population increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same? And what light do demographic and geographic data from local Jewish community studies shed on the question of the future of Judaism in America? These are difficult questions to answer. Because there is no agreed-­upon definition of “Jew” within the Jewish community it is no surprise that there is no consensus on the numbers. This chapter provides the data that are necessary for us to have a picture of American Judaism, and to understand the changes in exploring the challenge defining “Jewishness,” and of identifying Jews, and develops a profile of American Jews in all of their varied manifestations and expressions. Sheskin argues that the future for American Jews is brighter than many would believe. There are signs of strength despite significant rates of intermarriage, a declining population, and substantial internal migration (which increases the costs of maintaining Jewish institutions). The growth of Jewish summer camping and the expansion of Jewish studies are two among many indicators of this. According to Sheskin, there is not one future for American Jews, but different futures, depending upon which movement one is affiliated, and where one lives. In “Renewal,” Shaul Magid and Jerome Chanes explore the broad terrain of the single term that characterizes the dynamism and the changes in American Jewish religion. A byword in the American Jewish community in the 1970s, Renewal emerged in the late 1960s in several small worship communities (havurot) on the East Coast. The Jewish version of the religious communitarianism of the time, they were spiritually inspired by—indeed, are hard to conceive without—the influence of the neo-Hasidic Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. The chapter gives Reb Zalman his due even as it traces the institutional development of Renewal across the country. Now, once again, Renewal resonates for American Jews as each movement of American Jewish religion undergoes profound changes and as some movements spin off new vehicles of expression. Hasidism, the world of the sectarian Orthodox yeshiva, Modern and Centrist Orthodoxy, the non-Orthodox denominations (that is, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist), the second and third (and now fourth) generation of the havurah movement—all have generated congregations, study centers, publications, agencies and foundations, which bear little resemblance to what was on the scene a decade or two ago. To take but one of many examples, there is an expressed desire in one or another American Jewish movement to develop a more intense approach toward liturgical practices and styles of worship. Underlying the new expressions is the fact that Renewal changes the terms by which American Jews think about their religious community. Magid and Chanes argue that Jewish religious life in America is both fragmented and robust, even with the weakening of traditional institutional and organizational forms. American Judaism has developed many approaches—diverse and even contradictory—to religious expression and

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meaning; and many of these options of Renewal are in the process of becoming mainstream. The role of women is addressed by Sylvia Barack Fishman in “Women’s Active Partnership in Revitalizing American Judaism.” The impact of second-wave feminism and the emergence of Jewish women in all the Movements, has resulted in nothing less than dramatic—indeed, radical—changes across the spectrum of Judaism in America (and, for that matter, in Israel as well). Even the simple participation of women in a number of ritual activities of the synagogue (leading portions of the service is one important example), to say nothing of elevation to leadership positions—as rabbis or decisors on normative legal matters—has informed the changing landscape of American Judaism. These developments, argues Fishman, are nothing less than transformative. In the diverse arenas of leadership (lay and professional), scholarship, education, and arts and letters, Jewish women in America “share a paradigm of participatory Jewish partnership.” In “Jewish Political Involvement,” Marc D. Stern explores the evolving Jewish public affairs agenda. Public policy in fact represents another face of Judaism in America, that of how American Jews relate to the external world. The response to this exogenous agenda of the Jewish community—as distinct from the internal affairs of the movements and communities—is played out in activity in the public policy arena. This is the public face of American Jewry. Stern reviews the history and present nature of the American Jewish public affairs agenda and analyzes the interface of American Jewish religion and public policy. Coming at least in part out of the Jewish religious tradition is the political stance of American Jews, which has remained distinctly liberal and has shown no signs of shifting (even during the Trump era, with a sliding of a substantial percentage of Orthodox Jews in Trump’s direction), despite there being a case to be made, although not an irrefutable one, that the political Right may be friendlier to Israel than the Progressive Left. The impact—indeed, influence—that Jews in America exert on the political process and on public affairs is outsized in terms of their numbers. At the same time, there is in American Jewry a marked erosion in the sense of Jewish peoplehood, especially among the large cohort of Jews with little contact with organized Jewry and Judaism. Moreover, Jewish political activity now involves direct activity with parties and candidates more than (as in the past) through Jewish institutional life. This is especially the case among the economic elite a cohort that is increasingly not subject to democratic communal constraints; it acts and speaks independently of organized Jewish communal institutions. Finally, Jewish political representation no longer depends on concentrated Jewish communities. These factors, combined with a shrinking share of the overall American demographic, point to a reduced American Jewish communal influence in the future. In “American Jews, Judaism and Other Faith Communities,” Eugene Korn analyzes how American Judaism addresses relations with other faith-communities. The contemporary Jewish interreligious agenda, deriving originally from a shared desire to explore the roots of Christian anti-Semitism in the wake of the Holocaust, has developed into a range of enterprises encompassing theology, public affairs, and

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education—substantive in its own terms and not merely a vehicle for combating antisemitism. Catholic-Jewish, Mainline Protestant-Jewish, Evangelical-Jewish, and Muslim-Jewish relations are very different one from another, and each is explored in detail in this chapter. In addition, significant changes within the Jewish community with respect to engaging other faith-communities on theological issues will be examined with an eye to the future. Specifically, Korn differentiates interfaith dialogue and Jewish-Gentile interaction before and after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a positive Christian theological transformation toward Judaism and a greater feeling of security among American Jews. These two factors led to the blossoming of Jewish-Christian relations (mostly with Catholic and liberal Protestant churches; evangelical and fundamentalist relationships followed a different track, mostly linked to Israel) on political and religious levels that was unprecedented, indeed unknown, before World War II. Jewish-Muslim relations in America have been significantly less robust because of the smaller number of American Muslims, the deep communal divide over the Israeli-Arab conflict, traditional Muslim discomfort with religious pluralism, and the difficulty of identifying institutional and organizational partners with the Muslim and Arab communities. Yet common cause has been made around shared interests, such as the separation of religion and state. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Jewish interfaith relations have been changed by the political and demographic power of American Evangelicals, the increased identification of Mainline Protestant churches with the Palestinian cause, the papacies of Benedict XVI and Francis, the 9/11 attacks, the increasing presence of Islamic religious ideology in Western politics, and the atomization of American Jewish identity. Jewish organizations and individuals are now testing closer ties with Evangelicals because of strong evangelical support of Israel, while the other new conditions have given rise to negative trends in Jewish-Protestant, Jewish-Catholic and Jewish-Muslim relations. Jewish-Christian intermarriage and its gradual acceptance in the American Jewish community have also influenced Jewish-Christian relations. At the same time, the increased prominence of American Muslims combined with a new-found world interest in Islam augers strongly for attempts at improved Jewish-Muslim relations. All told, it is evident that there has been a sea change in Jewish interfaith relations since the late twentieth century. What does this all mean for Judaism in America? While the emergence of denominational movements in American Judaism is important, it is not the whole story. American Judaism represents, in microcosm, the ongoing sociological debate between the assimilationists and the transformationalists. Assimilationists maintain that things are terrible—the movements are riven with strife, two of them are shrinking (one drastically), and other than the Sectarian Orthodox, the religious community is not maintaining its numbers. The transformationalists assert that gloom and doom is not called for. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just different; American Judaism is transforming the ways in which it expresses itself— and that is to the good. This view suggests that it is not fair to evaluate or judge American Judaism by the same standards and criteria by which nineteenth-­century

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Vilna or Warsaw were judged; this is America, it is the twentieth and twenty-­first century. Our concluding chapter engages this discussion, with a view toward the future of American Judaism. It argues that American Judaism is a religion with a future, albeit a troubled future, and with a significant voice in the American body politic. Jerome A. Chanes is an adjunct professor at Baruch College of the City University of New York. He was national affairs director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (now the Jewish Council for Public Affairs) and was associate executive director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. He has taught at Barnard College, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Tel Aviv University School of Law, Yeshiva University, and the Academy of Jewish Religion. His books include Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook, Antisemitism in America Today: Exploding the Myths, and A Primer on the American Jewish Community, and he is author of more than 100 articles, book chapters, reviews, and encyclopedia entries on Jewish issues and arts and letters.  

The Future of American Jewish Denominations Lawrence Grossman

Rabbi Gilbert Rosenthal’s popular 1986 guidebook Contemporary Judaism: Patterns of Survival described the Jewish denominational structure at the time and made a tentative prediction: There are now four distinctive movements in religious life: Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist. Each has made its contribution to the development of American Jewry; each has undergone change and revision; each will probably continue to give American Jewry, as well as world Jewry, its uniquely piquant flavor.1

Today, Rosenthal’s assessment would have to be modified in two significant ways. First, whatever the case for world Jewry, the “uniquely piquant flavor” of American Jewry today is secularism, which is growing faster than any denomination. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 7% of American Jews said they were not Jews by religion; little more than a decade later, 22% said so—32% of those born since 1980—reflecting “a broader trend in American life, the movement away from affiliation with organized religious groups.”2 And even among those who declared themselves Jews by religion, close to one out of five did not identify with  Gilbert S, Rosenthal, Contemporary Judaism: Patterns of Survival (2nd ed.; New York: Human Sciences Press, 1986), p. 25. His use of the term “movements” was imprecise, as Orthodoxy is not, strictly speaking, a movement. In this essay “denomination”—despite its Christian derivation— will be used to denote any of the major organized expressions of the Jewish religion, while those that are indeed movements will also be referred to as such. 2  While the source of the earlier figure, the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000–01, is not directly comparable to the Pew Research Center report of 2013, the latter notes nevertheless: “The magnitude of these differences suggests that Jews of no religion have grown as a share of the Jewish population and the overall U.S. population.” A Portrait of Jewish Americans: Findings from a Pew Research Center Survey of U.S.  Jews, October 1, 2013, p.  32, http://www.pewforum. org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey 1

L. Grossman (*) American Jewish Committee, New York, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Chanes, M. Silk (eds.), The Future of Judaism in America, Studies of Jews in Society 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7_2

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any of the denominations, more than half thought that being Jewish “is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture,” and two-thirds said that belief in God was not necessary to be considered a Jew.3 This trend toward secularism and away from denominationalism is likely to become ever more pronounced over time as the proportion of mixed-religion families in the Jewish community grows.4 Second, Rosenthal’s belief that the denominations will “probably” retain their separate identities is becoming increasingly doubtful. Since his book was published, dramatic changes in the socioeconomic makeup of the American Jewish community, new ways of understanding Jewish identity and spirituality, and financial pressures have steadily eroded the denominational structure of American Judaism almost beyond recognition. More recently, Peter Berger, the eminent sociologist of religion, expressed confidence that “barring catastrophic political or economic scenarios (in which case all bets are off), Judaism will continue to be an integral part of the American pluralistic scene, and it will continue to be religiously vital and pluralistic within.” Unlike Rosenthal, he avoided prognostication, saying, “I would rather not try to predict what shape its denominational structure will take.”5 Berger’s modest refusal to play the prophet notwithstanding, current trends suggest which way the denominational winds are blowing.

Jewish Denominationalism The organization of Judaism into denominations, a modern phenomenon echoing the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent splintering of Western Christianity, has flourished uniquely in the United States. From the early days of the republic, not only was there no entrenched Jewish establishment claiming monopolistic authority, but the legal separation of church and state and the example of the multiplicity of Christian groups provided fertile ground for Jewish pluralism. Like their Protestant counterparts, the Jewish denominations that arose were largely distinguished from each other by wealth, social class, and degree of acculturation to America.6 The acculturation factor was complicated by the fact that Jewish rituals and folkways, as well as the Hebrew language of the traditional prayers, came from outside the Anglo-American tradition, setting up additional barriers to, and criteria for, Americanization.  Ibid, pp. 7–8, 48.  For a full discussion of these tendencies see Barry A.  Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, “American Jewish Secularism: Jewish Life Beyond the Synagogue,” American Jewish Year Book (hereafter AJYB) 2012, pp. 3–54. 5  Peter Berger, “Pluralistic Judaism,” The American Interest, May 1, 2013, http://blogs.the-­ american-­interest.com/berger/2013/05/01/pluralistic-judaism 6  The classic study of Protestant denominationalism is H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Press, 2004). It was originally published in 1929. 3 4

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Reform Judaism, the first denomination to crystallize, emerged in post-­ Napoleonic Germany and made great strides in the United States with the large Jewish migration from Germany in the two decades before the Civil War. Reform established itself as “American” by downgrading both the national/ethnic and ritual dimensions of Judaism and highlighting its faith and ethics, so that it bore a structural resemblance to Protestant Christianity. Reform also Americanized by dropping distinctive Jewish clothing and old-world Jewish language and manners, changing the synagogue service to make it more decorous, and introducing prayers and sermons in the vernacular. Reform Jews wanted to be seen as Americans just like any other, differing only in religion. Although Reform aspired to represent American Judaism as a whole, it particularly attracted upwardly mobile Jews of Central-European ancestry. By the late nineteenth century Reform boasted a congregational body, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), founded in 1873 (it would change its name to the Union for Reform Judaism—URJ—130 years later). In 1875, the Union launched a rabbinical seminary, Hebrew Union College (HUC), whose graduates formed a rabbinical association, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), in 1889. An influential statement of Reform principles known as the Pittsburgh Platform, promulgated in 1885, stressed the universalistic moral vision taught by the Hebrew prophets while declaring the previously normative ritual system obsolete and Jewish nationalism (then manifested in the early stirrings of the Zionist movement) illegitimate. This became the basis for what is called Classical Reform. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Orthodox Judaism, which emerged from premodern Judaism in nineteenth-century Europe and saw itself neither as a movement nor a denomination but as the defender of Jewish tradition against Reform and secularization. While its adherents took a variety of positions on the acceptability of Western culture—such acceptability declining the further east in Europe one looked—all Orthodox Jews insisted on the continued validity of Jewish law, especially the dietary and Sabbath restrictions. Orthodoxy also upheld the sanctity of existing liturgical practices and continued in the belief that Judaism had an ethnic/ national as well as a religious/ethical dimension. The popularity of Reform in nineteenth-century America seemed likely to swamp Orthodox Judaism until the large wave of Eastern European immigration that began in the 1880s resurrected and transformed it. While far from all the newcomers were religiously observant, they came from a culture in which Orthodoxy was virtually the only form of Judaism, with secularist ideologies the only alternative expressions of Jewish identity. The new immigrants, then, were in large numbers at least culturally Orthodox. And since they were Yiddish-speaking, generally poor, and unfamiliar with American ways, Orthodoxy became associated with immigrant status, low socioeconomic levels, and an inability or unwillingness to Americanize. As an agglomeration of Jews loyal to tradition rather than a formal movement, Orthodoxy has always been loosely organized. The Union of Orthodox Rabbis (Agudath Harabonim) was founded in 1902 to represent synagogue rabbis, who were generally Yiddish-speaking and unacculturated to American life. The oldest and largest Orthodox synagogue body is the Union of American Orthodox Jewish

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Congregations (known as the Orthodox Union, or OU), launched in 1898. The National Council of Young Israel, a smaller group, traces its origins to 1912. These, as well as the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest Orthodox rabbinic body (founded in 1935), reflect the attitudes of modern, Americanized elements. The best-known Orthodox rabbinical seminary is that affiliated with Yeshiva University, generally identified with the modernists, but there are numerous other seminaries representing different ideological shades. Unlike the case in the other denominations, there are a good number of Orthodox congregations and rabbis operating independently, unaffiliated with any organization. Conservative Judaism gradually evolved as a Jewish middle-ground, though it had no clear denominational intentions at the outset, when the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) was founded in New York in 1886.7 While it harked back to European antecedents, its purpose was to train English-speaking, acculturated rabbis who might be able to combat Reform. The seminary maintained, in principle, allegiance to traditional Jewish law, while utilizing modern scholarly techniques to understand the historical development of the tradition. Reversing the Reform pattern in which the congregational body preceded and created the seminary, the United Synagogue, which comprised congregations allied with JTS, did not emerge until 1913, followed five years later by a rabbinic body mainly composed of JTS alumni, the Rabbinical Assembly.8 This expression of Judaism tended to attract children of Eastern European immigrants who felt comfortable in synagogues that provided traditional services but that also facilitated Americanization and social mobility through the extensive use of English, acceptance of American social norms—such as decorum and seating of men and woman together during worship—and a nonjudgmental attitude toward personal religious observance. Conservative Judaism only became a distinct religious movement in the 1940s and after, as the post-World-War-II generation of Jews moving to better neighborhoods, especially in the suburbs, found in the Conservative approach to Judaism a comfortable balance between Americanization and Jewish group identity. The demographic flow outside city limits precipitated the movement’s first official deviation from Orthodox Jewish law, the permission granted in 1950 to drive on the Sabbath to the synagogue, which, more often than not, was now beyond walking distance. Reconstructionist Judaism has exerted a degree of influence on American Judaism far beyond its meager numbers. Developed by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan in the early decades of the twentieth century, it removed the supernatural element and offered a new understanding of Judaism as a “religious civilization.” The values and practices of historical Judaism were reinterpreted as Jewish folkways; in a sense, Reform was turned on its head, with faith in a supernatural Being—the fundamental  Michael R. Cohen, The Birth of Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter’s Disciples and the Creation of an American Religious Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 2–3. 8  A second American rabbinical school associated with Conservative Judaism would be established in Los Angeles in 1996, the Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies. 7

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tenet of Classical Reform—replaced by allegiance to the Jewish people and its culture, a position compatible with secular Zionism. Kaplan did not intend to found a denomination but rather to influence all of American Judaism—which he did in the sense of stimulating Jewish ethnic and cultural awareness, albeit not to the extent he had hoped. Strictly speaking, Reconstructionism became a denomination only in 1954 with the creation of the Reconstructionist Federation of Congregations, which went through a series of name changes. In 2012, weakened by financial difficulties, that body merged with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (founded in 1968) to become, in 2018, Reconstructing Judaism. The college’s alumni have been organized in the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association since 1974. The two decades that followed World War II marked a golden age of growth for the Jewish denominations as it did for American religion as a whole. As Will Herberg noted at the time, while minority ethnicity had been suspect in American culture and immigrant groups were expected to enter the melting pot, religious identification, protected by the Bill of Rights, was considered legitimate, even praiseworthy. Hence Jews joined synagogues in large numbers as an expression of Jewish identity even if they were not particularly interested in religion.9 But a profound social shift was also unfolding that began to undermine the denominational structure itself. Over the course of the generation that passed after the cutoff of mass migration to the United States in the 1920s, the children and grandchildren of the Eastern European arrivals enjoyed significant social mobility, blurring, by the 1950s, the class differences that had lain at the root of Jewish denominational identity. The old stereotypical association—substantially rooted in social reality—of Reform with wealthy German Jews, Orthodoxy with poor East European immigrants, and Conservatism with the Americanizing children of the latter, verged further and further from reality.10 There were now wealthy, well-educated Orthodox Jewish professionals, whose synagogues—often termed “Modern Orthodox”— offered dignified services and English-language sermons. On the other end of the spectrum, a good many successful Jews of Eastern European ancestry joined Reform temples, often bringing with them a sense of Jewish peoplehood, appreciation of the Hebrew language, and affection for certain religious rituals that, over time, placed proponents of Classical Reform on the defensive. And the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 put to rest, once and for all, the debate over Zionism that had long marked off anti-Zionist Classical Reform from the rest of American Jewry.11 In this environment, Conservative Judaism, the quintessential moderate center, became the largest denomination.

 Will Herberg, Catholic-Protestant-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 172–210. The original edition appeared in 1955. 10  Charles S. Liebman, “Changing Social Characteristics of Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews,” Sociological Analysis 27, Winter 1966, pp. 210–22. 11  See Leonard Fein et al., Reform Is a Verb: Notes of Reform and Reforming Jews (Cincinnati: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1970). 9

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If these mid-century changes tended to homogenize Jewish religious life, developments in the late 1960s reversed the trend and spawned greater diversity. The Havurah movement—small groups of young people who met for prayer and contemplation, Jewish study, and social activism—saw itself as an alternative to the more formalized congregational structure that characterized their parents’ Judaism.12 This was a Jewish counterculture, explicitly anti-institutional and anti-hierarchical, disdaining denominational labels, although a disproportionate number of the participants came from Conservative homes. While the havurot in a sense foreshadowed the later blurring of boundaries between the non-Orthodox denominations, they drew only a small segment of the baby-boom generation, and their impact was blunted by the decision of some established congregations, alarmed at the prospect of losing their younger cohort, to find a place for them inside the synagogue, essentially co-opting them.

Denominations Under Stress A crisis hit denominational life late in the century that has steadily intensified since, part of a larger Jewish cultural retreat from group identification—from the organized Jewish community, from Israel—and a search, instead, for individual fulfillment. Perhaps the first scholar to spot the full import of this change was Charles Liebman, who in 1997 argued that the decline of Jewish ethnicity and peoplehood along with the elevation of egalitarianism and spirituality were replacing “the notion of an awesome and authoritative God whom Jews are obliged to obey” with “the legitimation of self and the kinds of lives American Jews have chosen to lead.”13 Steven M. Cohen and Arnold Eisen subsequently chronicled this process among “moderately affiliated” Jewish young adults: They take for granted the compatibility of being both Jewish and American; this is simply not an issue anymore. And they are even less interested in denominational differences than their parents’ generation was, insisting from first to last on the right—and the fact—of individual autonomy when it comes to deciding the details of Jewish practice. On the other hand…God… is often quite important to them; spirituality is a felt concern…. They want to be Jewish because of what it means for them personally—not because of obligations to the Jewish group….14

 For a brief description by one of the founders see Alan Mintz, “Along the Path to Religious Community,” in James A. Sleeper and Alan L. Mintz, eds., The New Jews (New York: Vintage, 1971), pp. 25–34. 13  Charles S. Liebman, “Post-War American Jewry: From Ethnic to Privatized Judaism,” in Elliot Abrams and David G.  Dalin, eds., Secularism. Spirituality, and the Future of American Jewry (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999), p. 16. 14  Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 35. 12

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In 2006, Cohen and Jack Wertheimer noted: “Contemporary American Judaism is replete with the language of spiritual quest, personal ‘journeys,’ and searches for healing.” This trend was confirmed in a 2009 study by Cohen and Lawrence Hoffman, who found that American Jewish young adults were increasingly defining their Jewish identity in individual-spiritual rather than communal-institutional terms. While scoring much lower than non-Jewish whites when it came to involvement with organized religious activities, Jews under the age of 35 were almost as “spiritual”—however they might define the word—as non-Jews.15 In terms of practice, this impulse toward spirituality unmoored from institutional religion could manifest itself in unconventional ways, leading some to create their own rituals16; others to readjust old ones, for example taking teenage girls to the mikveh to help them improve their self-esteem17; and yet others—an unrepresentative fringe, to be sure—to mark their Jewish identity by transgressing Jewish norms, such as violating the prohibition on consuming pig products.18 Such Jews—thoroughly Americanized, their immigrant family origins for the most part a hazy historical memory—are as affected as other Americans by what Robert Putnam has called “declining social capital.” In the waning years of the twentieth century, many people were abandoning their previous involvement in voluntary associations such as religious bodies and living more socially isolated lives.19 This trend paralleled the postmodernist vogue in intellectual circles summarized by Jean-François Lyotard as “incredulity toward metanarratives,” the delegitimization or at least questioning of any identity imposed by society or by groups, forcing the individual back on him/herself and a loose circle of personally chosen fellow seekers to construct personal meaning.20 One way to gauge the effect of this new spirituality-based anti-institutionalism on Jewish denominations is to note the proliferation of “independent” minyanim, unaffiliated prayer groups organized and run by young-adult Jews. The New York Times reported that the latter have “shrugged off what many participants see as the passive, rabbi-led worship of their parents’ generation to join services led by their   Steven M. Cohen and Jack Wertheimer, “Whatever Happened to the Jewish People?” Commentary, June 2006, p. 36; Steven M. Cohen and Lawrence A. Hoffman, How Spiritual Are America’s Jews? Narrowing the Spirituality Gap Between Jews and Other Americans, March 2009, at http://www.synagogue3000.org/files/53KReportHowSpiritual.pdf 16  Jay Michaelson, “Don’t Call the Rabbi, Make Your Own Rituals,” Forward, September 16, 2011, http://www.forward.com/articles/142435/dont-call-the-rabbi-make-your-own-rituals. Michaelson compares developing a new ritual to “finding unusual, local, organic and gluten-free desserts.” 17  Renee Ghert-Zand, “The Mirror in the Mikveh,” Forward, May 31, 2013, http://www.forward. com/articles/177195/the-mirror-in-the-mikveh/?p=all 18  Leah Koenig, “Swine of the Times,” Forward, June 26, 2009, http://forward.com/articles/107973/ swine-of-the-times 19  Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6:1, January 1995, pp. 65–78. Putnam later expanded this thesis into a book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Renewal of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). 20  Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1984), p. xxiv. 15

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peers, with music sung by all, and where the full Hebrew liturgy and full inclusion of men and woman, gay or straight, seem to be equal priorities.”21 Ethan Tucker, a leading figure in the independent movement, explained its attitude toward the denominations: Part of the success of the independent minyanim is driven by their unwillingness to affiliate officially with existing religious denominations, an unwillingness that has enabled them to embrace all who are interested in the minyan’s concrete practice…. This model urges a pragmatism that transcends pluralism: build a Jewish community with a specific set of practices rather than open an ideological conversation that is bound to emphasize differences that will impede the launch of a successful, cohesive community.22

These independent groups do not generally encounter the fear and suspicion that the established Jewish community originally directed toward the Havurah movement a generation earlier largely because the discontent with denominational Judaism is much broader now than it was during the 1960s, reaching far beyond the limited ranks of participants in the minyanim and encompassing even elements within the Jewish establishment. Indeed, these innovative groups receive generous grants from Jewish foundations, which are eagerly on the lookout for cutting-edge expressions of Jewish identification that might appeal to young people.23 Synagogue 3000, a foundation dedicated to support and encourage the transformation of the American synagogue, issued a report in 2007 about such “Emergent Jewish Communities and their Participants.” It found more than 80 independent minyanim in the U.S. and Canada that varied greatly in their styles and constituencies. As compared to the membership of standard American synagogues, participants in the minyanim were far likelier to be under age 40, unmarried, and unaffiliated with any of the Jewish denominations. Those associated with the independents were far likelier than regular synagogue members to consider “being Jewish” very important, and attended services more regularly than the average synagogue member. Their levels of Jewish education, time spent in Israel, and knowledge of Hebrew were also higher. The conclusion was clear: while in the past non-affiliation with a denomination generally signified lack of interest in Judaism, the emergence of the independent minyanim meant that at least some non-affiliators might in fact be more strongly identified as Jews than those belonging to synagogues.24 In November 2008, 32 independent minyanim participated in a national conference funded by the Samuel Bronfman Foundation. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, the founder of Kehillat Hadar in New York, told the gathering that Jewish life was “much more  Neela Banerjee, “Challenging Tradition, Young Jews Worship on Their Terms,” New York Times, November 28, 2007, http://nytimes.com/2007/11/28/us/28minyan.html 22  Ethan Tucker, “What Independent Minyanim Teach Us About the Next Generation of Jewish Communities,” Zeek, January 2008, http://zeek.net/print/801tucker 23  Rebecca Spence, “Leaders of Indie Prayer Groups Get Grants, Become Mainstream Darlings,” Forward, October 8, 2008, http://www.forward.com/articles/14356/leaders-of-indie-groups-getgrants-become-mainstream-darlings 24  The entire report is available at http://www.jewishemergent.org/survey 21

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textured” than the “three big Jewish boxes”—his term for the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform denominations. Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, the middle-of-the-­ road denomination that felt most threatened by the independents, plaintively commented, “I think people are really looking for an ideology, many of them, a practice that is somewhere in the framework known as Conservative Judaism, but they don’t find it in their Conservative synagogues.” He pleaded with the young people to maintain Conservative affiliation and hold their services within the precincts of Conservative congregations.25 Epstein showed considerably more tact than Ismar Schorsch, who, upon retiring from his post as chancellor of JTS in 2006, rued the impact of the new spirituality upon his school’s rabbinical students and Conservative Judaism as a whole. “As opposed to the dense and demanding discourse of scholarship,” he said, “students crave instant gratification. The way to the heart is not through the circuitous and arduous route of the mind but the rhythmic beat of the drums… the primitiveness of rap and the consumerism of the mall threaten to trivialize the literary culture that is the pride of Judaism.”26 But Felicia Herman, executive director of one of the foundations that was funding the minyanim, believed that “there will be a necessary transformation in what American Judaism and the institutions of American Jewish life look like in the twenty-first century.”27 In 2010, Elie Kaunfer’s book, Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us About Building Vibrant Jewish Communities, made a sustained case for the proposition that postdenominational spirituality was the wave of the future for American Judaism.28 A similar movement away from denominational identification happened in Jewish education, and, once again, mostly at the expense of Conservative Judaism— in this instance, its erstwhile “crown jewel,” the Solomon Schechter school network. With the exception of the Orthodox day-school system, the fastest growing type of Jewish school became the nondenominational “community” day school. In 2011 there were 91 of these (actually a decline from the more than 120 in 2008, before the nation’s economic crisis hit), as compared to only 23 in 1990. This growth was largely at the expense of the Schechter schools, some of which closed down and others dropped the Conservative label and went nondenominational. One head of  Carolyn Slutsky, “Minyanim Grow Up, Turn Inward,” New York Jewish Week, November 25, 2008. 26  “The Commencement Address of Dr. Ismar Schorsch, (then) Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary–New York at the 112th Commencement Exercises on May 18, 2006,” at http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/files/schorsch-commencement-address.pdf 27  Ben Harris, “Independent minyanim growing rapidly, and the Jewish world is noticing,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 11, 2008, http://www.jta.org/2008/11/11/life-religion/ independent-minyanim-growing-rapidly-and-the-world-is-noticing 28  Elie Kaunfer, Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us About Building Vibrant Jewish Communities Today (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2010). Not everyone was convinced. See the stinging critique by Margot Lurie, “Minyan 2.0,” Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2011, pp. 25–28, which charges the movement with self-indulgence and immaturity, and only a tenuous appreciation of Jewish peoplehood and the State of Israel. 25

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school explained to a reporter, “If you want to embrace all Jews in the area, it’s a shame to be limited.” The principal of another said, “Adults have problems with different denominations, but kids don’t.”29 In 2011, the Schechter system received a $250,000 grant from UJA-Federation of New York to rebrand itself, which it did by downplaying the denominational tie, which it saw as a serious liability, and declaring that its goal was to “engage the world.” By 2012 the Schechter network itself was seriously considering disaffiliation from the Conservative movement.30 Also contributing to the move away from denomination-based education was the growing number of Jewish charter schools, barred by their identification as public schools from teaching religion at all, and hence nondenominational by definition.31 Older Jewish students, as well, took denominational differences less seriously than they used to. The great boom in adult Jewish education saw the creation of very successful transdenominational initiatives across the country, among them Meah, which began in Boston and was picked up in other communities; Limmud, based on a British model; the Melton Mini-Schools; the Wexner Foundation programs; and Drisha Institute for Women in New York. Nondenominational rabbinic training also grew in popularity, especially among older aspirants to the rabbinate who looked to it as a second career. The Academy for Jewish Religion, a small, part-time program launched in 1956 to prepare rabbis to serve non-Orthodox constituencies, expanded its student body and faculty, and opened a branch in Los Angeles in 2000. Hebrew College in Boston launched a rabbinical school in 2003 and advertised it as “the first full-time, transdenominational” institution of its kind in Jewish history. Its rector, Rabbi Arthur Green, believed that its pluralistic approach had broader applications for the community. Green said, “If we can pull it off in a rabbinical school, Jews could learn to do it almost anywhere,” and asked, “Wouldn’t it be worth a try?”32 Another source of nondenominational preparation for the rabbinate has proven more controversial—online courses leading to ordination. A growing number of Conservative and Reform synagogues, especially in Florida, hired such candidates rather than rabbis ordained by their movements’ seminaries, who would command higher salaries.33

 Carolyn Slutsky, “‘Just Jewish’ Schools,” New York Jewish Week, November 12, 2008. A nondenominational Jewish boarding school, American Hebrew Academy, in Greensboro, North Carolina, closed in 2022. 30  Naomi Zeveloff, “What Does Schechter Decline Mean?” Forward, January 27, 2012, http://forward.com/articles/149983/what-does-schechter-decline-mean; J.J. Goldberg, “Day Schools Stuck in Neutral,” ibid., January 6, 2012, http://forward.com/articles/148762/day-schools-stuck-in-neutral; Naomi Zeveloff, “Will Schechter Schools Leave Conservatives?” ibid.,  July 13, 2012, http:// forward.com/articles/158920/will-schechter-schools-leave-conservatives 31  AJYB 2012, pp. 140–41. 32  Arthur Green, “Rabbis Beyond Denomination,” Contact: The Journal of Jewish Life Network/ Steinhardt Foundation 7, Summer 2005, p. 4. 33  Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Online-Ordained Rabbis Grab Pulpits,” Forward, December 7, 2012, http:// forward.com/articles/166946/online-ordained-rabbis-grab-pulpits 29

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The Non-Orthodox Converge For Jews who still identified with a non-Orthodox denomination, the emerging individualistic focus of Jewish identification expressed itself in downplaying denominational differences. The original distinction between Reform and Conservative—that the former rejects Halakhah while the latter is committed to maintaining it—became more formal than real. At the grassroots, neither Reform nor Conservative Jews understood Jewish practice as “law.” Like the Jews studied by Cohen and Eisen, they decide what rituals to perform on the basis of the personal meaning that a particular act might evoke. A 1996 survey indicated that 63% of members of Conservative synagogues (that is, the most committed Conservative Jews) agreed that their movement required obedience to Jewish law; yet paradoxically, 78% felt that a Jew could be religious “even if he or she isn’t particularly observant.” Patterns of actual observance were very low: 38% reported lighting Shabbat candles, 15% considered themselves Shabbat observers, and 29% said they only bought kosher meat.34 The survey showed that three-quarters of Conservative Jews did not keep kosher, a percentage that has surely grown since; it thus came as no surprise that a 2012 ruling by the movement’s Commission on Jewish Law and Standards suggesting guidelines for the consumption of food in non-kosher dairy restaurants was greeted with widespread incredulity.35 By 2013, only 24% said that “observing Jewish law” was essential to Jewish identity.36 At the same time, levels of traditional practice rose among Reform Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in it, even as the movement’s rejection of binding Halakah remained in place. “The twice-a-year Jew,” noted a leading scholar of Reform, “cannot help but notice the substantial increase of Hebrew in the service over the past few decades. Even more noticeable to the casual observer is the use of kippot (head coverings) tallitot (prayer shawls), and other ritual items in services.”37 To be sure, even though it was no longer surprising to find Reform engaging in the entire gamut of Jewish ritual, levels of observance still lagged behind those found among Conservatives.38 The estimated one-quarter of Reform Jews who still adhered  Steven M. Cohen, “Assessing the Vitality of Conservative Judaism in North America: Evidence From a Survey of Synagogue Members,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., Jews in the Center: Conservative Synagogues and their Members (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000), pp. 25, 44. 35  Stewart Ain, “Conservative Ruling Tips Scales on Cooked Fish,” New York Jewish Week, December 11, 2012, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/conservative-rulingtips-scales-cooked-fish 36  Portrait of Jewish Americans, p. 57. 37  Dana Evan Kaplan, American Reform Judaism: An Introduction (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003), p. 79. The trend drew considerable attention in the waning years of the twentieth century. See AJYB 1988, p. 192; 1991, p. 192; 1992, p. 255; 1993, p. 191; 1996, p. 160; 1997, p. 198; and 1998, p. 136. 38  See the chart in Cohen, “Assessing the Vitality of Conservative Judaism,” p.  25; The Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011, Executive Summary, p. 27, http://www.ujafedny.org/jewish-­ community-­study-of-new-york-2011; and Portrait of Jewish Americans, pp. 76–77. 34

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to Classical Reform acted as a brake on greater commitment to ritual, as Rabbi Richard Levy, then president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, found out in 1999 when his initiative to formalize the new openness to tradition in a set of principles had to be watered down considerably to gain acceptance.39 Nevertheless, the anti-ritual element of Reform, found disproportionately among the elderly, is likely to decrease over time, making Reform more difficult to distinguish from Conservative Judaism on the basis of practice. Even at New York’s Temple Emanu-­El—a bastion of old-line Reform—the new senior rabbi appointed in 2013 wore “a Jewish skullcap and prayer shawl” at services, “resulting in an audible gasp from the congregation.”40 Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism at the time, told Reform Jews in 2007 that there was no limit to the degree of ritual practice they might assume and still identify as Reform. However, “If you take it all upon yourself as an obligation rather than as a choice, you’ve reached the point at which you are no longer a Reform Jew.”41 Meanwhile, significant voices within Conservative Judaism pushed for a formal break with the notion of a binding Halakhah,42 a step that would place their movement exactly where Reform is. Such a position may still be a minority view within the Conservative leadership, but Arnold Eisen, who assumed the chancellorship of JTS in 2007, has reinterpreted Halakhic obligation in a way that varies greatly from the traditional understanding. Instead of grounding the obligation in the will of God as embodied in the holy texts of Judaism and interpreted by rabbinic scholars, Eisen identifies the source of authority in the community. He has urged Conservative rabbis to find out from their congregants “what obligates them; what they feel responsible for; what engages them….”43 Any substantive distinction between Yoffie’s Reform position of no obligation and Eisen’s Conservative self-­ obligation is not easy to discern. And neither man would presumably object to the Reconstructionist view that ritual forms developed in the course of the evolution of Jewish civilization “are vehicles for moving us toward a Jewish way of seeing the world, understanding reality, and living a sanctified Jewish life.”44

 Kaplan, American Reform Judaism, pp. 237–40.  Sharon Otterman, “At a Temple Proud of Its Traditions, a New Rabbi With ‘Alternative’ Ideas,” New York Times, December 5, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/nyregion/ at-a-temple-proud-of-its-traditions-a-new-rabbi-with-alternative-ideas 41  Debra Nussbaum Cohen, “Reform Youth Flexing Their Ritual Muscle,” New York Jewish Week, August 10, 2007, http://www.thejewishweek.com/features/reform_youth_flexing_ritual_muscle; AJYB 2008, p. 141. 42  The various views within the movement are discussed in Conservative Judaism 58, Winter– Spring 2006, the entire issue dedicated to “The Aggadah of the Conservative Movement,” and in Neil Gilman, Doing Jewish Theology: God, Torah and Israel in Modern Judaism (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 2008). 43  AJYB 2008, p. 141. 44  Jacob J.  Staub, “Reconstructionist Judaism,” in Stephen H.  Norwood and Eunice G.  Pollock, eds., Encyclopedia of American Jewish History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2008), vol. I, p. 95. Eisen’s formulation is heavily indebted to Mordecai Kaplan, Reconstructionism’s founder. 39 40

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A pattern similar to the convergence between the movements in ritual practice emerged in regard to distinctions in religious status. The traditional Halakhah still followed by Orthodox Judaism regulates status by ascription: one is born into it. There are boundaries between genders (men and women have different religious obligations and privileges), sexual orientations (same-sex relations are banned), and faith commitments (Jews—defined as those born of a Jewish mother or those “reborn” through conversion to Judaism —are “inside,” non-Jews “outside”). However, such “essentialism”—the idea that one can be defined by membership in a category—is anathema to contemporary Western culture in which choice has largely replaced ascription. Replacing group identity is globalism: “In the name of eliminating ‘boundaries’ between and among people, whether national, ethnic, or religious, this quintessentially postmodern movement celebrates the trans-national, trans-cultural individual.”45 It has become a truism that we now live in a post-ethnic America.46 In 2008 and again in 2012, the American people elected a president who was the son of a Muslim African man and a white American woman, publicly and emphatically throwing into question the validity of racial boundaries, and by implication, all other ascribed categories of people.47 Reform Judaism’s early moves to dismantle the system of category distinctions under the banner of egalitarianism underlined its distance from the more traditional movements, but Conservative Judaism has been following the same path. Here, too, the non-Orthodox sector appears on the way to coalescing. Reform had always, at least in theory, backed the religious equality of men and women, but it was not until the second half of the twentieth century that the new feminist consciousness propelled it to produce concrete change. In 1972 Sally Priesand was ordained as the first female Reform rabbi, with virtually no opposition from within the movement. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College admitted women from its founding in 1968, and its first female graduate, Sandy Sasso, was ordained in 1970. By 2000 at least half the rabbinical graduates of the two movements’ seminaries were women.48 In Conservative Judaism the process took far longer and was more acrimonious. While the movement already allowed congregations to count women for a minyan (prayer quorum) and to call them up to the Torah, female ordination had to withstand serious challenge based on Jewish law. Not until 1983—eleven years after Ezrat Nashim, a group of young women, first issued a call for gender equality at the Rabbinical Assembly convention of 1972—did the Jewish Theological Seminary allow women to become rabbis. The first to be ordained was Amy Eilberg in 1985.49 The Orthodox were now alone in barring women from the rabbinate.  Cohen and Wertheimer, “Whatever Happened to the Jewish People,” p. 36.  David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 2001). 47  See Hua Hsu, “The End of White America?” Atlantic Monthly, January–February 2009, http:// www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200901/end-of-whiteness 48  Kaplan, American Reform Judaism, pp. 191–92; Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 341. 49  Sarna, American Judaism, pp. 341–43. 45 46

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A similar pattern emerged in dealing with restrictions on the basis of sexual orientation. In 1977 the Reform movement resolved to welcome congregations that did special outreach to homosexuals; in 1990 it decided that homosexuality would not be a barrier to rabbinic ordination; and in 2000 it backed rabbinic officiation at same-sex commitment ceremonies.50 Reconstructionism, which had a nondiscriminatory policy of admissions to its rabbinical school as early as 1983, declared the complete religious equality of gays and straights in 1992.51 The Conservatives, once again, took longer due to Halakhic constraints. In 1991 they officially welcomed homosexuals to the synagogue, but only in 2006 would the movement agree to the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis and to the performance of same-sex commitment ceremonies, in 2012 issuing two alternative liturgies for the latter that were different from the standard Jewish marriage ceremony.52 In 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and two years later, when the Court declared same-sex marriage legal across the country, the non-­ Orthodox Jewish movements enthusiastically hailed the rulings. Traditional boundaries marking off Jews from non-Jews have proven somewhat more robust, and the convergence of the non-Orthodox movements remained incomplete. Recognizing the reality that a growing number of their affiliated families were headed by Jewish husbands and non-Jewish wives, the Reform movement in 1983 parted with the matrilineal standard for determining Jewish status and declared that a person can be deemed a Jew if either parent is Jewish and the individual is raised as a Jew. Not only did this decision create a category of people who were considered Jewish by Reform but not by the traditional denominations, but it also sharply reduced the incentive for conversion of the non-Jewish wives of Jewish men, since the children would be deemed Jewish in any case. Efforts of “outreach” to these spouses, therefore, downplayed the conversion option. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, over a quarter of member families of Reform congregations were intermarried.53 Often, the non-Jews were given membership rights and participated in the services. There was talk in Reform circles of rescinding the requirement that applicants for rabbinical training at Hebrew Union College sign an agreement stating that “any student engaged, married, or partnered/committed to a person who is not Jewish by birth or conversion will not be admitted or ordained.” Rabbi Aaron Panken, named president of HUC in 2013, said the seminary would take a “very serious look” at eliminating this rule and allowing people with non-Jewish spouses

 Kaplan, American Reform Judaism, pp. 214–27.  AJYB 1994, p. 198. 52  AJYB 1992, p. 258; 2007, p. 127; Naomi Zeveloff, “Conservatives Skip Kiddushin for Same-Sex Rite,” Forward, June 15, 2012, http://www.forward.com/articles/157422/conservatives-skipkiddushin-for-same-sex-rite 53  Jack Wertheimer, “What Does Reform Judaism Stand For?” Commentary, June 2008, p. 33. 50 51

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or partners to study for the Reform rabbinate.54 While Reconstructionism did exactly that in 2015, Reform has not.55 Rising rates of intermarriage generated intense pressure from congregants on Reform rabbis to perform the Jewish-Christian weddings of their children—a practice discouraged but not prohibited by the movement—and the percentage of rabbis willing to officiate at mixed-faith wedding ceremonies (sometimes together with non-Jewish clergy) has been going up.56 A survey conducted in 2017 indicated that 84% would do so, but only 26% would co-officiate with clergy of another religion.57 Reconstructionist Judaism, anticipating Reform, recognized the children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers as Jews in 1968, and in 1982 officially welcomed intermarried families into Reconstructionist congregations.58 The Conservative movement still retains the traditional taboo on the marriage of a Jew to a non-Jew, and a rabbi can be dismissed from the Rabbinical Assembly for performing one. While that rule had originally applied even to attendance at an intermarriage, in 2018 attendance was allowed.59 To be sure, some Conservative rabbis will refer mixed-religion couples to Reform or Reconstructionist clergy who perform such weddings, and, despite the official Conservative position that the child of a non-Jewish mother is not Jewish, children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers are for all practical purposes treated as Jews in a good many Conservative synagogues and schools. Nevertheless, the formal position of the movement barring rabbinic involvement in intermarriage ceremonies and rejecting patrilineal Jewish identification remains the sole serious remaining impediment to de facto agreement with the religious orientation of the other non-Orthodox groups.

 Ellen Lippmann, “Reform Rabbi Urges Hebrew Union College to Reconsider Decision on Intermarried,” Forward, May 24, 2013, http://www.forward/articles/176823/reform-rabbi-urges-­ hebrew-union-college-to-reconsider-decision-on-intermarried; Uriel Heilman. “The war against intermarriage has been lost. Now what?” JTA, August 6, 2013, http://www.jta.org/2013/08/06/ news-opinion/united-states/the-war-against-intermarriage-has-been-lost-now-what 55  Edmund Case, “Want more Reform rabbis? Stop turning away Jews in interfaith relationships,” Jewish New of Northern California, Mar. 30, 2022, jweekly.com/2022/03/30/want-morereform-rabbis-stop-turning-away-jews-in-interfaith-relationships 56  Kaplan, American Reform Judaism, pp.  160–179. For one well-publicized example of a co-­ officiated intermarriage that had many traditional Jewish elements though it took place on Shabbat, see Luchina Fisher, “Chelsea Clinton’s Interfaith Marriage: Kids, Holidays, Soul-Searching,” August 2, 2012, at http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/chelsea-clintons-interfaith-marriagemarc-mezvinsky 57  “Nearly all Reform rabbis perform intermarriages—but not with non-Jewish clergy, study finds,” JTA, Aug. 8. 2018, jta.org/2018/08/08/united-states/nearly-all-reform-rabbis-perform-inter marraiges-but-not-with-non-jewish-clergy-study-finds 58  Staub, “Reconstructionist Judaism,” p. 96. 59  Ben Sales, “Conservative group ousts rabbi for performing intermarriages,” JTA, Dec. 19, 2016, www.jta.org/2016/12/19/news-opinion/united-states/rabbi-expelled-from-conservative-body-forperforming-intermarriages; “Conservative rabbis can now attend intermarriages,” Jewish Standard, Oct. 23, 2018, jewishstandard.timesofisrae.com/conservative-rabbis-can-now-attend-inter marriages 54

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Indeed, powerful voices within the movement, both rabbinic and lay, are calling for Conservative Judaism to follow the lead of the liberal denominations just as it has on feminism and gay rights, and to relax its exclusionary policy toward the mixed-married and their children. This is justified both on moral grounds—exclusion of non-Jews is widely seen as “racist”—and for the pragmatic reason that such a step might slow the losses that Conservative congregations have sustained from the defection of mixed-religion families to Reform, which accepts them virtually unconditionally.60 The campaign to replace a conversionary thrust with “outreach” won a significant ally in 2009, when Chancellor Eisen declared: “We can’t do an intermarriage, but we can make room for intermarried couples.61 Most grass-roots Conservative Jews are ready to follow Reform and Reconstructionism and accept the children of non-Jewish mothers as Jews. As early as 1996, while a survey of Conservative synagogue members showed them opposed by 54% to 28% to the idea of their rabbi performing intermarriages, they agreed overwhelmingly—69% to 21%—with the statement, “Anyone who was raised Jewish—even if their mother was Gentile and their father was Jewish—I would regard personally as a Jew.”62 By 2011 some Conservative synagogues had amended their constitutions to admit to membership families with just one Jewish parent even if it was the husband and not the wife, a step toward de facto acceptance of patrilineal descent.63 In November 2013, the board of the movement’s Solomon Schechter day schools appointed a task force to consider admitting students to these schools whose mothers were not Jewish.64 A few weeks later, Rabbi Charles Simon, president of the movement’s Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs and a leading proponent of relaxing the remaining barriers to the acceptance of mixed-religion couples, made public a list of recommendations that he had coauthored. These included allowing non-Jewish spouses full congregational membership and the right to hold synagogue office; rabbinic performance of funerals of non-Jewish members; bar/bat mitzvahs for children of non-Jewish mothers and Jewish fathers; and ending the prohibition on

 AJYB 2006, p. 104; Julie Wiener, “Conservatives Walking Intermarriage Tightrope,” New York Jewish Week, October 12, 2012, http:www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/ conservatives-walking-intermarriage-tightrope 61  Stewart Ain, “Conservatives End Push to Convert Intermarrieds,” New York Jewish Week, July 8, 2009, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/conservatives_end_push_convert_intermarrieds; Lois Goldrich, “JTS Head Highlights Movement’s Challenges,” New Jersey Jewish Standard, February 27, 2009, http://jstandard.com/index.php/content/print/6952 62  Cohen, “Assessing the Vitality of Conservative Judaism in North America: Evidence from a Survey of Synagogue Members,” in Wertheimer, ed., Jews in the Center, p. 59. 63  Naomi Zeveloff, “Conservative Synagogues Crack Open Door to Intermarried Families,” Forward, September 9, 2011, http://www.forward.com/articles/142112/conservative-synagoguescrack-open-door-to-intermarried-families 64  Uriel Heilman, “Schechter schools considering embracing patrilineal descent,” JTA, November 22, 2013, http://www.jta.org/2013/11/22/life-religion/schechter-schools-considering-embracingpatrilineal-descent 60

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rabbinic officiation at mixed marriages.65 These sentiments percolated up to the General Assembly of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which passed a resolution in 2017 allowing individual Conservative congregations to decide whether to open membership to non-Jews. The vote, conducted online, was overwhelming—94 to 8 with one abstention—and the resolution’s call on its congregations “to open their doors wide to all who want to enter” made clear which choice the delegates wanted them to make.66 Meanwhile, some Conservative rabbis who remained unwilling to challenge the ban on performing intermarriages head-on have devised outreach strategies that they believe can anchor the non-Jewish spouse in the Jewish community without crossing the line. One approach is to perform a ceremony—not a formal wedding— that celebrates the new couple’s creation of a Jewish home; another is to assign the non-Jewish partner a status not quite Jewish but not Gentile either—a Jewish “green card”—or reviving the biblical category of ger toshav (resident alien), who, according to a proponent of this approach, is not prohibited from marrying a Jew.67 Another suggested strategy involves reconceptualizing conversion. In a Sabbath morning sermon in 2013, Rabbi Elliott Cosgrove of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City advocated the immediate conversion of the non-Jew who wishes to marry a Jew, with no pre-conversion study requirement. Besides making possible a timely wedding ceremony, this step would also render all subsequent children of the couple Jewish. Under such a system, it would be up to the rabbi, after the wedding, to educate the convert about the faith.68 Cosgrove later suggested a further refinement: requiring immersion in a mikveh for all brides and grooms as a condition for rabbinic officiation at their weddings. Immersion is a prerequisite for conversion, and the immersion of these non-Jews would make them Jews. But since the born-Jews were immersing as well, it would not, according to Cosgrove, be seen as “vetting” or “making someone feel ‘less than’—rather, the same rule applied to all.” That, he argued, would “serve the purpose of leveling the playing field of Jewish identity.”69 Despite pressure from its membership, the Conservative movement is still holding the line against official acceptance of intermarriage and patrilineal Jewishness. The increasingly inventive—some might say desperate—ways that its rabbis are  Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Conservative Rabbis Set to Debate Opening the Door to Intermarrieds,” Forward, December 6, 2013, http://forward.com/articles/188511/conservative-rabbis-set-todebate-­opening-the-door. Simon’s coauthor was Reform Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, head of the Jewish Outreach Institute, who had two sons who were Conservative rabbis—another indication of how alike the two movements had become. 66  “Conservative synagogues pass resolution allowing non-Jews as members,” JTA, March 5, 2017, http://www.jta.org/2017/03/05/life-religion/’conservativesynagogues-pass-resolutionallowing-non-jews-as-members 67  See AJYB 2015, p.  137, and Jane Eisner, “Why This Renegade Rabbi Says He Can Marry Jews—And The Jew-ish,” Forward, June 9, 2017, forward.com/opinion/373982/ conservative-jewish-intermarriage-renegade-rabbi 68  Gary Rosenblatt, “Conservative Rabbi Offers ‘Trial Balloon,’” New York Jewish Week, March 4, 2013, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national-news/conservative-rabbi-offers-trial-balloon 69  Rabbi Elliott Cosgrove, “Mikveh Can Solve Conversion Problem,” New York Jewish Week, April 13, 2017, http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/mikveh-can-solve-conversion-problem 65

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seeking to address rising intermarriage rates without overstepping halakhic principles may not succeed over time in a society that validates the individual’s unfettered choice of a marriage partner. If—or perhaps, when—Conservative Judaism acts in conformity with the zeitgeist, it will hardly differ from Reform and Reconstructionism.

Will They Unite? The growing similarity between the non-Orthodox movements has naturally raised questions about the need to maintain separate institutional structures. Conservative Judaism has seemed the likeliest candidate to give up the ghost due to declining numbers and a lack of clarity about its message.70 In a remarkably candid admission, the president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents the Conservative rabbinate, said in 1991, “We are challenged by an assertive and triumphalist Orthodoxy on our right and by a vigorous, growing Reform movement on our left. We are dissatisfied with the state of our movement, we fall short in our own eyes, we are pessimistic about our future.”71 More bad news came from the National Jewish Population Study of 2000–01, which indicated that Reform had replaced Conservative Judaism as the largest movement. This finding led Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive director of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform), to predict in 2004 that Conservative Judaism was doomed to die or merge with Reform, leaving just one large non-Orthodox grouping. This provoked expressions of outrage from Conservative leaders.72 But five years later the newly elected executive director and CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism compared his movement invidiously to Orthodoxy, whose rabbis, he said, were “missionaries,” while their Conservative counterparts “want to get paid.” And he lamented, “We don’t believe. What do we believe in?”73 Toward the end of the decade the country’s economic woes hit all the movements hard and gave Reform and Conservative Judaism even more incentive to cooperate and pool resources. Conservative Judaism’s flagship educational institution, the Jewish Theological Seminary, was already $2.2 million in the red in mid-2008.74 By  Clifford Librach, “Does Conservative Judaism Have a Future?” Commentary, September 1998, pp.  28–33, as well as the letters-to-the-editor and Librach’s reply in the January 1999 issue, pp. 3–13. 71  AJYB 2002, p. 258. 72  AJYB 2005, pp. 197–98. 73  Gal Beckerman and Rebecca Dube, “United Synagogue Approves Broad Restructuring,” Forward, September 25, 2009, http://forward.com/articles/114305/united-synagogue-approves-­ broad-restructuring. Soon thereafter he apologized, explaining: “What I said came out as flippant and hurtful to many of our colleagues…. I am sorry.” Gal Beckerman, “Conservative Synagogue Chief Issues Apology,” Forward, October 2, 2009, http://www.forward.com/articles/114345/ conservative-synagogue-chief-issues-apology 74  Steward Ain, “JTS Facing $2 Million Budget Shortfall,” New York Jewish Week, June 25, 2009, http://thejewishweek.com/news/national/jts-facing-2-million-budget-shortfall 70

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the fall of 2009, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism reported a $1.3-­million deficit and a loss of 33 congregations in just one year. Most of these synagogues disaffiliated at least partly because of economic factors. Amid calls from some unhappy synagogue leaders for secession from the United Synagogue, that body approved deep staff cuts, consolidation of services, and a sharp reduction in the size of its board on September 13, 2009.75 The Union for Reform Judaism was forced to cut its budget by more than 20% in 2009, shutting down its regional offices and cutting about 60 staff positions. URJ also granted relief to financially strapped congregations by reducing dues. Hebrew Union College began to consider consolidating its campuses, eventually leading to the elimination of its original seminary in Cincinnati.76 Both the Reform and Conservative programs for college students faced the budget axes of their respective synagogue organizations, the former’s Kesher closing in 2009 and the latter’s Koach limping along by raising its own funds until 2013, when it, too, succumbed.77 Rabbi Eric Yoffie, then URJ’s president, addressed the situation in his sermon before the Union’s board of trustees in December 2008. With the American economy in apparent free-fall, he issued a public call to all the Jewish movements “to take a hard look at whether they need to merge or share services, buildings, and staff with neighboring congregations, including those of other denominations.” But he also saw beyond the immediate financial crisis and asked, “In areas such as social action and synagogue management, why shouldn’t we be working together? At a crucial crossroads of American Jewish history, perhaps now is the time for all streams of Judaism to join in friendship and cooperation to help maintain the strength and vibrancy of our synagogue community.”78 A survey of Reform and Conservative congregations carried out in 2010 provides a valuable snapshot of non-Orthodox Judaism at the depth of the recession. “Both Jewish movements,” it said, “suffer from lackluster attendance and pallid attempts at recruitment of new members.” Each was overwhelmingly composed of older people, with Jews aged 18 through 34 making up just 8% of both Conservative and Reform congregations. While Christian churches had a similar age problem, the report suggested that it “may be especially acute in Jewish circles where educated young adults marry late, bear children later, and have competing opportunities for social interaction and spiritual searching.” Synagogue attendance was weak. The  Stewart Ain, “New Vision for USCJ, Conservative Judaism, Gets Mixed Reviews,” New York Jewish Week, September 15, 2009; Beckerman and Dube, “United Synagogue Approves Broad Restructuring.” 76  “Union for Reform Judaism Plans Reorganization to Strengthen Congregations and Build the Reform Jewish Future,” press release, March 6, 2009, http://urj.org/pr/2009/restructure/index. cfm?&printable=1; Andrew Lapin, “Hebrew Union College to end Cincinnati rabbinical program after board backs controversial plan,” JTA, April 11, 2022. 77  Sam Cohen, “College Dropouts,” New York Jewish Week, July 6, 2012, http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/opinion/college-dropouts; http://www.uscj.org/Objects/Documents/ Koach%note.pdf 78  “Rabbi Eric Yoffie Calls on Synagogue Movements to Cooperate in Economic Crisis,” URJ press release December 12, 2008, http://urj.org/pr/2008/economy 75

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best-attended Conservative service, on Shabbat morning, attracted “an average of 24 worshipers for every 100 member-families,” and the most popular Reform service, on Friday night, drew just 17 people per hundred families, a disparity the study attributed at least partially to the older average age of Conservative Jews, which provided them more leisure time. Synagogues in both movements reported increased unemployment among their members and significant layoffs of congregational employees. Reform synagogues seemed to be faring better than their Conservative counterparts both objectively and in terms of morale. Rabbi Larry Hoffman, co-­ director of Synagogue3000, believed this was because Reform temples tended to be much larger, on average, than Conservative synagogues, and hence somewhat better equipped to cushion the recession’s economic blows.79 By then, mergers between non-Orthodox congregations of different denominations, considered unusual as late as 2000,80 had increased in popularity. In 2009, when two Miami congregations, Bet Breira (Reform) and Temple Samu-El Or Olom (Conservative) united, the merged entity became the twelfth U.S. synagogue to identify with both movements, and there were “at least four other congregations that have dual Conservative and Reconstructionist affiliations.”81 In addition, there was the phenomenon of non-Orthodox synagogues of different denominations in the same community sharing a building but otherwise maintaining their separate identities82 or, alternatively, combining their religious schools, adult education, and other programming, but not their religious services.83 In 2013 there were reportedly “scores” of such interdenominational mergers around the country, and Rabbi David Fine, rabbinic director of the URJ’s network of small congregations, explained: “Many congregations worked for years to distinguish themselves. It wasn’t so much ‘who are we’ but ‘who are we not?’—looking at the other place across town. Now it’s more ‘what do we have in common?’”84 Even before the financial crunch, outside funding was made available to facilitate such cooperative ventures. Synagogue2000 (later renamed Synagogue3000) and STAR (Synagogue Transformation and Renewal), through which non-Orthodox congregations of the different movements jointly work at spiritualizing and reinvigorating their activities, were founded in the late 1990s and are subsidized by  S3K Synagogue Studies Institute, S3KReport, March 2012, Number 11, www.synagogue3000. org. This survey was part of the Faith Communities Today (FACT) series, www.faithcommunitiestoday.org 80  Elaine Gale, “Two Congregations Forge Unusual Partnership,” Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2000, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jun/05/local/me-37588 81  Stewart Ain, “Welcome to the Re-Conservative Shul,” New York Jewish Week, June 12, 2009, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/welcome_re_conservative_shul 82  Stewart Ain, “Reform, Conservative Roommates in Forest Hills?” New York Jewish Week, August 5, 2009. 83  For the discussion of such an arrangement in Detroit in 2007 see “The Equation for Communal Growth,” http://choppingwood.blogspot.com/2007/09/equation-for-communal-growth.html 84  Ben Gittleson, “To stay afloat, shuls merging across denominational divide,” JTA, May 9, 2013, http://m.jta.org/news.article.2013/05/09/6/3126186/facing-possible-extinction-struggling-shulsmerging-across-denominational-divide 79

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foundations.85 In 2005, UJA-Federation of New York provided a grant for Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Reform and Conservative seminaries, to develop a transdenominational Leadership Institute for Congregational School Educators.86 The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation has been especially active in encouraging Reform-Conservative cooperation. In 2008 it launched a fellowship program for outstanding rabbinical students, four Reform and four Conservative, to study together formally for three years, led by faculty from the seminaries of both streams.87 That same year it largely funded the joint appointment of an Israeli scholar as visiting professor at both Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary.88 As an example of a joint local program, the Avi Chai Foundation, through the St. Louis Central Agency for Jewish Education, paid “to support a collaborative venture that will reduce duplicative back-office operations” of the city’s Conservative and Reform day schools.89 Asked in June 2009 whether the trend toward cooperation and coordination might lead to a full merger of the non-Orthodox movements, URJ president Eric Yoffie responded, “Not in the foreseeable future, but who knows where the winds of Jewish history will take us?”90 Given the institutional loyalties and personal factors that make mergers of any kind in the Jewish organizational world—let alone those of a denominational nature—almost impossible to pull off, it is hard to imagine this taking place, barring a far more severe economic downturn than we have yet experienced. Nevertheless, a continuing homogenization of non-Orthodox Judaism even with the current institutional structure remaining in place is likely. Any decision by the Conservative movement to move further toward welcoming intermarried families and their children even without conversion—de facto, if not de jure, joining the rest of liberal Judaism in accepting patrilineal Jews—would accelerate the process. The increasingly popular independent minyanim and nondenominational educational programs mentioned earlier will fit comfortably into this hypothetical loose coalition of like-­ minded Jews committed to individual choice, antinomianism and egalitarianism.

 http://www.synagogue3000.org; http://www.starsynagogue.org  Eric J.  Greenberg, “Reform, Conservative Movements Collaborate on Principal Training,” Forward, January 14, 2005, http://www.forward.com/articles/4135/reform-conservative-­ movements-­collaborate-on-pricipal-training. One of the educators involved is quoted as saying, “We have talked about how to handle the different movement ideologies. We acknowledged early on that there will be times when we break down into smaller groups, by denominations.” 87  The two movements issued an identical press release, “Schusterman Rabbinical Fellowship Program a Milestone in Collaboration,” http://huc.edu/nes/08/5/milestone, and http://www.jtsa. edu/x10205.xml 88  “Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Announces New Visiting Faculty in Israel Studies,” press release, http://huc.edu/news/08/8/visitingfaculty 89  “Grant Funds Collaboration Between Two St. Louis Day Schools,” http://Jewishinstlouis.org/ page/aspx?id=201628 90  Ain, “Welcome to the Re-Conservative Shul.” 85 86

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The release, in late 2013, of the Pew Foundation’s A Portrait of Jewish Americans, a rigorous demographic analysis of the American Jewish community, gave added credence to such a scenario by establishing just how weak the Conservative movement had become. Only 18% of American Jews now identified themselves as Conservative (35% were Reform and 10% Orthodox), a remarkable decline since 1970, when, at the peak of its popularity, Conservative Judaism was the largest denomination, enjoying the allegiance of 42% of American Jewry. Furthermore, the Conservative group is likely to shrink further since the median age of Conservative adults is 55—the highest for any American religious group; the average Conservative household has only 0.3 children, far below the replacement level; and there seems to be little interest among other Jews in affiliating with Conservative Judaism.91 Another Pew survey conducted in 2020 showed no significant change.92 A hypothetical non-Orthodox transdenominationalism would be sufficiently committed to spiritual autonomy, the dissolution of status boundaries, and liberal politics to include both Secular Humanistic Judaism and Jewish Renewal. The former, organized by Rabbi Sherwin Wine in the mid-1960s, rejects the concept of a Deity and understands Judaism as the “human-center heritage, culture, civilization, ethical values and shared experience of the Jewish people.”93 It may be seen as Reconstructionism’s more radical little cousin. The latter, likewise a child of the 1960s, describes itself as “rooted in Torah and tradition. Kabbalah and Hasidism, combined with a modern consciousness that is politically progressive, egalitarian and environmentally aware…that embraces singles, GLBT people and interfaith families.”94 It has had, relative to the number of its actual devotees, an outsized influence across the movements (see “Renewal” by Shaul Magid and Jerome Chanes in this book). The prospect of a sharp diminution in the importance of the denominations, if not their actual demise, has triggered a good deal of comment.95 Those who consider it a good idea note that denominations are foreign to classical Judaism and arose in  Portrait of Jewish Americans, pp.  48, 39, 41. The 1970 figure is cited in Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 52. 92   Pew Research Center, Jewish Americans in 2020, May 11, 2021, pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020 93  http://www.ifshj.org 94  https://www.aleph.org 95  Philanthropists and younger Jews tend to favor the tendency, while people heavily invested in the specific movements—especially Conservative Judaism, which is most vulnerable—express less enthusiasm. See Uriel Heilman, “Beyond Dogma: Is American Judaism headed toward a post-­ denominational future?” Jerusalem Post, February 11, 2005, http://urielheilman. com/0211beyonddogma.html; Jack Wertheimer, All Quiet on the Religious Front? Jewish Unity, Denominationalism, and Postdenominationalism in the United States (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2005; The Reconstructionist 7, Spring 2007, entire issue devoted to “Denominationalism”; “Symposium: The Future of the Different Movements in Judaism,” G’Vanim: The Journal of the Academy for Jewish Religion 5, 2009, pp. 55–100, available at http:// ajrsem.org/index.php?id=460; Zachary I.  Heller, ed., Synagogues in a Time of Change: Fragmentation and Diversity in Jewish Religious Movements (Herndon, Va.: Alban Institute, 2009); David Ellenson, “Denominationalism:History and Hopes,” in Sidney Schwarz, ed., Jewish 91

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response to specific social conditions that may no longer apply, and argue that the separate groups both duplicate services and create needless divisiveness. The most hopeful expression of what the brave new world of American Judaism may offer has come from one of the most generous funders of Jewish communal initiatives, Michael H. Steinhardt, who has coined a term for it, “Common Judaism,” which he describes as an articulation of shared values, rooted in tradition but resonant with contemporary life, that speaks to all Jews, that merges secular Jewish pride with Jewish values, and that offers Jews a new spiritual joy. It should appeal to all, regardless of geography, ideology, background or levels of observance. The objective is to attract the non-Orthodox back to Jewish life by emphasizing those elements in our history and tradition that are the most enduring, that are consistent with the values of the open society, and that are most capable of nurturing a lifelong attachment to Judaism. After all, Jews in the future will no longer determine Jewishness by lineality but by choice. Whether they lay tefillin or keep kosher will matter less than whether they throw their lot in with the Jewish people in an age of competing cultures and religious fads.96

Skeptics, however, worry that such a bland Judaism would stifle the enriching debate on Jewish issues that goes on between and within denominations over the requirements and boundaries of Jewish life, and replace it with an anything-goes approach that papers over differences of opinion on substantive issues. In the words of Jack Wertheimer, I do, in fact, admire the constructive work that has brought about much transdenominational study and cooperation, but I also lament the price exacted for this goodwill. Beneath the façade of calm, the issues continue to fester, matters of personal status remain unresolved, and questions of religious principle are marginalized. A people famous for its disputatious nature has  convinced  itself and consensus has been reached, when, in reality, healthy debate has been silenced—for now.97

Another cause for concern is the apparent tendency of postdenominational Jews—contrary to Michael Steinhardt’s hopes—to show weak interest in the ethnic/ peoplehood dimension of Judaism. The 2013 Pew survey showed not only that Jews of no religion are considerably less Jewish, both religiously and ethnically, than Jews by religion,98 but also that a similar gap exists between Jews by religion who are unattached to a denomination, and denominational Jews. The difference in consciousness of peoplehood is striking; 85% of all Jews by religion say they have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, but only 53% of those with no Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 2013). 96  Michael H.  Steinhardt, “My Challenge: Towards a Post-Denominational Common Judaism,” Contact: The Journal of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation 7, Summer 2005, p. 15. 97  Wertheimer, All Quiet on the Religious Front, p. 26. 98  Portrait of Jewish Americans, p.  7; Don Seeman, “Pew’s Jews: Religion Is (Still) the Key,” Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2014, pp. 7–8. Seeman, p. 8, writes that the “Jews of no religion” are “alienated, impatient, or in many cases simply uninterested in Jewishness in any of its forms. Mostly, they are looking for the exit door.”

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denomination do, and while 71% of Jews by religion feel they have a special responsibility to care for Jews in need, just 39% of those with no denomination agree. Similarly, 76% of all Jews by religion claim an emotional attachment to Israel, as compared to 49% of those who are not denominationally affiliated.99 It can be argued that lumping together all nondenominational Jews by religion obscures key differences between those who are simply indifferent to their Jewish identity, on the one hand, and the younger postdenominational Jews, such as those who frequent the independent minyanim, on the other, who are intensely Jewish but prefer to remain outside the denominational framework. Yet there is evidence that the latter, while certainly seeking a more intense religious experience, show some discomfort with Jewish peoplehood. An admittedly extreme example is Renewal advocate Shaul Magid, who prescribes an entirely spiritually based postdenominationalism in his book American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society. Magid argues that elimination of the denominations must entail the rejection not only of Jewish ethnicity, but also of Halakhah, the rabbinic tradition, and ultimately monotheism itself.100 Yet even a far more mainstream figure, Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, contrasts “covenantal” postdenominational Judaism, which affirms progressive universalistic values, with outmoded, old-style “tribal” Judaism that cares only about what is good for the Jews—and for Israel.101 An Israeli visiting the nondenominational Romemu congregation on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for the heavily-attended Friday night service was surprised to find that “the idea of collectivity, the idea of responsibility for an entire nation, the possibility of uniquely Jewish aspects of our moral mission on earth—these were nowhere to be found.”102 And it was surely suggestive that two highly publicized congregational expressions of less-than-enthusiastic support for Israel in 2012 came from large nondenominational synagogues, one in Los Angeles, the other in New York.103 Ten years

 Ibid, pp. 52, 82.  Shaul Magid, American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 2013). See Allan Arkush’s review, “All-American, Post-Everything,” in Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2013, pp. 23–25. 101  Sidney Schwarz, ed., Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 2013), Part 1. 102  Robbie Gringras, “Shabbat Service Here Highlights Israel-Diaspora Gap,” New York Jewish Week, May 10, 2013, http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/shabbat-service-here-­ highlights-israel-diaspora-gap. Three long letters appeared in the May 17 issue defending the service’s individualistic focus. 103  Julie Gruenbaum Fax, “Rabbi Sharon Brous vs. Rabbi David Gordis: Betrayal or Compassion?” Los Angeles Jewish Journal, November 29, 2012, http://www.jewishjournal.com/cover_story/ article/rabbi_sharon_brous_vs.-rabbi_david_gordis_betrayal_or_compassion; Sharon Otterman and Joseph Berger, “Cheering U.S.  Palestine Vote, Synagogue Tests Its Members,” New York Times, December 4, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/nyregion/jewish-congregation-­ applauds-un-vote-on-palestine.html?pagewanted=all 99

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later, in the wake of Hamas attacks on Israel and Israeli air strikes on Gaza, a nondenominational synagogue in Chicago declared itself anti-Zionist.104 By then, the non-Orthodox denominations themselves, irked by years of non-­ recognition by the Israeli government and repelled by the evident Israeli support for Donald Trump, turned increasingly hostile to the Jewish state. When about 100 non-­ Orthodox rabbinical students signed on to a statement accusing Israel of apartheid-­ like polices toward the Palestinians, the national Reform and Conservative organizations remained silent. Pro-Israel rabbis, alarmed and even feeling “bullied” by unsympathetic colleagues, felt compelled to start a new organization to express their Zionist convictions. One Conservative rabbi said, “There was a time when it was understood to be a rabbi meant to be a lover of Israel. That has become less so today.”105 The danger posed by loss of a sense of group solidarity also loomed over Jewish philanthropy. The National Study of American Jewish Giving, released in 2013, showed that Jews gave charity at a higher rate than other Americans, but that Jews under age 40 were far less likely than their elders to give to Jewish causes. Analyzing the results, Steven M. Cohen discerned the same dynamic that was eroding the non-­ Orthodox denominations. He noted that the key factor associated with Jewish giving was “connection to and engagement with the Jewish community.” He said: “Jews today think less collectively and more personally, the rhetoric of discourse has shifted to the individual.”106 In what may mark a watershed in American Jewish philanthropy, the Nathan Cummings Foundation—a major Jewish family foundation—announced in late 2013 that it would no longer fund “Jewish Life and Values,” to which it had previously devoted 20% of its resources. It would instead focus on programs to combat inequality and climate change. The foundation would, however, develop an “approach” titled “Religious Traditions and Contemplative Practices” since “meditation and reflection can help reduce inequality and shape a more moral society.”107 This postmodern amalgam of anti-institutionalism, universalism and spirituality is the philanthropic equivalent of postdenominational Judaism.

 Jacob Magid, “Preaching to the margins: Chicago synagogue adopts anti-Zionism as a ‘core value,’” Times of Israel, Apr. 6, 2022, timesofisrael.com/preaching-to-the-margins-chicagosynagogue-adopts-anti-zionism-as-a-core-value 105  Phylissa Cramer, “Dozens of US rabbinical students sign letter calling for American Jews to hold Israel-accountable for its human rights abuses,” JTA, May 14, 2021, jta.org/2021/05/14/ united-states/dozens-of-us-rabbinical-students-sign-letter-calling-for-american-jews-to-hold-­ israel-­accountable-for-its-human-rights-abuses; Arno Rosenfeld, “New group fears rabbis are drifting away from Zionism,” Forward, May 26, 2022, forward.com/news/503901/ new-group-fears-rabbis-are-drifting-away-from-zionism 106  Gary Rosenblatt, “Jewish Giving Strong, But Concerns Loom, New Study Finds,” New York Jewish Week, September 6, 2013, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/national-news/ jewish-giving-strong-concerns-loom-new-study-shows 107  Gary Rosenblatt, “Making A Move At Cummings,” New York Jewish Week, December 6, 2013, http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/gary-rosenblatt/making-move-cummings 104

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Whatever one thinks of non-Orthodox postdenominationalism, it will be part of our future even if the current denominations remain nominally alive—barring a seismic shift in American culture that would devalue individual spirituality and reassert the authority of institutions and the credibility of traditional religion-based boundaries.

The Orthodox Survive, Thrive, and Diverge Orthodox Judaism would appear to enjoy social and ideological immunity to the forces that are transforming the rest of the American Jewish community. Its stress on Jewish peoplehood should tamp down the quest for personal spiritual satisfaction that drives the postdenominational ethos; its prescribed way of life, seen as divinely ordained, should combat the tendency to pick and choose which Jewish rituals and customs to practice; and its essentialist understanding of the world that carefully differentiates between, and makes value judgments about, gender roles, sexual orientations, and religious identities should presumably protect the boundaries of Orthodoxy from the egalitarian impulse. Furthermore, early-twenty-first-century Orthodoxy appears demographically secure. While constituting just 10% of American Jewry, it encompasses 22% of synagogue members and, since Orthodox families have more children than others, 27% of children under age 18. The high rate of attrition from Orthodoxy that characterized earlier generations has sharply declined, and virtually no Orthodox Jews intermarry. “Every year,” said sociologist Steven M. Cohen, “the Orthodox population has been adding 5,000 Jews; the non-Orthodox population has been losing 10,000 Jews.” If these trends continue, most American Jews could be Orthodox within a decade.108 Yet Orthodox Judaism finds itself torn by internecine battles. If the other denominations seem poised to meld into a “Just Jewish” amalgam, Orthodoxy shows signs of splintering and perhaps generating a new cycle of denominationalism, as some elements within it bend to the  very same pervasive societal influences that are reshaping non-Orthodox Judaism, while others seek to avoid that fate by building their religious walls ever higher. Students of American Orthodoxy distinguish two sectors, one “modern” and the other often called “ultraorthodox” or “haredi.” Modernists have been typically described as Zionist, open to secular culture, friendly to expanded roles for women, and willing to cooperate with the other Jewish denominations, while haredim, both Hasidic and non-Hasidic, have been viewed as more punctilious in observance,  Infographic: Survey of Jewish Americans, Spotlight on the Orthodox, http://www.pewforum. org/2013/12/03/infographic-survey-of-jewish-americans/#spotlight-on-the-orthodox; Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Orthodox Population Grows Faster Than First Figures in Pew Jewish America Study,” Forward, November 15, 2013, http://forward.com/articles/187429/ orthodox-population-grows-faster-than-first-figures 108

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more committed to intensive Torah study, distrustful of feminism, cool if not hostile to Zionism, wary of the lure of the secular, and willing to countenance university education only for the utilitarian purpose of making a living.109 Assumed as late as the 1950s to be withering away with the passing of the prewar immigrant generation, Orthodoxy found a new lease on life by the mid-1960s, “experiencing a greater sense of confidence and purpose.”110 As American society developed a more accepting approach toward ethnic and religious differences, and émigré rabbinic scholars established a following in the community, both insiders and outsiders came to see Orthodoxy no longer as a quaint agglomeration of obsolete, old-world practices, but as a consistent if demanding Jewish way of life. In the early 1970s, a so-called “ba’al teshuvah” movement arose, a stream of previously non-Orthodox Jews adopting Orthodoxy. Although no statistical data are available to measure its extent or whether it compensated numerically for the number of born-­ Orthodox who defected, the movement of outsiders into Orthodox ranks was perceived as a sign of success, and it further buoyed Orthodox self-confidence.111 Perhaps the clearest sign of Orthodoxy’s willingness to chart its own path lay in its gradual movement, beginning in the 1960s, away from the political and social liberalism it had previously shared with most of the rest of American Jewry. On such issues as government aid to non-public schools—where Orthodox day schools stood to benefit—and abortion and homosexuality—where Orthodox teachings opposed the liberal outlook—Orthodox bodies tended increasingly to ally with Catholics and Evangelicals and oppose the mainstream Jewish community.112 And just as they moved away from liberal policies, they also rejected the widespread view that liberalism expressed Jewish values. A Los Angeles Times national survey in 1988 asked: “As a Jew, which of the following qualities do you consider most important to your Jewish identity: a commitment to social equality, or religious observance, or support for Israel, or what?” Sixty-three percent of nondenominational Jews, 65% of Reform Jews and 44% of Conservative Jews answered, “a commitment to social equality,”

 The classic discussion of the two subgroups, Charles S. Liebman’s “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” AJYB 1965, pp. 3–97, uses the sociology-of-religion term “sectarian” for the latter. “Haredi,” a Hebrew word designating one who fears God, came into common use later, first in Israel and then in the Diaspora. American spokesmen for this group today prefer being called “fervently” Orthodox; they object strongly to the label “ultra-Orthodox” that is often given them by outsiders, which they claim suggests extremist tendencies. 110  Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” p.  22. On the situation in the 1950s see Lawrence Grossman, “American Orthodoxy in the 1950s: The Lean Years,” in Raphael Medoff, ed., Rav Chesed: Essays in Honor of Rabbi Dr. Haskel Lookstein (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 2009), vol. I, pp. 251–69. 111  Herbert Danzger, Returning to Tradition: The Contemporary Revival of Orthodox Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Ba’al teshuvah is Hebrew for one who has returned or repented, and as the great majority of these individuals had never been religiously observant to begin with, the term is, strictly speaking, a misnomer. 112  Lawrence Grossman, “Mainstream Orthodoxy and the American Public Square,” in Alan Mittleman, Jonathan D.  Sarna and Robert Licht, Jewish Polity and American Civil Society (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2002), pp. 283–310. 109

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but only 18% of the Orthodox did. The great majority of them chose religious observance or support for Israel.113 Politically conservative (and Republican) voting patterns emerged in the Orthodox electorate. In both 2008, when some three-quarters of American Jews voted for Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential election, and 2012, when about 70% of them voted for his reelection, a majority of Orthodox Jews supported his Republican opponents, John McCain and Mitt Romney. In 2013, 70% of American Jews said they identified with the Democratic Party and 22% with the Republicans, while the Orthodox breakdown was 57% Republican to 36% Democrat.114 In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton outpaced Donald Trump among all Jews by 70% to 24%, but did noticeably worse among the Orthodox, winning an estimated 56% of the vote, despite her longstanding political ties to the New York Hasidic community and the distaste that many Modern Orthodox voters felt towards Donald Trump.115 Four years later, Trump’s share of the overall Jewish vote climbed slightly to 30%, but ballooned to 83% among Orthodox voters.116 With Orthodoxy on the upswing, there has been a simultaneous strengthening of the haredi element at the expense of the modernists, whose version of Orthodoxy increasingly came to be seen as fatally compromised and watered down. Many Orthodox institutions and families that accepted modernity as a matter of course and even valued it as enhancing religious values found their constituents and children opting for stricter forms of the faith that sharply curtailed exposure to the liberal arts and sciences and to American culture.117 Buoyed as well by their higher birthrate, haredim outnumbered the Modern Orthodox by two-to-one in 2013.118 Along with the movement to the “right” came a new Orthodox triumphalism sometimes manifested in the denigration and delegitimation of non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, the stated or unstated assumption that only Orthodoxy would survive, and occasional acts of insensitivity toward those identifying with the other  Los Angeles Times, “Times Poll on American Jews,” April 24, 1988, http://articles.latimes. com/1988-04-24/opinion/op-2504_1_jewish-history-american-jews-religious 114  Ari Goldman, “Obama and the Orthodox,” New York Jewish Week, November 27, 2012, http:// www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/obama-and-orthodox; Infographic: Survey of Jewish Americans, Spotlight on the Orthodox. 115  Steven Bayme, “As Orthodox Move Right, ‘The Jewish Vote’ Divides,” New York Jewish Week, Dec. 5, 2016. Jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/as-orthodox-move-right-the-jewish-vote-divides; Mitchell Rocklin, “Are American Jews Shifting Their Political Affiliation?” Mosaic, Jan. 2017, http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2017/01/are-american-jews-shifting-their-politicalaffiliation 116  Jacob Magid, “Orthodox Jews back Trump by massive majority, poll finds,” Times of Israel, October 15, 2020, timesofisrael.com/orthodox-jews-back-trump-by-massive-majority-poll-finds; Jonathan Tobin, “The Jewish vote mattered more than we thought in 2020,” JNS, November 10, 2022, jns.org/opinion/the-jewish-vote-mattered-more-than-we-thought-in-2020 117  Samuel C.  Heilman, Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 118  Portrait of Jewish Americans, p. 48. 113

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denominations.119 Institutions and leaders previously associated with Modern Orthodoxy felt the need to hedge their bets: by the early 1980s Rabbi Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, was using the word “centrist” rather than “modern” to denote the nature of his Orthodoxy.120 In 1994, when the Synagogue Council of America—which had represented all the Jewish denominations and had therefore been boycotted and denounced by the haredim—dissolved, the executive director of the Orthodox Union, a mainstream body that had belonged to the Council, publicly pronounced the traditional celebratory blessing praising God “who has kept us alive and sustained us to this day.”121 Complicating the Orthodox picture is the anomalous case of the Brooklyn-based Lubavitch Hasidic sect, also known as Chabad. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was named head of the movement in 1951 after the death of his father-in-law, transformed it into an engine of outreach to all Jews.122 Unlike other haredi activists, whether Hasidic or yeshiva-based, who tend toward insularity, there are more than 1,600 husband-and-wife couples who serve as Chabad emissaries around the world. In the United States, Chabad runs programs in hundreds of communities large and small, and on close to 200 college campuses. Much of Chabad’s success comes from its nonjudgmental approach. The Jews who attend their prayer services, who show up for their Chanukah parties and Torah classes, and who end up giving them money, are not Lubavitchers. Most are not even Orthodox. For the most part, they are non-observant or even unaffiliated Jews, or perhaps members of Reform or Conservative congregations, who are responding to something in the Chabad message.123 And crucially, in an age that prizes individual autonomy, Chabad does not try to recruit those who use its services into the movement, nor does it even work to make them Orthodox—though some do become more observant and many more develop a positive attitude toward religious practice. While Chabad does not recognize any non-Orthodox form of Judaism as legitimate, it has consciously made itself into a prime provider of Jewish content for non-Orthodox, postmodern Jews. The death of Rabbi Schneerson in 1994 at the age of 92 presented two related challenges to the movement. First, as he had no children and had not designated a successor, a vacuum of leadership loomed. Second, elements within Chabad that identified Schneerson as the messiah even in his lifetime now claimed that he was not in fact dead and would soon reveal himself and redeem the world, so that no  Samuel Freedman, Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007). 120  Lawrence Grossman, “The Search for the Elusive Center: Norman Lamm and American Orthodoxy,” Hakirah, Fall 2022, pp. 99–120. 121  AJYB 1996, p. 163. 122  Much of what has been published about him is hagiographic. A controversial attempt at a scholarly treatment is Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). 123  Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch (New York: Schocken, 2003), p. 11. 119

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flesh-and-blood successor was necessary. The messianic claim—and even more so the Christian-sounding notion of a resurrected Messiah—drew charges of heresy that threatened to delegitimize Chabad in Orthodox eyes.124 But over time the messianist faction was marginalized—though not without considerable internal strife— and the movement has continued to expand under a decentralized leadership structure.125 While another succession problem may arise when the current leaders, disciples and associates of Schneerson, pass from the scene, there is every reason to believe that Chabad will continue to flourish and play its unique role on the Jewish scene. Today, even apart from the unique situation of Chabad, the internal divisions within Orthodoxy do not necessarily fit on the old modern/haredi axis. Ironically, Orthodoxy, a term connoting adherence to one teaching, has become the most diverse and contentious form of Judaism, a process helped along by the lack of any recognized authority to settle intra-Orthodox disputes. Some of the old Orthodox fault lines have shifted. While Zionism had previously marked off modernists from haredim, Zionist ideology now plays almost no role in American Jewish life, and the hawkish pronouncements of Modern Orthodoxy about Israeli politics are hard to distinguish from those of haredim (the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta being the sole, tiny exception). There is even an amalgam, somewhat similar to what is called hardal in Israel, which combines a hard-line stance on retaining all the disputed territories with extreme, haredi-like scrupulousness in religious observance.126 The old debate within Orthodoxy over higher secular education has also become much less polarized. As the humanities fell into disfavor in the broader American culture,127 Modern Orthodoxy too—which had gone so far as to argue that secular knowledge could deepen and enhance religious experience—stopped valuing the liberal arts it used to champion. Yeshiva University sought to drop its longtime identifying tagline Torah U-Madda (Torah and Knowledge), with its implication of melding Jewish and secular wisdom, in favor of the more generic and banal “Add Wisdom to Life.” Only vociferous protests from older alumni convinced the university to desist.128 Modern Orthodox parents have increasingly opted to steer their  David Berger, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London: Littman, 2001). 125  Fishkoff, The Rebbe’s Army, p. 12. 126  See Lawrence Grossman, “Decline and Fall: Thoughts on Religious Zionism in America,” in Chaim I. Waxman, ed., Religious Zionism Post Disengagement: Future Directions (Jersey City: Ktav, 2008), pp. 31–54. 127  “In one generation… the numbers of those [college students] majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30% to a total of less than 16%; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14% to 22%.” William W. Chace, “The Decline of the English Department,” American Scholar 78 (Autumn 2009), pp. 32–33. 128  Jennifer Siegel, “Yeshiva University Catching Flak for Dropping Old Hebrew Slogan,” Forward, Sept. 30, 2005, forward.com/news/1975/yeshiva-university.catching-flak-for-dropping-old-­­ hebrew-slogan. For more detail see Lawrence Grossman, “The Rise and Fall of Torah U’Madda,” Modern Judaism 41, Feb. 2021, pp. 71–91. 124

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children into pre-professional educational programs rather than the liberal arts. The haredi community, for its part, has moved in the same direction. It can now boast of successful professionals as well as businessmen in its ranks, even though the stress (for men) on spending more time on Torah study and the widespread fear of sending young men and women to secular, coed colleges has necessitated the formation of new, single-sex, culturally “safe” institutional settings to prepare people to become self-supporting. The economic downturn that began in 2008 and the prospective erosion of parental and grandparental financial support for “learning” are likely to further the trend toward professional training.129 But just as the longtime boundary markers between Orthodox subgroups eroded, new ones emerged. Committed to keeping its members within the fold amid an open American society, haredi Orthodoxy has created neighborhood enclaves, primarily in the New York City area but also elsewhere, where social pressure ensures adherence to distinctive communal dress codes and norms of behavior, and anyone who will not conform moves out. The heavy residential concentration of haredim has given such groups significant political clout, especially as revered rabbis are believed to be able to “deliver” a bloc vote. Municipal officials go to great lengths to accommodate religion-based demands that emanate from these communities even when they seem to grant special privileges, and politicians are sometimes tempted to tread warily when allegations of haredi criminal behavior arise.130 Haredim, then, have become much more politically visible—and therefore more exposed to scrutiny, jealousy, and resentment—than other Orthodox Jews. The same cultural insularity that encourages residential enclaves also breeds fear of all means of communication that threaten community values. Haredi Orthodoxy has launched a concentrated attack on the new digital media, particularly the internet, which it views as a far more potent danger to its way of life than television or the movies, whose influence had to be fought before. Haredi leaders well understand that the anonymity available on the blogosphere provides the opportunity for members of even the most insular Orthodox factions to participate on social media sites where questioning and even mocking received wisdom are common. While there are no statistics about haredi dropouts, the existence of organizations for ex-­ haredim and the publication of literature by and about them suggests that their numbers are growing.131 That the radical, postmodern individualism of American culture

 See Heilman, Sliding to the Right, pp. 140–79. In this regard American haredim differ markedly from their Israeli counterparts, whose leaders still distrust and resist secular studies, and advocate government subsidies for full-time male Torah study rather than working for a living. 130  Joseph Berger, “Out of Enclaves, a Pressure to Accommodate Traditions,” New York Times, August 22, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/nyregion/hasidic-jews-turn-up-pressure-­­ on-city; Adam Dickter, “Hynes Faces Critics, Challengers,” New York Jewish Week, March 13, 2013, http://thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/hynes-faces-critics-challengers; Shmarya Rosenberg, “Ultra-Orthodox Power Grows in Brooklyn,” Moment, September/October, 2013, p. 18. 131  See, for example, Hella Winston, Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005). 129

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that questions all authority can penetrate even the heart of haredi society is attested by a former Skver Hasid: What many of us now reject are, yes, rules and restrictions, but also, any worldview or philosophy that demands we act and behave in specific ways even when not personally meaningful; any dogma or doctrine that demands, without needing to justify it, that an individual respect authority—of tradition, of scholarship, of the great minds behind old ideas—simply because they declared: Trust us, this is good for you.132

Haredi rallies and rabbinic bans against internet and cell-phone use have proven unavailing, if for no other reason than the requirements of running a business.133 Efforts to stop Orthodox Jews from hearing ideas that conflict with the group’s worldview—by using filtering devices on computers, for example—are doomed to failure since the revolutionary nature of electronic communications technology makes it impossible to control the free flow of information. The new media and the even more intrusive means of communication sure to follow pose a serious challenge to the future of American haredi society. Modern Orthodoxy, for its part, with unfettered access to the world around it, faces an incipient split. On the one hand, there are those committed to a traditional understanding of Orthodox authority—and who thus share a certain affinity with the haredi world—but are also open to broader cultural vistas. On the other are Orthodox Jews profoundly affected by contemporary social values, and are thus more likely to espouse the postmodern deconstruction of ascribed categories and champion individual choice. The latter significantly differ, though, from their non-Orthodox counterparts, since their continuing Orthodox identification requires that the fruits of postmodernity be justified by Halakhah, Jewish law. This often entails reinterpretation of that law in ways unacceptable not only to haredim, but also to more traditionally oriented Modern Orthodox authorities. Not surprisingly, fault lines have opened on several key issues. One is whether Orthodox Judaism can tolerate the use of modern modes of inquiry in the search for truth when the subject is religiously sensitive. Orthodox attempts to come to grips with critical study of the Bible—an enterprise that Charles Liebman predicted in 1965 would eventually bring “explosive consequences”134— are generating heated disputes within the Modern Orthodox world. In 2007, Professor James Kugel—self-identified as Orthodox—published How to Read the

 Shulem Deen, “Why I Am Not Modern Orthodox,” July 2, 2013, http://zeek.forward.com/ articles/117822 133  Michael M. Grynbaum, “Ultra-Orthodox Jews Rally to Discuss Risks of Internet,” New York Times, May 20, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/nyregion/ultra-orthodox-jews-holdrally-­on-internet-at-citi-field.html; Shahar Ilan, “If we can’t stop the internet let’s at least rally against it,” Haaretz, February 12, 2013, http://www.haaretz.com.misc/article-print-page/if-we-­ can-t-stop-the-internet-let-s-at-least-hold-arally-against-it.premium-1.503065; Daniel Estrin, “Burn iPhones Says Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jew,” Huffington Post, September 25, 2012, http://huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/25/rabbi-chaim-kanievsky-burn-phone_ n_1912814.html 134  Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” p. 46. 132

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Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now,135 which starkly juxtaposed traditional Orthodox modes of interpreting the Bible with those in use by academicians, and insisted on their incompatibility. The large crowds that attended Kugel’s lectures at Modern Orthodox institutions, as well as the comments registered on his website136 demonstrated the intense interest that the tension between divine and human elements in scripture evokes among secularly educated adherents of Orthodoxy. But Modern Orthodox Jews who take literally the doctrine of Divine authorship of the Torah have defined Kugel out of Orthodoxy and expressed outrage that Yeshiva University allowed him to speak on campus.137 This internal Orthodox theological split widened in 2013 with the appearance of TheTorah.com, a new website devoted to encouraging Orthodox engagement with critical Biblical scholarship. While the site’s popularity, like the response to Kugel, indicated the existence of a real constituency for Orthodox involvement in the field, some rabbis condemned it as heretical. The Rabbinical Council of America, the voice of the Modern Orthodox rabbinate, announced that “the specific belief that Moshe received the Torah from God during the sojourn in the wilderness” was a bedrock principle of Jewish belief, and that any expression denying this “is unequivocally contrary to the faith requirements of historic Judaism.”138 Clearly, Orthodox academics prepared to analyze the Bible according to the canons of contemporary scholarship cannot live with such guidelines. They must break with the RCA and reinterpret the doctrine of Mosaic authorship of the Torah in non-literal terms.139 Even if intellectual challenges to Orthodoxy like this one can somehow be deflected and ideological schism prevented, more serious dangers to Orthodox unity loom, rooted in the very spirit of individual self-fulfillment and impatience with imposed categories that motivates the non-Orthodox groups. Such boundary issues as sexual orientation, feminism, and defining Jewish identity, which increasingly unite the non-Orthodox, are dividing the Orthodox. The official position of Orthodox authorities remains that homosexuality, called to’evah (abomination) in the Torah, is a serious sin that would, theoretically, merit the death penalty. And yet there is now an openly gay Orthodox rabbi who has written a book recounting his experiences and calling for acceptance of homosexuals, if not for specific homosexual acts. This rabbi has also performed same-sex commitment ceremonies. In addition, there are several organizations for Orthodox gays,

 James Kugel, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture. Then and Now (New York: Free Press, 2007). Kugel then taught both at Harvard and Bar-Ilan Universities; he has since retired from Harvard. 136  http://www.jameskugel.com 137  Yehuda Bernstein, “Dr. James Kugel: Kosher Enough for YU?” Commentator (student newspaper of Yeshiva College), Jan. 7, 2009; “YU Gives Platform to Famous Apikores,” http://www. vosizneias.com/25007/2008/12/31 138  Rabbinical Council of America, “RCA Statement on Torah Min HaShamayim,” July 31, 2013, http://www.rabbis.org/news/article.cfm?id=105768 139  For a comprehensive review of the issue see Marc B. Shapiro, “Is Modern Orthodoxy Moving Towards An Acceptance Of Biblical Criticism?” Modern Judaism, May 2017, pp. 165–193. 135

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and a film about homosexuality in the Orthodox community, Trembling Before God, has aroused broad sympathy for people who feel they must hide their sexual orientation if they are to function in Orthodox society.140 Even in culturally conservative Modern Orthodox circles there is much more understanding than ever before of gays and a willingness to accept them in synagogues and other Orthodox venues.141 An attempt to establish a student LGBTQ club at Yeshiva University, thwarted by the administration, drew national attention and judicial intervention.142 Since it is inconceivable that the Orthodox rabbinic leadership will drop the ban on homosexuality, the issue will likely continue to divide the community. Equally threatening to Modern Orthodox unity is disagreement over the religious role of women. Some of the old restrictions on women’s roles, based more on custom than black-letter law, have been relaxed among certain Orthodox groups. For example, many Orthodox women today study Torah—even the Talmud—intensively. The plight of the agunah, the woman who cannot remarry because her husband refuses to give her a Jewish divorce, is high on the Orthodox agenda, even though no universally acceptable solution has yet been found. The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), organized in 1997, vigorously advocates for these and other matters of concern to Jewish women.143 The slow and gradual appointment of women to positions of authority in Orthodox synagogues was capped in 2009 by the decision of Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale, New York, to start a program to train women as “full members of the clergy,” though they would not be called rabbis.144 In 2013 the first class of three women graduated with the title “Maharat,” a Hebrew acronym devised by Weiss to denote a female spiritual and religious leader. The program, by now a full-fledged seminary, was given the name Yeshivat Maharat.145 The movement to expand the role of women in Orthodoxy, and particularly Weiss’s step to grant them a status virtually equivalent to ordination, generated a strong backlash. Not only haredi rabbis but also many who, on other issues, identify as Modern Orthodox have launched attacks on Orthodox feminism, in some cases

 Steven Greenberg, Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004); Chaim I.  Waxman, “It’s All Relative: The Contemporary Orthodox Jewish Family in America,” Ideas: Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, Fall 2009, http://www.jewishideas.org/print/373; “Trembling on the Road,” http://www.filmsthatchangedtheworld.com.site 141  See especially Hayim Rapoport, Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004). 142  Adam Liptak, “Jewish University Loses Ruling in Suit Over L.G.B.T. Group,” New York Times, September 15, 2022, p. A16. 143  http://www.jofa.org 144  Anthony Weiss, “Orthodox Women to Be Trained As Clergy, If Not Yet As Rabbis,” Forward, May 29, 2009, http://forward.com/articles/106320 145  Ben Harris, “For graduates of Avi Weiss’ academy, ordination comes with controversy,” JTA, June 18, 2013, http://jta.org/2013/06/18/life-religion/for-graduates-of-avi-weiss-academyordination-comes-with-controversy 140

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identifying it as the central threat to Orthodoxy.146 The RCA issued a statement declaring it could not accept “either the ordination of women or the recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate regardless of the title,” since this “contradicts the norms of our community.”147 Since the RCA is the halakhic authority for the OU, that synagogue body could not avoid addressing the issue of female clergy as well. It appointed a seven-member rabbinic panel to explore the matter, which reported back after several months that “a woman should not be appointed to serve in a clergy position” even with a title other than “rabbi,” but that women could teach, advise, and do religious outreach. The OU accepted the ruling and, on February 1, 2017, issued a document explaining the decision, and also promised to expand the role of women within the organization.148 Subsequently, four OU member synagogues were found to be in violation of the newly enacted policy. OU officials visited each of them with the aim of convincing the congregational leadership to remove or reassign their female clergy. None showed an inclination to do so, and it was unclear whether the OU would consider taking action against these synagogues.149 What was clear from the outraged reaction of JOFA to the OU’s move150 was that further clashes over female clergy were inevitable, possibly leading to the emergence of a clear-cut distinction between feminist and anti-feminist versions of Modern Orthodoxy. An internal Orthodox dispute with even more serious potential long-range implications is over where to draw the boundary between Jew and non-Jew. For Orthodoxy, determining the criteria for conversion to Judaism has become an analogue to the challenge that intermarriage poses to the other denominations. On this issue, the Israeli connection is key, reflecting the umbilical relationship that has developed between American and Israeli Orthodoxy. American Orthodox Jews are intimately connected to their Israeli counterparts through repeated visits, years of study there by American young adults, and a rate of aliyah far higher than other sectors of American Jewry. Conflicts in Israel about the role of religion have immediate reverberations on these shores, and conversion is one of the most combustible of those conflicts.

 See Adam S. Ferziger, “Feminism and Heresy: The Construction of a Jewish Metanarrative,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77 (September 2009), pp. 1–53, and the sources cited in it. 147  “RCA Statement Regarding Recent Developments at Yeshivat Maharat,” May 7, 2013, http:// www.rabbis.org/news/article.cfm?id=105753 148  Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Exclusive: Orthodox Union Adopts New Policy Barring Women Clergy,” Forward, Feb. 2, 2017, http://forward.com/news/362043/orthodox-union-adopts-polcy-barring-­­ women-clergy The text of the rabbinic report can be found at https://www.ou.org/assets/Responses-­ of-­Rabbinic-Panel.pdf, and that of the OU statement at https://www.ou.org/assets/OU-Statement.pdf 149  Ben Sales, “Orthodox Union asks women clergy to change their titles,” JTA May 19, 2017, www.jta.org/2017/05/19/news-opinion/united-states/orthodox-union-asks-women-clergy-tochange-titles 150  “JOFA Advocacy Statement in Response to the OU’s Statement Regarding Women Clergy,” February 2, 2017, at https://www.jofa.org/Advocacy/advocacy_statements; 146

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In addition to ritual immersion and, for males, circumcision, Halakhah requires a convert to agree to live a Jewish life—that is, to observe Jewish law. This has been interpreted in various ways by different rabbis in different times and places. In Israel today, where the official Orthodox rabbinate makes the decisions, there is a large population of those who are not Jewish according to Halakhah, many of whom arrived as relatives of Jews who entered the country under the Law of Return, which grants Israeli citizenship to any Jew seeking it, and to his or her extended family. Within Israeli Orthodoxy there is a struggle between those who want to ease the absorption of such individuals into the Jewish people by minimizing the conversion requirements and demanding only minimal conformity to religious observance, and those holding out for commitment to follow Halakhah in its entirety. The latter have gradually taken control of the official Israeli rabbinate, and have gone so far as to retroactively annul conversions of people who went through the process but were later found to have violated Jewish law, as interpreted by the particular rabbinical judge assigned to the case.151 The candidacy of Rabbi David Stav for Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel in 2013—he was supported by many Modern Orthodox Jews in America—was in part an attempt to reverse the trend and introduce greater flexibility in the requirements for conversion, but Stav went down to defeat. The creation of a category of would-be Israeli converts in Jewish limbo—eerily similar, in some respects, to American patrilineal Jews—has consequences for the United States, since the religious status of American converts who move to Israel is at stake. Israeli authorities have pressured the RCA to adopt a new, centralized conversion standard in the U.S. that would meet Israeli specifications—a departure from the tradition of rabbinic autonomy that previously reigned. So far American Modern Orthodoxy—which performs the lion’s share of Orthodox conversions— has acquiesced to the Israelis, although not without bitter complaint. Americans converted years ago worry that the new, upgraded requirements might be used to nullify their conversions retroactively.152 In October 2013, the Israeli rabbinate rejected a letter written by Rabbi Avi Weiss certifying the Jewishness and single status of a couple that wanted to marry in Israel, a move that Weiss believed was meant to delegitimize him for “the institutions I’m involved with.” Rabbi Seth Farber, who heads an organization that helps people deal with the rabbinic bureaucracy in Israel, said that the number of such rejections of letters from American rabbis who were not on an “approved” list was increasing. Clearly, Israel-Diaspora friction over determining Jewish identity has become politicized, raising the prospect of a rift within Orthodoxy over who is a Jew.153  David Ellenson and Daniel Gordis, Pledges of Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policymaking in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodox Responsa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 121–164. 152  AJYB 2007, pp. 126–127; 2008, p. 143. Non-Orthodox observers have noted the irony that the very Modern Orthodox rabbis who denied the validity of their conversions and applauded the Israeli rabbinate’s similar denial were now seeing their own conversions denied. 153  Michele Chabin, “Fresh Skirmish In ‘Who Is A Jew’ Wars,” New York Jewish Week, October 18, 2013, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/israel-news/fresh-skirmish-who-jew-wars 151

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The long-simmering agunah issue, a central concern of Orthodox feminists, is also threatening a rift within Modern Orthodoxy. Its rabbinate, as represented by the RCA, has devised a prenuptial agreement designed to prevent husbands from withholding religious divorces from their wives, but does not require its members to use it, or even recommend its use when performing weddings. Others, including some liberal Orthodox rabbis, believe that Halakhah allows for a broader, more far-­ reaching solution whereby such marriages might be annulled, taking away the husband’s power to extort or punish his wife by holding back the Jewish divorce.154 Toward the end of 2013, the Orthodox feminist organization JOFA announced the formation of a new bet din (religious court) to deal with such cases, and Rabbi Simcha Krauss, named to head the effort, said it would seek “systemic Halakhic solutions.”155 Since the court was set up the following year it has freed hundreds of agunot by voiding their marriages through halakhic means, publicly explaining its reasoning while maintaining the anonymity of the parties.156 It is as yet unclear, however, whether the women this court certifies as unmarried will be considered as such by the RCA and the Modern Orthodoxy it represents—not to speak of the Haredi world—and this could create doubts about the legitimacy of any children they bear after remarriage. If the conversion controversy raises confusion over who is a Jew, the Israeli rabbinate does not accept the certification of certain American Orthodox rabbis that someone is Jewish, and the agunah controversy leads to a situation where women are considered married by some authorities but not by others, can Modern Orthodox schism be far behind? Underlining the seriousness of the crisis is that these fissures are finding institutional expression. Yeshiva University and the RCA, the seminary and rabbinic body that enunciate mainstream Orthodox ideology and define acceptable religious practice, now have their more liberal counterparts in Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, founded by Rabbi Avi Weiss in 1999 to produce rabbis committed to “Open Orthodoxy,” and the International Rabbinic Federation (IRF), launched in 2008 when it became clear that the RCA would not admit Chovevei graduates to membership. The IRF affirms “the right, responsibility and autonomy of individual rabbis to decide matters of Halakha for their communities,” denying the authority of the RCA, the Yeshiva University Talmud faculty, or any other body. Chovevei and the IRF not only advocate greater openness on intellectual challenges to Orthodoxy, on homosexuality, the role of women and conversion, but also seek collegial relations with the non-­ Orthodox denominations, a posture that few Yeshiva University and RCA rabbis  Jillian Scheinfeld, “Agunah Summit pushes for answers,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 27, 2013, http://www.jta.org/2013/06/27/news-opinion/agunah-summit-pushes-for-answers; Susan Aranoff, “Reviving the Rackman Beit Din,” Times of Israel, July 3, 2013, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/reviving-the-rackman-beit-din; Sharon Shenhav, “New hope for ‘agunot’? Jerusalem Post, July 7, 2013, http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=319050 155  Gary Rosenblatt, “New Agunah Court Announced,” New York Jewish Week, December 13, 2013, http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/gar-rosenblatt/new-agunah-court-announced 156  See internationalbeitdin.org/decisions 154

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share.157 Rabbi Asher Lopatin, who succeeded Rabbi Weiss in 2013 at the helm of Chovevei Torah, said that while he was willing to “sit down with the Satmar,” his “dream” was “to have Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hadar and Chovevei on one campus, to move in together. We’d each daven in our own ways….”158 It would be hard to imagine any RCA rabbi expressing similar sentiments. While leading figures in the non-Orthodox movements attended his installation, Orthodox leaders stayed away.159 At this point, the two wings of Modern Orthodoxy are not hermetically sealed off from each other, as several Yeshiva University-trained rabbis who sympathize with IRF positions belong to both the RCA and the IRF. Perhaps an even more important factor inhibiting an outright schism is the difficulty that the more liberal element has so far confronted in building a body of lay supporters. An attempt to do so was made in 1996 with the creation of Edah, whose tagline was “the courage to be modern and Orthodox,” and which aspired to develop “a mutually enriching relationship” between “Torah and Halakhah,” on the one hand, and “the modern world,” on the other. While it began energetically with impressive conferences and programs across the country that garnered media attention, Edah folded after ten years due to lack of funds.160 A successor organization, PORAT (People for Orthodox Renaissance and Torah), was launched in 2016. It listed among its priorities religious Zionism, gender equality, resolving the agunah problem, modernizing the process of conversion to Judaism, and ensuring “the place of gay and lesbian individuals in our community.”161 Whether PORAT will succeed in creating a strong lay constituency for a revived Modern Orthodoxy remains to be seen. Clearly, even as the non-Orthodox movements coalesce de facto or de jure, divisions within Orthodoxy are deepening and could possibly spawn new factions, if not denominations. Their nature, their relationships with each other, and their possible appeal to Jews outside of Orthodoxy lie in the realm of speculation.

 For the ideological underpinnings of Chovevei Torah see Avraham Weiss, “Open Orthodoxy! A Modern Orthodox Rabbi’s Creed,” Judaism 46, Fall 1997, pp. 409–21, and the school’s website, http://www.yctorah.org. The IRF mission is stated on its website, http://www.internationalrabbinicfellowship.org 158  Allison Hoffman, “The New ‘Morethodox’ Rabbi,” Tablet, April 29, 2013, http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/130760/ 159  Paul Berger, “Asher Lopatin Gets Less-Than-Warm Welcome from Orthodox World,” Forward, November 1, 2013, http://forward.com/articles/186116/asher-lopatin-gets-less-than-warmwelcome-from-orthodox-world 160  Information about Edah’s vision and activities is available on its website, www.edah.org, which is still up. 161  See its website, www.poratlonline,org 157

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Toward the Future The prominence of American Jews and the attention the Jewish community attracts make it easy to forget that the approximately 5.5–6.5 million “core” Jews make up only about 2.2% of the country’s population.162 As a tiny minority, Jews are strongly affected by trends in the broader American society. And just as Protestant denominationalism influenced the Reform-Conservative-Orthodox model that gradually emerged in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a century later, the weakening of Christian denominationalism provides the backdrop for the blurring of boundaries between Jewish movements. In 1988, only two years after Rabbi Gilbert Rosenthal predicted that the existing branches of Judaism “will probably continue to give American Jewry, as well as world Jewry, its uniquely piquant flavor,”163 the eminent scholar of American religion Robert T. Wuthnow argued for “The Declining Significance of Denominationalism.”164 He cited evidence of Christian ecumenism, the waning of economic and geographical distinctions between movements, the accelerating pace of denominational switching, and changes in attitudes—especially among young people—about the importance of religious differences, as symbolized by the election of a Catholic president in 1960 and rising rates of intermarriage not only between Christians of different denominations, but also between Christians and Jews. Wuthnow saw the old denominational differences becoming subordinated to a crosscutting ideological divide between religious liberals and conservatives, a development that James Davison Hunter fleshed out three years later and called the “culture wars.”165 Hunter argued that many conservative evangelicals, Catholic traditionalists and Orthodox Jews were finding that they had more in common with each other than they had with the liberals in their respective religious bodies. Yet two unique characteristics of American Jewry render the comparison with Christian groups inexact. First, the ideological balance in the Jewish community is far more strongly skewed in favor of the liberals than is the case among Protestants or Catholics. Among Jews, only the Orthodox show measurable support for conservative social and political positions, and even in that subgroup, as noted above, a modernist element has been adopting a more liberal outlook. Second, intermarriage has become increasingly common, even normative, in the non-Orthodox, predominantly liberal sector—58% of all Jews who have married since 2000 have a spouse  Survey of Jewish Americans, p. 23, explains the meaning of “core” and lays out other possible criteria for counting people as Jews that would lead to different results. The Pew survey has also produced an online interactive means to calculate Jewish population geared to different definitions of Jewishness. See “Calculate the Size of the U.S. Jewish Population” at http://www.pewresearch. org//2013/10/01/jewish-population-calculator 163  Rosenthal, Contemporary Judaism, p. 25. 164  The title of Chapter 5 of his book The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 71–99. 165  James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Control the Family, Art, Education, Law, and Politics in America (New York: Basic Books, 1991). 162

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who is not Jewish. The leadership of the Jewish community accepts and even legitimates the situation not only tacitly, but often explicitly.166 As the boundary between Jew and non-Jew in America becomes increasingly permeable, speculation about the future of the denominations may pale into insignificance as debate over the very survival of a coherent Jewish community takes center stage. Lawrence Grossman (Ph.D.  City University of New  York Graduate Center) taught history at Yeshiva University and then served as director of publications at the American Jewish Committee from 1982 to 2019. The author of more than 100 essays and reviews on Jewish history and contemporary Jewish life, he was the longtime editor of the American Jewish Year Book.  

 Jack Wertheimer, “Intermarriage: Can Anything Be Done?” Mosaic, September 2013, http:// mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2013/09/intermarriage/ 166

Perspectives from Demography and Geography Ira M. Sheskin

It has been said that the only ones who are wrong more often than economists are demographers. Thus, it is with some trepidation that I write on the future of American Jewish Religion from the perspective of a demographer of the Jewish community trained in the discipline of Geography. Contributing to this concern is the fact that so many have been so wrong with their predictions in the past. A few examples will suffice. • On May 30, 1934, a New York Times headline stated, “Religion Among Jews Found to Be Waning.” • On May 5, 1964, LOOK magazine ran a cover story by Thomas B. Morgan entitled “The Vanishing American Jew.” LOOK postulated that due to assimilation, low birth rates, and intermarriage, the American Jew would disappear by the end of the twentieth century. • In 1986, Israel, the Ever-Dying People, and Other Essays was published, exploring some of the difficulties of survival in the diaspora.1 • On September 28, 2008, New York Magazine in its 40th anniversary issue declared, “Success Ruined The New York Jew.” What makes this article unique is its startling thesis: As the New York Jew disconnects from rituals and observance, opting for “universalist” values above all else, then the New York Jew will become like everyone else in the universe. No more “New York Jew,” except as an ethnic curio.

 Simon Rawidowicz, Israel, The Ever-Dying People, and Other Essays (Translated by Benjamin C. I. Ravid) (New York: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986).

1

I. M. Sheskin (*) Department of Geography, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Chanes, M. Silk (eds.), The Future of Judaism in America, Studies of Jews in Society 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7_3

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• On October 5, 2008, Edgar Bronfman, a billionaire philanthropist, was interviewed in the New York Times Magazine. Mr. Bronfman was asked why he donates to Jewish causes instead of broader social causes. “There are not that many of us in the Jewish world who understand that we are ‘in crisis’” he responded. “We are not in crisis because of anti-Semitism; we are in crisis because we are disappearing through assimilation.” (However, note that US News & World Report found a Jewish “Return to Tradition” on December 13, 2008.) • One recent study by a renowned group of researchers predicted that in the next 80 years, America‘s Jewish population would decrease by one-third to 3.8 million if current fertility rates and migration patterns continue.2 • The January/February 2017 issue of Moment presented a symposium with both optimistic and pessimistic views by 16 demographers and other experts entitled “What Will the Jewish World Look Like in 2050?” • Upon publication of the Pew Research Centers reports in both 20133 and 2020,4 the American Jewish Year Book published essays by 16 researchers in 2013 and 17 researchers in 2020, with opinions that are both optimistic and pessimistic.5 In both years, sessions were held at the Association for Jewish Studies meetings around the Pew Research Center studies. The demise of the Jews has been predicted in the past as well. King Louis XIV of France, over 300 years ago, asked Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher, to provide proof of miracles. Pascal answered, “Why, the Jews, your Majesty–the Jews.” In his work Pensées Pascal opined that the fact that Jews had survived until the seventeenth century was nothing short of a supernatural phenomenon.6 Arnold Toynbee, in his classic twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of human civilizations, A Study of History (1934–1961), was troubled by the one exception to his universal rules governing the inexorable decline of every people. Only the Jews had survived, in defiance of Toynbee’s carefully reasoned analysis. Toynbee declared that the Jews were “a vestigial remnant,” a people destined to perish soon.7 Like Mark Twain, who read his own obituary in the newspaper, Jews can respond that the report of their death “is highly exaggerated.”

 Sergio DellaPergola, Uzi Rebhun, and Mark Tolts, “Prospecting the Jewish Future: Population Projections, 2000–2080,” in the American Jewish Year Book, 2000, Volume 100 (David Singer and Lawrence Grossman, editors) (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2006) pp. 103–146. 3   Pew Research Center. A Portrait of Jewish Americans. 2013. http://www.pewforum. org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/ 4   Pew Research Center. Jewish Americans in 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/ 5  Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M. Sheskin American Jewish Year Book 2014 (Cham, SUI: Springer) (Chapters 1–13) and Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M.  Sheskin American Jewish Year Book 2021 (Cham, SUI: Springer) (Chapter 2). 6  Blaise Pascal and Ernest Havet. Pensées. Dezobry et E. Magdeleine, 1852. 7  Toynbee, Arnold J. Study of History. Oxford University Press, 1946. 2

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To this day, experts on the American Jewish community debate the Jewish future. A 2017 issue of Moment magazine,8 with contributions from some of the most ­recognized experts in the American Jewish community9 present both reasons to be optimistic and reasons to be pessimistic. To assess the future of American Judaism, one must examine evidence related to both the “quantity” of people who identify as Jewish and the “quality” of that identification. That is, how many Jews live in the U.S. (quantity) and to what extent do these Jews express their Jewish identity by being “Jewishly connected” (quality). Thus, this chapter first examines the historical size of the American Jewish population (the “quantity” issue) and then looks at the issue of Jewish connectivity. It is difficult to make projections of the size of the Jewish population. At the start of the nineteenth century, who could have predicted the great migration of Jews from Europe to the US from 1880 to 1917? At the start of the twentieth century, who could have anticipated the size and geographic redistribution of the world Jewish population resulting from the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, and the large-scale migration of Jews from Europe and the Middle East to Israel? Thus, it is with great trepidation that this chapter attempts to prognosticate about the future of American Jews. As important as the number of Jews might be, one must examine the changing geographic distribution of American Jews for, indeed, there may be one future for the country as a whole and another future for individual Jewish communities. The manner in which the Jewish population has redistributed itself geographically is examined as this has resulted in different regions of the country and different Jewish communities having potentially different futures. Next, this chapter examines some overall measures of Jewish identity (the “quality” issue) for the country as a whole and the manner in which various measures of Jewish connectivity vary from community to community and from region to region. An important part of this analysis examines how these measures of Jewish identity vary over time, both nationally and locally.

 Johnson, George E. (Editor) “What Will the Jewish World Look Like in 2050, A Moment Symposium.” Moment Vol. 42, No. 1 (January/February 2017) pp. 44–55. 9  Sarah Bunin Benor, David Biale, Steven M. Cohen, Alan Cooperman, Arnold Dashefsky, Anita Diamant, Sylvia Barack Fishman, Samuel Heilman, William Helmreich, Bethamie Horowitz, Ari Y. Kelman, Barry A. Kosmin, Sergio DellaPergola, Leonard Saxe, Ira M. Sheskin, and Arnon Soffer. 8

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Data Sources Perhaps most helpful to this analysis is the fact that never have more data been available on the demography and geography of American Jews. In addition to the data from the National Jewish Population Surveys completed in 1971,10 1990,11 and 2000–01,12 and the 2013 and 2020 studies conducted by the Pew Research Center,13 more than 80 local Jewish communities have funded in-depth Jewish community studies of their Jewish federations’ service areas at least once since 1990 and reports and data from more than 200 such studies completed in the past 100 years can be found at the Berman Jewish DataBank (www.jewishdatabank.org). Also, the American Jewish Year Book has published a chapter annually on American Jewish demography for about 100 years.

Demographic Profile of the Jewish Population Before considering the demographic future of American Judaism, it is helpful to compare the U.S. Jewish population with the population at large, from which it differs in significant ways.14 For one thing it is somewhat older. Pew found that 29% of Jewish adults are age 65 and over, compared to only 20% of adults in the general public. The median age of Jewish adults is 49 years, compared to 46 years for the general public. The Jewish population is less fertile, averaging 1.5 children per adult aged 40 to 59, compared to 1.7 children in the public at large. The Jewish population is far better educated. Fifty-eight percent of Jewish adults have a four-year college degree, compared to 29% in the general public. Twenty-­ eight percent of Jews have a graduate degree, compared to 11% of the general public. The Jewish population is much wealthier. Fifty-four percent of Jewish households earned at least $100,000  in 2019, compared to 19% of the general public.

 Chenkin, Alvin 1972. Jewish Population of the United States, 1971. In American Jewish Year Book 1972 (Vol. 73), eds. Morris Fine and Milton Himmelfarb, pp. 384–392. New York: American Jewish Committee and Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. 11  Kosmin, Barry A. et al. 1991. Highlights of the CJF 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. (New York: the Council of Jewish Federations). 12  Kotler-Berkowitz, Laurence, Steven M. Cohen, Jonathan Ament, Vivian Klaff, Frank Mott, and Danyelle Peckerman-Neuman. 2003. The National Jewish Population Survey 2000–01: Strength, Challenge and Diversity in the American Jewish Population. New  York: United Jewish Communities. 13   Pew Research Center. A Portrait of Jewish Americans. 2013. http://www.pewforum. org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/ and Pew Research Center. Jewish Americans in 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americansin-2020/ 14   Pew Research Center. Jewish Americans in 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/ 10

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Ninety-­two percent of Jews are white, non-Hispanic, compared to 60% of the US general public. Ten percent of Jews are foreign born compared to 15% for the US general public. Average Jewish household size is 2.7 compared to 2.5 for the US general public. Forty-five percent of Jews live in the Northeast, compared to 17% of the US general public. Eleven percent of Jews live in the Midwest, compared to 21% for the US general public. Twenty-two percent of Jews live in the South compared to 38% of the US general public. About 23% of both Jews and the general public live in the West. Of the measures examined by Pew, only for the percentage who are currently employed (63% for Jews and 61% for the US general public) are Jews like the US general public. Two other important demographic trends in the Jewish community mirror the US general public. First, increasing proportions of adults are turning age 65 and choosing not to retire. For example, in Broward County (FL), in 1997, 3% of adults age 65 and over were employed full time compared to 16% in 2016.15 Second, young adults are not getting married until they are older. For example, in Miami in 1994, 47% of adults age 18–34 were married, compared to 27% in 2014.16 These basic demographic factors influence the future of American Judaism in significant ways. As shown above, Jews are a highly educated, high-income group. In American society, affluence and high levels of education often result in decisions to follow a more secular lifestyle.17 As a second example, delaying marriage and consequently having fewer children, often lead to a decision to join a synagogue at a more advanced age (related to delaying marriage) and a decision to leave synagogue life after a relatively fewer number of years because of low fertility. That is, with fewer children, the period of time when a family has at least one child in religious school or Jewish day school studying for a bar(t) mitzvah is shorter.

The Nature of Jewish Identity The problem of defining who is, and who is not, a Jew has been widely discussed.18 In broad terms, some define “being Jewish” solely in religious terms, while others recognize the ethnic component of being Jewish. The Pew Portrait of Jewish Americans in 202019 classified about 73% of the Jewish population as Jews by  Sheskin, Ira M. The 2016 Jewish Federation of Broward County Population Study: A Portrait of Jewish Broward (2017) (Broward County: The Jewish Federation of Broward County) Table 5-56. 16  Ira M.  Sheskin. The 2014 Greater Miami Jewish Federation Population Study: A Portrait of Jewish Miami (2015) (Miami: The Greater Miami Jewish Federation) pp. 5–123. 17  Pew Research Center, 2017. “In America, Does More Education Equal Less Religion? http://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-education-equal-less-religion 18  Sergio DellaPergola “Was It the Demography: A Reassessment of U.S.  Jewish Population Estimates, 1945–2001,” Contemporary Jewry, Volume 25 (2005) pp. 85–131. 19  Pew Research Center 2020 op cit. 15

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Religion and 27% as Jews of No Religion. In another finding, respondents were asked if being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry, culture, or religion. Fifty-six percent of respondents mentioned culture in their answer; 52% ancestry, and 36%, religion. (Note that respondents could select more than one answer.) During biblical times, Jewish identity was determined by patrilineal descent. During the rabbinic period, this was changed to matrilineal descent. In the contemporary period, officially, Orthodox and Conservative Jews only accept matrilineal descent (the practice in the Jewish community from the second century CE until the rise of the Reform movement in the nineteenth century), while Reform (as of 1983) and Reconstructing Jews accept, under certain circumstances, both matrilineal and patrilineal descent. Orthodox Jews only accept as Jews converts (known as “Jews by choice”) converted by Orthodox rabbis. All four branches believe that ethnic Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah (self-described Messianic Jews) should not be considered as still being Jewish. In Israel, the Orthodox establishment follows the matrilineal descent criterion, but the government, at least for the purpose of the Law of Return, defines Jews as persons with at least one Jewish grandparent. In general, social scientists using survey research have adopted the stance that all survey respondents who consider themselves to be Jewish will be counted as such with the exception of Messianic Jews.20 The vast majority of persons counted as Jews by social scientists were born or raised, at least partly, as Jews. A small percentage of survey respondents, counted by some social scientists, but not by others, were born or raised as Jews, but when asked if they currently consider themselves Jewish, answer in the negative. Most of these respondents are found, in fact, to be involved in Jewish practices and to be emotionally attached to Israel, but answer negatively to “considering themselves to be Jewish” because they are atheists, agnostics, or of “no religion.” However, they are clearly culturally and ethnically, even if not “religiously” Jewish, and almost all Jewish community studies do count them as Jews. A very small percentage of persons consider themselves Jewish and are involved in Jewish religious practice without having formally converted, often because they are married to a Jew. Thus, even within the broad definition used by social scientists, there are definitional issues which can result in researchers deriving different estimates of the Jewish population of a community.21 In sum, one reason for the uncertainty concerning the number of American Jews is the lack of consensus on whom to include and whom to exclude as part of that number.22  In the world Jewish population chapters in the American Jewish Year Book, Sergio DellaPergola provides four Jewish population estimates for all the countries of the world: Core Jewish Population (CJP), Population with a Jewish Parent (PJP), the Enlarged Jewish Population, and the Law of Return Population (LRP). 21  Debates over how to define Jews have occurred in other periods of history. During medieval times, for example, rabbinic authorities argued over whether to include Marranos or secret Jews resulting from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. 22  For a lengthy discussion of all the various options open to American Jews for participating (or not participating) in the American Jewish community, see Arnold Dashefsky, Ira Sheskin, & J.  Alan Winter. Jewish Options: Pluralistic American Identities and Communities in Pursuit of Continuity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield) (publication expected 2023). 20

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US Jewish Population 1780-2020 (in thousands)

8,000

7,250 7,000

Central European Immigration

Early Republic

Eastern European Immigration

6,544 6,136 6,000

6,000

5,532 4,975

5,000

Holocaust Survivors

3,605

3,000

2,350

2,000

Sources: Sarna, Jonathan D. 2019. American Judaism: A History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press (unl 1910) and American Jewish Year Book (1910 on)

1,058 875

1,000

2020

2010

2000

1850

1990

1840

1980

1830

1970

1820

1960

1810

1950

1800

1940

1790

280 1930

100 200 200

1920

15

1900

6

1910

5

1890

5

1880

5

1870

3

1860

3 1780

0

FSU Immigrants

5,921

5,000

4,228 4,000

5,941

Fig. 1  Growth of the U.S. Jewish Population

The Numbers of American Jews Figure 1 shows that the Jewish population has increased from about 3000 soon after the American revolution to about 5000 about 1810. Central European Jewish migration brought the total Jewish population to about 280,000 by 1880 when significant Jewish migration from Eastern Europe resulted in a Jewish population of 2.35 million by 1910 and almost five million by 1940. The current estimate of the US Jewish population is about 7.3 million, meaning that Jews are but 2.2% of the American population.23 The 7.3 million Jews represent about 44% of the 16.7 million Jews in the world.24 About 41% of world Jewry reside in Israel, so Israel and the US are the largest Jewish communities in the world. Figure 1 also appears to indicate that the U.S. Jewish population increased by more than a million between 1990 and 2020, from 5.94 to 7.25 million in 2020. Some of this increase no doubt was due to the significant influx of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The 2020 Pew Research Report shows that 10% of American Jews were either born in the FSU or  Ira M.  Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky. “United States Jewish Population, 2020,” in Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M.  Sheskin. (Editors) The American Jewish Year Book, 2020, Volume 120 (2020) (Cham, SUI: Springer) p. 170. 24  Sergio DellaPergola. “World Jewish Population, 2021,” in Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M. Sheskin. (Editors) American Jewish Year Book, 2021, Volume 121 (2021) (Cham, SUI: Springer) Chapter 7. 23

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are the children of Jews born in the FSU. A few tens of thousands were due to an influx of Hispanic Jews to South Florida25 along with other immigrants, including Israelis.26 Some of the apparent increase may have been due to improved estimating methods. The 7.25 million estimate for 2020, taken from the 2020 American Jewish Year Book (AJYB),27 results from collecting and aggregating information from more than 900 American Jewish communities. It is close to the 7.5 million estimate based on a state-of-the-art survey completed by the Pew Research Center in 202028 as well as to the 7.6 million arrived at by the American Jewish Population Project at Brandeis University.29 While I am confident that the 7.25 million is a realistic estimate, I also believe that pre-2000 studies, lacking access to a well-developed internet, undercounted the population. (Many of the AJYB estimates are obtained by searching the internet for reports on the number of Jews in various locales.) My judgment is that the American Jewish population is increasing, but not as quickly as suggested by the numbers in Fig. 1.

Geographic Profile of the Jewish Population The American Jewish population, as shown on Map 1 and Table 1 is geographically clustered. (In interpreting this map, note that the dots are placed randomly within each state.) Eight states have a Jewish population of 200,000 or more: New York (1,786,000); California (1,188,000); Florida (663,000); New Jersey (609,000); Pennsylvania (434,000); Massachusetts (302,000); Illinois (298,000); and Maryland (239,000). The four states with the largest shares of the Jewish population—New York (25%), California (16%), Florida (9%), and New Jersey (8%)—account for 27% of the entire U.S. population but 59% of the Jewish total. The largest percentages of Jews are found in New York (8.8%), the District of Columbia (8.3%), New Jersey (6.6%), Massachusetts (4.3%), and Maryland (3.9%).

 Sheskin, Ira M. The 2014 Greater Miami Jewish Federation Population Study: A Portrait of Jewish Miami (2015) (Miami: The Greater Miami Jewish Federation) p.  421 and Sheskin, Ira M. The 2014 Jewish Federation of Broward County Population Study: A Portrait of Jewish Broward (2017) (Davie: The Jewish Federation of Broward County) pp. 4–18. 26  Gold, Steven J. “Patterns of Adaptation Among Contemporary Jewish Immigrants to the US,” in Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M. Sheskin. (Editors) American Jewish Year Book, 2015, Volume 115 (2015) (Cham, SUI: Springer) pp. 3–44. 27  Sheskin, Ira M. and Arnold Dashefsky. “United States Jewish Population, 2021,” in Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M.  Sheskin. (Editors) The American Jewish Year Book, 2021, Volume 121 (2021) (Cham, SUI: Springer) Chapter 6. 28  Pew Research Center. Jewish Americans in 2020. 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/ 29  Saxe, L., D. Parmer, E. Tighe, R. Magidin de Kramer, D. Kallista, D. Nussbaum, X. Seabrum, and J. Mandell. 2020. American Jewish population estimates 2020: summary & highlights. 25

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Map 1  Jewish Population in U.S. 2021 Table 1  Changes in the Regional Distribution of American Jews Census Region Northeast Midwest South West Total

1937 69% 19% 7% 5% 100%

1960 67% 14% 9% 11% 100%

1972 63% 12% 12% 13% 100%

1984 54% 11% 18% 16% 100%

1997 48% 12% 21% 19% 100%

2021 45% 10% 22% 23% 100%

Source: Author from the American Jewish Year Book, 1938, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1998, and 2021

Table 2 shows the Jewish population and the general population for the 21 largest U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Where 39% of all Americans live in these areas, 79% of American Jews do, constituting 4.5% of the population. As a largely metropolitan population, Jews have the infrastructure (synagogues, Jewish Community Centers, and Jewish organizations, etc.) to choose the means of expressing their Jewish identity—including highly secular options. The New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL MSAs are 10.8% and 8.7% Jewish respectively, while the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA, Philadelphia-Camden-­ Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH, and San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA MSAs are all 4.6–6.8% Jewish. Thus, the Jewish

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Table 2  Jewish population in the top 21 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), 2021 MSA Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6

MSA name New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 7 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 8 Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL 9 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA 10 Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ 11 Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 12 San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA 13 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 14 Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI 15 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 16 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 17 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA 18 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 19 Denver Aurora-Lakewood, CO 20 St. Louis, MO-IL 21 Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD Total Population in Top 21 MSAs Total US Population Percentage of Population in Top 21 MSAs

Population Total 20,140,470 13,200,998 9,618,502 7,637,387 7,122,240 6,385,162

Jewish % Jewish 2,174,500 10.8 622,480 4.7 294,280 3.1 75,005 1.0 51,640 0.7 297,290 4.7

6,245,051

423,150

6.8

6,138,333 6,089,815 4,835,832 4,941,632 4,749,008 4,599,839 4,392,041 4,018,762 3,690,261 3,298,634 3,175,275 2,963,821 2,844,810 2,820,253 128,908,126 331,449,281 38.9%

535,500 119,800 98,750 257,460 244,000 23,625 71,750 62,350 64,800 100,000 51,350 90,800 61,300 117,800 5,772,630 7,266,140 79.4%

8.7 2.0 2.0 5.2 5.1 0.5 1.6 1.6 1.8 3.0 1.6 3.1 2.2 4.2 4.5 2.2

Notes: 1. www.census.gov/geographies/reference-­files/time-­series/demo/metro-­micro/delineation-­ files.html contains a list of the counties included in each MSA 2. Total population data are for April 1, 2020 3. Jewish population of 5,772,630 excludes 65,000 part-year residents included in MSAs 8, 13, and 18

population is large enough to support organizations and synagogues that present Jews with a significant number of options for being Jewish in most places. More options almost certainly increase the number of Jews who choose to maintain a Jewish identity and, thus, to a more positive future for a Jewish community Yet, it is also clear that most Jews make these choices within an overall environment in which most of their friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and co-workers are not Jewish.

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The Changing Geographic Distribution of American Jews Map 2 shows the manner in which the U.S. Jewish population has changed at the state level between 1980 and 2021. The number of Jews in New York decreased by 355,000 (17%), largely as a result of a decline from 1,998,000 to 1,786,000 in the New York City area. In percentage terms, the biggest decreases occurred in North Dakota (63%), South Dakota (58%), Mississippi (52%), and West Virginia (47%), all of which have small Jewish populations. The number of Jews in California increased by 434,000 (58%), reflecting increases particularly in San Francisco, Orange County, and San Diego, from 754,000 to 1,188,000. The number of Jews in Florida increased by 209,000 (46%), reflecting increases particularly in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, from 455,000 to 663,000. Other significant increases include New Jersey (166,000, 38%), especially reflecting migration from New York City to the suburbs in northern New Jersey; Georgia (94,000, 272%), reflecting most notably the growth in Atlanta; Texas (103,000, 143%), reflecting largely the growth in Dallas and Houston; Arizona (83,000, 200%), reflecting particularly the growth in Phoenix; Colorado (67,000, 210%), reflecting primarily the growth in Denver; Nevada (63,000, 364%), reflecting especially the growth in Las Vegas; Washington State (57,000, 310%), reflecting the growth in Seattle, Virginia (91,000, 154%), reflecting the growth in

Map 2  Changes in U.S. Jewish Population 1980–2021

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the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC; and Maryland (53,000, 28%), reflecting the growth in the Montgomery County suburbs of Washington, DC.

Migration and the Maintenance of American Jewish Religion The maintenance of Judaism in America requires the preservation of Jewish institutions. These include synagogues, Jewish Community Centers, regional federations and their agencies (such as Jewish Family Services, Jewish education agencies, day schools and preschools, etc.); mohalim (those who perform ritual circumcisions); Jewish camps, seminaries, mikva’ot (ritual baths), eruvim (unbroken, delimiting boundaries necessary for Orthodox Jews to carry items on the Sabbath outside their homes), Jewish funeral homes, Jewish cemeteries, kosher restaurants, kosher food stores, kosher butchers, Judaica stores, Jewish books stores, and Jewish newspapers and other media. Just as a department store cannot remain in business unless a certain minimum number of shoppers show up each week, each Jewish institution has a certain threshold number of “customers” needed for the institution to maintain itself. Improved transportation and communication over the past 50  years have increased the range or maximum distance that people are willing to travel to participate in certain Jewish activities. Thus, in many instances, the Interstate Highway System has made it possible for Jewish day schools to attract students from significant distances and the Internet (and the mail system) has extended the range of Judaica shops to the entire world. The Covid-19 pandemic has also lessened the impact of geography in that it is now possible to live further from Jewish institutions but participate virtually via Zoom. The extent to which this will improve the future of American Jewry seems significant, but as of this writing the jury is still out. Migration, however, has acted to put some Jews outside the range of existing Jewish institutions. They have been about twice as likely as other Americans to move.30 That a significant shift has occurred in the past few decades in the geographic location of American Jews is well documented by all three National Jewish Population Surveys (NJPS 1971,31 NJPS1990,32 and NJPS 2000–01,33), by the Pew Research Center studies, and by data presented annually in the American Jewish

 Sidney Goldstein and Alice Goldstein, Jews on the Move: Implications for Jewish Identity (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996). 31  Fred Massarik and Alvin Chenkin, “United States National Jewish Population Study,” in American Jewish Year Book, 1973, Volume 73 (David Singer and Lawrence Grossman, editors) (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1973) pp. 264–306. 32  Barry A. Kosmin, et al., Highlights of the CJF 1990 National Jewish Population Survey (New York: Council of Jewish Federations, 1991). 33  Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, et  al., Strength, Challenge and Diversity in the American Jewish Population (New York: United Jewish Communities, 2003) and Egon Mayer, Barry A. Kosmin, and Ariela Keysar, American Religious Identity Survey, 2001 (New York: The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2001). 30

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Year Book. Table 1 shows that in 1937, 69% of American Jews lived in the Northeast; 19% in the Midwest; 7% in the South; and 5% in the West. By 1984, the percentage in the Northeast had decreased from 69% to 54% and the percentage in the Midwest decreased from 19% to 11%. On the other hand, the percentage in the South increased from 7% to 18% and the percentage in the West increased from 5% to 16%. The decrease in the Northeast continued and was only 45% by 2021 with a continuing increase in the South to 22% and in the West to 23%.34 NJPS 1990 and NJPS 2000–01 confirmed this trend by examining the region of birth in each Census Region and noting that as of 2000 large percentages of Jews in the South and the West were born in the Northeast and the Midwest compared to 1990, although NJPS 2000–01 suggested a slowing of this trend. This has important implications. Six to seven million Jews within a short distance of existing Jewish institutions can meet the threshold numbers for those institutions. When Jews move to other areas of the country, outside the range of those institutions, some thresholds can no longer be met, and some institutions cease to exist. Note that while the Internet has allowed many people in dispersed locations to maintain a Jewish identity and to connect to the Jewish world, they generally do not join Jewish institutions and contribute to the community.35 Again, the impact of Covid-19 and Zoom has the potential to ameliorate this impact. Even within existing areas of Jewish settlement, the suburbanization process has moved Jews outside the range of many Jewish institutions, which as a result have had to close or move because of an inability to meet their threshold number of customers. The movement of Jews to the American suburbs has been one of the most profound geographic changes for the American Jewish community over the past seventy years, affecting both Jewish residential location and the location of Jewish institutions. Writing in 1989, Arthur Hertzberg summarized this process in the two decades after World War II as follows36: Between 1945 and 1965, about a third of all American Jews left the big cities and established themselves in the suburbs. The small-town synagogues which already existed in these areas were transformed into large, bustling congregations, and hundreds of new communities were created … In the 1950s and 1960s, at least a billion dollars were raised and spent building a thousand new synagogue buildings. It was the largest building boom in the history of American Jews.

Most of the recent local Jewish community studies support the fact that the suburbanization process has continued.37 Clearly, the migration of Jews has contributed  Updated from Ira M. Sheskin, Geographic Differences among American Jews, United Jewish Communities Series on the National Jewish Population Survey 2000–01, Report Number 8 (2005). Also available at www.jewishdatabank.org 35  Ira M. Sheskin and Micah Liben. “The People of the Nook: Jewish Use of the Internet” in The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics (Stanley D. Brunn, editor) (Cham, SUI: Springer, 2015) pp. 3831–3856. 36  Arthur Hertzberg. The Jews in America, Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989) p. 321. 37  See the Community Archive by State at www.jewishdatabank.org 34

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to the difficulty of maintaining American Jewish Religion, which depends both on numbers and geographic distribution. Whether at the regional or metropolitan scale, an important implication of this migration has been the need to rebuild Jewish institutions, at significant cost, to service new Jewish population centers. Funds that might otherwise have been devoted to programs to improve the quality of Jewish services and programs had to be diverted to capital projects to house those services and programs. In South Florida, for example, many retirees, while perhaps willing to pay synagogue dues, shy away from additional building funds. It is also important to recognize the impact of Jewish population size on the future of American Judaism at the community level. For example, while Miami’s Jewish population decreased from about 207,000 in 1980 to 123,000 in 2014, this community continues in a strong sense.38 True, some synagogues in some neighborhoods have closed, but the basic Jewish infrastructure remains intact and, in fact, has grown as the smaller population is more than enough to support the necessary Jewish infrastructure. On the other hand, consider a community like San Antonio (TX), with about 9200 Jews.39 A similar percentage decrease in its Jewish population would almost certainly mean the closing of much of the existing Jewish infrastructure. Thus, to the extent that Jewish population decreases occur in the future, such decreases will have differential impacts on different communities.

J ewish Connectivity and the Future of American Jewish Religion What will happen to the size of the American Jewish population in the future? Seven main forces contribute to the population change of an ethnic or religious group within a given country: (A) Birth rate (B) Death rate (C) Migration into the country (D) Migration out of the country (E) Accessions to Judaism (converts) (F) Secessions from Judaism (“drop-outs”) (G) The intermarriage rate40

 Sheskin, op. cit. 2018, p. 3–11.  Sheskin, Ira M. The Jewish Community Study of San Antonio (2007) (San Antonio, TX: The Jewish Federation of San Antonio). 40  For data on intermarriage rates, see I. Sheskin & H. Hartman. 2015. The Facts about Intermarriage, Journal of Jewish Identities, 8(1): 51–73. 38 39

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As noted above, the American Jewish birth rate (A) is quite low. Given the older nature of the American Jewish population, the death rate (while unknown) (B) is doubtlessly relatively high. Thus, changes in the size of the US Jewish population due to birth and death rates would indicate that we can expect a natural decrease in the American Jewish population. Net migration (migration into the country (C) minus migration out of the country (D)) is, at least at present, not significant in population change, although the impact of the last significant migration of Jews from the former Soviet Union around 1990 was significant. There is little indication that conversion to Judaism (E) is significant. Thus, we might expect decreases in the size of the American Jewish community due to the inability of the Jewish community to convince the next generation that maintaining a Jewish identity and raising their children as Jews will improve the quality of their lives. Persons of Jewish heritage will certainly increase in number over time, as it is difficult to imagine a situation that would lead to the physical annihilation or mass emigration of American Jews. The real question is whether Americans of Jewish descent will continue to identify with the Jewish religion and/ or with the Jewish people in an ethnic sense, and thus continue to count themselves as “Jewish.” The number of secessions, then, will probably drive the size of the American Jewish community in the future. Some have argued that we can expect an increase in Jewish population due to intermarriage. The logic is as follows. If two Jews marry one another and produce two Jewish children, the population will increase less than if two Jews marry non-­ Jews and produce four Jewish children. This argument only works if we assume that more than 50% of intermarried couples raise their children to be Jews and if those children remain Jewish as adults. The available evidence is not strong for either of these points. To examine Jewish continuity measures as indicators of the future of American Judaism, it is helpful to analyze both data from national Jewish population surveys and local Jewish community studies and as well as temporal variations in measures of Jewish continuity.

Temporal Variations in National Studies Although comparing the results of NJPS 1990, NJPS 2000–01, Pew 2013, and Pew 2020 is imprecise because of differences in methodology,41 it is still instructive. Let’s consider four critical variables: synagogue membership, intermarriage, identification as Jews by Religion and Jews of No Religion, and Jewish identification.

 Rebhun, Uzi. The Golden Jubilee of the First National Jewish Population Survey: A Critical Assessment of the Demographic Study of US Jewry, 1970–2020,” in Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M.  Sheskin. (Editors) American Jewish Year Book, 2022, Volume 122 (2022) (Cham, SUI: Springer) Chapter 1. 41

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In 1990 (adjusting the 2000–01 NJPS results so that the 2000–01 sample better reflects the 1990 sample yields), 33% of Jewish households were synagogue members. Pew 2013 reports 31% and Pew 2020 reports 35%. Thus, no significant change has occurred in synagogue membership since 1990. In 1990, 45% of married couples in Jewish households were intermarried. In NJPS 2000–01, the percentage increased to 48%, again indicating little change since the 48% is within the margin of error of the 45%. The rate was 44% in 2013 and 42% in 2020. Note that one reason the rate does not change significantly is that we are looking at all existing married couples in each year. See below for results that show that more recent marriages are more likely to be intermarriages. In 1990, 20% of Jews were Jews of No Religion (JNR) and 80% were Jews by Religion (JBR). In 2013, 22% of Jews were JNR. This increased to 27% in 2020. While this is a significant increase, it could be, in part, a consequence of Pew 2020 widening the definition of a JNR to include people who identified as Jewish because of their “ancestry.” In 1990, 30% of respondents identified as Just Jewish, rather than as Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. This percentage decreased to 26% in 2000–01 and then increased to 36% in 2013 and 2020. Although this increase is in the expected direction, the magnitude of the increase may be attributable to the fact that in NJPS 1990 “Just Jewish” was not offered as a possible response to the respondents (rather, respondents either volunteered this response or another similar response was categorized as Just Jewish) whereas in NJPS 2000–01 “Just Jewish” was read as a possible response to the respondents. Although the national studies support the conclusions of local Jewish community studies, I believe the differences are not as great as many Jewish community observers claim. The Pew Research Center’s 2013 A Portrait of Jewish Americans re-analyzed data from NJPS 2000–01 to make it as comparable as possible to the 2013 results. Some of the comparisons: • The percentage of Jews who participated in a Passover Seder in the past year decreased from 78% in 2000 to 70% in 2013 to 62% in 2020. • The percentage of Jews who fasted for all or part of the day on Yom Kippur decreased from 60% in 2000 to 53% in 2013 to 46% in 2020. • The percentage of Jews who always or usually light Sabbath candles decreased from 28% in 2000 to 23% in 2013. In 2020, Pew asked if the respondent often/ sometimes marked Shabbat in a meaningful way and 39% responded in the affirmative. • An examination of the intermarriage data in the 2020 Pew study suggests that the percentage of Jews with a non-Jewish spouse among new marriages has increased from 18% for marriages that occurred before 1980 to 42% of marriages in the 1980s, 37% of marriages in the 1990s, 45% of marriages in the 2000s, and 61% of marriages in the 2010s. Thus, although the overall intermarriage rate, as shown above for all existing married couples has not changed much, more recent marriages are much more likely to be intermarriages.

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• The percentage of Jews who feel very or somewhat attached to Israel remains virtually unchanged from 2000–2013 at about 69%. But this percentage decreased to 58% in 2020.42 So there was some diminution of Jewish connectivity between 2000 and 2020.

Geographic Variations in Jewish Connectivity If the future of American Jewish religion is related more to convincing Jews to maintain their Jewish identity than to demographic factors, than it is important to examine the extent to which American Jews are connected both religiously and culturally in different geographic areas. A major conclusion is that the American Jewish future depends very much on geography. That is, the “future” of Judaism in America will not be the same throughout the country. Some communities will thrive and others will struggle or disappear. Table 3 examines the Pew 2020 data for 16 measures of Jewish continuity for the U.S. Census Divisions. The strength of religious and ethnic attachment clearly varies by division. Note that these measures of Jewish continuity are higher in the Northeast for ten of these measures and close to highest for another four. Twelve of the measures are lowest in the West. For example, for respondents attending synagogue services once per month or more, the percentage is highest in the Northeast (26%) and lowest in the West (14%). As a second example, 39% of respondents in the Northeast report that all or most of their close friends are Jewish, compared to only 22% in the Midwest, 28% in the South, and 19% in the West. On the whole, then, the picture is much more positive for Jewish continuity in the Northeast than in the West. Another interesting finding is that the South has the highest measures for the three Jewish cultural connections as well as for Chabad participation. Clearly some sections of the country will have an easier time maintaining a strong Jewish community than others. The same type of significant geographic variation can be found at the community level. Almost all local Jewish community studies examine population size, geography and mobility, demography, religious practice, intermarriage, membership, Jewish education, familiarity with and perception of Jewish agencies, social service needs, Israel, anti-Semitism, use of the media, and philanthropy. These data provide indications as to the likelihood that a given local Jewish community will be successful in transmitting Jewish heritage from generation to generation. Some Jews will deepen and share their Jewish connections while others will assimilate or ignore them. Three factors important in measuring Jewish continuity can be used to illustrate these differences: synagogue membership, intermarriage, and Just Jewish

 Sheskin, I. M. 2012. Attachment of American Jews to Israel: Perspectives from Local Jewish Community Studies, Contemporary Jewry, 32 (1): 27–65. 42

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Table 3  Geographic Variations in Jewish Continuity Measures by Census Region Variable Northeast Overall measures of connectivity Respondent is Just Jewish 33% Respondent is Orthodox 17% Being Jewish is very important 50% Traditional measures related to level of religious observance Synagogue membership 41% Respondent Attends Synagogue 26% Once per Month or More Hold/Attend Passover Seder 72% in the Past Year Fast all or part of day on Yom Kippur 55% Keep a Kosher Home 25% Jewish cultural connections Go to Jewish film festivals or see out Jewish films ** 25% Listen to Jewish/Israeli music ** 39% Read Jewish literature, biographies, or books on 47% Jewish history ** Jewish peoplehood measures I have a responsibility to help Jews in need around the 32% world (a great deal) All or Most of Respondent’s Close Friends Are Jewish 39% Respondent Has Been to Israel 51% Very/somewhat emotionally attached to Israel 62% Other Participate in activities or services provided by 16% Chabad **

Midwest South West All 36% 5% 44%

37% 5% 40%

42% 37% 1% 9% 33% 42%

42% 21%

33% 19%

27% 36% 14% 21%

62%

59%

52% 63%

44% 16%

46% 15%

35% 47% 8% 17%

21% 34% 39%

30% 42% 49%

24% 26% 29% 37% 39% 44%

32%

32%

19% 29%

22% 38% 55%

28% 43% 61%

19% 30% 42% 42% 52% 59%

14%

21%

13% 17%

Source: Author from Pew Research Center 2020 ** often/sometimes

identification.43 All three factors illustrate that the extent of “Jewishness” varies significantly from community to community as seen in Tables 4, 5, and 6. Synagogue Membership44  Table 4 shows the percentage of synagogue member households for 45 Jewish communities that completed scientific Jewish community studies from 2000–2018. Synagogue membership usually involves a significant dues payment and is considered a basic measurement of the extent to which a house Updated from Sheskin, Ira M. (2018) Comparisons of Jewish Communities: A Compendium of Tables and Bar Charts (New York: Berman Jewish DataBank and The Jewish Federations of North America, 2015) published on www.jewishdatabank.org. For a set of similar tables see Sheskin, Ira M. (2001). How Jewish Communities Differ: Variations in the Findings of Local Jewish Demographic Studies (New York: City University of New  York, North American Jewish Data Bank) at www.jewishdatabank.org and www.bjpa.org 44  I.  Sheskin & Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz. 2007. Synagogue, JCC, and Jewish Organization Membership: Who Joins? Journal of Jewish Communal Service, 82(3): 271–85. 43

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Table 4  Synagogue Membership—Community Comparisons Community Cincinnati Tidewater St. Paul Minneapolis Pittsburgh Hartford San Antonio Lehigh Valley Bergen Jacksonville Howard County St. Louis Baltimore Westport Sarasota New York Houston Middlesex Atlantic County New Haven Rhode Island Cleveland Detroit Columbus Boston Washington Miami Chicago Philadelphia Omaha Broward Portland (ME) Atlanta South Palm Beach Denver Tucson West Palm Beach Indianapolis San Diego Phoenix

Year 2008 2001 2004 2004 2002 2000 2007 2007 2001 2002 2010 2014 2010 2000 2001 2011 2016 2008 2004 2010 2002 2011 2018 2013 2005 2003 2014 2010 2009 2017 2016 2007 2006 2005 2007 2002 2005 2017 2003 2002

% 60 58 56 54 53 53 52 51 50 49 48 46 46 46 45 44 44 44 44 43 43 42 39 38 38 37 36 36 35 34 34 33 33 33 32 32 30 29 29 29 (continued)

I. M. Sheskin

72 Table 4 (continued) Community San Francisco East Bay Seattle St. Petersburg Las Vegas

Year 2004 2011 2000 2017 2005

% 22 21 21 15 14

Source: Author from data available at www.jewishdatabank.org

hold is connected to a community. It is the case, however, that reported percentages in surveys are overestimates of actual synagogue membership.45 The proportion of households reporting synagogue membership varies from 14%–15% in Las Vegas and St. Peterburg to 60% in Cincinnati. Of the seven communities with the lowest synagogue membership, six are in the West: Denver (32%), San Diego (29%), Phoenix (29%), San Francisco (22%), East Bay [CA] (21%), Seattle (21%), and Las Vegas (14%). In these seven communities, the percentage of locally born Jews is low—a situation where it is common for households with a prior affiliation not to join a synagogue in their new community. Many social scientists have noted that those who move to the West often do not belong to traditional households. National studies of American religious behavior have noted that the West contains the greatest percentage of the “unchurched.”46 Tidewater Virginia (Norfolk/Virginia Beach) offers an interesting case study.47 The 58% synagogue membership rate in this community is the second highest of the almost 60 communities canvased. Given that intermarriage in this community is very high and levels of home religious practice are about average, the high synagogue membership rate may be surprising. However, in small southern communities, where the church membership rate is quite high, acculturation may actually be expressed by joining a “Jewish church.” Also, in Tidewater, the 37% of intermarried couples who are synagogue members is the second highest percentage of 55 comparison communities. Note that the other small southern communities in the table (with the exception of Orlando, which has many new residents) have synagogue membership rates above the median: San Antonio (52%), Jacksonville (49%), and Sarasota (45%). Larger communities tend to have low synagogue membership rates. Five of the six largest Jewish communities in the table (excluding the Florida retirement communities) have below median synagogue membership rates: Washington (37%),  For an analysis of the disparity between reported and actual synagogue membership, see Ira M.  Sheskin, The 2016 Jewish Federation of Greater Houston Population Study: A Portrait of Jewish Houston (2017) (Houston: The Jewish Federation of Greater Houston) Table 7-7. 46  See, for example, Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Bachman. One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (New York: Harmony Books, 1993). 47  Sheskin, Ira M. The United Jewish Federation of Tidewater Community Study (2002) (Virginia Beach: The United Jewish Federation of Tidewater). 45

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Chicago (36%), Philadelphia (35%), Atlanta (33%), and San Francisco (22%). This finding is consistent with sociological theories suggesting that persons in large cities tend to be less involved in their communities than those in small cities. Intermarriage  Table 5 shows couples’ intermarriage rates for 46 Jewish communities. Although some intermarried couples are contributing significantly to the Jewish community, it is also clear that when measures of “Jewishness” for intermarried and in-married couples are compared, intermarriage detracts from Jewish continuity. Levels of religious practice, membership in the organized Jewish community, Jewish philanthropy, and other involvement in Jewish activity are particularly low in intermarried households.48 In San Antonio, for example, 98% of in-married households are involved Jewishly in some way, compared to only 80% of intermarried households. And while many intermarried couples have at least some Jewish activity evident in their household, on individual measures, intermarried households are generally much less Jewishly connected than in-married households. For example, 77% of in-married households donated to the Jewish Federation of San Antonio in the past year, compared to only 34% of intermarried households. Likewise, 78% of Jewish respondents in in-married households feel very much or somewhat a part of the San Antonio Jewish community, compared to just 34% of Jewish respondents in intermarried households. Only 39% of children in intermarried households in San Antonio are being raised Jewish (which is about average among about 50 American Jewish communities for which such data are available), which does not portend well for Jewish continuity.49 Table 5 shows that the intermarriage rate varies from 9% in South Palm Beach to 61% in Portland (ME) and East Bay. Note that four of the seven Jewish communities with the lowest couples intermarriage rates (rates of 20% or lower) are retirement communities, mostly in Florida. Five of the eight Jewish communities with intermarriage rates in excess of 53% are western communities, including East Bay (61%), Seattle (55%), San Francisco (55%), and Denver (53%). Just Jewish Identification  Table 6 shows Just Jewish identification for 45 Jewish communities. Jewish respondents have generally been asked whether they consider themselves Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, or “Just Jewish.” Jewish identification is based on self-definition and is not necessarily based on synagogue membership, ideology, or religious practice. In fact, discrepancies between Jewish identification and practice are sometimes evident. For example, respondents may identify as Orthodox or Conservative, but report that they do not keep kosher. Respondents may identify as Reform but say they never attend synagogue services. Conversely, some respondents who identify as Just Jewish are synagogue members.50  Cohen, Steven M. “A Tale of Two Jewries, The ‘Inconvenient Truth’ for American Jews” Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, 2006. 49  Ira M. Sheskin, The Jewish Community Study of San Antonio (San Antonio: Jewish Federation of San Antonio, 2007). 50  See also Bernard Lazerwitz, J.  Alan Winter, Arnold Dashefsky, and Ephraim Tabory, Jewish Choices: American Jewish Denominationalism (SUNY Series in American Jewish Society in the 1990s) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). 48

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74 Table 5  Intermarriage—Community Comparisons Community Portland (ME) East Bay Omaha St. Petersburg Indianapolis Seattle San Francisco Denver Columbus Atlanta Las Vegas St. Louis Tucson Boston San Diego Jacksonville Tidewater Washington Phoenix Houston St. Paul Cleveland San Antonio Pittsburgh Lehigh Valley Cincinnati Rhode Island New Haven Chicago Minneapolis Westport Detroit Howard County Philadelphia Atlantic County Broward Hartford New York Baltimore Sarasota

Year 2007 2011 2017 2017 2017 2000 2004 2007 2013 2006 2005 2014 2002 2005 2003 2002 2001 2003 2002 2016 2004 2011 2007 2002 2007 2008 2002 2010 2010 2004 2000 2018 2010 2009 2004 2016 2000 2011 2010 2001

% 61 61 58 56 55 55 55 53 52 50 48 48 46 46 44 44 43 41 40 39 39 38 37 36 36 34 34 34 33 33 33 30 29 28 26 23 23 22 20 20 (continued)

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Table 5 (continued) Community Bergen Miami West Palm Beach Middlesex South Palm Beach

Year 2001 2014 2005 2008 2005

% 17 16 16 14 9

Source: Author from data available at www.jewishdatabank.org Table 6  Just Jewish—Community Comparisons Community Portland (ME) St. Petersburg Las Vegas Omaha East Bay Tucson Indianapolis San Francisco Broward New York St. Paul Sarasota Jacksonville New Haven Minneapolis Rhode Island Seattle Westport Washington Hartford Houston Miami Columbus San Diego Detroit Denver Lehigh Valley San Antonio Bergen Middlesex W Palm Beach Atlantic County St. Louis

Year 2007 2017 2005 2017 2011 2002 2017 2004 2016 2011 2004 2001 2002 2010 2004 2002 2000 2000 2003 2000 2016 2014 2013 2003 2018 2007 2007 2007 2001 2008 2005 2004 2014

48% 47% 47% 46% 45% 44% 43% 40% 37% 37% 37% 37% 36% 35% 35% 35% 35% 35% 34% 34% 33% 33% 33% 32% 31% 31% 31% 30% 30% 29% 29% 29% 28% (continued)

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Table 6 (continued) Community Phoenix Tidewater S Palm Beach Howard County Cincinnati Baltimore Philadelphia Atlanta Boston Pittsburgh Cleveland Chicago

Year 2002 2001 2005 2010 2008 2010 2009 2006 2005 2002 2011 2010

28% 28% 26% 25% 22% 20% 18% 18% 18% 18% 16% 14%

Source: Author from data available at www.jewishdatabank.org

The percentage of respondents who identify as Just Jewish varies from 14% in Chicago to 48% in Portland (ME). The percentage of respondents who reply Just Jewish is, in many ways, indicative of the size of the population that does not feel connected to the Jewish community or to the Jewish religion. However, the Just Jewish are not a uniform group and large percentages are involved in Jewish activity. For example, in South Palm Beach, 86% of Just Jewish households are involved in some type of Jewish activity as defined by that study.51 Differences in the Jewish behaviors of the Just Jewish exist by community. For example, in Detroit, 59% of the Just Jewish always or usually participate in a Passover Seder, compared to 32% in Las Vegas. As a second example, in Detroit, 29% of the Just Jewish contributed to the Jewish Federation in the past year, compared to 12% in Las Vegas.52

Temporal Variations in Local Communities Tables 7, 8, and 9 show temporal variations in the same three variables: synagogue membership, intermarriage, and Just Jewish identification. For each of the communities included in these tables, two random digit dial studies had been completed in the years shown in the first column of the table after each community’s name.

51  Ira M.  Sheskin, The Jewish Community Study of Southern Nevada (Las Vegas: The Milton I. Schwartz Hebrew Academy and United Jewish Communities of Las Vegas, 2007) Table 6-1 and Ira M.  Sheskin, The Jewish Community Study of Detroit (Detroit: The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, 2007) Table 6-1. 52  Ira M.  Sheskin, The Jewish Community Study of South Palm Beach (Boca Raton: Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, 2006) Table 6-1.

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With the exception of West Palm Beach (six years) and Houston (30 years), the time between studies varies from nine to twenty years. Given the sample sizes in most surveys, only differences of at least six percentage points between the first and second studies indicate that an important change has occurred. Note that while the tables only include communities in which the two studies were conducted with relatively comparable sampling methods and in which the question was asked in an exact or almost exact manner in both years, in some cases slight changes in sampling method and question wording may account for a part of the change. Synagogue Membership  Table 7 shows temporal variations in synagogue membership. Los Angeles (eight percentage points) and Broward County, FL (seven percentage points) are the only communities that show a significant increase in synagogue membership. The second Los Angeles study was in 1997 and may not reflect current trends in the twenty-first century. The increase in Broward County is due to a significant change in the demographics of the community. While Broward remains a retirement center, the percentage of households with four or more members increased form 12% in 1997 to 21% in 2016 and larger households are more likely to join synagogues.53 Fifteen communities showed no significant change in synagogue membership. Ten communities show significant decreases, including Cleveland (ten percentage points), St. Louis (ten percentage points), Milwaukee (11 percentage points), San Francisco (11 percentage points), Columbus (12 percentage points), Seattle (12 percentage points), and Las Vegas (20 percentage points). Intermarriage  Table 8 shows temporal variations in the couples intermarriage rate for 28 Jewish communities. As would be expected, none of the 28 communities show a decrease in the intermarriage rate. But, 13 of the 28 communities show a couples intermarriage rate that has increased by less than six percentage points. The largest increases occurred in San Francisco (28 percentage points over 18 years), Rhode Island (26 percentage points over 15 years), St. Louis (23 percentage points over 19 years), Las Vegas (22 percentage points over 10 years), and Atlantic County (21 percentage points over 19 years). These changes occurred, for the most part, for communities with studies completed more than 10  years apart. Four of the nine highest increases are in the West. Just Jewish Identification  Table 9 shows temporal variations in the percentage of respondents who identify as Just Jewish for 25 Jewish communities. Four of the largest changes (a 17 percentage point increase in Hartford, a 15 percentage point decrease in Atlanta, a 12 percentage point increase in Atlantic County, NJ, and a nine percentage point increase in Rochester) are probably due to changes in ­question wording where in one year “Just Jewish” was read explicitly as a choice and in the other year the question was read as “Do you consider yourself Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or something else?”. The increases are consistent with the 2013 and 2020 Pew Research Center finding that an increasing percentage of Jews 53

 Sheskin, op. cit., 2017. Table 5-26.

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Table 7  Temporal Changes in Synagogue Membership Community Los Angeles 79–97 Broward 97–16 Boston 95–05 Sarasota 92–01 New York 02–11 Rhode Island 87–02 Tidewater 88–01 Rochester 86–99 Philadelphia 97–09 Washington 83–03 Miami 04–14 South Palm Beach 95–05 Atlanta 96–06 Phoenix 83–02 Denver 97–07 Baltimore 99–10 Chicago 00–10 Atlantic County 85–04 Hartford 82–00 Houston 86–16 West Palm Beach 99–05 Cleveland 96–11 St. Louis 95–14 Detroit 05–19 San Francisco 86–04 Columbus 01–13 Seattle 90–00 Las Vegas 95–05

Earlier Study 26% 27% 41% 43% 43% 43% 58% 55% 37% 39% 39% 36% 37% 33% 37% 52% 42% 51% 60% 51% 37% 52% 56% 50% 33% 50% 33% 34%

Later Study 34% 34% 43% 45% 44% 43% 58% 54% 35% 37% 36% 33% 33% 29% 32% 46% 36% 44% 53% 44% 30% 42% 46% 39% 22% 38% 21% 14%

Increase/(Decrease) (in percentage points) 8 7 2 2 1 0 0 (1) (2) (2) (3) (3) (4) (4) (5) (6) (6) (7) (7) (7) (7) (10) (10) (11) (11) (12) (12) (20)

Source: Author from data available at www.jewishdatabank.org

can be defined (in Pew terminology) as “Jews of No Religion.” Thirteen of the 25 communities show changes within the five-percentage point margin of error for this variable. All three tables display similar patterns. Of the 82 temporal variations examined for the three variables, 45% are within the margins of error of five percentage points. Only a very few communities show “improvements” in Jewish continuity. A significant number show decreases in synagogue membership and increases in both the couples intermarriage rate and Just Jewish identification that indicate cause for concern about Jewish continuity. While these results portray an American Jewish community that overall clearly displays Jewish continuity concerns, the extent of the “problem” varies by community.

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Table 8  Temporal Changes in Couples Intermarriage Rate Community San Francisco 86–04 Rhode Island 87–02 St. Louis 95–14 Las Vegas 95–05 Atlantic County 85–04 Phoenix 83–02 Seattle 90–00 Detroit 05–18 Boston 95–05 Denver 97–07 Atlanta 96–06 Milwaukee 83–96 Washington 83–03 Houston 86–16 Columbus 01–13 Philadelphia 97–09 Broward 97–16 West Palm Beach 99–05 Los Angeles 79–97 Miami 04–14 Baltimore 99–10 Chicago 00–10 Sarasota 92–01 South Palm Beach 95–05 Hartford 82–00 Cleveland 96–11 New York 02–11 Rochester 86–99 Tidewater 88–01

Earlier Study 27% 8% 25% 26% 5% 24% 40% 16% 32% 39% 37% 16% 29% 30% 45% 22% 18% 11% 19% 12% 17% 30% 17% 6% 21% 38% 22% 30% 43%

Later Study 55% 34% 48% 48% 26% 40% 55% 30% 46% 53% 50% 28% 41% 39% 52% 28% 23% 16% 23% 16% 20% 33% 20% 9% 23% 38% 22% 30% 43%

Increase/(Decrease) (in percentage points) 28 26 23 22 21 16 15 14 14 14 13 12 12 9 7 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 0 0 0 0

Source: Author from data available at www.jewishdatabank.org

Yet another way to assess changes in local study results for measures of Judaism is to examine home religious practices for a few individual communities. Three recent studies are used (Miami, Broward, and New York) to illustrate this. In Miami, the percentage of Just Jewish barely changed from 32% in 1994 to 33% in 2014. The percentage with a mezuzah on the front door increased from 76% in 1994 to 80% in 2014. The percentage who always or usually participate in a Passover Seder increased from 77% to 81%. The percentage who always or usually light Chanukah candles increased from 72% to 76%. The percentage who always or usually light Sabbath candles increased from 29% to 32%. The percentage who keep a kosher home remained constant at 20%.54

54

 Sheskin, op. cit., 2015.

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Table 9  Temporal Changes in Just Jewish Identification Community Rhode Island 87–02 Milwaukee 83–96 Hartford 82–00 Houston 86–16 Tidewater 88–01 Washington 83–03 St. Louis 95–14 Detroit 08–18 Atlantic County 85–04 Rochester 86–99 Sarasota 92–01 Baltimore 99–10 Cleveland 96–11 New York 02–11 Phoenix 83–02 San Francisco 86–04 West Palm Beach 99–05 Broward 97–16 Miami 04–14 Denver 97–07 South Palm Beach 95–05 Columbus 01–13 Boston 95–05 Los Angeles 79–97 Philadelphia 97–09

Earlier Study 14% 14% 17% 17% 12% 19% 15% 19% 17% 20% 29% 13% 11% 32% 23% 36% 25% 34% 31% 30% 25%

Later Study 35% 34% 34% 33% 28% 34% 28% 31% 29% 29% 37% 20% 16% 37% 28% 40% 29% 37% 33% 31% 26%

Increase/(Decrease) (in percentage points) 21 20 17 16 16 15 13 12 12 9 8 7 5 5 5 4 4 3 2 1 1

34% 20% 28% 22%

33% 18% 26% 18%

(1) (2) (2) (4)

Source: Author from data available at www.jewishdatabank.org

Similar results are seen In Broward. The percentage of Just Jewish barely changed from 34% in 1997 to 37% in 2016. The percentage with a mezuzah on the front door barely changed from 79% in 1997 to 78% in 2016. The percentage who always or usually participate in a Passover Seder increased from 75% to 79%. The percentage who always or usually light Chanukah candles increased from 74% to 77%. The percentage who always or usually light Sabbath candles barely changed from 21% to 22%. The percentage who keep a kosher home decreased from 16% to 12%.55 In New York, the percentage Just Jewish increased from 15% in 1991 to 37% in 2011. The percentage of couples who are intermarried barely changed from 20% in 1991 to 22% in 2011. The percentage who always or usually participate in a Passover 55

 Sheskin, op. cit., 2017.

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Seder decreased from 77% to 69% from 2002–2011. The percentage who always or usually light Chanukah candles decreased from 76% to 68% from 2002–2011. The percentage who always or usually light Sabbath candles barely changed from 31% to 33% from 2002–2011. The percentage who keep a kosher home increased from 28% to 32% from 2002–2011.56

Political, Economic, and Psychological Impacts What is the impact of these changes in the number of Jews and somewhat declining levels of the traditional ways in which Jews connect to the Jewish community? That depends on the geographic scale at which one examines the issues. Given Jews constitute little more than 2% of the American population, it is difficult to imagine that political influence— the ability of the Jewish community to affect public policy on issues of importance to the Jewish community (such as separation of church and state, various social issues, civil rights, and Israel)—would be impacted by changes in the size of the community nationally.57 Jewish political influence in presidential elections derives from the electoral college system. Of the 269 electoral votes needed to be elected president, significant numbers are concentrated in battleground states like Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada. Geographic concentration of Jews also helps explain the 9 (9%) Jews among the 100 Senators in the 2018 Senate and the 27 (6.2%) Jews among the 435 Representatives in the 2022 House of Representatives. Continuing Jewish political influence nationally will probably be more dependent on the existence of a core group of politically active Jews rather than on the overall number of Jews. Locally, it is clear that Jewish political influence also does not require large numbers of Jews: many of the Jews in the Senate and the House were elected from states and congressional districts that contain small Jewish populations. Clearly, non-Jews are now willing to vote for Jewish candidates. And much of the impact of Jews upon the electoral process is related to the willingness of Jews to contribute both money and time to political candidates. Economically, maintaining a Jewish community is expensive and the cost of Jewish membership, education, and institutional participation is often cited by respondents to local Jewish community studies as the major reason for their non-­ participation in the community.58 If the number of Jews decreases, much less impact 56  Cohen, Steven M., Jacob B. Ukeles, Ron Miller, Pearl Beck, and David Dutwin (2011) Jewish Community Study of New York (New York: UJA Federation of New York). 57  See, I. Sheskin 2013. Geography, Demography, and the Jewish Vote, In American Politics and the Jewish Community, The Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life Annual Review, 11 B. Zuckerman, D. Schnur, & L. Ansell (eds.. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press) 39–76. 58  See, for example, the importance of cost in joining synagogues, in joining a Jewish Community Center, and in sending children to Jewish day school in Ira M. Sheskin, The Jewish Community Study of San Antonio (San Antonio: The Jewish Federation of San Antonio, 2007) pp. 7–33, 7–53, and 8–56.

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is felt by national institutions than by local institutions, particularly for small Jewish communities. Some larger Jewish communities, such as Broward,59 have shown recent decreases in Jewish population, but the impact on the ability of these communities to maintain themselves has not been great. Broward’s Jewish population decreased from 243,000 Jews in 1997 to 149,000 Jews in 2016. Yet, the number of Jews remaining in the community was sufficient to maintain most existing institutions, even though some merging was required when the thresholds for individual institutions were not met in certain parts of the urban area. On the other hand, the ability of smaller Jewish communities to maintain their institutions is sometimes affected by a decrease in Jewish population, as has happened, for example, in Atlantic City (NJ),60 Harrisburg (PA),61 Hartford (CT),62 and Pinellas.63 The number of Jewish households in Atlantic City decreased from 11,200 households in 1994 to 10,000 households in 2002 (11%). The number of Jewish households in Harrisburg decreased from 3800 households in 1985 to 3200 households in 1994 (17%). The number of Jewish households in Hartford decreased from 16,000 households in 1990 to 14,800 households in 2000 (6%). The effect of a decreasing Jewish population has been dramatic across the South, where many very small communities that existed in 1960 ceased to exist by 1997 as their Jewish population fell below 100, the generally accepted minimum number to maintain a Jewish community.64 Across the country, many Jews trying to maintain their Jewish identity and instill a Jewish identity in their children and grandchildren are psychologically impacted by information that the Jewish population of their area is declining and becoming less Jewishly connected. This has led to two separate reactions. Many Jews, who had themselves chosen to become less involved in Jewish life, felt that the “correctness” or “inevitability” of their choice was confirmed by the fact that many others had followed the same path. Other Jews reacted with alarm at the implications of these findings. Determined to reverse the trends, “continuity” has been made a

 Sheskin, op. cit., 2017. Table 3-6.  Ira M. Sheskin, The Jewish Community Study of Atlantic and Cape May Counties, NJ (Atlantic City, NJ: The Jewish Federation of Atlantic and Cape May Counties, 2005). 61  Ira M. Sheskin, The Jewish Community Study of Greater Harrisburg (Harrisburg, PA: The United Jewish Community of Greater Harrisburg, 1994). 62  Ira M.  Sheskin, The Jewish Federation of Hartford Community Study (Hartford: The Jewish Federation of Hartford, 2001). 63  Sheskin, Ira M. The 2017 Jewish Federation of Pinellas and Pasco Counties: A Profile of Jewish Pinellas and Pasco Counties (Largo, FL: The Jewish Federation of Pinellas and Pasco Counties and Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services, 2017). 64  Ira M. Sheskin, “The Dixie Diaspora: The ‘Loss’ of the Small Southern Jewish Community,” Southeastern Geographer, Volume XXXX, Number 1 (May, 2000) pp. 52–74 and “Jews in the South: An Update,” presented at the annual meeting of the Southeast Division of the Association of American Geographers, Greensboro, NC (2008). See also Lee Shai Weissbach Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). 59 60

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priority in many American Jewish communities (and in the Jewish community nationally), addressed by “Jewish continuity commissions” in many Jewish communities. This has led to additional funding for both formal (Jewish day schools) and informal Jewish education (overnight camp, College Hillel, and teenage youth groups) and for programs like Birthright Israel. Not long ago, the executive director of a small Southern Jewish community told me that she would very much like to undertake a study of her community. However, she was very concerned that, since the community has always thought that its Jewish population was about 6000, if the study found that the Jewish population significantly differed from that assumed number, or if it showed that the Jewish population was decreasing, such news might depress the community and lead to despair that could hurt fundraising efforts.

The Growth of Jewish Institutions One could counter the argument of the lessening of Jewish identity with data on the growth of a variety of Jewish institutions over the past decades. According to the 2020 American Jewish Year Book, the US now has more than 140 Jewish federations, over 200 Jewish Community Centers, more than 900 national Jewish organizations, more than 100 Jewish museums, about 165 Holocaust museums and memorials, more than 150 Jewish overnight camps, about 140 national Jewish publications, and about 3500 synagogues.65 There are hundreds of college-level Jewish Studies programs, with thousands of professors and thousands of courses offered. Almost none of this existed 50 years ago. Moreover, thousands of websites have emerged over the past fifteen years on Jewish-related and Israel-related topics. The Florence Melton Adult Mini-School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened in 1986 and has about 35 schools in the US offering adults the opportunity to acquire Jewish literacy in an open, trans-denominational, intellectually stimulating learning environment. New Orthodox institutions, particularly Chabad and Aish HaTorah, are flourishing and attracting many non-Orthodox Jews to Jewish religious and cultural programs. Chabad’s fundraising is unsurpassed and it operates about 2900 institutions across North America. In Miami alone, the number of Chabad Centers increased from four in 1994 to 23 in 2014. A 2014 survey indicated that 26% of Miami Jewish households had participated in a Chabad activity in the past year. More importantly, this percentage rose to 47% for households under age 35.66 Jewish book fairs, Jewish film festivals, and Israel Independence Day celebrations attract hundreds of thousands of participants in Jewish communities around  Jim Schwartz, Jeffrey Scheckner, and Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, “Census of Synagogues, 2001,” in the American Jewish Year Book, 2002, Volume 102 (David Singer and Lawrence Grossman, editors) (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2002) pp. 112–148. 66  Sheskin, op. cit., 2015. 65

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the country. A myriad of new programs have been developed and funded which are designed to cement Jewish identify in the next generation. The Foundation for Jewish Camp provides scholarships nationally to encourage Jewish parents to send their Jewish children to attend one of about 150 Jewish overnight camps. Since 1999, Birthright Israel has taken over 400,000 young American adults to Israel on free ten-day educational trips. Hillel on the college campus has seen significant redirection and strengthening, and there are now more than 150 Chabad Houses on American college campuses.

Conclusion Very often, as illustrated by the quotes with which this chapter began, pessimists have dominated continuity discussions in the hallways of American Jewish institutions. But the evidence from recent national Jewish population studies and local Jewish community studies indicates that the picture is considerably more complex than suggested by media reports: • Demographically, Jews are older, have fewer children, are better educated, and have higher income than is true for the US general public. • The number of Jews in the US is probably around 7.3 million and while the demographics might suggest a stable or declining Jewish population, surveys keep finding higher Jewish populations! In 1990, about 6 million Jews lived in the US. It is likely that half this increase from 6 million to 7.3 million are Jews from the Former Soviet Union and their children. • The Jewish population is geographically clustered in just a few states and, at the urban level in America’s largest cities. • A major geographic shift has occurred in the location of the American Jewish community from the Northeast to the West and the South. This migration has impacted Jewish connectivity and the options that are available to Jews for maintaining a Jewish identity. It has had a significant impact on the need to build Jewish institutions in newly settled places. • Some data from national studies show decreasing Jewish connectivity, although the changes are often not significant. Local study data show decreases in connectivity in some areas, but not in others. The premise for the pessimism on the issue of the number of Jews and Jewish continuity is that many measures of Jewish continuity are in a continuous downward spiral in America. Such is clearly not the case. • Levels of Jewish connectivity differ among the Northeast, the Midwest, the South, and the West. Generally, they are highest in the Northeast and lowest in the West, although the South leads on certain cultural connections. • The maintenance of Judaism in America requires the preservation of American Jewish institutions. Data from the American Jewish Year Book show that numer-

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ous American Jewish institutions exist and that, in fact, have been increasing in number and scope. • Many new programs have been developed in the Jewish community in the past decades to help counter problems with Jewish continuity, including such things as Jewish overnight camps, Birthright, and programs such as Jewish film festivals. • Perhaps most important, is the finding there are a number of different futures of Judaism in America. Communities feature very significant variations in Jewish connectivity according to synagogue membership, intermarriage rates, and the percentage of Jews who identify as Just Jewish. So was LOOK correct? Obviously not, and it needs to be pointed out that Jews are still here and LOOK is long gone! All in all, I am cautiously optimistic that the future of the American Jewish community is secure. The nature of Jewish identity is changing and the manner in which Jews express that identity will doubtlessly be different in the future, but I suspect that when we enter the twenty-second century, American Jews will still be here and contributing in significant ways to the future of America. Ira M. Sheskin (Ph.D. Ohio State University) is professor of geography and sustainable development at the University of Miami in Florida. Widely recognized as an expert in the demography and geography of American Judaism, he has been, since 2012, co-editor of the American Jewish Year Book, and produced more than 50 monographic studies of Jewish communities in the United States. The most recent is, The 2018 Detroit Jewish Population Study: A Profile of Jewish Detroit.  

Renewal Shaul Magid and Jerome A. Chanes

We Are All Multiculturalists Now. So reads the title of Nathan Glazer’s slim 1997 book describing the successes and failures of the late-twentieth-century American approach to pluralism that we now call multiculturalism. Although the term itself did not make it into the Oxford English Dictionary until 1989, multiculturalism describes a more celebratory form of the philosopher Horace Kallen’s prewar concept of “cultural pluralism.”1 Multiculturalism’s main shortcomings, according to Glazer, are that it never adequately dealt with class and failed to truly integrate African Americans.2 Later critics argue that the call for diversity in multiculturalism leaves in place the white hegemonic dominance that has become the arbiter of the ostensible celebration of diversity since the 1970s.3 Both criticisms are largely true.

 See Horace Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York: Routledge, 1989) ix-lxix. Cf. idem. “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism,” The Journal of Philosophy 54 (1957): 119–127. 2  Nathan Glazer, We are all Multiculturalists Now (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997). 3  Olaf Kaltmeier, Josef Raab, and Sebastian Thies, “Multiculturalism and Beyond: The New Dynamics of Identity Politics in the Americas,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 7.2 (2012): 103–114; and Olaf Kaltmeier, and Sebastian Thies, “Specters of Multiculturalism: Conceptualizing the Field of Identity Politics in America,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 7.2 (2012): 223–240. See also, Bell Hooks, “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 36 (1989): 15–23. Hooks uses her own life-story to illustrate the ways in which black success is still in many ways determined and regulated by white privilege. 1

S. Magid (*) Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. A. Chanes Baruch College, New York, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Chanes, M. Silk (eds.), The Future of Judaism in America, Studies of Jews in Society 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7_4

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But even so, by almost all accounts and even given the caveats, multiculturalism has been very good for the Jews. And America more generally has been good for the Jews who live there. Whether it has been good for Judaism is another question.

The Destabilization of Jewish Ethnicity in America American Jews became more secular and acculturated in the second half of the twentieth century but not less invested in religious institutions. In fact, in the 1950s, America witnessed the growth of Jewish institutions, the proliferation of synagogues in American suburbia and the expansion of prewar umbrella (secular) organizations such as the Jewish Welfare Board (later the Jewish Community Centers of America (JCCA)), the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, Hadassah, B’nai Brith, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). And it was in the 1950s that Conservative Judaism truly flourished, with its mix of tradition and acculturation (described by Mordecai Waxman as “tradition and change” in a book of that title).4 In this sense Jews were very much a part of the so-called Eisenhower Revival in postwar America, even as they were becoming assimilated at an accelerating pace. For many Jews, however, the 1950s did not constitute a return to religion so much as an embrace of affiliation—perhaps affiliation as religion, religion largely a response to the newfound call for personal and collective identity.5 Will Herberg’s 1955 Protestant, Catholic, Jew was an important intervention, concerning itself with the state of religion in America in the first postwar decade.6 Herberg’s “triple melting pot” theory set out to explore the place of organized religion in America and its relationship to identity among different groups with different religious affiliations. In the words of Philip Gleason, “Religion, he [Herberg] said, had become the most satisfactory vehicle for locating oneself in society and thereby answering the ‘aching question’ of identity: ‘Who am I?’”7 At least for American Jews, however, identity more generally and, by extension, the ubiquitous “identity crisis” (a term coined by the Jewish immigrant from Germany Erik Erikson) were arguably symptoms of a crumbling sense of self, even as religious institutions were being built to house that Jewish self. As Jews became more a part of America, they had less of a sense of who they were, or were supposed to be, as Jews. Many Jews “belonged”— donated and attended services—but what distinguished them from their Gentile neighbors became harder to determine.  See Mordecai Waxman, Tradition and Change: The Development of Conservative Judaism (New York: The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 1958). 5  Here see, Philip Gleason, “Identifying Identity: A Semantic History,” Journal of American History 69.4 (1983): 910–931; and Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond Identity,” Theory and Society 29 (2000): 1–47. 6  Will Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic, Jew (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1955). 7  Gleason, “Identifying Identity,” 912. 4

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How would this nominal Jewishness survive? “Religion,” as Herberg used it, partially answered that question. But religion for many Jews in the 1950s was not faith-­based. Rather, religion, in particular institutional religion (e.g. synagogues), largely served as the way to “identify” as Jewish without requiring much more in terms of belief, practice, or knowledge. In some sense, one’s religious identity (“I am Jewish”) was expressed through membership (“I belong to a synagogue” or “I give to the Federation”). A very prominent, avidly secular college president once related that he was asked by an Orthodox Jew at a meeting, “Why should I consider you a Jew?” The college president replied, “Because I am on a list.” The Orthodox Jew looked confused. The college president continued, “I am on a list. I donate to the Jewish Federation and thus I am on a list. That makes me a Jew.” The Orthodox Jew, still somewhat baffled, then slowly nodded; it was an answer he had never thought of. In 1950s America, “I am a good Jew” no longer primarily meant that I keep the Sabbath and dietary laws (which Jews increasingly abandoned in the course of the twentieth century) but “I pay my synagogue dues and support Jewish causes” and, beginning in the late1960s, “I support Israel.” Studying the 1950s and early 1960s, Jonathan Woocher would call this the American Jewish Civil Religion.8 The question of ethnicity that would come to the fore in the 1960s was already a part of the Jewish equation in the 1950s. Popular culture is often a good way to understand how these changes filter into the larger collective consciousness. The 1964 Broadway musical rendition of Sholem Aleichem’s “Fiddler on the Roof” (along with the 1971 film adaptation) may be viewed as a kind of culmination of the ethno-religious mix that Herberg was writing about: “Jewishness” as ethnic pride. The protagonist in the Americanized “Fiddler,” Tevya the Milkman, was not a particularly religious man (although he did venerate “tradition”) but an everyman who evoked nostalgia in many American Jews who were removed from the European Jewish experience.9 Like Exodus, Leon Uris’s 1958 novel (made into a popular film in 1960) about the founding of the State of Israel, “Fiddler” (whatever its misrepresentations of shtetl life—“the cutest shtetl that never was,” in Irving Howe’s classic crack) became a source of pride for many postwar Jews who had abandoned observance yet felt a strong need to continue to identify as Jews. Such did Jewish ethnicity—Jewishness unmoored from religious practice on the one hand and (overt) antisemitism on the other—become established in postwar America. Until the 1970s, in line with many other minority communities, the intermarriage rate among Jews in America remained relatively low. Through the postwar decades, Jews could easily identify as Jews through family ties and shared customs (bar and bat mitzvahs), stereotypes (Jewish mothers and their doctor sons, Jewish daughters and their nose jobs), entertainment (from Woody Allen to Mel Brooks and Carl  See Jonathan Woocher, Sacred Survival: The Civil Religion of American Jews (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986). 9  On the role of nostalgia in modern Judaism more generally see Arnold Eisen, “Nostalgia as Modern Jewish Mitzvah,” in his Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 156–187. 8

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Reiner’s “2000 Year Old Man”), literature (from Saul Bellow, Irving Howe and Phillip Roth to Allegra Goodman, Michael Chabon and Shalom Auslander), humor (from Sid Caesar, Danny Kaye, and, Jackie Mason to Larry David and Sarah Silverman), food (bagels, pastrami, matzo ball soup), and style (the Jewfro). Multiculturalism inspired new efforts to add ethos to an already deeply entrenched ethnos, giving substance to a Jewishness lacking in knowledge of, and commitment to religious tradition. It pushed against the assimilationist tide, and in the process opened the door for a significant minority to return to, discover, or reinvent religious practice; a person who makes such a return as called in Hebrew a baal teshuvah, a term that gave its name to a movement in the 1970s and 1980s.10 Many in the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s were children of assimilated parents—confident young Americans who felt free to explore new avenues of spiritual meaning, inside and outside Judaism.11 Inside, Modern Orthodoxy offered a traditional religious option that enabled American Jews to retain their middle class or upwardly mobile lives with a life of Torah and mitzvot that would distinguish them from their non-Jewish and non-religious compatriots, but as a practical matter not be perceived as intrusive.12 Some chose Modern Orthodoxy because it would ostensibly insure Jewish in-marriage for their children, perhaps the greatest fear of the acculturated American Jew beginning in the 1970s. Others opted for Modern Orthodoxy as a means of finding a refuge from deteriorating public school systems in many urban areas. The motto of Torah U Mada (literally “Torah and Science” but signifying the joining of religious and secular learning), adopted by Modern Orthodoxy’s flagship institution, Yeshiva University, offered a form of accommodation to modernity while maintaining the basic structures of traditional Jewish law (halacha) and practice. Torah U-madda asserted not only that there was no conflict between Jewish religious and secular practice and study, but also that they complemented, indeed enhanced, each other.13 Modern Orthodoxy taught the Jewish world—and the non-Jewish as well—that Orthodoxy was not an accretion of primitive obscurantist doctrines but a religion with serious intellectual underpinnings.

 See Sander Gilman, Multiculturalism and the Jews (New York: Routledge, 2006), 179–224. A baal teshuvah (literally “master of return”) indicates a Jew who has “returned” to traditional observance. On the Baal Teshuva movement, see Herbert Danzger, Returning to Tradition: The Contemporary Revival of Orthodox Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Aaron Joshua Tapper, “The ‘Cult’ of Aish Hatorah: ‘Ba’alei Teshuva’ and the New Religious Movement Phenomenon,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 44.1/2 (2002): 5–29; and idem. “Reclaiming the Ba’al Teshuva Movement: A Liberal Critique,” CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly (Winter, 1993): 23–32. For American Jewish denominationalism, see Lawrence Grossman, “The Future of American Jewish Denominations,” in this volume. 11  On the notion of the spiritual “seeker” in postwar America, see Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality on America Since the 1950s (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998). 12  See Rachel Kranson, Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 17–43. 13  On these and other aspects of Modern Orthodoxy see Adam Ferziger, Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015). 10

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Journals such as Tradition and The Torah U Mada Journal published scholarly and popular essays advocating this approach. A second option was Hasidism, which leaned heavily on the modern world but offered a very different and more committed Jewish lifestyle that accentuated difference in a more radical way than Modern Orthodoxy.14 A third option that gained a wider audience in the mid-1970s was what became known as Yeshiva Orthodoxy or, as its leaders defined it, “Torah-true Judaism.”15 This community is an American transplant of the Jewish life of Lithuanian16 Jewish communities, spiritual descendants of the great yeshivot and Musar Movement of Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries.17 Its ideology and Americanized practice became concretized in the ArtScroll publishing house that produced new translations of classical Jewish texts for an American audience.18 While from the outside, the Yeshiva Judaism lifestyle does not differ a great deal from Hasidism, it is less counter-­ cultural, more conducive to what one might call a conventional American mindset.19 It is focused more on study than experience, more rational and less mystical. These  See, for example, Susan Fishkoff, The Rebbe’s Army (New York: Schocken Books, 2003); Jan Feldman, Lubavitchers as Citizens (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006); and Maya Katz, The Visual Culture of Chabad (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On Hasidism in America more generally see Samuel Heilman’s Who Will Lead Us? The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). 15  On this see Jeremy Stolow, “‘Nation of Torah’: Proselytism and the Politics of Historiography,” PhD dissertation, York University, 2000 and idem. “Here (we) are the Haredim,” in The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History, D.  Peteson and D.  Walhof eds. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 59–76. 16  “Lithuanian” does not mean literally Lithuania. The term signifies the approach to rabbinic study— “Litvish”—that characterized northern Eastern European communities. 17  See Shaul Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century: Creating a Tradition of Learning (Oxford and Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012); and Alan Nadler, The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). On the Musar movement, see Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Musar Movement: Seeking the Truth of Torah, Jonathan Chipman trans. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993), Dov Katz, Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Musar Movement: Seeking the Truth of Torah Tenu’at Musar, five volumes (r.p. Jerusalem, 2006); and Geoffrey Claussen, Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simḥah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2015). 18  See Jeremy Stolow, “Nation of Torah: Proselytism and the Politics of Historiography,” PhD dissertation, York University, 2000; “Here (we) are the Haredim,” in The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History, D.  Peterson, D.  Walhof eds. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 59–76; “ArtScroll,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, Second Edition, Editors-in-Chief: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (Jerusalem and New  York: Keter Publishing and MacMillan Reference, 2007), vol. 2, 534–5; Jeremy Stolow, Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the Artscroll Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010); Shaul Magid, “From Sainthood to Selfhood in American Judaism: ArtScroll’s New Jewish Hero and Jewish Renewal’s Functional Rebbe,” Modern Judaism (October, 2012): 270–291; and Magid, American Post Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 157–185. 19  On the Yeshiva lifestyle more generally, see Samuel Heilman, The People of the Book: Drama, Fellowship, and Religion, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002). 14

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two sectarian Orthodox alternatives, although they fought bitterly in Europe, largely worked together to constitute what has become known as Haredi Judaism.20 And then there was the Jewish Renewal movement.

Renewing Judaism By late 1967—in the wake of the rise of the Black Power movement, the Six-Day War, and the decision of the New Politics conference in Chicago to add “Zionist imperialism” to its platform—many Jews who were involved in the New Left were beginning to turn away from its cosmopolitan vision and explore their own Jewish roots: political, cultural, and spiritual.21 In the fall of 1967, Sharon Rose, Michael Tabor, and Arthur Waskow founded “Jews for Urban Justice” in Washington D.C. In 1971, James Sleeper and Alan Mintz founded the journal Response, soon to be edited by William Novak, which would serve as a main voice of the Jewish radical left. Meanwhile, a number of religious fellowships (havurot) emerged, created and led for the most part by undergraduates and graduate students, not rabbis.22 The synagogue of the 1950s and 1960s, whatever the denominational Movement, was hierarchical, hidebound, and in the view of many (especially younger) Jews, boring. In fact, the havurah movement reflected “the feeling that the synagogue was not for people like us”—young Jewish activists, mostly students impatient with existing structures, not least religious ones.23 The feeling among many was that most of the synagogues they had experienced (largely Conservative and Reform but also Orthodox) “were not particularly serious about the Judaism.” The havurah was designed “to create an alternative for the Judaism that existed at the time.”24 These “New Jews” (as James Sleeper’s and Alan Mintz’s 1971 collection of essays25 titled them) channeled their rebelliousness, assertiveness, and alienation into  For a comprehensive history of Hasidism, see Hasidism: A New History, D. Biale and D. Assaf eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). 21  For a broader discussion about the components that sparked the return of many of the Jews in the New Left toward a new Jewish consciousness see Hillel Levine, “To Share a Vision,” in Response (Winter, 1969) re-printed in Jewish Radicalism, Jo Porter and P. Drier (New York: Grove Press, 1973), 183–194. 22  The word “havurah” (“Fellowship”) is from the Talmud, denoting the group of people who join together for the Paschal Sacrifice. Who first used the term in its modern context is a matter for discussion. Jewish studies scholar Jacob Neusner maintained that it was he who first used the term. For a full discussion  of the history of “renewal,” see Jerome A.  Chanes, “A Renewed Look at ‘Jewish Renewal’: Two Case-Studies,” Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston (2018). 23  Michael Strassfeld, one of the prime movers of the Havurah movement, personal conversation Jerome Chanes, September 1, 2018. 24  Strassfeld conversation. 25  James A.  Sleeper and Alan L.  Mintz, The New Jews, New  York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1971. 20

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communities that they expected would transform Jewish religious life in America. “We must turn inward toward Judaism and the Jewish community as the stage on which to play out our social and religious aspirations.”26 It was the era of the counterculture, of Vietnam. The “mother church,” in many ways, was Boston’s Havurat Shalom, founded (in Somerville, Mass.) in 1968 by Art Green, Rabbi Everett Gendler, Barry Holtz, and Michael Strassfeld. “We wanted to go back to Eastern Europe,” recalled Strassfeld, “But we were in the ‘60 s. It was the spirit of Orthodoxy and Hasidus, and the social justice of Reform.”27 It based itself on a devotional model of prayer, with a strong Hasidic component. Egalitarian and innovative, it represented a radical departure from existing congregations, including those in the Conservative movement from which many in its leadership came. Officially called the Havurat Shalom Community Seminary, it was partly created to establish a rabbinical program that could be used to exempt its students from serving in the war in Vietnam.28 Havurat Shalom was followed in the fall of 1969 by the New York Havurah in Manhattan under the leadership of Rabbi Eugene Wiener and John Ruskay. (Alan Mintz played an important role as well.) The New York Havurah differed both in ideology and in practice from the Boston Havurah in that it was less devoted to innovative prayer—the Havurah did not hold services on a weekly basis—and more to social-justice activities (especially in opposition to the war in Vietnam) and to study groups. A third havurah, Fabrangen in Washington D.C., was organized by Robbie Agus and Rabbi Max Ticktin. Other iterations of alternative religious communities (minyanim) included the more traditionalist House of Love and Prayer (HLP) in San Francisco, founded by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, which opened its doors in 1967. Soon after, more radical elements in the HLP broke away to found The Aquarian Minyan in Berkeley, California. Rachel Kranson notes that by the mid-1970s “an estimated sixty havurot (fellowships), alternative prayer communities that challenged the scale and opulence of synagogues, and batim (houses), campus cooperatives made up of Jewish students living communally, flourished…and involved roughly 1200 members.”29 Indeed, the Havurah phenomenon did not escape the attention of the mainstream synagogues, and here and there synagogue-based havurot popped up. Altogether, these alternative communities established a new form of Jewish religiosity apart from the institutional synagogue. They were committed to progressive and experimental Jewish living and in some cases, communal living.

 Ibid., 24.  Strassfeld, conversation. 28  On Havurat Shalom, including the issue of the draft see Everett Gendler, “Yesh B’rera?—Is there an Alternative?” Response 11 (Fall, 1974) re-printed in in Jewish Radicalism, 209–221. For an ethnography of the Havurot see Riv-Ellen Prell, Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989). 29  Kranson, Ambivalent Embrace (op. cit.), 141. 26 27

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Central to the three original havurot, and to the ones that followed, were first, a spiritual sense that was expressed by serious study, and (above all in Havurat Shalom), a commitment to the spirituality of the Shabbat service, with music in the form of niggunim (traditional Jewish melodies, tunes, and chants, often keyed to the text of prayer) as an essential component of the service; and second, community. Community was key. The havurah was a fellowship, a Gemeinschaft reaction against the corporate Gesellschaft of the standard synagogue of the time. The havurah was to be a group in which everyone was on intimate terms with everyone else, a true community. This spiritual agenda was in large part established—and metaphysically presided over—by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Schachter-Shalomi was trained in Chabad but had left the movement by the early 1960s. He at one time served as a Chabad rabbi in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and subsequently as a Hillel rabbi at The University of Manitoba, where he gained experience in working with college students. He then moved to Philadelphia to teach at Temple University, where he also founded B’nei ‘Or (Children of Light) later changed to P’nei ‘Or (Faces of Light) for reasons of gender inclusivity, “b’nei” being the masculine form for children. Schachter-Shalomi was present at the founding of Havurat Shalom in 1968 and served as a spiritual advisor to many of its founding members, including Arthur Green and Rabbi Everett Gendler. “Reb Zalman,” as he was popularly known, served as the conduit for a spiritual excitement that was embedded in Jewish tradition, and which animated the organizers of the havurot. He was important as well in the penumbra of the havurah movement, providing intellectual and spiritual underpinning to much of what would come to be called Jewish Renewal. In the following decades, Green himself wielded considerable influence in American Neo-Hasidism.30 Havurat Shalom also included such future influential Jewish academics as David Roskies, Michael Fishbane, Gershon Hundert, and James Kugel. On the West Coast, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s Orthodox and neo-Hasidic House of Love and Prayer was founded in 1967, as was the more radical Aquarian Minyan that later embraced Schachter-Shalomi.31 In Washington,  On Havurat Shalom see Steven Lerner, “The Havurot: An Experiment in Jewish Communal Living,” Conservative Judaism 24.3 (Spring, 1070) reprinted in Jewish Radicalism (op. cit.) and Prayer and Community (op. cit.). For a general overview of these developments in their broader American context, see Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 272–355. The notion of the Havurah owes some of its inspiration to Jacob Neusner, whose book Fellowship in Judaism: The First Century and Today (New York: Valentine Mitchell, 1963) had a role in the idea of the Havurah Movement. After the founding of Havurat Shalom, Neusner wrote a scathing critique in The Jewish Advocate, the weekly Boston Jewish newspaper, accusing the Havurah’s members of “their present irrelevant and solipsistic life,” largely “naval gazing” instead of trying to become more integrated into the larger Jewish community. On Green’s most succinct statement of his later views, see Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010). 31  On the House of Love and Prayer see Aryae Coopersmith, Holy Beggars: A Journey from Haight Street to Jerusalem (El Granada, CA; One World Lights, 2011); and Yaakov Ariel “Hasidism in the Age of Aquarium: The House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco, 1967–1977,” in Religion and American Culture 13.2 (2003): 139–165. 30

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the Fabrengen havurah included Arthur Waskow, a long-standing Jewish activist who became a central player in the havurah movement. Ticktin for his part became a leading voice at Fabrengen and influenced generations of young Jews, in Washington and nationally, with his political activism and spiritual creativity. From the beginning, Jewish Renewal was, as well, strongly influenced by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary until his death in 1972. Many havurah adherents had personal contact with Heschel, and many others were influenced by his inspirational writings as well as by his outspoken support for the civil-rights movement. Another influence was Martin Buber, who died in 1965, just before many of these new movements began to emerge. Buber’s historically flawed understanding of Hasidism—he missed its mystical roots—did not prevent him from having a profound influence on the Hasidic aspect of Jewish Renewal. Also influential was Will Herberg, a former Marxist who after World War II began making the case for a strong religious identity.32 The sentiments of this nascent counter-cultural Judaism coalesced in 1973 around the Jewish Catalogue, which was edited by Michael and Sharon Strassfeld and Richard Siegal. The Catalogue was inspired by a Brandeis University MA thesis by Siegal and George Savran, on the production of a “how to” book for new Jewish seekers that would be modeled after the Whole Earth Catalogue (1968).33 Two subsequent volumes were published over the next five years. The Catalogue was a ubiquitous part of Jewish renewal in this period, and by the 1980s it had sold more than 200,000 copies and had a significant impact on an entire generation of American Jews. While some of the havurot from the 1970s still existed a half-century later (i.e. Havurat Shalom, Fabrangen, the Aquarian Minyan), a second generation of prayer communities had come to the fore. Lay-led communities have emerged in many cities in the United States. Minyan M’at in Manhattan, among the most influential of these new communities, grew out of both the New York Havurah and, more importantly, out of New York’s West Side Minyan.34 A cadre of West Side Minyan members felt that it had lost its sense of creativity and direction, and that its

 On Herberg, see Herberg and David Dalin, From Marxism to Judaism: The Collected Essays of Will Herberg (New Jersey: Markus Weiner Publishing, 1989). 33  On the Jewish Catalogues, see Ari Y. Kelman, “Reading a Book like an Object: The Case of The Jewish Catalog,” in Thinking Jewish Culture, Ken Koltun-Fromm ed. (Lexington, KY: Lexington Books, 2103), 109–130. George Savran never continued with the Jewish Catalogue project. See also Marshall Sklare, “The Greening of Judaism” (Commentary, December 1, 1974), which Sklare takes a “plague on both your houses” stance: a critique of the existing Jewish communal and synagogal structure together with a sharp critique of the Catalogue as a less-than-serious approach to Jewish tradition and ritual, and by extension of Jewish Renewal in general as derived from a watered-down Conservative Movement Camp Ramah ethos. 34  The West Side Minyan was a 1980s prayer-group that was based on Torah “discussions” rather than the traditional d’var-Torah, a disquisition on a text-based topic. The New York Havurah did not have regularly scheduled Shabbat services; the West Side Minyan was organized by New York Havurah members to remedy what they viewed as this serious deficiency. 32

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Torah discussions were too often weak. This group—including Michael and Sharon Strassfeld, Barry Holtz, Nessa Rapoport, Richard Siegel, and later Alan Mintz— founded Minyan M’at, an egalitarian, traditional minyan whose core ethos was that of innovation. Minyan M’at was a direct response to the West Side Minyan; “quality control” in the services and the Torah discussion (d’var-Torah) was central. From Havurat Shalom came the idea of the service having a kavannah—a theme that runs through and informs the service, and a musical experience that would be central to the service. In the words of one of the founders of Havurat Shalom and of Minyan M’at a decade later, “We were perpetually in search of the perfect service.” This notion informed much of Jewish Renewal in the 1970s and 1980s. Noteworthy as well was the “Library Minyan” in Los Angeles, which had a different genesis, but in practice was also a traditional egalitarian prayer group.35 A third generation of Jewish Renewal prayer groups emerged in the 2000s. Notable among them were Kehilat Hadar and Romemu in Manhattan. Romemu grew out of Schachter-Shalomi’s vision of Renewal but was also deeply influenced by the spiritual approach of synagogues such as B’nai Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Bnai Jeshurun, a large congregation (very unlike the havurah model of small prayer groups) with an emphasis on spirituality and devotional music, was very much in the Renewal mode, and developed a national reputation beginning in the 1980s. In Los Angeles Ikar and the Shtieble minyanim were founded on egalitarianism and social justice issues. Many of these communities were included under the umbrella of the Independent Minyan Movement.36 In the Orthodox arena, prayer communities were also progressing beyond their traditional boundaries. “Carlebach Minyanim,” incorporating Shlomo Carlebach’s liturgical style (nusach), emerged in many Orthodox communities. This constitutes a form of neo-Hasidism that combines Orthodox worship with the regular study of Hasidic texts and the use of Hasidic melodies. The Carlebach Shul in Manhattan is this movement’s “mother church.” In addition to prayer communities, various learning and resource institutions emerged that were extensions of the changes initiated in the 1970s. In 1974, Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, an Orthodox rabbi, together with Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and Steve Shaw, founded the National Jewish Resource Center, which became CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in 1974. One of the first trans-denominational Jewish organizations in America, CLAL has its focus the promotion of religious pluralism in the Jewish community through a broad range of educational programs and conferences. Its mandate was to train future Jewish leaders as well as provide educational resources for pluralistic thought and practice. Many young rabbis and lay leaders passed through CLAL, and thence to establish their own institutes influenced by CLAL’s vision. Mechon Hadar in Manhattan, founded by rabbis Shai Held, Ethan Tucker, and Elie Kaunfer, all JTS graduates,  For a history of the Library Minyan, see Samuel G. Freedman, Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry. 36  An important addition to the literature on independent minyanim is Elie Kaunfer’s Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us about Building Vibrant Jewish Communities (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2010). 35

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was envisioned as an egalitarian traditional-style yeshiva. (Hadar subsequently jettisoned its earlier vision of being a degree-granting yeshiva, but functions as an influential resource center, providing courses, programming, and lectures.) Two significant institutions that are arguably contemporary expressions of Renewal are Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT), founded in 1999 by Avi Weiss, the long-time rabbi of the (Orthodox) Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, and Yeshivat Maharat, a women’s seminary for training women for Orthodox semikha, rabbinical ordination. YCT was an expression of Weiss’s “Open Orthodoxy,” an approach that sought to further expand Orthodoxy’s openness to modernity beyond that of traditional Modern Orthodoxy—one that included incorporating critical approaches to the study of the Hebrew Bible and Talmud. It is too early to tell whether Chovevei Torah will have the critical mass of ordained rabbis necessary to have an impact on the mainstream Orthodox world in America. But analysts suggest that the more serious problem with YCT is that the school, which represents itself as a yeshiva, may not be developing a cadre of graduates who are learned in the sophisticated manner of mainstream yeshivot. This point is worth noting, because it is an issue that has been a question about Jewish Renewal since its beginnings.

The Jewish Women’s Movement The experimentation in the Jewish revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s coincided with second-wave feminism, whose impact on Judaism in America is the subject of the next chapter. Here it is important to begin by emphasizing the prominent role played by women in the radical Jewish politics of this period. Aviva Cantor Zuckoff, who was the editor of the Jewish Liberation Journal, and Sharon Rose, one of the founders of “Jews for Urban Justice,” were early figures who had considerable influence early on. In the early 1970s feminism moved into more institutional Jewish settings. Sally Priesand was ordained as the first female American rabbi, in the Reform Movement, in 1972. But the watershed moment was in the spring of 1971, when political scientist Martha Ackelsberg, together with Dina Rosenfeld, started a study-group in the New York Havurah, in direct response to what they perceived as a male-oriented interpretation of central prayers in the Shabbat service. In Ackelsberg’s words, “The symbolism used [in interpreting the prayer] excluded me.”37 What began as a women’s study group expanded into what became known as “Ezrat Nashim,” the first and ultimately most important expression of Jewish feminism.38 Three factors informed the genesis and development of Ezrat Nashim. First, there was the specific question articulated by Ackelsberg about how the prayer  Jerome Chanes interview with Martha Ackelsberg, April 9, 2018.  Ezrat nashim literally means women’s aid or assistance. Used to designate the women’s section in the traditional synagogue, it acquired a pointed double meaning with the establishment of this study group. 37 38

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service related to women. Second and more generally, there was the feeling that the feminist movement in general was doing little to address questions particular to Jewish women, especially those involving religion. Finally, as more women became active with Ezrat Nashim—including Paula Hyman, Elizabeth Koltun, Eva Fogelman, and Debbie Weissman—the age-old question of the participation of women in the public rituals of the synagogue became paramount. In brief, the question was expressed as: “What is halacha (legal norm) and what is minhag (custom)?” To answer this question the Ezrat Nashim women began the serious study of classic Jewish texts—an early and fruitful effort for women to enter an arena that was traditionally a strictly male province. In March 1972 Ezrat Nashim decided to present a list of demands to the rabbinical body of the Conservative Movement, the Rabbinical Assembly. This was an important moment: for the first time, issues of concern to women were given the floor at a major traditional rabbinic forum. But it is important to understand that Ezrat Nashim activists came out of all three movements, and that the impact of Ezrat Nashim went far beyond Jewish Renewal per se. The first Jewish Women’s Conference was held in 1973 at New York’s McAlpin Hotel and attended by key figures in the nascent Jewish feminist movement such as Blu Greenberg and Rachel Adler.39 In 1976, Aviva Cantor and others founded the feminist quarterly Lilith, which for nearly half a century has served as a forum for fiction, feature essays, theology, and art relating to Judaism and feminism from all branches of Judaism, religious and secular. Likewise, a number of influential feminist books emerged from the Jewish Renewal movement. Judith Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai (1990) became required reading for Jewish feminists.40 Following the work of non-Jewish theologians Mary Daly and Carol Christ, Plaskow offered a radical reassessment of religious patriarchy and its impact on Jewish thought and practice. Orthodox feminist Blu Greenberg published a more conservative analysis, On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition in 1981.41 Engendering Judaism (1999) by Rachel Adler, founder of Los Angeles’ Library Minyan, offered a halachic critique of traditional Judaism on the question of gender, and presented one of the first alternative marriage documents (called Brit Ahuvim) that departed from the hierarchical structure of the traditional Jewish marriage contract (ketubah). Feminism came to the Orthodox table relatively late, but once it did, Orthodox women began challenging the patriarchal nature of halacha while remaining true to its normative precepts. In 1994, Tamar Ross, an Israeli scholar of American descent,

 See Paula Hyman, “Ezrat Nashim and the Emergence of a New Jewish Feminism,” in The Americanization of the Jews, R. Seltzer and N. Cohen eds. (New York: NYU Press, 1995), 284–295; Deborah Lipstadt, “Feminism and American Judaism,” in Women and American Judaism, P. Nadell and J Sarna eds. (Hanover: University Press of new England, 2001), 291–308. 40  Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (New York: Harper Collins, 1990). 41  Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism (Philadelphia: JPS, 1981). 39

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published Expanding the Palace of Torah, a sweeping theological re-assessment of revelation and halakha from a feminist perspective.42 Feminism moved into the Orthodox world institutionally as well. One significant development was the “partnership minyan,” informed by elastic halachic interpretations of the role of women in the synagogue service. Beginning in the late 1990s in New York, spearheaded by Rabbi David Silber (the visionary founder of the Drisha Institute) and Devorah Steinmetz, and picked up by the influential Shirah Hadasha community in Jerusalem, partnership minyanim (the flagship was New York’s Darkhei Noam) sought to maximize women’s participation in the public ritual activities of the synagogue within the parameters of traditional halacha. This included women leading certain non-obligatory parts of prayer, women being called to the pulpit (receiving aliyot) during Torah reading, separate women’s readings of the Book of Esther on the holiday of Purim, and in some cases the requirement that a prayer quorum be comprised of 10 women as well as 10 men. In 1997, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) was founded by Blu Greenberg, providing a platform for expression of issues of halachic and sociological of concern to Orthodox women—and by extension to the Modern Orthodox community. The Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in New York City, founded by the Orthodox Rabbi David Silber in 1979, was the first vehicle for in-depth communal study of Jewish texts by women. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, Jewish feminism has permeated all levels of religious education. Serious works on Jewish feminism continue to appear: Elyse Goldstein’s New Jewish Feminism: Probing the Past, Forging the Future; Susannah Heschel and Danya Rottenberg’s Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism; Marla Brentschneider’s Jewish Feminism and Intersectionality; and Joyce Antler’s Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement have generated a cottage industry on this topic. Feminism was an integral part of the postwar Jewish revival, both its institutional implementations and the more theoretical works that have compelled a rethinking of Jewish religious, social, and cultural life. More recently this has morphed into LGBT issues, which challenge American Jewish leadership with respect to social progress and traditional values.

What Reb Zalman Had to Teach Spiritually speaking, Jewish Renewal constitutes a systematic and sweeping reassessment of the American Jewish experience from the sources of the Jewish mystical tradition refracted through the lens of the counterculture of the 1960s and the New Age religious revival of the 1970s. It is one iteration of how some American Jews responded to the changing contours of American life. Its broad-based attempt

 Tamar Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (Hanover: University of New England Press, 2004). 42

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to re-think Judaism from a practical, liturgical, and metaphysical perspective offers perhaps the most systemic reassessment of Judaism in the post-ethnic moment. It focuses on devotional behavior in a post-halachic framework, while offering an expansive vision of Judaism as part of a global spiritual renaissance. This includes opening Jewish wisdom and practice to those who were not born Jews without requiring conversion as a prerequisite to become members of the Jewish devotional tradition. In addition, Renewal’s openness to limited religious syncretism enables it to absorb wisdom and practice from other great spiritual traditions broadening and deepening the potential for the renewal of Jewish life and practice. Here, Schachter-Shalomi’s career is central.43 On his vision of Renewal as presenting Judaism as a world religion, a religion founded by the Jews that the Jews could offer as a gift to the world, the influence of the seventh Chabad-Lubavich rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, should not be underestimated. Unabashedly particularistic, Schneerson nevertheless supported a ritual-oriented Judaism that reached out to the world; indeed, this was one of his great contributions to modern Judaism.44 For his part, Schachter-Shalomi never said that he left Chabad but rather that he “graduated from” it.45 In effect, Jewish Renewal was Schachter-Shalomi’s rendering of Chabad refracted through a New Age or Aquarian Age lens. Like Chabad, Jewish Renewal has not viewed itself as another Jewish denomination. It has, instead, sought to engage in a series of spiritual thought experiments for creative Jewish living that other Jewish communities can selectively adopt. Like Chabad’s messianism, Renewal’s New Age-ism has been predicated on a belief that we are living on the cusp of seismic global change. Jewish Renewal can be divided into two basic metaphysical components.46 The first is a second-wave neo-Hasidism (following in the footsteps of a neo-Hasidism popular at the turn of the twentieth century in Eastern and Central Europe) that consists largely of an adaptation, or revision, of Hasidism to conform to present-day sensibilities and beliefs.47 Schachter-Shalomi was deeply engaged in an effort to adapt Hasidism to the New Age. One can see this in both his early Fragments of a Future Scroll: Hasidism for the Aquarian Age (1975) and such later work on Hasidism as Wrapped in a Holy Flame (2003) and A Hidden Light (2011). He also  For a study of Schachter-Shalomi’s life, see his memoir My Life in Renewal: A Memoir (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012). 44  On this approach see Chaim Miller, Turning Judaism Outwards: A Biography of the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Brooklyn, NY: Kol Menachem, 2014). 45  Magid personally heard him say this. It is worth noting that the seventh rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, dropped the second “h” from the Schneersohn family name soon after he immigrated to America. 46  Much of what follows here is adapted from Magid’s essay “Between Paradigm Shift Judaism and Neo-Hasidism,” Tikkun 30 (Winter, 2015): 11–20. 47  On first wave neo-Hasidism see Niham Ross, A Love/Hate Relationship with Tradition: NeoHasidic Writing at the Beginning of the 20th Century (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2004) [in Hebrew]. See also Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin, Arthur Green, selected and edited (New Jersey: Paulist Press 2012). 43

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contributed to gender inclusivity in Jewish practice, drawing together forms of Jewish feminism in the 1970s as part of his neo-Hasidism. As Arthur Green characterized the desideratum: “A radical spiritualization of Judaism’s truth, begun within Hasidism some 200 years ago, needs to be updated and universalized to appeal to today’s Jewish seeker. This would offer the possibility of religious language that addresses contemporary concerns while calling for a deep, faith-based attachment to the essential forms and tropes of Jewish piety.”48 The second metaphysical component of Jewish Renewal may be called Paradigm-­ Shift Judaism. Schachter-Shalomi himself used “paradigm shift” (borrowed from historian of science Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) to describe a post-Holocaust world that required Jews, as spiritual inhabitants of the planet, to radically re-assess everything from their understanding of monotheism to the Gentile world, the environment, religious ritual, and Jewish law. The result was a more revolutionary break from original Hasidism than neo-Hasidism, comparable to the original Hasidic revision of the Judaism of the eighteenth century. Schachter-­ Shalomi’s innovative work on metaphysics—which has received less attention than either his early neo-Hasidic writings or his pastoral work—lies at the heart of Paradigm-Shift Judaism, the most innovative re-articulation of American Judaism since Mordecai Kaplan’s Reconstructionism in the 1930s. One of the salient features of Jewish Renewal is that its adaptation to the world in which it lives was systemic, fundamental rather than merely a function of historical circumstance. Like Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization (1934) and The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (1937), it constitutes a metaphysical revision of American Judaism. It was thus not simply an adaptation to new norms but an alteration of the very template of the theological vision of Judaism that necessitated re-­ thinking the entire edifice of Jewish life and practice.49 This new metaphysical template was drawn from the Jewish mystical tradition that has become what Schachter-Shalomi called “the new reality map” of Renewal spirituality. In Paradigm Shift (1993), Credo of a Modern Kabbalist (2005), Integral Halachah (2007), and God Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown (2013), he offered a form of pantheism in which the radical transcendence of God is mitigated, and perhaps even undermined, by God’s proximate immanence. He developed this idea through a reinterpretation of the kabbalistic idea of zimzum—the self-imposed “withdrawal” of God from the world to create the space that makes it possible for the universe to be created. In June of 2014, a few weeks before he died, Schachter-Shalomi, already quite weak, spent the holiday of Shavuot at Camp Isabella Friedman, a Jewish Renewal retreat center near Falls Village, Connecticut. After the holiday, everyone left and Schachter-Shalomi stayed behind for Shabbat with an employee of the center.

 Arthur Green, “Awakening the Heart,” in Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, April 2014. On Green’s vision of neo-Hasidism, see Green’s Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2004); and idem. Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition. 49  In “Between Paradigm Shift Judaism and Neo Hasidism”, Magid discusses various other new metaphysical turns in Jewish history that are beyond the scope of this chapter. 48

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The two were sitting by the pond as the sun reflected on the rolling green hills of southern New England. His attendant turned to him and, pointing to the beautiful scene, said, “Reb Zalman isn’t it amazing what God created.” Schachter-Shalomi turned to him and smiled, “No, Ya’akov, not quite right. Isn’t it amazing what God became.”50 This substitution of “becoming” for “creating” is what takes SchachterShalomi’s metaphysics beyond neo-Hasidism. The distance between God and world has been breached. In God Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown as well as in earlier works, Schachter-­ Shalomi presents zimzum as challenging the Jewish concept of God as it has evolved from what he sees as biblical deism to the rationalist theism of the Middle Ages. According to him, zimzum is the final phase of the theistic period. It leads first to panentheism, the belief that God is greater than the universe and includes and interpenetrates it, and then to pantheism, which identifies God with the universe. This represents a break from theism, creating a final post-monotheistic paradigm shift. Schachter-Shalomi views Paradigm-Shift Judaism’s four-stage metaphysics (deism, theism, panentheism, and pantheism) as the template of the history of God in those civilizations for which the Hebrew Bible is central. He argues that Kabbalah retains the Hebrew Bible’s earliest mythic (possibly plural) idea of God that was repressed through later biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish thought.51 Rather than deploy the language of myth as many biblical theologians prefer, Schachter-Shalomi suggests that the Bible first conceptualizes a God who can occupy corporeal space but whose place is beyond the cosmos and thus unknowable. This constitutes a deistic transcendence that makes room for divine descent into the world but maintains that the divine presence is uncanny. There is no real intimacy between God and the world in the Hebrew Bible; the separation is categorical. God can be simultaneously corporeal and totally other (e.g., Isaiah 55:8; 40:18, 25). Even in the intimate moments between God and Abraham or Moses, there is strangeness (Exodus 33:18–23). As Midrash Rabbah, the rabbinic commentary on the Torah, declares, “The world is not God’s place.” In this deistic phase, God is an interloper. The idea of zimzum derives from the sixteenth-century Kabbalist Isaac Luria, who suggested a model of creation whereby God, having withdrawn from the universe, infuses the empty space with divinity, in limited doses, through a cosmic catastrophe known as “the rupture of the divine vessels” (shevirat ha-kelim).52

 Magid was present at the Shavout retreat at Isabella Friedman a month or so before SchachterShalomi’s passing and he heard this anecdote from a friend of the individual attending SchachterShalomi on that warm late spring Shabbat afternoon. 51  On monotheism in the Bible, see Ben Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011). On monotheism and Judaism more generally see Lenn Goodman, God of Abraham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 52  A concise description of this can be found in Magid’s From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbalah (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 16–33; and Pinhas Giller, Kabbalah: A Guide for the Perplexed (London and New York: Continuum, 2011), 62–83. 50

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Schachter-Shalomi’s new metaphysics is less interested in zimzum as a creation myth than as a metaphor for thinking about God’s presence in, rather than absence from, the world. Although the understanding of zimzum as divine presence derives from traditional Hasidic thought, only in Schachter-Shalomi does it become the centerpiece of metaphysics. Zimzum simultaneously affirms and subverts radical transcendence. For him, God as infinite, distant, and indecipherable (eyn sof) exists alongside God as finite (the infusion of divinity into the empty space that becomes our cosmos and world). Zimzum thus serves as the final stage of theism in that it houses God’s radical transcendence and immanence. Schachter-Shalomi took particular interest in the internal kabbalistic debate that was raging in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries about whether the Lurianic doctrine of zimzum should be taken literally or metaphorically. That is, did God actually create God’s own absence in the vacuum that would become the cosmos and our world, or is divine contraction a metaphor suggesting that there was never any compromise of divine presence, that God is always present? This debate becomes the way in which the deistic/theistic biblical monotheism begins to unravel. In God Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, Schachter-Shalomi writes, “The literalists were on the front-line of the defense of the theistic idea of God, whereas the metaphorical interpreters were the forerunners of a new, pantheistic reality-map.” This is the overcoming of the rationalistic theism of the Middle Ages, which inaugurates what Schachter-Shalomi calls “the Pantheism of Aquarius.” Overcoming theism but not abandoning God is arguably the overriding metaphysical leap of Jewish Renewal. For Schachter-Shalomi, the Pantheism of Aquarius was multiplicity and hierarchy, not an equation of God and nature, a simple pantheism in which everything is ultimately the same. Rather, it comprises a metaphysical spectrum within which God is both at home and not at home in the world. Here the divine-human relationship has overcome its vertical metaphor, a metaphor founded on the idea that God and world are categorically distinct with the recognition that you and I are nothing but different and developing dimensions of God, informing God about God. This metaphysical innovation is not limited to theology. Renewal has been committed to what Schachter-Shalomi called a “post-triumphalist Judaism”—a Judaism beyond the notion of divine election or chosenness. Here he echoed Mordecai Kaplan, who rejected chosenness almost a century ago. But unlike Kaplan, for whom the collapse of chosenness was largely the result of living in a democratic society where divine election was simply not viable without succumbing to Jewish exceptionalism, for Schachter-Shalomi it was the result of a cosmic shift that requires a re-alignment of human civilization that rejects the vertical metaphor of hierarchy altogether. There are concrete practical consequences to this move which Renewal takes very seriously. If our vision of God and our vision of human civilization are no longer hierarchical, both theology and religious ritual (including liturgy) require a significant re-calibration. And here the question of how Jews have responded to the Holocaust looms large.

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Schachter-Shalomi’s entire Renewal vision should be understood as such a response.53 Rather than seeing the Holocaust as creating a need to turn inward, giving rise to the dominant survivalist preoccupation with Jewish continuity, Schachter-­ Shalomi, who spent time in a displaced persons camp in Marseilles before escaping to the U.S. with his family, counterintuitively considered it a sign that Jews must be more expansive.54 Because the Jews as a people were the victims, survived, and now found themselves primarily living either in an autonomous state (Israel) or a multicultural democracy (the United States), they had the responsibility, or at least the opportunity, to help construct a new era of civilization in its wake. This could be said of many of other Renewal leaders, and notably Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, whose writings on the Holocaust and the Jewish future have had widespread influence.55 For Schachter-Shalomi the lesson of the Holocaust for the Jew was not simply to insure it never happened again to the Jew. It was, rather, a clarion call to do two things simultaneously.56 First, the Jews had to view themselves as an integral part of the global community who carry an ancient tradition with ample wisdom to share, either through political power as citizens of their own nation state or as fully integrated participants in a democracy. Second, they had to investigate the ways in which Judaism before the war has outlived its relevance and was in need of radical reconstruction largely in relation to its outmoded inward-looking inclination (developed in part in response to many centuries of persecution). If there was any divine message in the Holocaust—and it is not clear that for Schachter-Shalomi there was—it would be that pre-­Holocaust Judaism should not survive because it could not survive. The paradigm had shifted. That Judaism, a Judaism that feared the world, a Judaism that was understandably closed in on itself, was what he calls the “old paradigm,” and any attempt to continue or retrieve that Judaism was destined to fail because that Judaism could not, by definition, survive the climate of the new paradigm.57 The consequences of this approach were far-reaching. Openness to the world included openness to other forms of spirituality (hence, syncretism). Indeed, openness to non-Jews would include enabling them to become part of the Jewish community with a distinct and honored status in that community. Openness to the planet  See Shaul Magid, “The Holocaust and Jewish Renewal: A Theological Response,” Tikkun (March/April 2006) and American Post-Judaism (op. cit), 219–230. 54  On Schachter-Shalomi’s youth see his My Life in Renewal (op. cit.), 19–48. 55  In particular, see Greenberg, “Could of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity and Modernity after the Holocaust,” in Auschwitz, Beginning of a New Era: Reflections on the Holocaust, Eva Fleischner ed. (New Jersey: Ktav Books, 1977), 7–55. 56  For an expanded discussion of Schachter-Shalomi on the Holocaust see Shaul Magid, American Post-Judaism, 219–230. 57  Schachter-Shalomi’s view of pre-Holocaust Judaism is centered in Eastern Europe and thus somewhat skewed. In a slightly different way, Ignaz Maybaum makes a similar case about the Holocaust. See Ignaz Maybaum, The Face of God After Auschwitz (The Netherlands: Polak & Van Gennep Ltd. 1965). Published a year before Richard Rubenstein’s After Auschwitz, Maybaum’s book was almost unknown in America. 53

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and the integration of environmentalism as sacred and not incidental would incorporate elements of the human experience not often included in the halachic system as an integral part of that system. An example of the former is Renewal’s rewriting of liturgy to call a non-Jewish member of the community to the Torah during Shabbat services. An example of the latter is Renewal’s notion of eco-kosher, which expands labeling something as permissible to eat to include environmental considerations and the proper treatment of animals.58 The halachic system structured as a set of obligations to a transcendent God was thus replaced by a more organic and integrative expression of Jewish law as what Arthur Green calls “a response to an inner divine call.”59 This included a re-­ structuring of Jewish society and Jewish religion that expressed a changing global consciousness and cosmic order—one that mandated extending Judaism beyond the Jews. Thus, in Integral Halacha (2007), Schachter-Shalomi followed the order of the classic code of Jewish law, the sixteenth century Shulchan Arukh (the “Set Table”), as an attempt to set a new halachic table for the present day.60 He was not blind to the horrible conflicts in our world. But he maintained that, nevertheless, something in the world changed after the Holocaust that could not be reversed. He was, to the end, a product of, and believer in, the New Age.61

Renewing Judaism While Jewish Renewal as a movement has never boasted a large number of members, its influence on the larger American Jewish community has been significant, in terms of its liturgical experimentation, its revisions of ritual, and its overall metaphysics. It has also served as an ongoing conduit of information and inspiration from its own past—the havurah movement, radical politics, feminism—to the next generation. The concept of renewal is integral to all major religious traditions. Tradition always exists in a dialectical relationship with innovation, always working both for and against itself.62 In this sense, tradition itself becomes a term of adaptation, and  See, for example, in Schachter-Shalomi,” A New Kind of Kosher,” in his Jewish with Feeling: A New Guide to Jewish Meaningful Practice (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2013), 119–180. 59  See Arthur Green, Radical Judaism, 79–119. See Magid’s discussion of this in American PostJudaism, 97–106. 60  See Schachter-Shalomi and Daniel Siegel, Integral Halacha: Transcending and Including (Canada: Trafford Publishing, 2007). 61  There is a new iteration of Neo-Hasidism, emerging from those Israeli yeshivot that push the envelope in terms of mahshevet Yisrael—Jewish thought and philosophy—and expressed in the writings of the late Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (known as HaRav Shagar). Rosenberg articulated a post-modernist view of halakha that is having an impact on a new generation of Orthodox Jews in America. This latest iteration of Jewish Renewal bears watching. 62  See, for example, Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984). 58

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not rejection, of the present. Traditions survive to the extent they absorb, integrate, and adapt to the changing circumstances that challenge their societies—even as, or precisely because, they claim to oppose innovation.63 The religious response that survives is one that can adapt and thus earn the label of “tradition.” As the early Reform leader Abraham Geiger once said, “The Jew is, as a rule, wise inasmuch as he always endeavors to acquire wisdom from non-Jewish sources.”64 Tradition is thus by definition innovative. After the destruction of the Second Temple, rabbis de-territorialized their religion as a necessary adaptation of ancient Israelite cultic religion. Various forms of modern Judaism are adaptations of the rabbinic Judaism they created, as refracted through the Judaism of the Middle Ages. What would ancient Israelites who brought sacrifices to the Temple in Jerusalem have thought if they had somehow landed in the rabbinical academies in Babylonia in the seventh century and witnessed their religion centered on the study of texts in a strange language with many laws they had never heard of?65 Or what would a seventh-century Jew from Babylonia think if he or she landed in a small Hasidic synagogue in Poland in the nineteenth century or a Modern Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the Aquarian Minyan in Berkeley, California, or Havurat Shalom in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1971? Yet these disparate and very different communities are connected through a pattern of continuity, shaped by the delicate balance of old and new. Some new iterations are more open to change than others. But all of them absorb it. We should therefore not think of tradition and renewal as distinct categories but rather as labels that emphasize different aspects of adaptation and preservation. American Jews were confronted with challenges not faced by their proximate ancestors. They never had to fight for emancipation, and almost always lived in a society that protected religious freedom and valued religious pluralism, at least in principle. Whatever antisemitism existed, it was never embedded in the institutions of society and of power the way it was in Europe. The distinctive character of America challenged American Jews to define themselves without the imperative of being defined (negatively) by others.66 Yet this sense of security and belonging has

 For an important exploration of this in Judaism see Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” in Tradition 28–4 (Summer, 1994): 64–130. For an Orthodox response to Soloveitchik’s essay see Isaac Chavel, “On Haym Soloveitchik’s ‘Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodox Society’: A Response,” in The Torah U-Madda Journal 7 (1997): 122–136; and Hillel Goldberg, “Responding to ‘Rupture and Reconstruction’” in Tradition 31–2 (Winter, 1997): 31–40. 64  Cited in George Berlin, Defending the Faith: Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Writing on Christianity and Jesus (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1989), 154. 65  The Talmud itself is sensitive to this in its depiction of Moses sitting in on a class Rabbi Akiva is teaching and being baffled and upset until he hears R. Akiva answer a question of law by saying “we know this is a Law from Moses (halakha le-Moshe me-Sinai). See b.T. Menaḥot 29b. 66  Thus while Jean Paul Sartre’s thesis in Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (New York: Schocken Books, 1948) that to some degree the antisemite defines the Jew may have had some traction in Europe, it is less convincing in postwar America. For a study that takes 63

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come at the price of being willing to engage in limited assimilation as part of becoming fully American. While multiculturalism lessened the need to assimilate, it did not erase it entirely. Various forms of American Judaism, from Reform to Chabad and even the insular haredi sects, are constantly negotiating the delicate balance of Americanism. All American Jews, up to and including the sectarian Orthodox are assimilated to one extent or another.67 Many American Jewish communities have engaged, and will continue to engage, in aspects of Renewal. If the twentieth century gave us the solidification of American Jewish denominations, the 21st, with its new post-ethnic landscape, may be a transition to a post-denominational Judaism, where existing groups will share the terrain with a variety of independent and lay-led communities that may be better equipped to experiment and reconstruct a new paradigm of peoplehood and a Judaism that will be more globalized than parochial. This new post-denominational landscape, coupled with the lasting glow of multiculturalism (even as its halcyon days may have ended), will constitute its own form of loose renewal. Non-Jews are increasingly becoming part of the Jewish community through intermarriage, and this trend (if trend it be) will likely require rethinking the parameters of the Jewish community as a social and religious community.68 Already, the American Jewish community is no longer a community made up exclusively of Jews. Many American non-­Orthodox synagogues have considerable numbers of non-Jews who attend and participate. The role of the non-Jew in the Jewish community may be the next great hurdle for American Judaism. Renewal will likely play an important role in this new discussion. As we move deeper into the century, new Jewish alternatives in America are continuing to blossom. The future remains open. One possibility is the emergence of a new form of Jewish secularism, perhaps through art, music and performance. The arts have always been a bridge between the secular and the religious communities. Jewish environmentalism has given us Eden Village, a non-denominational and religious/secular environmentalist Jewish farm camp in upstate New York connected to Renewal. Reb Zalman’s metaphysics offers not only a doctrine of religious inclusion but also a pantheistic bridge for those unable to accept the theism of traditional believers. Different forms of Renewal are, in short, sprouting in numerous areas of the American Jewish landscape, the fruits of which will be enjoyed by the next generation of Jews in America. If there is to be a Jewish renaissance in America, it will be found in places both obvious and not immediately apparent. It is not in Judaism as traditionally defined nor is it in many synagogues. The sentimentality of Fiddler on the Roof and Exodus cannot touch generations born with no living memories of up this theme in an American context, see Gil Anidjar’s Semites: Race, Religion, Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008). 67  Intriguing examples of this can be found in Feldman’s Lubavitchers as Citizens (op. cit.) and Heilman’s Who Will Lead Us? (op. cit.). 68  For one example of how the Conservative Movement is opening up to the reality of the nonJewish member of the Jewish community, see Mark Bloom et al., A Place in the Test: Intermarriage and Conservative Judaism (Berkeley, CA: EKS Publishing, 2004).

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prewar Europe or Israel before 1967. Multiculturalism itself may be a thing of the past. President Obama was the living example of an era where ethnicity itself became hybridized. We can hope that the outbreak of white nationalism in the Trump presidency will be a passing phase, as whites in America come to terms with being a minority like everybody else. American Jews, too, will have to negotiate their white privilege along with the nature of their community itself. It is now in a liquid state. Its future will depend as much on the changing American landscape as on the Jews who continue to inhabit it. Shaul Magid (Ph.D. Brandeis University) is professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. His most recent books are Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton, 2021) and The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance (Ayin Press 2023). He is a member of the American Academy of Jewish Research.  

Jerome A. Chanes is an adjunct professor at Baruch College of the City University of New York. He was national affairs director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (now the Jewish Council for Public Affairs) and was associate executive director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. He has taught at Barnard College, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Tel Aviv University School of Law, Yeshiva University, and the Academy of Jewish Religion. His books include Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook, Antisemitism in America Today: Exploding the Myths, and A Primer on the American Jewish Community, and he is author of more than 100 articles, book chapters, reviews, and encyclopedia entries on Jewish issues and arts and letters.  

Women’s Active Partnership in Revitalizing American Judaism Sylvia Barack Fishman

Americans who report they have no religion—religious “nones”—are increasingly numerous; a recent Pew study documented that “three in ten U.S. adults are now religiously unaffiliated” and “only four in ten U.S. adults consider religion ‘very important in their lives.’”1 Likewise, studies of American Jews, including Pew 2020,2 highlight growing numbers of “Jews of no religion,” especially among younger Jews. Despite these much-publicized secularizing trends, however, weakening ethnoreligious ties are only one part of the contemporary American Jewish panorama. Simultaneously, and far less discussed, significant cohorts build robust engagements with Jewish institutions, societies, culture, and religion. American Jewish women have been among the most active participants in these revitalizing activities. This chapter examines the transformation of women’s involvement in religious and spiritual aspects of Judaism in recent decades. Some women’s activities, particularly regarding public leadership, were historically regarded as preeminently masculine realms. On elite levels, women are being credentialed and are playing roles as rabbis; they are acknowledged as experts in educational and scholarly arenas, including within the more modern wings of Orthodoxy. Grassroots, lay female involvement in the religious and spiritual dimensions of Judaism has also expanded, grounded in the widespread education of Jewish girls in manners often virtually  Gregory A.  Smith, “About three-in-ten U.S. adults are now religiously unaffiliated,” National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS), Pew Research Center, Dec. 15, 2021. https://pewrsr. ch/3pT0x8R 2  https://www.pewforum.org/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/ 1

S. B. Fishman (*) Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Chanes, M. Silk (eds.), The Future of Judaism in America, Studies of Jews in Society 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7_5

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indistinguishable from (and sometimes surpassing) their brothers. Jewish girls and women participate in the obligations and performance of many religious activities once relegated to males; they participate in religiously connected cultural expressions, and innovative religious celebrations of female life-cycle markers. For many Jewishly active women, passionate interest in Judaism and internalized feminist principles coalesce and contribute to vibrant Jewish engagements. It is important to note that American Jewish women have not only taken on expanding roles as religious leaders, scholars, educators, writers, and artists, but have also galvanized the creation and revitalization of religious and spiritual communities. In their quest to fully participate in public Judaism in diverse roles, women sought (1) intellectual knowledge and skills; (2) liturgical competence and confidence—and worship environments encouraging female participation; (3) institutions to accredit women as religious leaders and scholars; and (4) associations for support, friendship, information sharing, and affirming mutual values. While this chapter focuses on non-haredi (non-ultra-Orthodox) American Judaism, gendered transformations were in many ways bi-national, reflecting fluidity and mutual influence between American and Israeli Jews across denominational spectrums, especially in their interactive Jewish feminist communities. Supported by efforts in both countries, throughout the first decades of the twenty-first century new opportunities for Jewish women opened in the areas of Jewish education and scholarship, participation in public Judaism, religious leadership roles, and cultural expression.

Trajectories of Transformation This chapter begins with a listing some of the benchmarks of change, followed by a deeper analysis, because this brief, compressed chronology dramatically illustrates the broad scope and rapidity of transformations over the past half-century. This trajectory also highlights the incremental nature of changes in religious options for women, with seemingly one-time or private events leading to the emergence of more systemic and widespread manifestations. These patterns are clear with hindsight, while experientially feminist goals often seemed frustratingly elusive in real time and were frequently marked with fierce contention. Thus, changes emerged piecemeal in the late 1960s and early 1970s, embedded in the profound social changes sweeping through America, including (but not limited to) Second Wave Feminism, which focused attention on women’s roles, and the Civil Rights Movement, which focused attention on diverse ethnic traditions. The first Women’s Tefilla Groups (WTG), in which mostly Orthodox women conducted traditional Jewish religious services in Hebrew and read from the Torah scroll, began in the early 1970s in several locations across the United States. WTGs greatly elevated Orthodox women’s liturgical skills and confidence because, although it can be said that in many co-educational Modern Orthodox schools’ girls and boys studied together and prayed at the same time (separated by mekhitza dividers), female familiarity with certain aspects was minimized by the fact that girls never assumed

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leadership of public services. At the same time, a group of women, some of whom were participants in the New York Havurah, coming from primarily Conservative and Orthodox backgrounds, joined together with like-minded friends to form “Ezrat Nashim,” an activist women’s study group agitating for religious gender equality. In 1972 the first female Reform rabbi was ordained. During the same year, Ezrat Nashim appeared at the Convention of the Conservative Movement’s rabbinical association, the RA, ultimately influencing the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law (CJL) to vote that women should be counted for a minyan in 1973.3 In Jerusalem, in 1973 the non-denominational Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem offered coeducational programs for men and women, providing the opportunity to engage in the study of classic Jewish texts in an open environment. In 1974 the first female Reconstructionist rabbi was ordained. Early Havurah groups of men and women praying and studying together emerging in the late 1960s and early 1970s were largely not initially focused on religious opportunities for women. Havurat Shalom, an independent countercultural “small, communal Jewish fellowship” founded in 1968  in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aspired to (at first mostly male) “spiritual intention and intensity,” according to participant David Roskies; after some time—and women’s protests— “women were admitted as equal members, not merely as spouses, and finally women stepped forward to lead davening.” (prayer)4 For some early Havurah groups, gender egalitarianism eventually became a central goal. For example, the Library Minyan, at Conservative Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, was created as a “self-led” Minyan in 1971 by young couples and teenagers, including rabbis who participated on equal footing with lay congregants; in 1975, the growing group began a “study process to understand, clarify, and address the issue of women’s participation.” Subsequently, “the Minyan decided to become completely egalitarian,” and pioneered “the inclusion of the names of our Matriarchs in the Amidah” (silent, standing prayer).5 Minyan M’at, founded in 1978, and finding a home at Manhattan’s Conservative Ansche Chesed,6 was both a continuation of the Havurah model and a reaction to it. Minyan M’at, which offered a traditional service, incorporated women completely from its very beginning. In the Orthodox world, Rabbi Chaim Brovender founded a school in Jerusalem (now known as Michlelet Lindenbaum) in 1976 which included an American Talmud program taught in the classic khevruta (study partner) method, for the “gap year” between high school and college, initially as the women’s component of  Sylvia Barack Fishman, A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community (New York: The Free Press, 1993), p. 7; https://jwa.org/node/12146; Jerome Chanes, “A Renewed Look at Jewish Renewal,” Association for Jewish Studies Conference, 2018; Pamela S. Nadell, “A Bright New Constellation: Feminism and American Judaism,” The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America (New York: New York University Press, 2003), pp. 385–405. 4  David Roskies, “A Jewish World of Infinite Possibility: Looking Back at 50  years of Havurat Shalom,” Tablet Magazine, May 24, 2018. 5  https://www.libraryminyan.org/about-us/ 6  https://anschechesed.org/prayer/shabbat-and-holidays/#minyan-mat 3

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Yeshivat Hamivtar. Rabbi Joseph Dov Ber Soloveitchik gave the founding lecture for Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women Beit Midrash program in 1977. Drisha, an innovative American adult women’s learning environment under Orthodox leadership was founded in 1979 and opened a full-time study program in 1984. Blu Greenberg published her iconic Orthodox feminist book On Women and Judaism in 1981, and Yeshiva University’s Stern College began teaching Talmud classes for women in the 1980s. The Conservative movement ordained its first female rabbi in 1985. The path to ordination of Orthodox female rabbis was less straightforward than that of their Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, and trans-denominational colleagues. A small number of individual women were quietly ordained in private arrangements from the 1990s onward, involving some Orthodox rabbis whose names remain secret, as well as the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Rabbi Jonathan Chipman, and Rabbi Aryeh Strikovsky.7 Organized institutional programs to train and credential women regarding mastery of classical rabbinical materials also emerged in the 1990s. The Israeli Nishmat women’s learning program was founded in 1990, and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin challenged the Israeli religious legal system and began training female Toanot (rabbinically trained female advocates in divorce cases) in the early 1990s. In 1992 Drisha created a credentialing program said to parallel rabbinic ordination, but Drisha did not (and does not) confer ordination. Yeshiva University created its GPATS Graduate Program for Women in Advanced Talmud Studies in 2000, the same year that Nishmat created its Yoetzet halakha program, a Talmudic training program for women focused on halakhic questions concerning marital issues. Dena Najman was privately ordained by Rabbi Daniel Sperber in 2006. Sarah Hurwitz was ordained in 2009, in conjunction with the founding of Yeshivat Maharat. In Israel, Beit Hillel created the women’s leadership program, and in 2015 Har’el Beit Midrash ordained two women. Thus, at the present time, access to high-level Jewish education for women is virtually universal, and, despite substantive differences, all wings of American Judaism include women credentialed as clergy. Moreover, the majority of women who do not aspire to rabbinical degrees gradually acquired the option of greater participation in public worship, including in mechitzah congregations. For example, New York’s Drisha Minyan offered women the opportunity to lead the preliminary morning service (p’sukei dezimrah) in a groundbreaking High Holiday service in 2001.8 Elsewhere, Elana Maryles Sztokman summarizes the progression: For several years, a variety of groups of men and women—precursors to the Partnership Minyan—quietly and privately made changes. A group called the Leader Minyan, in which women read from the Torah and led parts of the service, met monthly in Jerusalem. A handful of communities, such as Pardes and Yedidiah in Jerusalem, as well as small groups

 Laurie Goodstein, “Ordained As Rabbis, Women Tell Secret,” New York Times, Dec. 21, 2000.  Steve Lipman and Gary Rosenblatt, “New Role, New Opportunity,” The New York Jewish Week, August 3, 2001. 7 8

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elsewhere in private homes, experimented with allowing women to lead Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat.9

The public face of the Orthodox Partnership Minyanim program, which enabled women to lead in many portions of the prayer service and to read Torah in mixed settings, was arguably presented by the creation of Shira Chadasha in Jerusalem in 2001, which followed the model of the Leader Minyan and that of Drisha’s Rabbi David Silber. Darkhei Noam in New York’s Upper West Side was founded in in 2002 and was “inspired by Drisha’s high holiday minyan.” The writings of Mendel Shapiro and Rabbi Daniel Sperber were powerful influences, according to Darkhei Noam literature, and “several founders of Jerusalem’s Shira Chadasha minyan gave guidance and advice” initially.10 Then, as Sztokman notes, “Immediately following the opening of these two congregations…the model sprouted new synagogues around the world, including in North America, Europe, Israel, and Australia.”11 Similarly, the post-denominational Independent Minyanim movement began with the founding of Mechon Hadar in 2006. Rejecting the passive audience-style worship of typical Conservative and Reform congregations—and attracting worshippers from across the denominational spectrum—Hadar aimed for the sense of communal obligation, the participatory nature, and the lay praxis and mastery of Orthodoxy, but seriously combined “with complete egalitarianism.”12 Finally, the penetration of this trend toward broader and deeper religious opportunities for women is also evident in the haredi world, where, in the words of sociologist Adam Ferziger, women go “beyond Bais Yakov,” to function as significant “religious leaders.” In addition to Haredi women receiving significant education, serving as teachers in far-flung American and Israeli communities,13 and creating numerous female-authored cultural religious expressions,14 Haredi female preachers have become important influencers in their communities.15

 Elana Maryles Sztokman, “Partnership Minyan,” JWA Encyclopedia. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/partnership-minyan 10  https://www.dnoam.org/about/ 11  Stokman, ibid. 12  Elie Kaunfer. Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us (Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010), p. 95. 13  Adam S.  Ferziger, “Beyond Bais Yakov: Orthodox Outreach and the Emergence of Haredi Women as Religious Leaders,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 14, No. 1 (March 2015): 140–159. 14  Rena Reininger Reiner, The Audacity of Holiness: Orthodox Women’s Theater in Israel, trans. Jeffrey Green (Waltham, MA: Hadassah Brandeis Institute, 2014); Shira Rubin, “Painting outside the lines: Israel’s ultra-Orthodox women take their quiet revolution to art school,” The Washington Post, January 6, 2022. 15  Kimmy Caplan, “The Internal Popular Discourse of Israeli Haredi Women,” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 123, December 2003. 9

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Jewish Education for Girls and Women Until the twentieth century, in traditional Jewish communities, religious law prescribed fathers to instruct their sons (but not necessarily their daughters) in “Torah,” usually understood to mean classical Judaic texts, although arguably most Jewish boys and men did not fully live up to this aspiration. But traditionally religious girls as a group did not begin to receive substantive Jewish education in (all-female) classroom settings until Sarah Schenirer created the Bais Yakov schooling system in Poland in 1917. For those Jews who emigrated to the United States, as Jews acclimated to American life over the decades and acquired socioeconomic stability, modest levels of Judaic study for girls gradually became normative, aided immeasurably by the growing ubiquity of bat mitzva celebrations in the 1950s and 1960s in non-Orthodox families, who had sometimes sent their pre-bar mitzva boys to “Hebrew school,” relegating daughters to Sunday school only. While Reform Judaism and later Conservative Judaism featured mixed seating in their sanctuaries and abandoned the language of gendered difference, women were not active religious leaders within either type of congregation. By the 1970s Jewish all-day schools had become the educational venue of choice in Orthodox families, with girls and boys both enrolled in roughly equal numbers. Thus, historical patriarchal religious gendered educational assumptions among American Jews were well on the way to widespread transformation. However, the Jewish education provided to girls and boys was often separate and not quite equal. In a very few settings, girls and boys through high school sat in co-ed classes and took Talmud classes together, such as—from its founding onward—the Maimonides School in Brookline, Massachusetts, led by Rabbi Joseph Dov Ber Soloveitchik. However, this kind of rigorous text study leading to Talmudic literacy was not a widespread aspiration or a societal reality for girls and women in any wing of Judaism. In many Jewish day schools the subjects Orthodox girls studied were considered by many teachers, students, and parents to be “inferior” to the Talmudic curriculum of boys, and may well be construed to consist of a curriculum that made them “educated but ignorant,” in anthropologist Tamar El Or’s words.16 Sociological theory has long argued that each society constructs its own hierarchical understandings of which activities are more or less valuable and worthwhile; in Orthodox societies the Talmud that was learned by boys and men was considered to have greater value than the potpourri of biblical, ethical, ritual, quasi-historical and other materials that were taught to girls. Additionally, in schools where girls and boys were separated for Talmud study, they were often taught in different study styles: Several observers have noted that yeshiva boys emulated scholarly men by studying in dynamic, argumentative dyads-—the khavruta pedagogical model-—while girls often sat passively taking notes on the wisdoms imparted by their teachers.

 Tamar El Or, Educated But Ignorant: UltraOrthodox Jewish Women and Their World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishing, 1992). 16

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Opportunities for girls and women to study Talmud and other rabbinical as well as biblical texts expanded incrementally, as an increasingly diverse array of women’s study programs opened in Israel, both for the pre-college “gap year” and for adult women seeking Talmud study either full-time—similar to men’s Kollel full-­ time study—or part time, both in Israel and in the United States in the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. In the United States, in addition to institutions like Drisha, rabbinical seminaries, and other religiously grounded learning programs, university Jewish studies programs offered classes ranging from beginners’ level Hebrew to advanced studies. Today there is little gender difference in types and years of Jewish education received for American Jews under age 35, according to the Sheskin Decade 2000 data set; and in their study of Gender and American Jews, Harriet and Moshe Hartman note that in NJPS 2000–01 study gender differences “have almost disappeared” among Orthodox and Conservative Jews age 18 to 44.17 Indeed, in the non-Orthodox world, a reverse gender gap has emerged: girls are much more likely than boys to continue with Jewish education into their teen years, after the ages at which bat and bar mitzvah would have taken place. This is significant because of the powerful association of education in the teen years with adult Jewish connections. Boys who don’t participate in some form of Jewish education with peers as teenagers may grow into adults with lower levels of Jewish ethnic capital than girls who do continue with Jewish education as teenagers.18 Girls’ and women’s access to Jewish educational materials were further enhanced by the Internet. Among other online resources, Sefaria, which developed from a concept by author Joshua Foer and former Google project manager Brett Lockspeiser in 2011, became a nonprofit organization offering a huge free library of Jewish texts in Hebrew and English, through interactive interfaces for Web, tablet, and mobile phones. During the pandemic Sefaria added more materials to its data base and more users to its free online services, an enormous boon to Talmud studies by women and by people in locations with limited Judaic studies resources, helping women join the ranks of Daf Yomi daily Talmud study groups, which study a page of Talmud together, in person or virtually, every day. Without a doubt, Sefaria was instrumental and making possible events like International Women’s Talmud Day on April 25, 2021. Rabbanit Sara Wolkenfeld, Chief Learning Officer at Sefaria, said that its mission was to “democratize all Jewish texts.”19

 Harriet Hartman and Moshe Hartman, Gender and American Jews: Patterns in Work, Education & Family in Contemporary Life (Waltham, MA: HBI Series on Jewish Women/ Brandeis University Press, 2009), p. 146. 18  Sylvia Barack Fishman, “Generating Jewish Connections: Conversations with Jewish Teenagers, their Parents, and Jewish Educators and Thinkers,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed. Family Matters: Jewish Education in an Age of Choice (Waltham, MA.: Brandeis University Press/ University Press of New England, 2007, pp. 181–210. 19  Nomi Kaltmann, “An uptick in women’s Talmud study—courtesy of Zoom, podcasts, and online tools,” The Forward, April 12, 2021. 17

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The impact of this decades-long expansion of women’s Jewish learning was on full view with the first international Daf Yomi event that incorporated large numbers of women, early in 2020. Huge numbers of women, especially in the United States and Israel, congregated in person and over zoom each day as 2019 became 2020, to participate in an international group protocol. This Daf Yomi phenomenon generated a deeply impressed New York Times profile on “A Revolution in Jewish Learning, with Women Driving Change” (Jan. 4, 2020)20—a title which could appropriately be used to describe the entire subject of Jewish education for females. Jewish education for girls and women is the gendered change that made all the other gendered religious changes possible, although the ordination of female rabbis discussed below has perhaps attracted the most public attention. As the international Daf Yomi study brilliantly illustrated, today the image of girls and young women in serious study, bent over Hebrew texts, has become a commonplace in the world’s two largest Jewish communities, the United States and Israel. Many American women participating in the women’s Daf Yomi protocol engaged via virtual study with Israeli Rabbanit Michelle Farber, under the auspices of Hadran, an Israeli organization dedicated to women’s text study. In terms of social psychology, the normalization of the visual imagery of the studying girl was an important contributory element in the eventual acceptance of women’s high level rabbinic text study, making possible a whole range of socio-religious reversals. Writers Ilana Kurshan, in her memoir If All the Seas Were Ink (2017) and Dara Horn, in her book of essays, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (2021), each describes her own entry into Daf Yomi study. Much to her surprise, Kurshan found that the tractates of the Talmud often “match” or “challenge” her “various emotional states.”21 Horn articulated her feelings of connection with similarly studying American and Israeli women and also with the Jews of the past, in a vibrant communal conversation; undeterred by encountering “unenlightened things about women,” she finds herself “enchanted” by the Talmudic realistic discussions of “a broken world,” and its passionate dedication to “rebuilding,” which “is hard, daily, constant, endless.” Mostly, she loves Talmud study because “you are never alone in it”: “Once the process of memory becomes important, the details do not fade but rather accrue—because the memory itself becomes a living thing, enriched by every subsequent generation that brings new meaning to it…. these people’s elaborate communal memory overlapped with mine.”22 Feminist Jewish educators have been actively advocating that these new approaches and insights on women and Jewish religious texts and activities should transcend being an elite phenomenon and should be implemented in grassroots educational environments. The late Chaya Rosenfeld Gorsetman, and Elana Maryles Sztokman, for example, in Educating in the Divine Image: Gender Issues in

 “A Revolution in Jewish Learning, with Women Driving Change,” New York Times (Jan. 4, 2020).  Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), p. 123. 22  Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021), pp. 226–229. 20 21

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Orthodox Jewish Day Schools, analyzed the substantial lag between feminist insights and practical application in school policies and hiring and promotion practices. The authors encouraged “educating for a different view of leadership and gender” and substantively promoting Jewish religiously educated “compassionate males/powerful females.”23

 omen as Halakhic Authorities, Rabbis, and Judaic W Studies Scholars Some American Jewish women are drawn to diverse leadership roles in Jewish religious and liturgical settings, including becoming credentialed as rabbis; however, becoming a rabbi is far from the only motivation for acquiring expertise in rabbinical materials, and America’s various movement-related and trans-denominational rabbinic seminaries were not the only way for women to become Judaically learned. Thus, although Drisha, a New York-area innovative adult women’s learning environment under Orthodox leadership, opened a full-time study program (1984), and later created a credentialing program (1992), most of the women who studied at Drisha in the 1980s and 1990s did not aspire to the rabbinate. Indeed, many university students who simply wanted to upgrade their Judaic studies skills attended classes at Pardes in Israel or at Drisha. Increasing numbers of women enrolled in the Judaic studies departments and programs that were proliferating on American college campuses in the latter decades of the twentieth century. These programs, together with opportunities provided in liberal rabbinical seminaries and other institutions, gave women the ability to acquire the intellectual skills to read, understand, and analyze rabbinic materials, including the Talmud, in a setting outside the traditional yeshiva world. These academic settings added to the mix all the tools of the historical, critical, and analytical study of Jewish civilization, culture, and texts, including placing textual materials in their socio-historical contexts, and trying to understand how those contexts influenced the men who contributed their opinions to the corpus of rabbinic texts. This academic approach interrogated the Talmud and other rabbinic literature through the lenses of history, sociology, political theory, psychology, economics, literary analysis, and—more recently—gender theory. When Reform women, influenced by Second Wave Feminism, pressed for genuine equality in religious leadership, they often also served as brokers for Judaic traditionalism within the Reform movement. This phenomenon of women acquiring the skills and the ritual accoutrements and pressing for more Hebrew and more traditional rituals so that they could utilize them in Temple settings, is often missed by observers of Reform Judaism’s increasing openness during the second half of the

 Chaya Rosenfeld Gorsetman and Elana Maryles Sztokman, Educating in the Divine Image: Gender Issues in Orthodox Jewish Day Schools (Waltham, MA: HBI Series on Gender and Jewish Women, 2013), p. 266. 23

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twentieth century. For example, many Reform Women were personally interested in Jewish rituals like wearing kippot (kipa s, kippot pl/ Hebrew, skullcaps, yarmulkes) and a talit prayer shawl (talit s, talitot pl/Hebrew). They wore them in services—and after some time more men began to wear them also. Women’s personal aspirations included competency in Hebrew liturgical texts. These very rituals, along with the Hebrew language, had once been considered outmoded by male “classic” Reform leaders. Thus, the liberalizing efforts that led into the Reform movement’s being the first American Jewish movement to ordain a female rabbi in 1972, followed in 1974 by the Reconstructionist movement, also contributed to the Reform movement’s looking and sounding more Jewishly traditional in the 1980s and 1990s than it did in the 1940s. Conservative women, many of whom were the products of intensive Conservative educational systems, including Camp Ramah, where they attained liturgical skills— were usually  unable to use  those skills in Conservative congregations as adults. After considerable struggle within the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and within the Rabbinic Assembly (RA), the Conservative movement ordained its first female rabbi in 1985. Other rabbinic “firsts” for women followed, illustrating in their own way not only the fluidity of gender roles but also other kinds of boundary crossings: In 1985, Deborah Brin was ordained as the first openly lesbian female rabbi and in 1988, Stacy Offner became the first openly lesbian rabbi hired by a mainstream Jewish congregation, Temple Shir Tikvah in Minneapolis. In 1994, Laura Geller became the first female rabbi heading a major metropolitan congregation, Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills. As girls and women moved into spaces previously reserved for males, such as Torah services and sacred study halls, and donned symbolic ritual clothing long associated with men at prayer, the semiotics of maleness and femaleness in American Jewish worship environments changed profoundly. It is now acceptable and customary for women in American Conservative, Reform, and other liberal wings of United States Judaism to wear kippot and talitot at prayer services. Even in some Orthodox congregations, some women choose to cover their heads with decorative kippot; less often some wear prayer shawls. Recently a Modern Orthodox day school made headlines when it gave female students permission to wear tefillin (phylacteries) at weekday morning prayers (tefillin are not worn at Shabbat or holiday services).24 These changes are more than cosmetic. Initially, para-rabbinical roles were created by liberal Orthodox schools and institutions; for example, some Orthodox congregations hired female “Community Educators” or “Interns” who served quasi-rabbinic roles. In Israel, female legal advocates, Toanot (s. Toenet) received formal credentials from educational institutions like Nishmat in Jerusalem and became active in difficult divorce cases. Israeli Yoatzot (s. Yoetzet), female ritual advisors for women concerning religious behaviors connected with Jewish family law, received similar credentials. Although they were first viewed with suspicion by some male rabbis when they began actively advising Orthodox women, Yoatzot and

24

 http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/ramaz-would-permit-girls-wear-tefillin-0

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Toanot eventually garnered appreciation by many in the Orthodox rabbinate, who began to believe that female rabbinic advisors might actually increase levels of piety among Orthodox women. The existence of these Israeli cadres of women trained in rabbinical texts and competently performing aspects of rabbinical functions were one factor foreshadowing the creation of an American Orthodox rabbinical seminary for women, Yeshivat Maharat, which in 2009 ordained its first rabbi, Rabba Sara Hurwitz—who together with Rabbi Avi Weiss, founder of the Modern Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT) and rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx, had founded that institution. It had gradually become obvious that women were capable of mastering rabbinical legal texts. But the use of the term “Rabba“—Hebrew for female rabbi—generated vociferous controversy in the Orthodox community, both among the laity and among rabbis and communal leaders in positions of authority. As Yeshivat Maharat moved toward the ordination of three women at its inaugural graduation ceremony on June 16, 2013, the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) reissued a statement from 2010: “We cannot accept either the ordination of women or the recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title.” The school’s leaders decided to call all successive graduates “Maharat,” an acronym for Manhiga Hilkhatit Rukhanit Toranit (female leader of Jewish law, spirituality, and Torah), instead of “Rabba.”25 At the present time, however, Maharat and some other women’s rabbinic programs allow ordained women to choose their own titles, and to change them as circumstances demand. It should be emphasized that in the RCA’s 2015 resolution rejecting and opposing women calling themselves something like rabbi (rav (m) or rabba (f) in Hebrew), the authors enthusiastically endorsed the concept of women as authorities in rabbinic texts and ideas: The RCA encourages a diversity of halakhically and communally appropriate professional opportunities for learned, committed women, in the service of our collective mission to preserve and transmit our heritage…. This resolution does not concern or address non-­ rabbinic positions such as Yoatzot Halacha, community scholars, Yeshiva University’s GPATS, and non-rabbinical schoolteachers.26

Such full-throated ownership of women as halakhic experts would have been unthinkable for most of Jewish history, including just a few decades before the RCA Resolution. Thus, while American centrist Modern Orthodox authorities officially rejected the final step of women as ordained rabbis, their words illustrate how completely communal norms had changed regarding Jewish education—including high level Jewish education—for girls and women, in the United States. As sociologist Adam Ferziger observes, their response was closely tied up with the American milieu and the specific roles of rabbis in American Jewish life: “Even for the authors of the OU decision who forbade women rabbis, the only sphere that remained

 Batya Ungar-Sargon, “Orthodox Yeshiva to Ordain Three Women. Just Don’t Call Them Rabbi,” in Tablet online magazine June 10, 2013. 26  2015 Resolution: RCA Policy Concerning Women Rabbis. 25

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unconditionally associated with the male rabbi was the synagogue sanctuary during services.” All of these attitudinal and behavioral transformations are premised on changes in Jewish education for girls and women. In most traditional Jewish cultures religious text education was the necessary ticket to those aspiring to religious leadership roles in the Jewish community—and women were denied both high-level education and the credentialing as rabbis. One hugely important educational result of the credentialing of women as rabbis is that women can be full Jewish educational professionals, competing for Jewish positions that were long reserved for (male) rabbis, such as Jewish day school headmaster/head of school/principle, as well as in established or new positions in institutions of higher learning.

 hanging Orthodox Norms Regarding Women’s C Religious Expression Recent studies demonstrate that on a grass roots level attitudes toward and assumptions about women and their religious expressions have changed. According to Nishmah Research’s “Survey of the Modern Orthodox Community in the United States” (2017), 80% of American Modern Orthodox Jews agree that their synagogue should offer coed religious classes, study sessions (shiurim), and other learning opportunities; 75% that the mekhitza (gender-divided prayer partition) should be “woman friendly”; 75% that women should be eligible to serve as synagogue president; 69% that women should say the Mourner’s Kaddish out loud, alone if necessary; that women should give talks from the pulpit; and 53% that women should have some type of expanded synagogue clergy roles.27 It should be noted that parallel but not identical changes are taking place in haredi women’s communities. While ordination is not the goal of “a feminist revolt in ultra-Orthodox society,” either in the United States or Israel, women are pursuing ways to express their own voices, in activities such as all-female classes, lectures, theater, film, concerts, and written materials.28 Ferziger argues that the actual concept of the Orthodox rabbi has been subtly shifted through Orthodox discussions of women in the rabbinate, as well as by their actual existence; he offers detailed analyses of the ways in which “female roles, once viewed as purely supportive in nature, have evolved into platforms for voicing uniquely feminine styles of Jewish authority …increasingly among the more conservative haredi sector—sometimes referred

 Mark Trencher, “A Survey of the Modern Orthodox Community in the United States,” Nishmah Research, 9/ 2017. 28  Gitit Levy-Paz, “So how, in fact, do Haredi women behave,” https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/sohow-in-fact-do-haredi-women-behave/; Judy Maltz, “The Israeli woman leading a feminist revolt in ultra-Orthodox society,” Haaretz.com, Nov. 3, 2021. 27

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to as the right wing, traditionalists, ultra-Orthodox, sectarians, or enclavists.”29 In cultural realms as well, haredi women increasingly create opportunities to express themselves in often women-only settings for women-created graphic arts, architecture, and design, as well as books and lectures, music, drama, and film.30

 endered Lens Adding New Dimensions to Sacred Study G and Experience Women’s ordination as rabbis and scholars of rabbinic literature did more than unlock doors. It is in the process of changing the religious culture on a deep, psychological level. As the image of women as highly skilled experts in rabbinic texts was increasingly accepted, observers hypothesized that using gender as a lens for examining classic rabbinic and biblical texts might generate substantive changes in the way those texts were studied, understood, and implemented. Rabbinit Dr. Michal Tikochinsky, who documented new programs credentializing female morot halakha (decisors of Jewish law) posed penetrating questions: “Is the change something beyond the simple rectification of a historical injustice? Is this merely a quantitative change (i.e., there are more women responding to halakhic questions than there were before) or does it also indicate a qualitative change (the response model has changed)?”31 Orthodox feminist icon and philosopher Professor Tamar Ross’ 2004 classic treatise Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism declared that women’s participation would produce not just a spectrum of practical changes in educational, intellectual, spiritual expectations for Orthodox women, but profound underlying social and values transformations. Ross, who grew up in Detroit, Michigan and moved independently to Israel in her teens, predicted that women as “religious authorities” would create “sociological” changes, such as a “special focus on issues of concern to women.” Female Talmud scholars would “refuse to resolve policy issues at the costs of women’s interest,” Ross wrote—clearly implying that male Talmud scholars had in fact resolved policy issues at the costs of women’s interests! They would reject rigidity of certain formal halakhic patterns if the primary rationale for those patterns had been to differentiate Orthodox from non-­ Orthodox Jews. Ross insisted that female Talmud scholars would also raise scholarly and communal awareness of halakhically-created “moral pathos” in women’s lives, showing greater sensitivity to others, through personalization, creativity, and flexibility, focusing on “moral and spiritual considerations” over “adherence to formal  Ferziger, “Beyond Bais Ya’akov; Adam S.  Ferziger, “Female Clergy in Male Space: The Sacralization of the Orthodox Rabbinate,” The Journal of Religion, (University of Chicago) 2018. 30  Reiner, The Audacity of Holiness; Rubin, “Painting Outside the ines.” 31  Michal Tikochinsky, “Women in positions of Halakhic leadership,” Afterward to Daniel Sperber, Rabba, Maharat, Rabbanit, Rebbetzin: Women with Leadership Authority According to Halakhah (Jerusalem and New York: Urim Publications, 2020), pp. 107–142. 29

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rules.” Women would thus “inevitably challenge the scale of values governing public policy,” Ross wrote, on issues such as aguna (women seeking halakhic extrication from failed marriages), “questioning the male-centered orientation of halakhic assumptions.”32 More recently, Ross poses a disruptive question: “If the Torah’s understandings of self, world, and God so clearly reflect a patriarchal social order…. can we really credit it with being divine?” In the Jewish mode, she answers her question with another question: “This ultimately drives us to ask: Can any verbal message claiming revelatory status really be divine?” adding, “language itself is shaped by the cultural context in which is it is formulated.”33 An outpouring of learned feminist scholarship on rabbinic literature has validated predictions that scholarship with a gendered lens deals with previously underexamined topics. While many such scholars are Israelis, most of their publications are in English, and professional conferences facilitate fruitful intellectual interchanges between bring American and Israeli academics. To cite just two of many recent illustrative examples, philosopher Prof. Ronit Irshai, an Israeli gender scholar mentored by Tamar Ross, writes penetrating analyses about the quintessential philosophical and practical “maleness of halakha,” exploring topics like enforced gender identity, the impact of emphasizing female modesty as a religious expression, the silencing of women, homosexuality, and cross-dressing.34 American Prof. Sharon Faye Koren, in Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, examines rabbinical views of the female body and how those views impact women’s spiritual development.35 Rabbinical schools and higher-level institutions of Talmud study have been enriched in both dramatic and subtle ways by the influence of female rabbis and mentors. To cite just a few illustrative examples of the way female rabbinic scholars with Orthodox backgrounds have become public “influencers” in non-­denominational educational institutions, at Drisha, Rabbanit Leah Sarna, a Yale University graduate who received rabbinical ordination from Yeshivat Maharat in 2018, was appointed Associate Director of Education and Director of High School Programs in 2020. Sarna’s numerous enthusiastically attended activities—both in-person and virtual— have included a special class for Ta’anit B’chorot, the pre-Passover fast of the firstborn, historically observed only by first-born sons, and also classes on topics like a Talmudic exploration of bias, womb Torah, head coverings for men and women, and

 Tamar Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (Waltham, MA: HBI Series on Gender and Jewish Women, 2004), pp. 234–242. 33  Tamar Ross, “Feminism changes the study of Jewish thought,” Tablet Magazine, Dec. 17, 2021; https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/feminism-changes-study-Jewish-thought 34  See, for example, Ronit Irshai, Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature (Waltham, MA: Brandeis series on Gender, Culture, Religion and Law, 2012; “Cross-dressing in Jewish Law, and the Construction of Gender Identity,” Nashim, 2021; “Homosexuality and the ‘Aqueda Theology’: A comparison of Modern Orthodoxy and the Conservative Movement,” Journal of Jewish Ethics 4, No. 1 (2018). 35  Sharon Faye Koren, Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Waltham, MA: HBI Series on Gender and Jewish Women, 2011). 32

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food and intimacy.36 Dr. Erica Brown, a Jewish educator and author whose thoughtful books, columns, and blogs gained her a following far beyond her formal position as Director of George Washington University’s Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership, was recently named as Director of the Sacks-Herenstein Center at Yeshiva University, a new institute created to “mentor emerging Jewish leaders based on the values of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,” a mentor of Brown herself.37 Dr. Mijal Bitton, a public intellectual named in the New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” listing of young Jewish influencers, emigrated from Argentina and currently serves as a Scholar in Residence at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and the Rosh Kehilla (“communal leader”) and Co-Founder of the Downtown Minyan of New York City. She often writes of the strong traditionalist strands in her life as the wife of Rabbi Sion Setton in a Sephardic community and the mother of small children, which she weaves together with her own strong feminism, saying she aspires, “to be intellectual engaging, spiritually uplifting, and outward looking,” and to convey “Torah learning as an extensive conversation between people, ideas, and texts.”38 Outside of Orthodoxy, of course, the influence and importance of American female rabbinic leaders is long established, and numerous female rabbis have exercised and continue to exercise significant impact. Many Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and trans-denominational female rabbis have distinguished careers as rabbinic leaders in synagogues and temples, and some have created communities of shared values outside of congregational settings in which religious principles guide public advocacy. Once again, just a few illustrative examples can suggest the broad range of women’s rabbinic leadership. One such public leader is Rabbi Sharon Brous, the founder in 2004 of IKAR (essence) “a community blending spirituality and strong social justice values to reengage disaffected Jews.” Rabbi Brous, who offered a prayer at President Obama’s inaugural prayer service, is often named one of America’s most influential rabbis by the Forward 50 and Newsweek; she speaks and writes widely in both in-person and virtual venues.39 Rabbi Judith R. Hauptman, the E. Billy Ivry Prof. Emerita of Talmud and Rabbinic Culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary, began teaching Talmud there in 1973. Her pioneering scholarship on women and women’s issues in rabbinic literature had an impact on scholars and was among the first to make rabbinic thought through a gendered lens accessible to a broad reading audience, especially in her much-read book, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (1987). Hauptman went on to be ordained as a rabbi in 2003 by the Academy for Jewish Religion, and shortly afterward founded Ohel Ayalah (named in memory of her mother), an innovative organization providing free walk-in High Holiday Services and Passover Seders in New York City of otherwise  https://www.jofa.org/rabbanitleahsarna  Jacob Miller, “YU taps educator Erica Brown for new leadership program,” ejewishphilanthropy, Nov. 24, 2021. 38  Miriam Groner, “Mijal Bitton, 28, Public Intellectual, Public Values,” New York Jewish Week, June 6, 2018. 39  https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/brous-sharon 36 37

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unaffiliated young adult Jews.40 Reform Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, Senior Rabbi and Senior Cantor in Manhattan’s prestigious Central Synagogue, electrifies and inspires congregants (and those who tune virtually to their services) with prayers and songs conveyed with her magnificent operatic voice and spiritual passion. Buchdahl, who was named “one of America’s most influential rabbis” by Newsweek in 2011, says that one of her goals is to “amplify the voice of progressive Judaism…as a force for good.” As the first Asian American woman to be rabbinically ordained, she has been called “a poster girl for the face of Jewish diversity in America.”41

Jewish Women’s Cultural Expressions As Deborah Whitehead correctly asserts, “while attention to women’s ordination is important, it does not tell the whole story” of women’s spiritual leadership.42 Scores of academic books and articles by Jewish women, although they are written in a scholarly rather than a religious framework, provide important resources for women’s spiritual and religious lives. Additionally, the phenomenon of American Jewish women’s spiritual and religious flowering also includes cultural expressions. To note a few examples that illustrate the range of intellectual and cultural enterprises drawing on iconic Jewish religious texts and themes: American Jewish poet and Professor of English Joy Ladin’s, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, interprets biblical passages and concepts, powerfully illuminating words and ideas, including the loneliness of God, as seen from a transwoman’s perspective.43 In The Book of Blessings (1996), American Jewish poet, translator, and liturgist Marcia Falk rewrote foundational prayers such as the Sh’ma Yisrael (Hear Oh Israel) from a deeply feminist and Jewishly knowledgeable sensibility; in The Days Between (2014) she provided profound poetic musings on the High Holy Days.44 Scholar Mara Benjamin scrutinized biblical texts such as the narratives of Sarai and Hagar, Moses, and Ruth and Naomi to illuminate the complexities of modern fertility and childcare outsourcing arrangements in her insightful exploration, The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (2018).45 Feminist creative writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians with strong Judaic backgrounds and interests have also fruitfully expanded women’s engagement with  Gail Labovitz, “Judith Hauptman,” The Shalvi/ Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, 2021.  Rahel Musleah, “Profile: Angela Buchdahl,” Hadassah Magazine, June/July, 2013. 42  Deborah Whitehead, “Women lead religious groups in many ways—besides the growing number who have been ordained,” The Conversation, Dec. 8, 2021. 43  Joy Ladin, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective (Waltham, MA: HBI Series on Gender and Jewish Women, 2018). 44  Lucille Lang Day, “Marcia Falk,” https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/falk-marcia 45  Mara H. Benjamin, The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2018).

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Judaism, as well as exploring the tension between feminism and Judaism. Indeed, the explosion of creativity, especially among Israeli female musicians, dramatists, and filmmakers; while these Israeli artists are not the focus of this chapter, they are accessible to, and influence Jewishly involved American creators of cultural products. This interactive fertility recalls Emile Durkheim’s strong statement on the centrality of the arts in religious experience: “Art is not simply an external ornament…They [the arts in the service of religious rites] are as necessary to the proper functioning of our moral life as food is to sustain our physical life. For it is through them that the group affirms and maintains itself.”46 In the United States, Jewish artist Helene Aylon turned her feminist artistic lens on traditional Judaism in the 1990s in a nine-part work entitled, “The G-D Project” (artist’s spelling, reflecting a sectarian Orthodox view of the holiness of the deity in English). Her memoirs, Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist47 described both her personal and artistic evolution. American-Israeli printmaker and painter Andi Arnovitz reworked biblical, Talmudic, and halakhic concepts into stunning large visual pieces, such as a coat for agunot (women trapped in dead marriages) composed of hundreds of photocopied Hebrew marriage contracts torn into small pieces, sewn together with hanging threads, for example. “The subjects I think are work exploring…[are] the places where religion, politics, and gender meet,” said Arnovitz about her artwork.48

Women’s Full Participation in Independent Minyanim Considerations of gender equality played an important role in the creation of Independent Minyanim, worship and study communities that exist independently of the congregations created by the denominational movements. The concept of independent worship communities has a strong precedent in the 1960s and 1970s, when groups of rebellious young Jewish leaders founded experimental worship communities called Havurot in reaction to what they then saw as an unspiritual and overly materialistic and pro forma institutional Jewish world. Havurot, much like today’s Independent Minyanim, emphasized an egalitarianism which expanded to include women, and urged innovative approaches to passionate prayer in a non-institutional structure with lay-led services. But while it is probably true in terms of social dynamics that the existence of egalitarian Havurot eased the way for the emergence of the Independent Minyan movement, today’s Independent Minyan leaders fiercely  Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912, RPT trans. Carol Cosman (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 284. 47  Helene Aylon, Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life As A Feminist Artist (Waltham, MA: HBI Series on Gender and Jewish Women and The Feminist Press, 2012). 48  Chloe Sabib, “Artist Andi Arnovitz: ‘Judaism Is Worth Exploring Over and Over Again,’” Alma November 11, 2021. 46

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differentiate between the Havurot and Independent Minyanim, arguing that most Havurot did not insist on rigorous mastery of liturgical and textual materials, according to Rabbi Elie Kaunfer depicting the creation of Mechon Hadar, (by Rabbis Kaunfer, Shai Held, and Ethan Tucker) a leading Independent Minyan in Manhattan.49 Independent Minyanim can be divided into two types: (1) those that are share many characteristics of Orthodox environments, and (2) those that have more in common with Reconstructionist or Reform values and mores. Although different experiences motivate the leaders of the Independent Minyanim movement, many perform traditional—some of them virtually Orthodox—services conducted with egalitarian principles. Indeed, Kaunfer explicitly wrote that their davening (prayer chanting) sounds “just like Orthodox if your eyes are closed,” with the firm proviso that egalitarianism is a sacred principle in the Independent Minyanim movement. Rabbi Ethan Tucker explained, “There are any number of people who, by all rights, would just be in a Modern Orthodox synagogue if certain trends with women or interactions with the larger Jewish and non-Jewish society had played out in a different direction than they did.” Tucker added that “if the gender nut were really cracked in Orthodoxy such that you wouldn’t join or not join an Orthodox synagogue because of gender, if that could be taken off the table—I think you’d have a lot of people who would say, ‘Great. I’m signing up for this’…I think it boils down to gender, nothing more, nothing less,” Tucker said.50

Many Women’s Roles in Orthodox Partnership Minyanim Partnership Minyanim can be regarded as a specialized, Modern Orthodox subset of the Independent Minyanim phenomenon, (although they preceded them): men and women are separated, usually by a halakhic mekhitzah divider, but girls and women lead all parts of the service and Torah reading except for the Amidah and other prayers for which women’s leadership is explicitly proscribed by rabbinic law. Partnership Minyanim are reported to provide intense worship experiences, with leaders who report that they are committed to halakha (rabbinic law) and Orthodoxy, and are also committed to the enterprise of enabling women to experience prayer deeply and intimately.51 Today, about two dozen Partnership Minyanim currently operate in the US, Israel, and Australia, but more may exist because new congregations of this type open frequently, but are not always registered in international counts. They are prevalent enough—and attractive enough to large numbers of well-­ educated Orthodox yeshiva graduates, as well as a multi-generational, broad spectrum of Jews from other backgrounds—to garner their own condemnations from  Kaunfer. Empowered Judaism, p. 95.  Personal interview. 51  For a complete description of the creation of Shira Hadasha and its goals, see: Tova Hartman, Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press/ University Press of New England, 2007). 49 50

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some official rabbinic bodies and individuals, who attempt to delegitimize them as authentic Orthodox places of worship. However, they have also garnered support from rabbis such as Israel’s Daniel Sperber, a professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University, who has written extensively on the halakhic permissibility of Partnership Minyanim.52

Jewish Women’s Feminist Organizations Three non-profit educational institutions focusing on Jews and gender were initiated in the mid-1990s: JWA, HBI, and JOFA. JWA, the Jewish Women’s Archive, which “documents Jewish women’s stories, elevates their voices, and inspires them to be agents of change,” according to the JWA website, opened in 1995, founded by Gail Twersky Reimer. The JWA produces attractive educational materials that can be downloaded for free, including posters, exhibits, an online Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, book and film guides, and other materials. HBI, The Hadassah Brandeis Institute (www.brandeis.edu/hbi/), an academic research center initially endowed by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America was founded at Brandeis University in 1977 by Shulamit Rheinharz. Dedicated to promoting fresh ways of thinking about Jews and gender worldwide, HBI supports three book series which have transformed many aspects of the field of Judaic studies, invites Scholars in Residence and Artists in Residence to the HBI offices at Brandeis, distributes yearly research grants to Jewish women’s studies scholars around the world, and runs international conferences and lecture series. JOFA, The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, also founded in 1997, “has grown from a small group that gathered around founding President Blu Greenberg‘s kitchen table into a professionally staffed, international alliance,” according to its website. JOFA runs international conferences that typically attract more than 1000 participants, produces The JOFA Journal featuring essays, as well as print and taped educational materials on specific halakhic issues affecting women, sponsors local and regional programs and JOFA “campus fellows,” and advocates for the expansion of the roles of Jewish girls and women in a broad variety of settings. The scholarship of female Orthodox scholars of rabbinic texts is featured in JOFA publications like Ta Shma Halakhic Source Guides, and Shema Bekolah. Among other materials usable either in home settings or educational institutions, tapes for women learning how to read the Torah and various holiday scrolls are available. Highly relevant to this chapter’s topic, JOFA has policies and programs in place that support Orthodox women rabbis and their careers. For example, the Devorah Scholar Grants, “an innovative program designed to seed the American landscape with women spiritual leaders,” sponsored by the Micah Foundation, partners with Orthodox

 Daniel Sperber, Rabba, Maharat, Rabbanit, Rebbetzin: Women with Leadership Authority According to Halachah, op. cit. 52

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congregations by providing substantial challenge grants to hire female rabbis in clerical roles. Pam Scheininger, President of the JOFA Board (2021), commented, “Judging by the number of inquiries and applications we received from women and men across the United States and Canada, Israel, and Australia, it is clear that there is a demand for women’s leadership roles in Orthodox synagogues around the world.”53

 onclusion: Jewish Religion and Spirituality in Women’s C Lives and Communities The transformations described in this chapter have not been exclusively related to intellectual activities. They are influencing American Judaism as a lived religion. Over the past few decades, many Jewish women’s ritual and ceremonial lacunae have been filled in most American Jewish religious environments. Jewish ceremonies and naming celebrations for newborn girls, prayers to sacralize the childbearing process, bat mitzvah services and celebrations that are now ubiquitous in American Jewish communities across denominational lines, and meaningful roles for brides in their own Jewish weddings have become the norm for many American Jews. American Jewish women bereaved of loved ones--and the men among whom they worship--now often assume that their mourning process can include women’s public recitation of kaddish in synagogue services, including in many Orthodox institutions. As a result, American Jews—male and female—frequently assume levels of Jewish religious involvement for women in public Judaism which is not shared among some Jewish communities in other countries. These developments do not mean that American Jews have adopted the American assumption that women are innately more spiritual and religious than men, as articulated in the assumption, “By now it is so taken for granted that women are more religious than men that every competent quantitative study of religiousness routinely includes sex as a control variable.”54 While some researchers have asserted innate psychological leanings are the basis for female religiosity, others have argued that while “men are assigned [by society] roles that are more instrumental than socio-emotional and thus are less concerned with problems of morality,” women are socialized to be more relational in their development and more inclined toward religiosity.55 However, female interest in religion precipitating male lack of interest in religion and religious culture is neither universal nor inevitable. D.  Paul Sullins (2006) uses international data revealing that in religions other than  https://www.jofa.org/devorah-scholars  Rodney Stark, “Physiology and Faith: Addressing the ‘Universal’ Gender Differences in Religious Commitment,” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41, No. 3 (2002), pp. 495–507, p. 496. 55  Cited in Hart Nelson and R. M. Potvin, “Gender and Regional Differences in the Religiosity of Protestant Adolescents,” in Review of Religious Research 22, No. 3, pp. 268–285. 53 54

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Christianity—especially Judaism and Islam—men are often equally or more religious than women. “Worldwide there is no measure of religiousness on which Jewish females score higher than Jewish males,” comments Sullins. “Jewish men report significantly higher rates of synagogue attendance and belief in life after death than do Jewish women; otherwise there is no sex difference in religiousness among Jews.”56 The elite and lay female religious activists, religious leaders, and spiritual and religious thinkers and artists discussed in this chapter have diverse styles and religious approaches, but most share a paradigm change of participatory Jewish partnership: Rather than assuming that the religiosity of girls and women is auxiliary to and enabling of the central, foundational religiosity of obligated men—an historical Jewish religious expectation—current generations of contemporary American Jewish women who are interested in Jewish religion and spirituality treat their religious interests and obligations as functionally independent from that in their male cohort. This is true whether they themselves are married or unmarried, with or without children, heterosexual, LGBTQ+, or gender fluid. Among those who are religiously observant, many take on the personal status of religious obligation. Contemporary American Jewish women’s religious expressions, as this chapter has demonstrated, include innovative leadership, scholarship, and education, as well as cultural and artistic creativity. To an extent not always fully realized, women’s religious expressions also create social contexts and are distinguished by a communal dynamic, quite unlike the isolated, personalized Jewish experience, which some have claimed defines contemporary Jewishness. In contrast to “the Jew within,”57 from the beginning women’s communities have emerged for learning together, praying together, and working for common religious and spiritual goals, as can be seen from the emergence of Ezrat Nashim and the first Women’s Tefilla Groups (WTG) in the early 1970s through current developments in women’s Jewish expressions, such as international women’s Daf Yomi daily Talmud study participation. Each of these enterprises has generated its own fresh—and contagious—excitement. This is not to deny or trivialize the fact that American women’s Judaic achievements have been enabled by untold hours of solitary study and individual personal effort. But, equally important, the group social dynamic women experienced epitomizes a current manifestation of what sociological pioneer Emile Durkheim called “collective effervescence.” That is, when people “moved by a common passion…become susceptible to feelings and actions” and experience a mutual sense of deep meaningfulness, vitality, and joy. Thus, as Durkheim describes the paradoxical dynamic, shared work on behalf of common goals helps shared values to be experienced by the individual as “an integral part of our being, and in so doing it elevates and enlarges that being.”58  D. Paul Sullins, “Gender and Religion: Deconstructing Universality, Constructing Complexity,” in American Journal of Sociology 112, No. 3 (November 2006), pp. 838–880, pp. 844, 846. 57  Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2000. 58  Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, pp. 157 ff. 56

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This contagious social dynamic affects not only participating women as individuals but is also a critical factor in the power of women’s active partnership in American Judaism. Indeed, although the women and men involved in the expansion of Jewish women’s religious and spiritual roles comprise a minority in the American Jewish population, they are a vibrant and robust minority. They provide much of the religious, spiritual, and cultural leadership within their diverse communities. Their growth and influence are hopeful—and countercultural—evidence of the revitalization of Judaism in America going forward. Sylvia Barack Fishman (Ph.D. Washington University) is the Joseph and Esther Foster Professor Emerita of Contemporary Jewish Life in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department, Brandeis University. The author of eight books and numerous articles, she received the Marshall Sklare Award from the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry in 2014.  

Jewish Political Involvement Marc D. Stern

Louis Marshall, one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), said in 1904: “What I am trying to avoid is the creation of a political organization, one which will be looked upon as indicative of a purpose on the part of Jews to recognize that they have interests different from those of other American citizens.”1 Fifteen years later, an early leader of the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) declared that the absence of a Jewish voting bloc was a disgrace.2 Notwithstanding their objections to acknowledging a Jewish vote, Jewish leaders were prepared to invoke Jewish bloc voting to support their preferred immigration policy3—and they did so repeatedly. One hundred years later, no one pretends that there are no Jewish voting patterns—patterns that are in many ways distinct, though perhaps not in the way that Marshall contemplated. Indeed, no later than the 1950s such patterns were evident, and, more importantly, publicly discussed, as shown by political scientist Lawrence Fuch’s The Political Behavior of American Jews.4 At the time of Fuch’s work, Jews were more reluctant than they are today to speak of a Jewish vote. Fuchs, in fact, begins his book with a chapter entitled “But Is There a Jewish Vote?” Some forty

 Letter to Rabbi Joseph Stolz, in Louis Marshall, Champions of Liberty: Selected Papers and Addresses (1957), 21–22, reprinted in P.R. Mendes-Fox and J. Reinharz, The Jews In The Modern World, 487 (1995). 2  Henry Feingold, A Time for Searching: Entering the Mainstream 158–61 (1992). 3  See N. Cohen, Not Free to Desist (1972), pp. 40–53; 138–142. Note that at first, AJC played a behind the scenes role, but came to act directly, including threatening to intervene in presidential campaigns. Id. at 50–51. 4  L. Fuchs, The Political Behavior of American Jews (1956). 1

M. D. Stern (*) American Jewish Committee, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Chanes, M. Silk (eds.), The Future of Judaism in America, Studies of Jews in Society 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7_6

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years later, J.J. Goldberg, in his book on Jewish political power,5 takes the existence of such a vote as a given. Political scientists today routinely acknowledge the salience of religion in voting patterns. The point is not whether there were Jewish voting patterns in the 1950s; clearly there were. And just as clearly, that was the case earlier. It is just that Jews (or their organizations) tried desperately to deny what was undoubtedly and obviously true. During the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign in which Kennedy’s Catholicism was a crucial issue, journalists inquired about the proclivities of the Jewish vote.6 AJC issued a statement indignantly denying that there was any such thing as the Jewish vote, and AJCongress issued a similar denunciation. Nevertheless, the American Jewish Year Book, published by the very same AJC, meticulously reported on how Jews voted in that election. No one would, or could, credibly issue such a denial today—not when each presidential candidate for the previous several elections has had a designated Jewish liaison, devoted substantial efforts to appealing to Jewish voters, often about Israel or church-state separation, and used campaign paraphernalia (buttons, hats, bumper stickers) aimed at Jews, often in Hebrew. Jewish newspapers are now full of campaign ads specifically directed at Jews. Federations and other Jewish groups scramble to run candidate nights for offices at all political levels. AJC, which half a century ago denied the existence of a Jewish vote, today publishes an annual poll which probes, inter alia, Jews’ political inclinations.7 Political scientists and polemicists now regularly and forthrightly write about the Jewish vote without being accused of speaking of a chimera or perpetuating an anti-Semitic myth. That is not to say that antisemites don’t invoke the idea that the Jewish vote is important or controlling. They do, but that no longer scares off Jews, nor do such assertions have any measurable impact on the general population or candidates. Discussions of the Jewish vote in the mainstream media—of the potential impact of Barack Obama’s appeal or lack thereof to Jews in Florida in 2008 or of Israel President Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 speech to Congress attacking President Obama’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran—are today matter of fact, not in any way tainted by dark conspiratorial musings or warnings, except from the marginal far-­ left and far-right. The current willingness to speak directly of a Jewish vote reflects first, and most importantly, a decline in overt political antisemitism of the sort typified by the Catholic “radio priest” Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, a fact unchanged by the recent attention to the so-called alt-right. The reason why John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s deeply flawed The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007)

 J.J. Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (1996).  Given the depth of Jewish anti-Catholic feeling in those pre-Vatican II days, it is quite surprising that Kennedy won 82% of the Jewish vote. Nixon’s hardline anti-Communism—and his Republican credentials—must have been more repulsive to Jews than Kennedy’s Catholicism. 7  For a recent example reporting on an AJC poll, see, Obama Stuck at 60 Percent of Jewish Vote (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Sept. 26, 2008). The most recent (2017) AJC poll can be found at www.ajc.org/survey. It reports extensively on how Jews voted in the 2016 election. 5 6

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provoked a panicked reaction in American Jewish circles was that some of its formulations raised the specter of a rebirth of that form of political antisemitism. And the same rationale explains the excited response to the alt-right. (Curiously, criticism from the left about Israel’s undue influence on American policy vis-à-vis Israel/Palestine does not elicit the same alarm.) These changes are not due to a disproportionate and evident growth in the number of Jewish voters, nor are they because Jews continue to vote in high numbers. Indeed, because Jews today are far less likely to be found in concentrated neighborhoods (other than in the Orthodox community) than they were when the Fuchs study was conducted, there are fewer districts where the Jewish vote is decisive—where some large percentage of the vote (roughly 25 to 40%) is Jewish.8 There remain a few such districts but most of those are not as overwhelmingly Jewish as the ones Fuchs described. In a particularly close election even a small group can be decisive, but modern districting techniques that favor the creation of politically safe districts make this a relatively uncommon scenario. The concentration of Jews in a few large key states (New York, California, Ohio, Florida, and Illinois) led Jews to support the increasingly undemocratic Electoral College. Given the weight those states had in the college, Jews as a group, so the argument went, might be able to determine the overall result.9 The dispersion of the Jewish community (and the inability of a small bloc of voters to influence the result in now reliably Democratic New York and California) makes this argument far weaker. That is more and more the case as well in Florida, which has shifted decidedly from being a swing state (most famously in the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential race) to dependably Republican in statewide contests. Whatever its cause or causes, the change in willingness to speak of a Jewish vote is evident and significant in degree, frequency, and forcefulness. While even in the nineteenth century Jews spoke out about persecution of Jews abroad or about their right to be treated as equal citizens, the political focus as a community was parochial.10 In the mid- to late-twentieth century, the agenda broadened significantly. The scope and level of activity in the twenty-first century dwarf the nineteenth-­ century initiatives, though most of the national agencies are now focusing on fewer issues, rather than the broad spectrum that was the case a few decades ago. These issues are not, however, purely parochial.

 There is a large political science literature on the subject of when voting blocs become decisive. Much of it centers around the Voting Rights Act, some of whose provisions turn on definitions of politically significant bloc voting of minority groups. 9  For a statement making the case, see testimony of Howard M. Squadron at a hearing of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, April 3, 1979. 10  See, M. Borden, Jews, Turks & Infidels (1984). 8

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The Jewish Political Spectrum The three defense agencies11 active through the twentieth century occupied the political center, from moderate left to moderate right. The far left has had, and still has, its share of institutions, from groups organized around—and sometimes as alter-egos of—the Communist Party in the early 1930s through the early 1950s,12 to such left-leaning but anti-(or non-)Communist organizations as the Jewish Labor Committee/Workmen’s Circle; and more recently, Jews for Economic and Social Justice, Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Tikkun Community, and JStreet. There are also a variety of further left-leaning Jewish groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace, some of which support a multi-ethnic Israel—that is, an Israel that might no longer define itself as a Jewish state. It is usually not helpful to question a claim that an organization is “Jewish” but when it comes to certain groups on the far left it’s fair to ask whether they invoke their Jewishness only to establish a voice. Through much of the twentieth century, the Jewish left was a major institutional and electoral force in Jewish life. Its publications (most prominently the Yiddish-­ language Forwerts (Forward) and Freiheit) were major organs of Jewish political and intellectual expression. The socialist Eugene. V. Debs won 38% of the national Jewish vote in his 1924 presidential race even as Jews in New York City were electing socialists like Meyer London and Louis Waldman to the state legislature.13 But with the revelation of Stalin’s murderous antisemitic excesses, and the transformation of the Jewish working class (immigrant garment district workers, peddlers, low-level civil servants) into small business owners, middle-class professionals, and, later, upper-middle-and-beyond executives, the Jewish left has shrunk dramatically. It still exists, is quite vocal, and likely gets more than its fair share of press— but it is hardly as important in the Jewish community as was the case a century ago. Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that left-wing publications are no longer the center of Jewish political debate—not that there is any longer such a center where ideas are put forward, examined, debated, debunked or endorsed. On the left organizationally, J Street, founded in 2007 as a counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is perhaps the most prominent. Along with several other progressive groups it serves to soften, but not eliminate, the harsh anti-Israel rhetoric prevalent in some segments of the left. These groups also generate a disproportionate share of “man-bites-dog” media attention. When a Jewish organization criticizes Israel, that’s news, even if the group is itself politically insignificant. Such activity also diffuses—often without any substantial basis in fact—the impression that other left-leaning groups have an existential problem with Israel’s existence.

 AJC, ADL, AJCongress. AJCongress is, as of about 2007–08, mostly inactive.  See, A.  Weingarten, Jewish Organizations Response to Communism and Senator McCarthy (2008), describing internal battles over communism in Jewish defense agencies. 13  See, Fuchs, supra, note 33. 11 12

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The political right also has prominent voices in the Jewish community, notably today in the form of groups like the Zionist Organization of America that take a very hard line view on Israel and its critics. The old right (not to be confused with the Alt-Right) has had fewer identifiably Jewish voices, although largely as the result of the efforts of the late William F. Buckley,14 it was purged of much of the antisemitism that characterized it for so long. (It was a purge whose effects were unfortunately not complete at the fringes, as evidenced by the Alt-Right’s public anti-Semitism). More important, at least in terms of intellectual influence, are the neo-conservatives, many of whose leaders are or were Jewish, and in some cases are ba’alei teshuva (so-called returnees to faith) from youthful leftist flirtations. Importantly, though, these Jewish neo-conservatives never organized on a religious basis. Critics of neo-conservatism seeking to paint it as a pro-Israel Jewish cabal frequently overlook this important point. And, of course, one cannot ignore the impact of the late Sheldon Adelson’s massive expenditures on behalf of Israel, any more than one should ignore the impact of philanthropist George Soros focused on criminal justice reform. Tellingly, neo-conservatives did not form or capture any specifically or significant Jewish organizations, with the possible exception of the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA). In 2007, one of the flagship neo-conservative publications, Commentary, severed formal ties with the American Jewish Committee, which had created (and in the late twentieth century, distanced itself from) the magazine. Commentary nevertheless remains a magazine with a distinctly Jewish flavor. Polling data over many years shows that the neo-conservatives had no major impact on the general political leanings of American Jewry. Thus, while neo-­ conservatives largely favored the war in Iraq, the Jewish community was largely skeptical or opposed, notwithstanding the efforts of Walt and Mearsheimer to paint Iraq as a Jewish war. In the wake of Ronald Reagan’s election, some Jewish neo-­ conservatives asserted a political transformation of American Jewry was at hand.15 But it did not happen. This is not only true with regard to domestic issues and American foreign policy, but, perhaps surprisingly, also with regard to Israel. The unwavering support of neo-conservatives for Israel did not have much of an impact on Jewish political behavior, attract a large Jewish following, or change Jewish political attitudes writ large—even when compared to segments of the Democratic Party that many Jews legitimately view as hostile to Israel—and still others embrace. It is noteworthy that the neo-conservative intelligentsia as a whole turned strongly against President Trump, notwithstanding Trump’s enthusiastic support for Israel against the Palestinians. Particularly after the 2020 election, writers such as Bill Kristol (son of leading neoconservatives Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb),

 W.F. Buckley, In Search of Anti-Semitism (1993).  See, for one dreamy prediction, almost none of which has come to pass, J.L.  Horowitz, The Politics of Centrism (p. 13) in The New Jewish Politics (D. Elazar, Ed.) (1988). Norman Podhoretz, one of the leaders of the neo-conservative movement, has now conceded this. N. Podhoretz, Why Are Jews Liberals (2009). 14 15

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Max Boot and Bret Stephens of the New York Times emerged as some of the leading anti-Trump voices on the center-right. Arguably, they were most repelled by Trump’s hostility to democratic values, manifest in his hostility to America’s long-time allies in Europe and Asia; his readiness to support such autocrats as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Victor Orban, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte; and above all the contempt he showed for the rule of law in America itself. Looking forward, it’s clear that, given for moment Trumpian takeover of the Republican Party, the neoconservative effort to push Jews toward voting for the GOP is at an end. Several periods of conservative control of the White House and Congress did erode the visceral Jewish distaste for Republicanism. In the early Reagan era, Jews refused even to acknowledge evangelical support for Israel, let alone welcome it. That is no longer the case—at least to the point that the support is welcome— though Jews still have no love for the domestic evangelical agenda. Their deep-­ seated distrust of evangelicals is probably a factor in the paucity of Jewish electoral support for Republicans. The exposure to evangelicals led, during the Clinton presidency, to working relationships that did not exist before—both at the political and religious levels. But there has been no political transformation of the Jewish community, and since that time, the contacts have eroded. I distinctly remember Hyman Bookbinder, AJC’s legendary Washington representative, telling someone in 1982 (after the Republicans captured control of the Senate) that he did not even know many of the new Republican Senate committee chairs, although some were old Washington hands. Where Republicanism has thrived in the Jewish community has been among the Orthodox, whose positions on social issues as well as on Israel come close to mirroring those of white evangelicals. But because the Orthodox constitute only 10% of the Jewish electorate, they have not moved the needle much. That may happen if and when a larger portion of the Jewish population becomes Orthodox. In assessing Jewish political activity, note should be taken of Jewish think-­ tanks—from the Saban Institute to the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). Focused mostly on the Middle East (albeit from different points of view), these well-funded institutions also influence the world of ideas. They represent a form of Jewish political activity sad well. It is noteworthy that no such institution exists with regard to domestic activity, although one did once as part of the Synagogue Council of America, an umbrella body comprising the three major religious streams that dissolved in 1994. Whether the lacuna is attributable to a communal pre-occupation with Israel or because the community does not see a need to think hard and critically about domestic issues—perhaps as a result of the security it feels in the United States or because it is comfortable with the general “liberal” consensus—is an open question.

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The Jewish Vote The Jewish vote for President has been solidly Democratic for a century, but not before that. Until 1924, Jews voted Republican in substantial numbers,16 probably because the GOP was middle class, anti-Catholic, not the party of the Irish, and (at

16

 J.J Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside The American Jewish Establishment (1997) at 34:

% of Jewish Year vote 1916 Wilson 5545 (D)Hughes (R)

% of total vote 1964 5148

1920 Cox (D)Harding (R)Debs (S)

1968 35613.5

194338

1924 512722 Davis (D)Coolidge (R)La Follette (P) 1928 7228 Smith (D)Hoover (R) 1932 Roosevelt 8218 (D)Hoover (R)

1972 295416

1976 4158 1980 5940

1936 Roosevelt 8515 (D)Landon (R)

1984 6237

1940 Roosevelt (D)Wilkie (R) 1944 Roosevelt (D)Dewey (R)

9010

1988 5445

9010

1992 5346

Year

% of Jewish vote

9010 Johnson (D)Goldwater (R)

% of total vote 6138

Humphrey (D)Nixon (R)Wallace, G.C. (AI)

81172

424313.5

McGovern (D)Nixon (R)

6532

3861

Carter (D)Ford (R)

6434

5048

Carter (D)Reagan (R)Anderson (I)

453915

41517

Mondale (D)Reagan (R)

6733

4059

Dukakis (D)Bush (R)

6435

4553

Clinton (D)Bush (R)Perot (I)

781210

433819

(continued)

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least for Jews in the North) the party of Lincoln.17 Moreover, many immigrants from Eastern Europe Jewish voting shifted solidly Democratic beginning in 1920, by which time—more sympathetic to (and in need of) government intervention than their German-Jewish predecessors (and, perhaps, because they were uncomfortable with Republican support for Prohibition)—had become citizens eligible to vote. Since then, no Republican presidential candidate has won more than the 39% Ronald Reagan tallied in 1980.18 Jews have remained loyal to the Democratic Party, even as the original economic impetus for their shifted allegiance disappeared. Greenberg and Wald report similar trends in Congress, at least since 1980.19 In 2002, the Gallup Organization noted

1948 Truman (D)Dewey (R)Wallace, H.A. (P)Thurmond (SD) 1952 Stevenson (D)Eisenhower (R) 1956 Stevenson, (D)Eisenhower (R) 1960 Kennedy (D)Nixon (R)

751015–

1996 494522

6436

2000 4455

6040

2004 4247

8218

2008 5049

78119

84941

Gore (D)Bush 79191 (R)Nader (G)

48482

Clinton (D)Dole (R)Perot (I)

Kerry (D)Bush (R)Nader (G)

7624‹1

48511

Obama (D)McCain (R)

7822

5346

KEY: AI  =  American Independent R  =  RepublicanD  =  Democrat S  =  SocialistI  =  Independent SD = Southern Democrat The figures for 2012 and 2016 are: Year 2012 Obama (D)Romney (R)

% of Jewish vote 6930

% of total vote 2016 5147

Year

% of Jewish vote

Clinton 7124 (D)Trump (R)

% of total vote 4846

Note that the Jewish Democratic vote stayed steady. The Jewish Republican vote dropped in the 2016 election. (The figures are drawn from JewishVirtualLibrary.org/jewish-voting-record-in-US-presidential-elections.) For the 2020 election, see infra. 17  See Fuchs, supra, note 4, at 44–47. 18  See, chart, supra note 16. 19  Id., at p. 170. See, for similar numbers as to party affiliation, The 1981–82 National Survey of American Jews in AJ Yearbook (p. 108).

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that the “Jewish tilt toward Democratic orientation is the most pronounced shift from the national average of any of the major religious groups in the country.”20 The take-it-for-granted loyalty of Jews to the Democratic Party does not itself generate Jewish angst. Jews certainly no longer worry about the effects of being politically active or taken for granted politically. Not so long ago so much prominence for Jews in public life would have generated concern—no longer. The palpably mixed feelings accompanying Senator Joseph Lieberman’s vice-presidential run in 2000 (pride versus doubt whether it would be beneficial to have a Jew in such a prominent position) seems to have vanished entirely.21 Most of what one needs to know about the state of Jewish politics in the twenty-­ first century is summarized by two facts from the 2008 election: approximately three-quarters of Jewish voters opted for the liberal (or relatively liberal) Democratic candidate, then Senator Barack Obama, and about the same percentage opposed California’s Proposition 8 barring recognition of same-sex marriage.22 Obama won 53% of the total vote, but only 43% of the overall white vote.23 California’s anti-­ same-­sex marriage proposition passed by an overall 52 to 48% margin.24 In 2012, Obama won 69% of the Jewish vote, despite several highly contentious clashes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the President’s first term.25 By contrast, he received only 51% of the total vote, and only 39% of all white votes

20  Just How Democratic Is The Jewish Population in American Today?, Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/6799/Just-How-Democratic-Jewish-Population-America-Today.aspx 21  Such hesitancy about the desirability of having a high-level black officeholder was nowhere observed in the African-American community during the 2008 Obama candidacy. 22  U.S.  Presidential Elections: Jewish Voting Record (1916 to present), Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewish virtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html (citing L. Sandy Maisel & I. Forman, Eds., Jews in American Politics 153 (2001)). Because of the relatively small number of Jews in California, general surveys of the data on Proposition 8 do not break out the Jewish vote. See, e.g., Election Center 200 Exit Polls, Ballot Measures, California Proposition 8: Ban on Gay Marriage, CNN, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=CAI01p2. However, Jewish groups report a 78% figure for the Los Angeles Jewish vote opposing Proposition 8, T. Tugend, Most L.A. Jews Voted Against Same-sex Ban (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 9, 2008). G.B. Lewis & C.W. Gossit, Changing Public Opinion on Same Sex Marriage: The Case of California, 36(1) Politics & Policy 4, 17 (2008) report that 70% of Jews supported same-sex marriage in 2003–06, about the same figure as persons reporting no religion, about twice the rate of Catholics and two and one-half times more than Protestants, and three times the rate of blacks—a group with whom Jews are often politically aligned. Jews and those with no religion often poll about the same on various political issues, an interesting comment about the state of Jewish religious belief. An AJC poll of American Jews in 2013 showed roughly the same numbers. AJC 2013 Survey of American Jewish Opinion, http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=7oJILSPwFfJSG&b=847975 5&ct=13376311 [hereinafter “AJC 2013 Poll”] (71% of Jews thought same-sex marriage should be legal across the country). 23  T.  Noah, What We Didn’t Overcome, Slate (Nov. 10, 2008), http://www.slate.com/articles/ news_and_politics/chatterbox/2008/11/what_we_didnt_overcome.html 24  See footnote 4, supra. 25  U.S.  Presidential Elections: Jewish Voting Record (1916 to present), Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewish virtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html

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(among whom almost all Jewish voters were to be found).26 It is true that Obama’s approval rating amongst Jews dropped later in his second term, especially after his clash with Israel regarding the Iran nuclear deal, but it was still higher (54%) than among the electorate generally (46%). However, the overall figure obscures important intercommunal differences. Of Jews who “seldom” or “never” attend synagogue, 58% approved Obama’s performance; those who attend “usually” only 34% approved; and those who attend “monthly” 53%. (We know from other data that relatively few Jews (with the notable exception of Orthodox) attend services regularly.27) The vote for Obama in 2008 came despite some over-hyped news stories trumpeting Jewish racism, suggesting that Jews, especially elderly Jews, could not bring themselves to vote for a black man. The vote in both 2008 and 2012 also came despite repeated claims by the Jewish political right that Obama and the people around him, would be—or, as supposedly demonstrated by events, were—unfriendly to Israel. The Jewish acceptance of Obama continued even after well-publicized confrontations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over settlements and Iran. (Sometimes overlooked in evaluating Obama’s relations with Israel was the high-level security cooperation between Israel and the U.S., as well as American help in deflecting criticism of Israel’s behavior in Gaza.) During Obama’s first term, Israelis were confident that Obama was not friendly to Israel, even though their American cousins seemed unperturbed by Obama’s Middle East policies.28 According to the Pew Research Center, 71% of Jews voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 24% for Trump—only slightly different from the 2012 results in the Obama-Romney race. (AJC’s poll showed 64% for Clinton; 18% for Trump.29) But those figures mask important differences: 54% of Orthodox Jews voted for Trump; only 10 and 8% of Reform and Reconstructionist Jews did. If anything, Trump’s performance in office, according to AJC’s 2017 poll of American Jewish Opinion, did not improve matters: 77% of American Jews (as of August 2017) gave the President an unfavorable rating. At roughly the same time, according to Project 538,30 Trump’s disapproval rating was 55% of the electorate. Over the next two years, Jewish disapproval stabilized at 71%, while overall disapproval hovered in the low 50s.

 Roper Center: How Groups Voted in 2012, http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/howgroups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/ 27  Gallup Poll: Obama’s Approval Advantage Among U.S. Jews Narrows, http://www.gallup.com/ poll/182366/obama-approval-advantage-among-jews-narrows.aspx (April 10, 2015). 28  Compare Poll: Only 12% of Israelis believe Obama supports Israel, Haaretz (Aug. 20, 2009), www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108976.html with E. Fingerhut, It’s Almost Unanimous: Jewish Dems on Board With Obama, Jewish Telegraph Agency (Aug. 17, 2009), http://www.jta. org/2009/08/17/news-opinion/politics/its-almost-unanimous-jewish-dems-on-board-with-obama 29  http://religionnews.com/2017/09/13/most-us-jews-oppose-trump-but-the-orthodox-stickwith-him/ 30  http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings 26

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The 2020 election showed a picture that was comparable if a bit fuzzy. A few weeks before the election, the AJC released a survey showing that Jews preferred Joe Biden over Trump by 75% to 22%.31 After the election, the National Election Pool (the longstanding consortium of media outlets) did not release a Jewish breakdown for lack of a sufficient number of respondents. Votecast, a new survey created by the Associated Press (which had withdrawn from the NEP in 2018) came up with Jewish vote of 68% for Biden versus 30% for Trump. A post-election survey for J Street had Biden over Trump 77% to 21%, while one for the Republican Jewish Coalition put Biden over Trump by only 60.6% to 30.5%.32 That difference could be explained by the fact that the RJC poll included a larger number of Orthodox Jews, and as we know from the 2021 Pew survey, 75% of the Orthodox identify or lean Republican, over 75% of the non-Orthodox (nine out of 10 American Jews) identify or lean Democratic.33 All in all, it seems safe to conclude that Biden received roughly 70% of the Jewish vote in 2020. Recent elections thus make clear that the difference between the Jewish vote and that of the general population is not likely to disappear any time soon. Indeed, the Jewish tendency to vote Democratic, dating back a century, points to a deep-seated Jewish commitment to a certain set of liberal, universalist, even progressive, values.34 How those commitments jibe with support for Israel, especially an Israel governed by a particularistic and nationalistic coalition, is a crucial question for the American Jewish community for the foreseeable future—in terms not only of political activity but also of communal cohesion. (Of course, universalism itself will weaken community cohesion.) The lock the Democrats have had on the Jewish presidential vote over the last century is not a happenstance of candidates or even assessments of what is best for Israel, or (before the existence of the state) the Zionist program. If that were the test, Jimmy Carter never would have won more Jewish votes than Ronald Reagan,35 and the McCain-Obama race, to say nothing of the Trump-Biden race,36 would have

 AJC 2020 Survey of American Jewish Opinion, https://www.ajc.org/survey2020  Ron Kampeas and Gabe Friedman, “How did Jewish Americans vote? Polls offer imperfect takes, but the picture is clear,” JTA, Nov. 16, 2020, https://www.jta.org/2020/11/16/politics/ how-did-jewish-americans-vote-polls-offer-imperfect-takes-but-the-big-picture-is-clear 33   Pew Research Center, “U.S.  Jews Political Views,” https://www.pewresearch.org/ religion/2021/05/11/u-s-jews-political-views/ 34  An interesting example is abortion. Traditional Jewish sources are nowhere nearly as monochromatic on this subject as pro-choice Jews make it appear. 35  For contrasting analysis, see J. Helmreich, The Israel Swing Factor: How The American Jewish Vote Influences US Elections, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (Jan. 2001), https://www.jcpa. org/jl/vp446.htm. Helmreich argues that the Jewish vote is uniquely attractive because appeals for support on Israel do not alienate other voters as do issues such as abortion and the like. It remains to be seen whether this remains true in the face of policy differences over Iran and the Palestinians. 36  For what it is worth, I believe much of the critique of Obama on Israel was overdrawn, and in many ways, unjustified. 31 32

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likely been much closer among Jews. It is true that some Jews think Israel would ultimately benefit more from pressure to achieve a peace treaty with the Palestinians than with unquestioning American support for an “expansionist” Israel, a position that has no home in the current Republican Party but which increasingly resonates with part of the Democratic Party base,37 as evidenced in part by the 2012 and 2016 disputes over the planks addressing Israel in the Democratic Party Platform. Whether Israel would really be safer, of course, is not knowable in advance, and in any event does not appear to me to rank high in concern with the activist base of the Democratic Party. Indeed, in 2012, a plank supporting a united Jerusalem was highly divisive, and passed only under intense pressure from party leaders. Whether one or the other view is right or wrong, the point is a more limited one. For example, the claim that Obama would have been as good for Israel as McCain or Romney was not so self-evident as to lead to a more than three-to-one advantage for the Democratic candidate. In 2001, Greenberg and Wald claimed that Jewish voters’ stances did not vary significantly over issues like “peace policy” and “Jerusalem.” This is almost certainly no longer true, as demonstrated, for example in AJC’s 2016 and 2017 annual polls. The yawning gap between Israeli and American Jews (and between American Jews themselves) on Obama’s peace policies and Iran probably presaged a change, which grew more acute during the Trump Administration. When Greenberg and Wald espoused that claim in 2001, those issues were more theoretical than real. Now there are deep and probably unbridgeable fissures within the Jewish community. The Obama Administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to end (or delay) Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons divided not only security and foreign policy experts (and, as in the case of Israel, security and military officials and their civilian counterparts), but Americans38 and American Jews as well. Several polls indicated that more American Jews supported the agreement than opposed it, though whether by a very narrow margin or by a broader margin39 was a matter of

 There are warning signs on the horizon. In early summer, 2015, pollster Frank Luntz published a poll showing that Democratic “opinion elites” are less favorable to Israel than their Republican counterparts. D.  Horovitz, Israel Losing Democrats, ‘can’t claim bi-partisan U.S.  Support,’ top pollster warns, http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-losing-democrats-cant-claim-bipartisan-ussupport-top-pollster-warns/ (July 5, 2015). One stark finding: 75% of Democrats, but only 25% of Republicans, thought settlements an obstacle to peace. And by roughly similar numbers, (76, 20), Democratic, but not Republican, opinion leaders believe Israel has too much influence on American foreign policy. Others vigorously denied there was much to worry about. See W. Jacobson, Declining Support for Israel Among Democrats? Not to Worry, http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2015/07/decliningsupport-for-israel-among-democrats-not-to-worry/ (July 6, 2015). 38  See, Poll: American Split on Iran Nuclear Deal, www.politico.com/story/2015/09/ abc-wapo-iran-213674 39  See, 2015 AJC Survey of American Jewish Opinion (51% approve strongly vs. somewhat); New Poll: U.S.  Jews Support Iran Deal, Despite Misgivings (48% supported; 31% opposed), http:// JewishJournal.com/news/nation/176121 (July 23, 2015); and U.S. Jews maintain strong support of 37

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dispute. (In either case, American Jews were more supportive of the deal than Americans generally.) One detailed poll showed that the likelihood of support varied both with a respondent’s political affiliation, but also by the nature of their affiliation with the Jewish community (religious or ethnic, Orthodox or not). The polls also reveal a split between the street and Jewish organizations juxtaposed with the positions of major organizations, most of which (J Street excepted) opposed the deal, perhaps in part for strategic reasons, to make it clear that the less-than-ideal deal with Iran came at a political price. This is not the place to decide who was right. The fact that a majority of Jews supported the deal doesn’t mean they were right. It’s entirely possible that the professionals in the agencies were better situated to make the policy judgments and that they were, in any event, better informed than the rank and file. Even if the JPOA was the best deal that any president could have negotiated, there was value in making it politically expensive. Still, these data suggest that a gap is emerging between American Jews—especially those with more minimal affiliations—and the agencies that represent them. While the number of Jews asserting that Israel is a central factor in their lives, according to some polls, is not declining,40 other, more recent polls show that the percentage of young people claiming that Israel is central to them is markedly less than that of the overall Jewish population,41 and significantly less than it was 50 years ago.42 As is now evident, those Jews opposed to Israel’s policies in the West Bank (and its actions in Gaza) are now saying so publicly, loudly and without apology, and in organizational form. Even if American Jews as a whole did support the Israeli right-wing parties’ position on the peace process—and they do not—it is no longer clear that a Democratic administration pushing Israel hard to make unwanted concessions would truly lose a majority of American Jews in an election.43 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 2015 speech to Congress warning against what he believed to be a bad deal with Iran exposed—indeed,

Iran deal—J Street Poll (60% support deal). The AJC poll was taken later, so the differences may reflect the effects of the debate on Jewish public opinion. But both the LA Journal and J Street data point to deep divides along political (liberal vs. conservative) and religious (Orthodox—non Orthodox) lines that are likely to transcend and outlive the specifics of the Iran debate. 40  A. Greenberg & K.D Wald, Still Liberal After All These Years in L. Sandy Maisel & I.N. Forman, Jews In American Politics (2001). 41  A Portrait of Jewish Americans, Pew Research Center (Oct. 1, 2013) at 84 (hereinafter “Portrait of Jewish Americans”). 42  Id., at 82–84. The centrality of Israel is also significantly larger for those who identify as Jews by religion (as opposed to ethnic Jews). Id. And there are sharp differences between modern Orthodox Jews, of whom 77% identify Israel as central, compared to 24% of Reform Jews and only 16% of non-denominational Jews. 43  For an interesting study of views of Conservative rabbis and rabbinical students, highlighting, inter alia, growing support for JStreet over AIPAC, see, JTS Rabbis and Israel: Then and Now— The 2011 Survey of JTS Ordained Rabbis and Current Students (by Professor Steven Cohen, September 2011).

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exacerbated—these fissures in the Jewish community and the Democratic Party. The Obama Administration was furious, seeing Netanyahu as acting in league with the Republican congressional leadership to embarrass the President. (For his part, Netanyahu denied any partisan intent. And, indeed, there were Democrats in Congress who criticized the President’s Iran negotiating strategy.) Political reaction to the Netanyahu speech split along predictable political lines, with some Democrats, including prominent Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel such as Vice President Biden announcing that they would miss the speech. A number of Jewish leaders warned that the speech threatened to undermine the long-standing bipartisan consensus about support for Israel. Presumably, an American president who supported calls for a single binational state in Israel/Palestine would lose the support of a majority of Jews, at least for the foreseeable future, though some marginally affiliated Jews now endorse that position. Still, support for Israel’s security and its existence as a Jewish state has been expressed by all presidential candidates other than Patrick Buchanan and Ross Perot, whose marginal candidacies went nowhere.

Jewish Politicians Jews, as a group, take the political process seriously, and want to be part of it. The trend in Jewish representation in Congress had been steadily upward over the last four decades (with the exception of the 106th Congress, which was heavily Republican), but with Republicans ascending, and Jews not favoring Republicans, that trend has reversed. Below are statistics showing the trajectory of Jewish representation in both houses of Congress since 1961.44 87th (1961– 63) 12 2.3%

91st (1969– 71) 19 3.6%

96th (1979– 81) 30 5.6%

101st (1989– 91) 39 7.3%

106th (1999– 01) 34 6.4%

111th (2009– 11) 45 8.4%

113th (2013– 15) 29 5.2%

114th (2015– 17) 29 5.2%

115th (2017– 19) 32 6.0%

116th (2019– 21) 36 6.7%

117th (2021– 23) 38 7.1%

The figures are notable, regardless of whether one considers these Jewish representatives do much to advance a “Jewish agenda” (however defined) or whether the numbers are a passing phenomenon or a long-term fact of political life. They certainly speak loudly to the comfort American Jews have in being politically active and visible, and the comfort many Americans have in electing Jewish

 Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition of the 113th Congress, Pew Research Center (Jan. 2, 2013), http://www.pewforum.org/2012/11/16/faith-on-the-hill-the-religious-composition-ofthe-113th-congress/); Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition of the 113th Congress, Pew Research Center (Jan. 5, 2015), http://www.pewforum.org/2015/01/05/faith-on-the-hill/ (citing the statistics for the most recent Congress, which are not included in the previous article). 44

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representatives, since none or almost none of the Representatives and none of the Senators could have been elected on Jewish votes alone. Indeed, in the twenty-first century Jewish representation in Congress has been between three and four times the Jewish proportion of the population at large. In the 111th Congress, elected in the 2008 Obama landslide, there were 45 Jews serving in Congress, 13 Jewish senators (13% of the total) and 32 Representatives (8.4% of the total), many of whom represented districts with miniscule Jewish populations.45 In the 2014 and 2016 elections, Jewish representation dropped to 5.2% of the total. This is explained by the fact that Jews have remained overwhelmingly Democratic, and Democrats did not fare well in either election. For in the 2018 midterm, when Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives, Jewish representative rose to 6.7%. Given demographic trends, including the rapid growth in minority votes, and demands for diversity in representation (reflective of the electorate), those figures for Jewish representatives will inevitably decline even if Democrats maintain their recent ascendancy. Until he lost the 2014 primary to a Tea Party activist,46 Eric Cantor, then the sole Jewish House Republican, was a rising star in the Republican Party and the second ranking Republican in the House. The absence of senior Jewish representation in Republican congressional ranks is not a good omen for the future, although Republican support for Israel remains strong. After the 2016 election, there were no Jewish Republican senators and only two Jewish Republican members of the House. That, too, is consistent with the general trends in American Jewish politics, and, it should be said, popular support among Jews for the Republican Party.47, 48 However, there was a significant decline in Jews voting for their district’s Democratic House candidate, from 87% in 2006 to 67% in 2014—a much sharper drop than occurred between the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.49 Several Democratic members are quite senior, and there is no guarantee that when they retire, they will be replaced by Jews. Given general demographic trends, it was hardly surprising that a retiring Jewish California U.S. senator would be replaced by a black woman and that the other would be challenged in a primary by a Latino. Notwithstanding some  overheated rhetoric, this phenomenon is ethnic  This is not an entirely new phenomenon. David S. Kaufman served in Congress from 1846–1851, representing Texas; Michael Hahn, William Levy and Adolph Meyer, from Louisiana, served in the nineteenth century. See L. Sandy Maisel, Ira N. Forman, ed., Jews in American Politics (2001). 46  See, e.g., M. Roig-Franzia, “Eric Cantor Is the GOP’s Rising Star to Rehabilitate the Party”, Washington Post (Dec. 11, 2008), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/12/10/AR2008121003751.html 47  See, infra note 19. 48  A.  Sandstrom, Religious Affiliations of Members of Congress Mirror Regional Trends, Pew Research Center (Jan. 5, 2015), http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/05/religious-affiliations-of-members-of-congress-mirror-regional-trends. See also, E.  Green, “Are Democrats Losing the Jews?” The Atlantic (Nov. 13, 2014), http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ archive/2014/11/are-democrats-losing-the-jews/382665/ 49  E. Green, “Are Democrats Losing the Jews” The Atlantic (Nov. 13, 2014), http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/are-democrats-losing-the-jews/382665/ 45

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succession, not antisemitism. Nonetheless, it has implications for the future. Broadly speaking, it remains to be seen if the level of electoral success measured by Jews in Congress will be a long-term phenomenon,50 little more than a series of coincidences, or if it is representative of an ethnic group’s political representation peaking long after its demographic peak. The growth in Jewish representatives comes as the Jewish share of the overall population has dropped steadily—now a mere 1.5–1.7% of the population, down from over three percent 50 years ago, a decline largely due to low Jewish birthrates.51 Still, fears of charges of dual loyalty or of concerns about too much visible Jewish power do not now inhibit Jews from running for national or local office, soliciting political and financial support from other Jews, or speaking up for Israel. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that there is no Jewish equivalent of the Congressional Black Caucus.52 There is a loosely run Conference of Jewish Legislators, concentrated mostly in the state legislatures, but its efforts are sporadic at best. It is hard to say whether there is no congressional Jewish caucus because of a perceived lack of need or because the Jewish community’s institutions do the relevant work from outside of Congress; because fears that such a caucus would inject religion into politics (while there is no Catholic or Protestant caucus, Jews are particularly allergic to mixing religion and politics) or because of an unenunciated fear of lending credence to overheated speculation about a Jewish conspiracy to exercise power.53 Certainly, the overwhelming Democratic voting pattern reflects the generally liberal cast of American Jewry, both on domestic issues and on war and peace issues. But it also reflects the importance of evangelicals to the Republican Party, and their push to make that allegiance dependent on approved stances on social issues such as

 For what it is worth, it may be a mistake to attach too much significance to the numerical trend. Sheer demographics, including the exponential growth of the Hispanic population, virtually mandate that there will be a decline in Jewish representation in coming years, though probably not immediately given the multiple advantages of incumbency. The redistricting after the 2010 census, and the approach the Obama Justice Department takes to the Voting Rights Act (VRA), with its thumb on the scale for minority candidates, will both play a large role here. The Jewish community as a whole has given little thought to the role the VRA will have on its political influence. Similarly, it has given little thought to what happens if current districting procedures change as a result of a pending Supreme Court case challenging gerrymandering. Some have already begun talking about instituting a system of proportional representation. 51  M. Lipka, “How Many Jews Are There in The United States?” Factank (Oct. 2, 2013), http:// www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/02/how-many-jews-are-there-in-the-united-states/ 52  There are various Israel-related caucuses, but these are not Jewish caucuses, and deliberately seek to reach all members of Congress. 53  Jewish politicians are, of course, not limited to those in Washington. There are even more Jewish state legislators, mayors, members of local legislatures and governors, though actual figures are hard to come by. Because more is known about Jewish congressional representatives, the focus in this paper is on them. A study of representatives in the state legislatures and Jewish governors would be highly desirable. 50

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abortion and gay rights. As noted above, for many Jews the influence (one might even say just the substantial presence) of evangelicals in the Republican Party is a negative, notwithstanding their robust support for Israel. The Republicans’ embrace of social conservatives’ hot button positions on abortion, LGBT rights, and immigration are turnoffs for most Jews. There are those who suggest that the issue for Jews is the “end of days” ideology that underlies much of evangelicalism. Most Jews, however, are only faintly aware of this issue. For Jews generally it is the evangelical stance on public affairs that is the turn-off.54 But Jewish influence on other issues will be markedly reduced, and the willingness of Democrats to support Israel may be reduced as the Jewish state is associated with a set of particularist values alien to the activist base of the Democratic Party. There are already indications of that for at least a part of the Democratic base (and, indeed, perhaps its core base), as manifest in the 2012 Convention’s tentative rejection of a unified Jerusalem plank, and survey data showing a substantial part of the Democratic Party seeking a less pro-Israel Middle East policy.55 The institutional Jewish connections (synagogues, local federations, national organizations) of elected Jewish politicians vary widely. Some have deep connections to the organized Jewish community, while others have only the most tenuous ties. There are Jewish members of Congress, such as the late New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who held important positions in Jewish life prior to their election to Congress. Others have had serious Jewish education (e.g., Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York). Yet others identify as Jewish only when they list their religious affiliations upon election to Congress. What may be more significant is that some Democratic members of Congress are becoming more comfortable with J Street, the progressive lobby, than with AIPAC. Some will no longer travel on “missions” to Israel with AIPAC, only with J Street or groups less identified with the Israeli government. As a rule, Jews do not openly express any desire to be represented by Jews,56 both as a matter of prudence (to avoid “elders of Zion” allegations) and as a matter of constitutional principle (religion ought to be irrelevant to political

 National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) lists among its goals “the separation of church and state” and “to work aggressively to combat an increasingly right wing agenda … “National Jewish Democratic Council, http://www.njdc.org/about-us. (The language on the NJDC website has been slightly amended since this article was initially written, at which point NJDC listed its goal as “fighting the radical right agenda.” See, E.  G. Witman, “National Jewish Democratic Council: Preparing for 2008 ”, Philadelphia Jewish Voice (June 2007)). Both ideas are missing from the Republican Jewish Coalition’s organizational bio. See, http://www.rjchq.org/about 55  See “Do the Democrats and Israel Have A Future Together?” New York Times Magazine (Mar.20, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/magazine/do-the-democrats-and-israel-have-afuture-together.html?_r=0. See also Gallup, Seven in 10 Americans Continue to View Israel Favorably, http://www.gallup.com/poll/181652/seven-americans-continue-view-israel-favorably.aspx 56  Indeed, a survey conducted in 1990 by Seymour Martin Lipset and Jerome A. Chanes found that most Jewish elected officials in the United States, at whatever level, were elected by constituencies in which there were few—or no—Jews. 54

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office-holding)— but they are, somewhat inconsistently, quite proud of Jewish representatives, and surely ready to take advantage of the “landsman” connection. Although rare, and usually without any measurable impact on particular elections, political antisemitism is not entirely unknown.57 One important exception was the race for Rep. Stephen Solarz’s New York City seat in 1988, where, in a district drawn to enhance Hispanic representation, some Hispanic activists urged a vote for any candidate but Solarz, described as the Jewish one. They were successful in ousting Solarz. (It is not known if the successful Hispanic candidate was behind that effort.) On the right, meanwhile, classic antisemites like the neo-Nazi David Duke occasionally captured a party nomination in a primary where the turnout was low, but when they did, their party and other prominent public figures publicly and emphatically supported their opponent.58 The result was that, through the latter part of the twentieth century and the first decade of the 21st, no open antisemite won a congressional office or, for that matter, a notable state or local election. In the 2010s, however, alt-right Republican candidates and elected officials began to traffick in antisemitic stereotypes with a notable degree of impunity. Most commonly they turned the wealthy Jewish-Hungarian financier and philanthropist George Soros into a bogeyman on the scale of such earlier Jewish bogeymen as the Rothschilds. Among Republican members of Congress, Georgia’s Margery Taylor Greene earned notoriety (but only limited GOP criticism) for promoting the so-called Replacement Theory. Two years before winning office in 2018, she posted an alt-­ right video in which a Holocaust denier claimed that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.”59 Shortly after she was elected, she herself contended in a Facebook post that California wildfires had been started by Pacific Gas & Electric in conjunction with the Rothschilds, who used a space laser to clear ground for a high-speed rail project.60 Whether such social media activity proved Greene to be an outright antisemite or merely antisemite-­ adjacent hardly mattered. The Charlottesville Unite the Right rally of 2017 (followed by President Trump’s inexplicable and inexcusable failure to condemn its bigotry) and the 2018 terrorist attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh did not cow Jews into silence. Far from it. Nevertheless, these events placed right-wing antisemitism on the Jewish communal agenda in a way it had not been since the early postwar period. It was clear, that the Replacement theory had gained real traction on the Republican right as part of a nativist agenda that harked back to a past that American Jews had thought was gone forever.  M.A. Akers, “Jewish Rep. Cohen Battles Antisemitism and Racism in Re-Election”, Washington Post, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/02/jewish_rep_cohen_battles_antis.html 58  The Duke campaigns in Louisiana were instructive. They demonstrated that many voters will handily ignore a candidate’s racism and antisemitism if the candidate talks to issues of concern to the population—educating children, economics. 59  Media Matters, https://www.mediamatters.org/congress/marjorie-taylor-greene-shared-antimuslim-video-portrays-jewish-people-trying-destroy 60  Jonathan Chait, “GOP Congresswoman Blamed California Wildfires on Jewish Space Laser, New York Magazine (January 28, 2021), https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/marjorie-taylorgreene-qanon-wildfires-space-laser-rothschild-execute.html 57

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Jewish Political Activism A weighing of Jewish political activism and its influence—understanding that one can be active without being influential—cannot be limited to elected officials. Nor can it assume that the activist Jewish community is monolithic. Jews are divided by class, by geography, and by religious identity. Some are wholly secular; others committed members of Reform and Conservative congregations; and still others practice one or another brand of Orthodoxy. Some are highly parochial, while others are equally committed to universalism. Most are somewhere in between. As noted above, non-Orthodox Jews are largely committed to liberal politics, except, perhaps, when it comes to Israel. But Orthodox Jews have in recent years become increasingly conservative on both social and foreign policy issues, with the political gap between them and the rest of community widening. Indeed, the political views of a substantial segment of Orthodox Jews have begun to resemble those of evangelical Christians in many respects.61 Among the Orthodox, however, the political views of the “Modern Orthodox” tend toward those of the rest of the Jewish community while Hasidic and other sectarian Jews are prone to vote their narrow economic or community interests rather than policy issues such as same-sex marriage or abortion. In addition to these divisions there is the increase in autonomous action by both wealthy Jewish individuals like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and the late Sheldon Adelson and political action committees, as opposed to Jewish communal organizations operating by (more or less) democratic consensus. In turn, the organized Jewish community is probably more influenced (some might say controlled) by wealthy donors now than at any time in post-World War II history.62 The importance of activism on the part of communal organizations has also decreased because fewer Jews are affiliating with them. The reasons for this include a decline of deep identification with the Jewish community, particularly among younger Jews; an absence of pressing domestic (pocketbook) Jewish issues (e.g., the demise of anti-­ Jewish discrimination in employment); a philanthropic trend toward focused and donor-controlled philanthropy (a trend not peculiar to Jews); geographic dispersion of the Jewish population; disagreements over Israel policy; and the “bowling alone” trend in the culture generally. The result is that, on both the left and the right, people and institutions speak for “the Jewish community” with less broad representational legitimacy than formerly. Meanwhile, Jewish media outlets—newspapers directed at specific local communities for the most part—have declined in importance and quality. They are not providing an intellectual community capable of substituting or the mass

 Some analysts suggest that the dynamic is less ideological that practical. The core issue for many, perhaps most, Jews, is Israel. Jews see hefty support for Israel among Republicans; many say, therefore, that they will take the entire Republican package if the result is shoring up support for Israel. 62  This “mega-donor” dynamic is a factor in many arenas of American Jewish life. 61

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organizations of the last century. The 2008 Obama presidential campaign famously used the Internet as a successful platform, and the growth of social media since then has profoundly affected American politics, more perhaps for worse than better. Whether digital communication can be employed within the Jewish community to muster and maintain identity and support on a broad scale (as opposed to niche websites), and whether social media and the like will provide venues for conducting policy debates and forging positions that represent a significant and informed communal consensus, remain very much open questions. However, the shift is not mainly one of organizational and communication modalities. There is an increasingly large cohort of Jews whose Jewishness is merely ethnic, and even then only superficially so. To be sure, the 2013 Pew Report, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” asserted “[l]arge majorities in all of the major Jewish movements express pride in being Jewish. Virtually all Orthodox—and nine of ten Conservative Jews—feel a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, as do [a majority] of Reform Jews.”63 But it is not clear what this pride amounts to. Connection with Jewish people is felt less strongly by those with no denominational attachment (53%). Similarly, while majorities of Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews said they had a special responsibility to care for Jews in need, less than half of Jews with no denominational affiliation (39%) felt this kind of responsibility. The latter did not belong to synagogues or Jewish organizations. They reported that being Jewish is not central to their lives and that Israel policy was not crucial to their votes. Evidently, they had little concern for the parochial concerns of the Jewish people. It is polite to pretend otherwise, but the numbers speak for themselves. Whatever one thinks of liberal Democratic politician and activist Ruth Messinger’s vision of twenty-first-century Judaism (“[j]oining the fight against global poverty, hunger and disease is essential to the survival of the Jewish people”), it leads to a very different form of “Jewish” politics—and one that will be incapable of sustaining itself as Jewish in an America where antisemitism is unlikely to be a major galvanizing factor over the long term. It is fair to ask whether this framing of the Jewish task (and the analogous running criticism of Israel) is simply a cover for those who want to exit the (parochial) Jewish world but are reluctant to do so directly. Why, in the end, perform good works in a Jewish context (Messinger’s American Jewish World Service) instead of in a purely universalistic one like Doctors Without Borders? If the trend of loosening ethnic and religious commitments continues, we will have at most a politics of Jews, not a Jewish politics. For those organizations that have made Israel a centerpiece of their work, the dilution of Jewish concerns points to a gap between the organization and the people they purport to represent. And, indeed, some Jewish organizations do seem to be moving away from Israel. Although the future will likely look very different, there are still important continuities in Jewish political behavior. These largely appear to have withstood other

 Pew Research Center, “Jewish Identity,” https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/10/01/ chapter-3-jewish-identity/ 63

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changes in communal life despite the erosion of the influence exercised by communal institutions over Jewish life and substantial changes in the economic, social, and religious status and beliefs of Jews. The American Jewish tendency towards liberal politics (captured in Milton Himmelfarb’s famous bon mot that Jews “earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans”) is longstanding and manifests itself over a wide range of issues. Four major characteristics seem important: (1) belief in a government role in supporting the less well-off; (2) deep suspicion of government involvement in religion and morality—especially sexual morality; (3) a broad internationalism, often coupled with resistance to the use of military force by the United States; and (4) commitment to the principle of human equality, both at home and across the world.64 These positions are not inherently linked. Libertarians are skeptical about government-imposed morality and challenge government involvement in economic support for the less well off. There are domestic liberals who are isolationists, especially when it comes to the use of force, but more generally because they favor a focus on domestic issues. And there are libertarians who are skeptical of American entanglements abroad, but opposed to social welfare programs. As Greenberg and Wald pointed out, Jewish political liberalism persists even as income increases—a phenomenon that defies general American demographic trends. Noting that Jews are disproportionately well educated and affluent, Greenberg and Wald point out, “But when we compare these Jewish American voters to non-Jews with the same socioeconomic status, the Jews remain politically distinctive. Exit poll data from the end of the twentieth century showed that 39% of comparable non-Jews identified as Democrats, compared to 60% of Jews; and 54% of comparable non-Jews supported Democratic candidates for the House, compared to 76% of Jews.”65 Americans who identify their religion as Jewish are more likely to say they are liberal than are either Protestants or Catholics. The ideological identification of Jews is in fact more similar to those who have no stated religious preference than it is to the other two major religious groups. A more recent study shows that self-identified Modern Orthodox are largely identical to the general population’s political orientation.66 Non-Orthodox, but religiously identified, Jews lean somewhat further left—albeit not quite as left as Unitarians or members of black churches.67 Ultra-Orthodox Jews are decidedly more conservative. On matters of sexual freedom Jews truly are distinctive. In 1988, Jews supported publicly funded abortion by a 6:1 ratio, while only 47% of all Americans supported the legality of abortion in the first place.68 Today, even as abortion continues to be a  AJC 2005 Survey of American Jewish Opinion, PDF available at http://www.jewishdatabank.org/studies/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=2256. (Polls show 70% of American Jews disapproved of Iraq War.) 65  Still Liberal After All These Years, supra, pp. 174–75). 66  Portrait of Jewish Americans, supra note 26, at 95–97. 67  Id. 68  Steven M.  Cohen, The Dimensions of American Jewish Liberalism (1989) (hereinafter “Dimensions”), at 45. For later dates (1992, 1996), see E.C. Ladd and K.M. Bowman, Public Opinion About Abortion (1999) at Table 28. Jews again stand out in their “liberal” views on abortion. 64

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deeply divisive issue for all Americans, Jews remain overwhelmingly pro-choice. They have not exhibited the increasing ambivalence about abortion elsewhere in the American populace. Indeed, in 2001, half of all Jews thought that a judicial nominee’s opposition to reproductive choice (= abortion) should be disqualifying.69 With the exception of the Orthodox groups, no Jewish group supported the claim of private corporations to be excused from providing contraceptive coverage for its employees in the Hobby Lobby case. On LGBT issues, Jews again remain well to the left of Americans generally. In 1988, a question asked by AJC in an annual poll was whether one was “for homosexual rights,” referring at the time to a ban on employment discrimination and an elimination of criminal penalties for sodomy. (“Homosexual rights” did not yet encompass samesex marriage.70) The results are distinct: 85% of Jews in 1988 supported “homosexual rights,” as opposed to 57% of other whites. That same disparity in support for LBGT rights was evident in a 2013 AJC poll.71 In a current case involving the asserted right of an evangelical Christian baker not to provide a cake for a same sex wedding, most Jewish groups opposed the baker; only Orthodox groups supported him—this in the face of a longstanding Jewish organizational support for religious liberty claims. On issues of church and state, Jews are distinctive as well. In 2005, 66% of Jews thought government should not fund social welfare programs run by religious institutions, apparently without regard to whether the programs were secular or religious.72 The general population felt otherwise, with two-thirds of those polled in a 2001 Pew study supporting government funding of social programs run by religious institutions.73 The general public has long supported some governmental involvement with religion; Jews are overwhelmingly opposed.74 This difference shows little sign of erosion, except that now marginally less of the general population now supports school prayer. This is perhaps a function of the growth of atheists and “nones,” but also because the increased religious diversity of American religion makes it more difficult for a community to agree on an acceptable school prayer.

Organizational Political Activity Policy-oriented not-for-profit organizations, which have long dominated organized Jewish political activity, cannot directly assess, support or oppose candidates in terms of their political views and retain their life-giving tax exemption as 501(c)(3)  2001 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion (AJC).  Steven M.  Cohen, The Dimensions of American Jewish Liberalism (1989) (Hereinafter “Dimensions”) at 45. 71  AJC 2013 Survey of American Jewish Opinion, http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx ?c=7oJILSPwFfJSG&b=8479755&ct=13376311 72  AJC 2005 Survey of American Jewish Opinion, PDF available at http://www.jewishdatabank.org/ studies/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=2256 (Question 23). 73  The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Faith-Based Funding Backed, But Church-State Doubts Abound, http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/15.pdf 74  See, e.g., Dimensions, Table 2.4. 69 70

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entities. Nor can they directly endorse or oppose candidates—that is, if they wish to retain their federal tax exemptions, as all do. Nevertheless, as a group, the policies of these groups reinforce or reflect the predominantly liberal views of American Jews. Notwithstanding the restrictions contained they can affect elections by determining what issues get debated in the Jewish community, and which are perceived as (Jewishly) acceptable and which are not. Jewish organizations that, for example, successfully stigmatize bigots in the general society (most Jewish organizations quickly criticized Candidate Trump’s astounding and perverse proposal to ban all Muslim immigrants) and suggest the desirability of regularizing the status of long-term illegal aliens, help shape electoral results without explicitly endorsing or opposing any particular candidate. Or, to cite another recent example, the lack of enthusiasm for religious freedom claims in cases like Hobby Lobby (in which a privately held company sought an exemption from a federal mandate to provide conception coverage for its female employees) suggests quite a lot about how Jews should think about candidates’ positions on these issues or religious liberty generally. (Of course, it is not always easy to separate cause from effect. Are the agencies’ positions shaping Jewish electoral results, or merely reflecting them?) Here a word about the role of religious institutions as such is in order, especially since those of other faiths sometimes skirt or ignore the rules against political endorsements. Synagogues and rabbis generally do not serve as political anchors of Jewish partisan political activity the way white evangelical and Black churches and their pastors do. When congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration proposed allowing religious (or all) not-for-profits to engage in electoral politics, no Jewish organization offered support. Specific groups of the Hasidic community may be atypical, in that the “rebbe” (Hasidic rabbis, often playing dominant role in the community) may openly indicate a preference for a particular candidate, although this is rarely because of ideology. In some but not all circumstances, such endorsements might put the groups’ tax exemption at risk. As far as I know (its actions are generally confidential), the IRS has never taken action against such endorsements by a synagogue. Although there have been periodic attempts to create them, there have been no significant “Jewish voter guides” distributed through synagogues as Christian voter guides were, and are, distributed through evangelical churches. (AIPAC’s electoral guides are not primarily distributed through synagogues.) A visit to a leading black pulpit is almost certain to be far more important to a candidate than a visit to a synagogue. For all the “social action” activities in Reform synagogues, those institutions take care not to devolve into partisan political forums, even if the liberal politics these synagogues embrace is a dimension of their Judaism. Jews have other, more direct and comfortable outlets for political expression. This is not to say that individual rabbis do not from time to time endorse, or all but endorse, candidates from the pulpit, or that they do not do so outside the pulpit, as

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was the case of a large group of rabbis endorsing Barack Obama for president during the 2012 election.75 However, rabbinic endorsements are not an important component of Jewish political activity. It is questionable if they would have much impact in any event. This reticence is not primarily a function of the uniquely law-abiding nature of synagogues. Rather, it reflects a continuing American Jewish ambivalence about the role of religion in partisan politics, and an often unstated (and legally incorrect) application of the principle of separation of church and state. Many synagogues also do not relish the controversy that comes with backing or opposing candidates: Almost every synagogue will have members supporting the unsupported candidate who will be unhappy with the endorsement. The hesitancy of synagogues and clergy to enter partisan politics also stems from a deep-seated belief that Jews will inevitably be the losers if politics—a numbers game—is played out along religious lines. Jews are anxious to be politically active, but not under rules that virtually guarantee the marginalization of Jews and Jewish causes. Important in this regard is the declining pull of organized religion in the American Jewish community. Almost half of American Jews do not belong to any synagogue; far fewer (11% according to Pew) attend synagogue as regularly as once a week and only 23% attend synagogue monthly. A startling percentage say religion is not very important in their lives.76 By contrast, 50% of the general public attend (or say they attend) a house of worship monthly.77 Even if synagogues increased political involvement, it is not at all clear that their involvement would make a significant difference in the political behavior of Jews. Though not involved directly in politics, Jewish public affairs organizations of varied ideological bent and the national synagogue organizations of the major streams of Judaism remain broadly active in attempting to influence public policy and debate. Sometimes these groups act in response to a clear Jewish interest (e.g., an issue involving Israel, or reacting to an appeals court decision allowing condominiums to ban mezuzahs from doorposts); sometimes to (what they perceive as) Jewish public opinion; and sometimes in advance of it, identifying an issue that they believe will impact on Jewish life or values (e.g., genocide in Myanmar, immigration, the war in Ukraine) in some way, or about which some more-or-less plausible case can be made that the “Jewish tradition” (religious, historical or political) points

 Jerusalem Post, “More than two-times the number of rabbis join grassroots election effort targeting Jewish voters than did in 2008,” http://www.jpost.com/The-US-Presidential-race/600-rabbisthrow-their-support-behind-Obama (8/21/2012). 76  Portrait of Jewish Americans, supra, note 27, at 72–75. Data for the American public is reported as well. 77  Id., at 76. It is widely believed that these figures are examples of over-reporting because respondents to such polls are embarrassed to tell the truth. But there is no reason to believe Jews are more or less honest in this regard than other groups. 75

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to a particular result, say on immigration, same-sex marriage, or abortion.78 (There is an important question about how accurately these groups reflect popular opinion, that of large donors only, or of staff.) If Jewish organizations are strongly pro-choice—as almost all non-Orthodox groups are—and emphasize the value of reproductive choice in a Jewish world view—then this emphasis will have an entirely legal impact on how Jews view candidates and how salient that issue will be in Jewish voters’ choices in a primary— and in the competition for “Jewish” money. Conversely, if Orthodox organizations constantly bemoan the absence of restrictions on abortion, it is more likely that Orthodox Jews, other things being equal, will gravitate to pro-life candidates. This remains true whether or not any particular reading of Jewish tradition is correct, or, as is sometimes the case, fabricated to suit the occasion. These impacts are not necessarily trivial. Jews have a plethora of organizations organized around large public policy themes, with government action (or inaction) as an immediate goal and metric of success. The so-called defense agencies have policy agendas of a certain cast. In each case, the realization of those agendas depends on elected government officials adopting certain policies. It was not always the case that organizational focus was on governmental action. Until World War II, the defense agencies focused on inducing public opinion to be favorably disposed to Jews, and not on enacting laws or obtaining favorable administrative or judicial action. Jews did repeatedly seek to keep America’s doors open for immigration, and some had quietly begun advocating for recognition of a Jewish state. The change in emphasis to active involvement in governmental affairs, so apparent in the post-World War II years, reflects a greater confidence of the Jewish place in America—in large part due to the participation of Jews as combatants in World War II, and a greater feeling of security. The communal agenda broadened in the wake of World War II to include a general program of support for civil liberties/civil rights, support for foreign aid beyond Israel and an aversion to using military force, though falling far short of pacifism. Some of these positions were motivated by self-interest, some by ideological commitment and some by both. AJCongress, which pioneered an activist strategy of law and social action, had a comprehensive self-described liberal agenda by the late 1950s and early 1960s, and included on its agenda subjects as diverse as support for the war on poverty, opposition to the war in Vietnam, support for more liberal immigration laws, abortion, opposition to McCarthyism, civil liberties in criminal law enforcement, advocacy of gun control and nuclear disarmament—all from a left-of-center to center position.

 These religious claims should be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism, as they are often ill-founded in traditional Jewish sources, sometimes plain distortions of it, and often from groups or persons who otherwise show little interest in, knowledge of, and commitment to, Jewish religious tradition. A cynic might say these religious references should be taken at most as a yearning to make traditional religion coincide with secular beliefs—beliefs that in fact are what is driving political activity. Of course, it must also be admitted that Orthodox groups, while typically more closely hewing to the traditional sources, are sometimes prone to selectively using the traditional in a political cause, only from the opposite direction (e.g., regarding capital punishment). 78

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Its work, alone and in coalition with others, focused on activity in judicial or legislative forums, not on changing hearts and minds—a tactic that in the beginning (late 1940’s—early 1950’s generated considerable controversy, some groups rejecting aggressive use of litigation or legislation to advance Jewish interests. That opposition did not last long. AJC’s post-World War II agenda was slightly narrower, marginally more centrist, and for a time more aimed at “hearts and minds,” though even at AJC legal and legislative activity was by the 1960’s regularly part of the program. (Unlike AJCongress, which actually litigated cases, AJC’s work was usually confined to friend-of-the-court briefs.) Most recently, AJC has (together with other national Jewish organizations) has been active in urging widespread adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which is designed to help government agencies as well as civil society organizations identify antisemitic words and deeds when they occur. The umbrella and coordinating organization of local Jewish community relations agencies and national Jewish agencies, now known as the Jewish Council on Public Affairs (JCPA)—formerly the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council and earlier still National Community Relations Advisory Council (note the deliberate omission of the word Jewish)—for decades published an annual compendium of policy positions (the Joint Program Plan) that was breathtaking in its scope. It, too, spoke from a distinctly liberal position. In more recent years JCPA has narrowed its focus, concentrating mainly on Israel, Iran, and domestic poverty, although (with the exception of Iran, which issues threats to destroy Israel) it is no less liberal on these matters than it was regarding its former, broader agenda. Its poverty agenda, given the economic status of most American Jewry and certainly its leadership, is not economic self-interest at work. It is an ideological commitment to a certain view of social justice. JCPA’s local constituents, the community relations councils (CRC’s), have changed substantially over time. From World War II through 1990, they functioned as local Jewish spokesmen on “community relations” issues, meaning roughly any issue on which inter-group tension was possible. They were loosely affiliated with Jewish Federations (which focused on raising money for Israel and social service programs). Often, the CRC’s were led and staffed by the (self-selected) liberal sector of the Jewish community. More socially and politically conservative Jews, more interested in parochial issues (read, Israel, Soviet Jewry), were active either in the local Federation or in exclusively pro-Israel activities. The CRC’s (some southern communities were an important exception) were also distinctly liberal on racial matters during the civil rights era. More recently, the CRC’s have declined sharply in importance as spokesmen on broader issues, especially those of ideological, not practical, interest to the Jewish community (e.g., church-state separation, reproductive choice). Instead, they have been brought ever more tightly into the Federation orbit, devoting the greater part of their energy to supporting Israel and efforts of Federations to attract sufficient government funds to maintain an extensive Jewish social services network. As integral parts of local Federations, the CRC’s are also under subtle (or not so subtle) pressure to avoid controversial public policy subjects (i.e., gun control, tobacco sales, abortion) that might alienate donors. Of course, the silence alienates other donors.

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One should not dismiss all these groups as (to use a dated term) “limousine liberals” without any real impact. The defense organizations and CRC’s have, by their public activities, validated popularly controversial positions as respectable when they might not have been without Jewish involvement. Church-state separation advocacy was harder to attack as atheism in the 1950’s and 60’s, as some Christians did79 when the Jewish community, especially including the Reform movement, supported it. On civil rights, especially in the 1950’s, Jewish organizational presence helped validate the movement, and in many cases, contributed important legal or lobbying work. When the civil rights pendulum swung, opposition to affirmative action (then polemically—and sometimes accurately—called quotas) in the 1970’s could not as readily be denounced as racist as the opposition sometimes was by its supporters, when most major Jewish groups, with their extensive record of support for civil rights, were skeptical or hostile (with the sometime exception of the Reform movement and the on-going exception of the National Council of Jewish Women). All in all, the leading Jewish organizations have narrowed their focus over the years. At first glance, this narrowing, and the resulting parochialism, might be seen as a rejection of universalist values. There has been some of that, but not much. In part, it is the result of the feeling that with the imminence of a nuclear Iran and its surrogates Hamas and Hezbollah, other issues recede in importance. Concomitantly and probably more importantly, is the growth of a range of narrowly targeted special interest groups that focus on social welfare and justice issues like abortion, children’s rights, and welfare reform that used to be high on the organizational agenda. Jews can and do play leading roles in these specialized agencies not as representatives of the organized Jewish community but as individuals. It is also difficult for Jewish organizations with broad social justice agendas to stand out against competition from single-focused and highly skilled single-issue organizations. On college campuses (and elsewhere), some social justice groups are actively hostile to Israel. Some Jews feel trapped between their commitment to Israel and social justice but seem unwilling to abandon pursuit of social justice with the very groups at the forefront of those efforts to undercut Israel. The ability of committed or not so committed Jews to play leadership roles in non-Jewish civil society organizations (to say nothing of their ability, if wealthy enough, to serve on boards of universities and other high culture institutions) has drawn wealthy persons with those commitments away from the Jewish communal agencies. An example of the politics of Jews superseding Jewish politics is Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which started life in the 1940’s as Protestants and Other Americans United and was mostly Protestant and distinctly anti-Catholic. The name of the organization is now just Americans United for Separation of Church and State, with many Jews in leadership and staff roles.

 This argument elides the increasingly important distinction between Jews as a religious group (a declining percentage of the Jewish community) and Jews as an ethnic group, often very secular in orientation. Still, today attacks on separationist positions typically target the ACLU, Americans United or Freedom From Religion Foundation, not Jewish groups who take the very same positions. 79

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Jews for whom church-state separation is still a central issue—and there are many, though Jewish organizations are no longer at the heart of these fights—can and do now join this organization and are not distracted by the clutter of a broader Jewish agenda. Another factor at work in the narrowing focus of Jewish life is that Jewish communal leadership is now on a “pay-to-play” basis, leaving no room for leadership on the part of middle- and even upper-middle-class Jews. There are distinct class differences and expectations between the current Jewish leadership and the broader mass of Jews. Then, too, a decrease in membership and funding, fueled by a diminishing affiliation with the Jewish communal organizations, requires national agencies to narrow their focus. The decline in organizational membership over the past few decades says much about the salience of a distinctly and explicitly Jewish approach to broad political issues. More worrisome is what it portends about Israel advocacy. Analysts suggest that there are limited concrete data to sustain claims that the narrowing of focus marks measurable domestic political shift to the right or, less frequently, to the left in the thinking of American Jews. That is small consolation, for the negative implications of the shrinking Jewish organizational membership for Israel advocacy and whatever domestic “Jewish” issues arise in the future are large. Advocacy organizations today compete with service-providing agencies (family services, poverty relief, and medical care) for funds and leadership. These attract those who want to do good. Real people benefit in real ways from such philanthropy, but these are not the only long-term concern of Jews. Meanwhile, many wealthy Jewish lay leaders want hands-on involvement in their Jewish activity such that the range of ideas these organizations are involved with diminishes as more energy is devoted to meetings with important public officials as opposed to professional staff work on issues. Only on some issues (Israel, antisemitism) is such personal involvement possible. In some part because it is not possible to personally lobby judges, there is now a marked lack of enthusiasm for organizational involvement in church-state or religious liberty litigation. (Of course, there are other factors in play, including the fact that many Jews no longer send their children to public schools and, until recently, the generally satisfactory state of the law.) It does not follow that Jews have shifted their views or that Jews or Jewish institutions don’t have such issues, just that they do not think of them in a Jewish organizational context. In any event, no Jewish organization currently has the in-house capacity to litigate such matters (or for that matter, issues arising on the campus or around the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement. In examining the decline of Jewish organizational involvement, it is worth bearing in mind that the most urgent aspects of the “particularist” (post-World War II) domestic agenda of the Jewish community have in large part been achieved. These include outlawing religious discrimination in employment (quotas, glass ceilings) and housing, insisting on church-state separation manifest in issues such as prayer in public schools, suppressing antisemitic violence and rhetoric. Under President Trump there was a limited but nevertheless shocking increase in antisemitic rhetoric and violence and, arguably, a weakening of church-state separation. In 2016, at least

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one major secular Jewish organization was in all but open opposition to the Trump candidacy, and moved distinctly left of center during his Administration. The Union of Reform Judaism did likewise. There are some (so far anecdotal) signs that the current generation of younger Jews are markedly to the left of their parents, not only on domestic social justice issues but on Israel as well. Whether this trend was a temporary reaction to Trump and his ugly far-right supporters, as well as to the religious nationalism of the Netanyahu government or a permanent generational shift in Jewish politics, only time will tell.

Individual Political Activity Although, as noted, Jewish organizational life rarely partakes of overtly partisan activity, partisan activity among Jews has grown more important. Wealthy Jews, especially in the Democratic Party but increasingly in the GOP as well, seek to align themselves with candidates they think will prevail, especially by contributing money early in the primary season. In a telling indication of the shift of activity from communal institutions to high worth individuals, in 2016 the Forward published an article on which candidates the Jewish billionaires were supporting for the Presidential 2016 nominations—but not one on whom pro-Israel PACs were supporting. It is important that Jews play—and are able and, indeed, welcome to play—an active role in the political life of American democracy. Since the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) that money is speech, such participation is a way of protecting Jewish interests, however defined. Whatever else they disagree about, politically active Jews did not and presumably will not kowtow to either the anti-Semitic populism and nativism of the alt-right or the hostility to Israel of the progressive left. There are, however, drawbacks to these individual political efforts. First, the interests of affluent Jews do not necessarily coincide with those of the less affluent. Wealthy philanthropists are as a group less committed to, for example, challenging race-based scholarships, supporting higher taxes for the rich, expanding Medicaid coverage, and regulating condominium conversion. Second, there is a loss of communal input into political activity. What issues are presented, in what order of priority, and with what nuances, are all effectively in the hands of individual donors—especially large donors—not the relatively democratic organs of the community at large. Some Jewish donors, of course, are intimately involved in Jewish community affairs. Others hover on the periphery, or are dependent on the judgments of independent paid advisors. It is also true that their own dependence on wealthy donors has made the communal organizations far less democratic and more elitist than they once were. The impact of Jewish giving on political campaigns is, like all such giving, mixed. Of primary importance, the Jewish community is able to compensate for its declining percentage of the electorate and its dispersal into smaller geographical

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groupings with its wealth and willingness to spend it in pursuit of a political agenda. On the other hand, large Jewish giving, no less if no more than other giving, has a corrupting effect on the political process, one that favors uncompromising positions on single issues. The outsized influence of wealth on government—think of the moneyed pressure against regulating financial markets—is not healthy. Moreover, some of the giving threatens the long-standing wisdom of the Jewish community that support for Israel should be bipartisan. While the press paid a lot of attention to the political largesse of Sheldon Adelson with its almost exclusive focus on Republican candidates who shared his right-wing take on the Middle East, little attention is paid to the fact that J Street, through its PAC, supports only Democrats who share its left-leaning views. The growing influence of private donors creates a dilemma for the many Jews and Jewish groups who support campaign finance reform, especially in the wake of Citizens United. Liberal Jews tend to favor such reform. More than a decade ago, JCPA was asked to support such efforts, over the objection of less idealistic, more pragmatic (some would say cynical) types urging caution because a likely outcome of campaign finance reform would be a diminution of Jewish political influence. The pragmatists ultimately lost at JCPA, but not in the real world of givers. And given the constitutional limits the current Supreme Court has placed on restricting political expenditures and giving (though still not permitting 501(c)(3) organizations to endorse or oppose80 candidates), it is likely that such individual giving will increase in salience. What is also troubling, though, is that such direct political activity has become more attractive to communal elites than the organized give-and-take of Jewish communal life. It is typical of the new emphasis on party politics that a recent chair of JCPA, after finishing her term, immediately became head of the Maryland Democratic Party. Her career, as described in a flyer handed out by the JCPA upon her retirement, was marked by a bouncing back and forth between Jewish life and the Democratic Party. Indeed, a past executive director of JCPA himself held jobs in both the National Jewish Democratic Coalition and organized Jewish life. The cloud in this silver lining of access to political actors is that partisan activity is now spilling over into—really crowding out—all corners of Jewish life. For starters, there are now explicitly partisan Jewish groups: the National Jewish Democratic Coalition (NJDC) and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). These are relatively new bodies, although there had long been (relatively low-level) party personnel assigned to deal with Jewish as well as other ethnic concerns. The RJC came first, with the NDJC following, largely as a reaction to the growing influence of the Jesse Jackson wing of the party in 1984 and its effort to weaken support for Israel in the party platform. The Jewish partisan operations look both inward and outward. They allow the party to speak directly to Jews without committing itself as  President Trump called for the lifting of this restriction—the so-called “Johnson Amendment.” The call received no support in the organized Jewish community nor, indeed, from most other religious communities. The House of Representatives included a partial lifting in its version of the 2017 tax bill but the Senate did not, and the restriction remained in place. 80

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a whole to any particular controversial position. These groups also speak from a more distinctly ethnic point of view than would be wise or possible for the party as a whole to do, denouncing the other party (or other members of that party) and its representatives in ways designed to appeal to Jews without committing the entire party. It is hard, for example, to complain about the Democratic (or Republican) Party’s silence on the antisemitism of a candidate when the NJDC or RJC criticizes its “own” antisemites. Official party condemnation is thus to all appearances unnecessary, and the parties’ silence—sparing possible offense to other constituencies— overlooked. Whether this will continue as the left and alt-right wings of the major parties become more vocal—and as more primaries are dominated by non-centrist party activists—remains to be seen. The increased level of Jewish partisan activity has other benefits and costs. That was the case with some of the anti-Obama ads run by the RJC in Jewish newspapers during the 2008 elections. NJDC pronounced itself shocked (shocked!) by the ads, which were little more than the partisan attacks that have unfortunately come to dominate presidential and other campaigns. Jewish papers largely owned or subsidized by Federations found themselves caught in the middle between the desire to publish the ads in keeping with the freedom of the press (and maximizing ad revenue) and the risk of offending large Democratic donors to Federation campaigns. Another unnecessary and unhelpful intrusion of partisan politics into Jewish communal life was the controversy over then vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin’s appearance to address a supposedly non-partisan anti-Iran rally during the UN General Assembly in 2008. Hillary Clinton, still serving as a Democratic senator from New York, had previously agreed to speak. It is still not clear whether Palin was herself invited, or whether the RJC was asked to supply a speaker and offered her as its representative. A day later, the rally organizers extended a parallel invitation to Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Biden, as the organizers were likely bound to do both by the law governing tax exempt organizations and by the need to keep support for a strong anti-Iran position bipartisan. What was unsettling were the purely partisan attacks on Palin’s very appearance. The then relatively new group J Street attacked any appearance by Palin, whose views on a variety of unrelated domestic issues were said to be (and probably were) anathema to the rest of the Jewish community. The point was explicitly made that since Jews did not agree with Palin on many issues, it would be wrong to give her a platform even about Iran—regardless of whether Democratic vice-presidential candidate Biden was invited as well, whether or not Palin’s views on Iran coincided with those of the Jewish community, or whether or not the loss of theological purity was outweighed by strengthening the anti-Iran coalition. J-Street unwisely and unhelpfully injected explicit partisanship into what should have been a non-­ partisan event. According to news stories, several large Democrat donors to the New York Federation, a major funder of the rally, also demanded that the invitation to Palin be withdrawn. A lawyer’s opinion letter was generated, claiming that her appearance would cost the rally’s sponsoring organizations their tax exemptions. The letter’s legal arguments were so weak that one must conclude that it was a partisan

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position in search of an opinion letter. Even if the rally’s organizers handled the matter poorly the upshot was that the highly partisan nature of the 2008 campaign and the increased personal partisan involvement of prominent Jews turned what should have been a non-partisan and relatively uncontroversial rally into a communal debacle. The successful decades-long strategy of treating Israel’s survival as an issue beyond partisan politics was badly wounded in the rush for partisan advantage. The partisan split was again evident in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s unwise decision in March 2015 to address a joint session of Congress to oppose the policy of a sitting President. Almost all of those boycotting the speech—which was arranged by the Republican speaker over the opposition (and without the prior knowledge) of the Democratic president—were Democrats, some of them Jewish, many traditional supporters of Israel. Jews, too, divided along partisan lines regarding the wisdom of the speech, as did Jews in Israel.81 Some of those unfriendly to Israel and its current government have hailed the partisan split as the beginning of the end of reflexive support for Israel. Inseparable from direct contributions is the process of “bundling”—assembling checks from multiple donors to a single candidate. This can be done by soliciting like-minded friends or by having a parlor meeting or dinner for a candidate, whether an incumbent or challenger, who meets and talks to potential donors. Or, of course, such meetings can also be arranged by an existing political action committee (PAC). Done well, this form of campaign gives donors a chance to influence candidates, assures challengers of unfriendly incumbents’ adequate resources, and conveys to all candidates, and by implication their opponents, what issues are of concern to Jewish donors—and, ideally, to the Jewish community at large. A notable example of the power of these efforts was the determined effort by Jews in 2002 to unseat Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was openly hostile to Israel. Her opponent was a virtual unknown and received much of her financial support from outside Georgia. When McKinney was unseated, she blamed the Jews, who were for once delighted to accept blame. The effort was a warning to others that there is (or at least there was in 2002) a price to pay for taking outlier positions on Israel. Contributions are also furnished through Jewish PACs, which solicit contributions from many persons around an issue, such as Israel, but also around general political issues (though these broad-based PACs are often less effective than the single issue-focused PACs) and then distribute the funds to candidates. PACs are not, of course, unique to Jews. Corporations run them as do labor unions and other interest groups. There are no comprehensive data on how much Jews give to candidates, whether through PACs or individual contributions. The closest is a compilation of how much is given by individuals or PACs labelled as pro-Israel. (Additional “pro-Israel” money is spent on lobbying Congress, mostly through agencies,

 See, e.g., S. Mufsan, Netanyahu’s Planned Congress Speech Splits U.S. Jewish Organizations, Washington Post, February 28, 2015. 81

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although the available data, on the Open Secrets website82 for example, is less than reliable; AJC’s total lobbying amount is described by Open Secrets as all pro-Israel lobbying, but that is incorrect.) According to Open Secrets, financial support to House and Senate candidates from pro-Israel donors83 rose from $4.2 million the 1990 election cycle to $30.5 in the 2020 cycle, a nearly quadruple increase after inflation. In the latter case, nearly twice as many Democratic candidates received support as Republicans, a pattern that has been consistent over the years. Notably, however, this substantial increase—occurring in the context of a huge run-up in total campaign fundraising—did not keep Israel as high in the overall ranking of issue-giving as it had been. A close study shows substantial differences among PACs. J Street, which according to Open Secrets data is now the largest pro-Israel PAC, donates exclusively (or nearly exclusively) to Democrats. Others split the money more evenly, presumably in some part for ideological reasons, but also by giving some weight to incumbency. AIPAC, whose existence predates the current campaign finance law, is not (despite its name) a PAC. It does not itself distribute money to candidates. It does, however, provide its leaders access to candidates, and analysis of candidates’ positions on Israel. Its publications serve as buyer’s guides for political donors, highlighting close races where money is especially likely to be influential. It has a significant budget and its annual dinner and meeting in Washington is a must stop for many high-ranking federal officeholders, who use the occasion to address Middle East matters, usually in general and anodyne terms. A notable exception took place in 2009, when then-Vice President Biden spoke of the urgency of freezing settlement activity. By contrast, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders’ declined AIPAC’s invitation in both 2016 and 2020, in the latter year tweeting that it “provides a platform for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.” [Since this was written, AIPAC spun off an entity which can endorse candidates and which was active in races across the country in 2022. It is yet too early to accurately assess the impact of this activity.] As the preeminent pro-Israel lobby in Washington, AIPAC typically follows the lead of the Israeli government on policy. Over the years, American Jews to the right and left of the government have criticized AIPAC for not acting on their own views of Israel’s best interests. In addition to evaluating candidates’ records on Israel, it suggests legislation or letters on matters of concern to Israel such as the 2015 bill on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (“BDS”). Through an affiliated organization, it spends considerable effort on taking new members of Congress to Israel. Particularly on the Jewish left in the years since the 1993 Oslo peace accords and the subsequent predominance of right-of-center governments in Israel, there has been a desire to create a counter-AIPAC, one devoted to pushing a different vision of Middle East peace.

 WWW.opensecrets.org  It is interesting to note that other lobbying on behalf of foreign policy issues gets listed by Open Secrets under the neutral categories “Foreign and Defense Policy” or “Human Rights.” Whether the choice to single out pro-Israel activity is dictated by the sheer size of the amounts involved, greater interest in the subject, or a belief in a Jewish cabal to control American Middle East policy, is unknown. 82 83

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Many Israelis would no doubt be surprised to find a “pro-Israel” group urging the United States to pressure the duly elected government of Israel to make concessions it does not want to make, or at least make without reciprocal Palestinian concessions. JStreet operates much the way AIPAC does—highlighting members of Congress with “good” and “bad” ratings. Unlike AIPAC, however, it deliberately seeks press attention. J Street and its allies offer cover for Congress members (and for that matter, Jews) who are inclined to its views but are afraid of appearing anti-­ Israel. It is evident that JStreet has struck a chord in both the political community and parts of the Jewish community that are uncomfortable with Israel’s actions in the occupied territories. It is also true that there are groups on the right that also feel free to criticize the Israeli government and lobby the U.S. accordingly. AIPAC acts in support of the democratic government of Israel, which bears the burden of getting its policies right. J Street (just like those on the right who fund and support provocative settlement projects in Israel) runs no real risks in expressing its views. That is no small difference. But given the lack of sympathy among American Jews for the settler movement, and the decline of “tribal” sentiments, J Street will be a force to be reckoned with in future years. Whether for better or worse remains to be seen.

Conclusion The ideological differences that give rise to the multitude of Jewish organizations are in each case understandable in their own self-contained terms. One can, for example, debate abortion or same-sex marriage as legitimate or illegitimate readings of the Jewish religious tradition. Conducting that examination requires consideration of important questions about what is the canon of that tradition. Is it open or closed? How are the texts of the canon to be read—as binding, illustrative or merely historical interest, surpassed by modern thought? Likewise, one could debate whether those sources have some binding or lesser pull on the question of, for example, “land-for-peace”—over and above the military and diplomatic issues. These are all important questions, but they are not directly the concern of this chapter. For present purposes, however, it is distinctly relevant to trace in broad strokes different concepts of the Jewish interest. These meta-questions supersede “local” consideration in many cases, and color the weighing of interests in particular disputes. Is Jewish interest to be measured in parochial or universal terms? Is the Jewish interest achieving justice, no matter what its impact on here and now (some, most or all) Jews or Jewish institutions? That is an issue that, for example, was at the heart of the communal dispute over the Hobby Lobby case. Or is it in pressing what is uniquely Jewish, even if it has some (or much) adverse effect on others, as is the case of exemptions from anti-discrimination laws desired by some Orthodox Jews in the case of same-sex marriage? Assume for the moment that a higher estate tax— or a reduction of the charitable deduction for estates—would serve important and useful redistributive ends, distinctly positive for the poor. Likely, Jewish

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organizational life would be (literally) impoverished by that change. What is the Jewish interest? What degree of self-sacrifice is morally and politically acceptable? What role for communal self-interest against the larger public weal? Are Jews first and foremost committed to worry about everyone else before themselves? Some Jews act as if this were so; others act as if no one else exists. In 2009, Ruth Messinger, then president of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), told the rabbinic graduates of Conservative Judaim’s Jewish Theological Seminary that as “children of the Exodus” and “because we are Jews and because we are creatures of God…[w]e must address the needs of all people because we are the boundary crossers, told to help the other and the stranger, directed not to stand idly by…What is required, first, is that we embrace those with whom we do not share a faith or a neighborhood, a country, a language, or a political structure… They are surely b’tzelem elohim—people made in the image of God.” Granted, this was a graduation speech from a longtime political activist. But it was also a charge to rabbis—one that did not mention that their priority might be to help people serve God, even though synagogue membership and attendance were in precipitous decline. There was not a word about the perilous financial status of their movement’s Solomon Schecter schools, though they were in a perilous state. Not a word about Israel. No, for Ms. Messinger, the Jewish task in the twenty-first century was to deliver a better life for the people of the world. Of course, it is equally necessary to cite and criticize Orthodox Jews and others who manifest a total disregard of anyone other than their own people. Leaving aside the moral bankruptcy of such a position, it is no recipe for political influence. Be that as it may, among American Jews, Messinger’s universalist tendency is in the ascendancy. AJWS has been successful in attracting young Jews to a sort of Jewish Peace Corps, while more Jewish-focused agencies have had substantial difficulty attracting young people. Whether AJWS’s involvement will generate long-term commitment to the parochial Jewish community is, however, very much an open question. These pulls indicate different policies and politics. Whether the community’s long-term interest is served by emphasizing the universalist egalitarian impulse or the particularist one is a question rarely addressed head on, often because people prefer not to think the two values conflict. Such clashes as do occur seem to be reflexively decided by default in favor of universalism. Jack Wertheimer, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, has traced the strongly universal impulse of contemporary public life back to the Jewish effort to combat the antisemitism of Europe and particularly that of the ultra-nationalistic and antisemitic Russian czars. Some of the Jewish leaders in that effort rejected any notion of Jewish particularity, but others (including the distinctly Jewish Bund) did not. In the larger Jewish community, the universalists may be winning the debate today, if only by default, and this, too, directly impacts Jewish politics. But in the Orthodox world, the opposite is true; the hyper-parochialists are ascendant. The question is whether that impulse will eventually extinguish Jewish politics as a whole, as opposed to the politics of individual Jews. That Jews feel no urgent need to press a communal political agenda is ample testimony to the success of Jews in

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America. While Jewish life need not, and should not, exhaust itself in politics, and certainly not electoral politics, politics and self-interest are an indispensable aspect of Jewish success and security. The trends outlined above presage difficult times for Jewish political power. First, there is the growing split over the nature of Jewish politics between the universal and the parochial. It is not clear that the large multi-purpose organizations of the past will be able to navigate the divide—or credibly represent to public officials and the American public that they represent a broad spectrum of Jewish opinion. Moreover, many Jews are not seriously interested in organized Jewish life, as measured in any number of ways, including declining synagogue membership, participation in national organizations, and the like, or by the proportion of Jews who say that Israel or being Jewish is important to them. All this was compounded by the broad negative reaction to Trump, combined with the distinct possibility that the Democratic Party was coming under the control of its left wing—a wing not friendly to Israel and other matters of concern to some Jews (including on religious liberty). Such a development would leave the Jewish community more divided that ever—and with no obvious way to heal the divide. Marc D. Stern (J.D. Columbia University School of Law) is chief legal officer at the American Jewish Committee. The author of many legal briefs and scholarly articles, he has argued four cases before the Supreme Court and is a legal expert on church-state relations in the United States.  

American Jews, Judaism and Other Faith Communities Eugene Korn

The American Catholic theologian David Tracy has pointed out that all theology addresses three distinct yet related social realities: the church, wider society and the academy.”1 Analogously, the narrative of American Jewish interfaith activity also takes place on three different strata: (1) the interactions of Jewish religious and organizational leaders with their American counterparts; (2) the social experiences of individual American Jews with their gentile neighbors and colleagues; and (3) the relationships and thought of Jewish and non-Jewish thinkers centering around new ways to understand Judaism, other religions, and their interrelationships. The first is professional, communal, and often political; the second, empirical and sociological; the third, theological and intellectual. While these interactions exercise influence upon each other, they constitute three distinct spheres of American Jewish interfaith activity. Past American Jewish interfaith experience was confined overwhelmingly to Jewish-Christian relations. America has been described as a “triple melting pot,” i.e., a society consisting of Protestants, Catholics and Jews.2 Present demographic trends point to growing Muslim and Asian religious presence in America and hence it is likely that Jews will increase their contact (religious and otherwise) with these groups in the twenty first-century, but Jewish interaction with non-Christians has been marginal to date.3 Nor has Jewish interfaith experience with Christians been  (1981, 5).  Will Herberg, Protestant—Catholic—Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (U. of Chicago, 1955) Chap. II. 3  General Social Survey (National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago) indicates that Americans whose religion is other than Christianity or Judaism comprised less than 1 percent from 1 2

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monolithic. Just as there is no unified American Jewish community or single form of American Judaism, there is no single Christian community or Christian faith with which Jews interact. For analytic purposes it is best to think of three “clusters” of Christian churches or groups, each constituting a different community, history, religious orientation, organizational structure, and each having distinct attitudes about issues bearing on Jewish interests, e.g., antisemitism, church and state, Israel, and religious pluralism. They are the Mainline/liberal Protestant churches (i.e., the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran and American Baptist churches, as well as the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ); the Catholic Church; and the evangelical Protestant churches.4 Jewish interfaith experience has changed vastly within different periods in America. If we understand the generic landscape of Jewish-Christian interaction in America prior to 1960, we can appreciate the fundamental transformation that took place beginning in the 1960s and continuing throughout the final forty years of the twentieth century. New interfaith dynamics emerged in this century, and while recognizing the perils of prediction, the current demographic, theological, cultural and political trends present us with a trajectory of future interfaith directions and interactions in the twenty-first century.

American Jewish Interfaith Relations Before 1960 From the founding of America through the 1950s, the cultural pattern of the USA was predominantly Protestant.5 This was reflected both demographically and institutionally. In 1952, Catholics comprised less than 25 percent of Americans, while Jews were less than 4 percent, or approximately 5 million people. The overwhelming majority of the balance were either church-affiliated Protestants (at least 54 million) or unaffiliated persons from Protestant backgrounds.6 Moreover, the main institutions of American life—e.g., public schools, universities, governments, civic organizations and financial institutions—were shaped by Protestant culture and personalities. Every American president and secretary of state since the country’s founding had come from Protestant heritage. Culturally, while the majority of Catholic and Jewish adults in America before 1960 were first- or second-generation Americans with personal memories of their immigrant parents or grandparents, the majority of American Protestants had resided in America for generations and had no 1973 to 1980 and reached only 2.6 percent in 2001, cited in Religious Diversity in America: Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, by Tom W. Smith (American Jewish Committee 2004. 4  See PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life, US Religious Landscape Survey, 2008, Appendix 2, found at http://religions.pewforum.org/reports, for an accurate categorization of the various Protestant churches. 5  Ibid, pp. 214–219. 6  Morris N. Kertzer, “Interfaith Relations in the United States,” Judaism, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1954 (New York: American Jewish Congress, 1954) p. 457.

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memory of foreign identity. In other words, America was a secure home to Protestants in a way that it was not to most Jews and Catholics.7 To be sure, America was a boon to Jews after their harsh experience in Christian Europe. From the 1920s through the 1950s, American Jews made steady economic, educational and political gains that significantly improved their personal and communal status. Yet because of their relatively recent arrival in America, their memories of European poverty and persecution and their small demographic numbers compared to America’s Christian majority, the American Jewish community of the 1950s still felt a measure of defensiveness and insecurity.8 This translated into a popular reluctance to fully engage with Christian Americans, whether in the political, domestic or religious arenas. America was not yet a country where ethnic and religious groups intermingled easily. Jews and Catholics resided primarily in America’s urban areas, where Mainline Protestants were often minorities. The majority of Evangelical Protestants lived in rural areas, which decreased Jewish-Evangelical interaction. Rabbis met Christian clergy as chaplains in the army and infrequently in formal pulpit exchanges, but rarely beyond that. Even this limited religious interaction failed to take place on a popular or communal level. Individual Jews and Catholics experienced “shared marginalization” and felt similarly excluded from the centers of power, privileged professions, civic clubs, and universities in America. Their leaders worked together to fight this discrimination, but only in their professional capacities. Although a growing phenomenon, Jewish-Christian intermarriages were still relatively rare. Nor was this situation unique to Jews. As one authoritative American Jewish historian put it, “notwithstanding the melting pot rhetoric, through the 1950’s most Americans married their own kind.”9 Endogamy in America was the rule, primarily out of ethnic or sociological solidarity rather than theological conviction, and Jews were more endogamous than their Protestant and Catholic neighbors. The Jewish intermarriage rate in America in 1957 was approximately 3.5 percent, and probably less in New York City, where there was a high concentration of Jews.10

 This was expressed most directly by President Franklin Roosevelt in his 1941 comment to Henry Morganthau, a Jew who was the Secretary of the Treasury, and Leo Crowley, a Catholic who was Custodian of Alien Property: “You know this is a Protestant country and the Catholics and the Jews are here under sufferance.” Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors (Simon and Schuster; New York, 2002) p. 51. 8  The Jewish “defense” agencies—the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Congress—were created in response to the overt antisemitism and Jewish sense of vulnerability that characterized the early and middle of the twentieth century. 9  Jonathan Sarna, “Intermarriage in America: The Jewish Experience in Historical Context” in The Ambivalent Jew, Stuart Cohen and Bernard Susser, eds., (JTS, 2007) p. 130. This accords well with Ruby Jo Kennedy’s findings in her study, “Single or Triple Melting Pot? Intermarriage in New Haven, 1870–1950” in American Journal of Sociology 58 (July 1952). 10  Beyond the Melting Pot, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Cambridge MA: MIT and Harvard U. Press, 1963) p. 160. 7

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Other substantive factors were at work that impeded natural Jewish-Christian interaction. Through the 1950s it was normative Christian teaching that with the historical arrival of Jesus in history, Christianity replaced Judaism spiritually—a theology that later became known as “supersessionism.”11 If Christianity was true, contemporary Judaism had to be false, or at least dead. Thus, to be a believing Christian entailed denying the validity of contemporary Judaism. This “replacement theology,” as Evangelicals call it, gave rise to the Christian emphasis on converting Jews and spawned anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews who refused conversion as blind, stubborn, and even Christ-killers. These hostile images of Jews were prevalent in the USA well into the 1940s,12 and were pervasive in American Catholic parochial school textbooks, which were so influential in shaping Catholic attitudes toward Jews and Judaism, into the 1960s.13 Supersessionism also formed a religious basis for occasional public anti-Semitic outbursts in America by Christian clergy such as Father Charles Coughlin’s radio broadcasts in the 1930s and the statements of Boston’s Father Leonard Feeney, who became well known in America for insisting that no one outside the Catholic Church could be saved. In the 1950s, Feeney edited a newsletter called “The Point” in which he claimed that Jews sought to destroy Catholicism and that Communism was as Jewish as Zionism. Nor was there any lack of negative portrayals of Jews by Protestant leaders such as Basil Mathews of Andover Theological Seminary, E.  N. Sanctuary of Broadway Presbyterian Church in New  York, and the right-wing Episcopalian activist Elizabeth Dilling. Prominent Protestant academics also did not hesitate to call for the end to Jewish distinctiveness or the end to Judaism itself.14 American Jews were also reeling from the devastation of the Holocaust during this period. They were well aware that the Nazi genocide occurred in the heart of Christendom and that most Christians there did little to save Jews going to their deaths. American Jewish leaders were disappointed both publicly and privately by the American Christian apathy to the news that European Jews were being slaughtered. The influential Protestant journal, The Christian Century, even denied the genocide until the end of the war.15 These factors deepened Jewish popular  The term “supersessionism” came into popular usage in the latter decades of the twentieth century, carrying with it a negative connotation. It was first used by S. Thelwall in the title of chapter three his 1870 translation of Tertullian‘s Adversus Iudaeos, written sometime between 198 and 208 CE. The term is supplied by Thelwall, but it is not in Tertullian’s original Latin. While most often applied to traditional Roman Catholic theologies, it applies as well to what Protestants often refer to as “replacement theology.” 12  H.  Shelton Smith, Robert T.  Handy and Lefferts A.  Loetscher, American Christianity: A Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents, 2 vols. (New York: Scribners and Sons, 1960–63) p. 26. 13  This was the conclusion of a 1961 doctoral dissertation by Rose Thering at St. Louis University, published as Jews, Judaism, and Catholic Education (New York: B’nai Brith, 1986). 14  Egal Feldman, Dual Destinies: The Jewish Encounter with Protestant America (Chicago and Urbana IL: University of Illinois, 1990) pp. 191–192. 15  See William Nawyn, American Protestantism’s Response to Germany’s Jews and Refugees, 1933–1941 (Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1982). And Stephen Wise in Feldman p. 202. 11

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alienation from Christians. The lack of Protestant and Catholic Church support for—and sometimes active opposition to16—the creation of Israel in 1948 only widened the psychological distance that American Jews felt from their Christian neighbors. While the idea of “Judeo-Christian tradition” and the interfaith “concept” began in America among intellectuals and politicians during the 1930s, 40 s and 50 s,17 it was then primarily one of “civic agency,” i.e., the promotion of affirmative cooperative action and brotherhood among Protestants, Catholics and Jews in areas of common civic concern. It stressed tolerance and democratic pluralism, steering clear of religious and theological issues, even shunning inter-religious worship and theological discussion.18 As such, its activities were largely limited to organizational leaders. Yet prominent Protestant theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and A. Roy Eckardt did write of the theological nexus between Judaism and Christianity, focusing primarily on Christianity’s its debt to Judaism and its need to recover the Hebraic prophetic tradition.19 These Protestants influenced the Jewish thinkers Will Herberg, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Irving Greenberg, planting the seeds that flowered into fuller interfaith theological dialogue only later in the late 1950’s and 1960’s after the full awareness of Christianity’s role in the Holocaust. Although most American Jews sympathized greatly with promoting civic brotherhood, interfaith activity failed to filter down to a popular or communal level. Indeed, even on the official level its impact was limited. It is telling that the activities of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), the major interfaith organization founded in 1928 to “promote justice, amity, understanding and cooperation among Protestants, Catholics and Jews,” do not appear in some comprehensive accounts of interfaith relations in the USA during this period.20 In sum, there  Many national Protestant leaders were vociferously anti-Zionist before creation of Israel. See Herzl Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State (Wayne state University: Detroit, 1973) pp. 83–107. When the United States voted for partition, the prominent Protestant theologian Henry Sloan Coffin protested that the American politicians had jeopardized the peace of the world and the good name of the United States with three hundred million Moslems “in order to fish for votes.” He saw those who maintained the Jewish claim to Palestine based on the Bible as “ignorant.” After Israel was created, these Protestant anti-Zionists shifted their strategy to try to emasculate Israel or portray it in a sinister light in order to cultivate pro-Arab opinion. (Fishman, p. 99.) 17  The “Judeo-Christian tradition” was mentioned—and debated—by thinkers such as Jacques Maritain while he was in America (1942), Louis Finkelstein (JTS), Lyman Bryson (Columbia U), Sidney Hook, John Dewey, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, Arthur E. Murray (Cornell U) during the 40’s. It was frequently invoked in popular culture from the 1930’s  – 50’s as a counterpoint to both Fascist and Communist ideologies. See Mark Silk, “Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America,” American Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), Johns Hopkins University) 65–85 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2712839. 18  Herberg, pp. 242–244. 19  Silk, pp. 70–76. Catholic theologians were generally averse to admitting that Catholicism could benefit from Judaism, until the late 1960’s when the Second Vatican Council acknowledged the Church’s debt to Judaism. 20  One example is Morris Kertzer’s report of 1954 interfaith activity, “Interfaith Relations in the United States,” (op cit.). 16

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were few political, sociological or theological conditions for robust interfaith engagement through the 1950s. According to one prominent Jewish interfaith ­official, “although not as strong as in prior years, the existing social forces of separatism and parochialism still were pervasive enough to prevent a genuine program of interfaith interaction…. The best that we can hope for in 1954 is a reduction of friction and minimizing of conflict” between Jews and Christians.”21

The Flowering of Interfaith Relations: 1960–2000 During the 1960s three specific events and one burgeoning sociological trend lay the foundation for dramatic changes in American Jewish interfaith activity. The events were the 1961 public trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, the Second Vatican Council in Rome from 1962 to 1965, and Israel’s lightening victory in the Six Day War of June 1967. Each had profound consequences for Jewish-Christian relations in America. The years between 1960 and 1970 were also when ethnicity gained greater acceptance in mainstream America and when most third-generation American Jews reached adulthood. It was during this time that the concept of America as a melting pot moved from rhetoric to becoming a broad social reality. Ethnicity became more accepted as an American value, and non-Protestant ethnics themselves—Catholics, Jews, Blacks—made large strides in participating fully in American life in government, elite universities, labor unions or civic associations. These phenomena enabled them to lay claim to being as American as their white Protestant counterparts. The 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, exemplified this trend of acceptance. Ethnics began to move more freely in America, gained access to power and wealth, and felt more confident in their relations with people out of their social and religious circles. Included in this category was the new generation of American Jews, who came to feel more secure and open with their Christian neighbors. They felt less need to retain their ethnic insularity than their parents and grandparents. Intermarriage is a key marker of this social and psychological change, and Jewish-Christian intermarriage rose geometrically. This was true for all Americans, as intermarriage for all groups began to rise significantly in the 1960’s and continued through the end of the century.22 The Israelis kidnapped Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 and tried him in Israel the following year. The long trial’s detailed personal testimonies of the Nazi extermination of Jews were broadcast on television internationally. As high drama, the trial became a public event that gripped the attention of the Western world. Prior to the trial much of the story of the Holocaust had been psychologically suppressed by Jews and culturally by gentiles. There was scant literature or scholarship about the

 Ibid, p. 468.  Jonathan Sarna, “Intermarriage in America: The Jewish Experience in Historical Context,” op. cit. p. 131. 21 22

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Holocaust, and no academic courses had been developed. More than any other event, it was the Eichmann trial that made the Holocaust impossible for Americans and Europeans to ignore and that raised profound historical, ethical, and religious questions for Western culture. For many Christian leaders the trial raised moral and theological issues about Christianity: What role did traditional Christian teachings play in Europe’s easy cultural acceptance of The Final Solution? How were Christians complicit in this slaughter? To what degree is Christianity responsibility for the genocide? Whereas signs of Christian contrition or theological reflection about the Holocaust were rare before the trial, they became increasingly common after.23 The same mainline Protestant Christian Century that steadfastly denied the Final Solution during the war was forced to ask in November 1961, “Could the Nazi persecution have been perpetrated without a long-standing atmosphere of anti-Jewish attitudes to which the Christian community had subscribed?”24 Many leading Catholic and Lutheran thinkers—those churches most directly implicated by the Shoah—also raised these questions. With the moral devastation of the Holocaust undeniable, Christian thinkers began to reexamine their church teachings and relations with Jews and Judaism. This profoundly affected the relationships between Christian and Jewish leaders on theological, moral and personal levels, and set a new agenda for Christian-Jewish dialogue for the rest of the twentieth century. As noted earlier, in light of the Holocaust individual Protestant theologians like Niebuhr,25 Eckardt, Franklin H. Littel and Paul Van Buren argued for a fundamental re-evaluation of Christianity’s relationship with Judaism. While some of their writings first appeared in the late 1940s,26 they did not gain real traction until the 1960s. These thinkers advocated new Christian teachings that rejected antisemitism and supersessionist postures toward Jews. They urged greater acknowledgement of Christianity’s Jewish origins, repentance for Christian complicity in the Holocaust, support for Israel, and policies of cooperation and equality with Jews and their faith.27 They were joined in fashioning this new relationship by a few influential Jewish theologians such as Abraham Joshua Heschel, Richard Rubenstein, and Irving Greenberg during this period. The Holocaust was fundamental to their thinking on Jewish-Christian relations, leading them to argue passionately for the  Much of this Christian reappraisal was spurred by Jules Isaacs’ The Teaching of Contempt: The Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism and Edward H. Flannery’s The Anguish of the Jews: TwentyThree Centuries of Antisemitism, published in 1964 and 1965 respectively. Malcolm Hay’s Foot of Pride: The Pressure of Christendom on the People of Israel for 1900 Years, published in 1950, garnered more attention after being republished in 1960 under the title of Europe and the Jews. 24  See The Eichmann Case and the American Press, American Jewish Committee (New York: Institute of Human Relations Press, 1962) pp. 84–86; and Feldman, pp. 206. 25  Niebuhr’s sympathetic posture toward Jews and Judaism predated the Eichmann trial. He was one of few American Christian theologians to raise his voice about the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II. It was to no avail among his colleagues. Later, Eckardt’s Christianity and the Children of Israel was published in 1948. 26  See note 17. 27  See Feldman, pp. 216–223. 23

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necessity of Jewish-Christian cooperation in the moral and religious future of humanity.28 The Second Vatican Council was the most important event affecting a new interfaith relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. Its October 1965 proclamation, Nostra Aetate, or “Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions,” redefined the Church’s official approach to Judaism and the Jewish people by asserting that all Jews should not be held responsible for the death of Jesus, “deploring anti-Semitism at any time or for from any source,” and insisting that God did not revoke the original biblical covenant with the Jewish people. It proclaimed “the common spiritual patrimony” of Judaism and Christianity. In sum, Nostra Aetate laid the groundwork for a positive understanding of Judaism and a cooperative relationship between Catholics and Jews on moral, political and theological grounds. This constituted a revolution29 away from traditional Catholic theology that had dismissed Judaism and deprecated Jews. It meant that for the first time in nearly 2000  years, Jews could approach Catholic officials on religious grounds with equal dignity and without the threat of conversion for the purposes of cooperation and establishing common cause. Although Nostra Aetate does not mention the Holocaust, there is no doubt that this Catholic reassessment of Judaism was influenced by its impact and the Church’s realization that its“teaching of contempt”30 had played a role in the Nazi genocide. In addition, the political experience of American Catholics and Jews working shoulder to shoulder in the 1940s and 1950s to fight exclusion from private clubs and places of privilege caused the American bishops at the Council to argue strongly for a positive reassessment of Judaism and Jews.31 The Vatican published two documents subsequent to Nostra Aetate that further elaborated the details of and standards for the new Catholic relationship with  See Heschel, “No Religion is an Island” (1966) reprinted in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel ed. (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996). Many of Greenberg’s early essays on theology and interfaith relations are reprinted in Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2000). 29  Understandably, some Catholic officials avoid terms like ‘revolution’ or even ‘change’ when referring to official doctrine. Recently I had an amusing but telling interchange with a high Vatican official. After I casually mentioned the changes in Church teachings initiated by Nostra Aetate, he looked at me with a broad knowing smile, and responded, “We do not speak of changes here, but of ‘developments’.” 30  The French Jewish scholar, Jules Isaac, was the first person to use the phrase, “Teaching of Contempt” to refer to the traditional Church theology regarding the Jews. Vatican historian Thomas Stransky maintains that it was Isaacs’ meeting with Pope John XXIII in mid-June 1960 immediately prior to the Second Vatican Council that convinced John to put the issue of the Church’s relation with Judaism and the Jewish people on the agenda of the Council. The result was Nostra Aetate, whose far reaching consequences could not have been envisaged by anyone at the time it was formally accepted in October 1965. Thus it was John who was largely responsible for Nostra Aetate, even though he died before it was passed. See America Magazine, “The Genesis of Nostra Aetate” by Thomas Stransky, October 24, 2005. 31  John Pawlikowski, “Jews and Christians: The Covenantal Relationship in the American Context” in Two Faiths, One Covenant: Jewish and Christian Identity in the Presence of the Other, Eugene B. Korn and John T. Pawlikowski eds., (Rowman and Littlefield: Lanham, MD, 2005) pp. 155–165. 28

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Jews and Judaism: “Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing Nostra Aetate” (1975) and “Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism” (1985). “Guidelines” in fact mentions the Holocaust as the historical setting for Nostra Aetate. The Catholic Church’s rethinking of its teachings about Judaism and Jews made official at the Second Vatican Council influenced Christian teachings throughout the world. One theologian summed up the changes as the “6 R’s”32: (1) the repudiation of antisemitism; (2) the rejection of the charge of deicide; (3) repentance after the Shoah; (4) review of teaching about Jews and Judaism; (5) recognition of Israel; and (6) rethinking of proselytizing Jews. Protestant Churches followed suit in reappraising their relations with and teachings about Jews.33 Nostra Aetate provided the impetus for Christian introspection about Christian treatment of Jews as well as a process of reconciliation with the Judaism and the Jewish people that came to dominate the relations for Jews and Christians in America for the next forty years. It enabled Jews and Christians to explore their relationship on religious grounds, not merely for the purposes of civic cooperation. While the Reform and Conservative movements embraced this new relationship, most Orthodox Jews continued to shun relations with church officials. Two influential Orthodox rabbis, Eliezer Berkovits of Chicago and Joseph B. Soloveitchik of Boston and New York argued against interfaith dialogue with Christians, the former primarily because of the Christian role in the Holocaust and the latter because of his belief that serious religious communication was impossible between Jews and Christians. Thus Orthodox organizations did not engage in interfaith dialogue either before or immediately after Vatican II. This Orthodox position originally staked out during the Second Vatican Council largely still holds sway, albeit with more nuance and some exceptions, to be discussed later.34 It is important to understand that most Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews relate to Christians in different ways. The more rigorously observant Orthodox, represented most prominently by Agudath Israel of America, hold the view that any interreligious contact is off the table. The Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements welcome any and all interreligious activity, including religious dialogue.35 This leaves the Modern Orthodox, whose position has been to engage with non-Jews on social and economic justice issues for the betterment of society, but to avoid dialogue on those theological issues that go to the core of the faith  Mary Boys, Has God Only One Blessing? (Paulist Press: New  York 2000) p.  248. See also pp. 247–266. 33  Boys, (ibid) presents the relevant Protestant documents. 34  Soloveitchik was dialectical in his objections to dialogue with Christians. In defining his position against theological dialogue in his essay, “Confrontation” (Tradition, Rabbinical Council of America 1963), he approved of interfaith dialogue “in secular orders” like the economic, social, scientific and ethical. However, the Orthodox community remained psychologically and practically reluctant to engage with Christians even in these areas. For greater analysis of ‘Confrontation’ and its impact on Orthodox interfaith policy, see Eugene B. Korn, “The Man of Faith and Religious Dialogue: Revisiting Confrontation,” Modern Judaism (October 2005). 35  “Dialogue” in interfaith encounter is an often-misunderstood term. It refers to the discussion of religion and theological issues on which there appears to be little or no ground for agreement. 32

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community. However, within Modern Orthodoxy, there were some dissenting voices that called for a revision of this threshold for engagement with other faith communities, and especially with the Roman Catholic Church in the aftermath of Nostra Aetate. It was after Vatican II that the national defense organizations like the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League developed fully activist national directors of interfaith affairs. So many different American Jewish organizations were in dialogue with the Catholic Church that the Church requested a single Jewish body with which it could carry on the dialogue. Thus in the late 1960s Jewish defense and religious organizations formed the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) to serve as the official address for discussions with the Vatican and the Protestant World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva. IJCIC’s individual member organizations, however, insisted on keeping their autonomy in dialogues with the American churches.36 IJCIC has also maintained sporadic relations with the Orthodox Church and its Ecumenical Patriarch, Metropolitan Emmanuel. In the 1960s the Synagogue Council, consisting of the six rabbinic and congregational bodies of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism in America, was active in representing the religious Jewish community to American Christian religious bodies, but the Council disbanded in 1994 due to internal disagreements among its member organizations.37 One significant consequence of the new Jewish-Christian relationship was the establishment of academic or quasi-academic centers of Jewish-Christian relations. Before Vatican II, only one such center existed, The Institute for Judeo-Christian Studies, at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. After the Council, the number of Christian-Jewish centers grew rapidly, with the majority housed at Catholic universities such as Boston College, St. Joseph’s University (Philadelphia), Notre Dame, and Xavier of Ohio. These centers saw themselves as carrying out Nostra Aetate’s mandate of deepening the relationship with Jews and Judaism. Christian-Jewish centers were also founded at Muhlenberg College (Lutheran), General Theological Seminary (Episcopalian), and a number of independent locations. The centers engage Jewish and Christian scholars to probe the history, relationship and theologies of both faiths. They publish books, monographs and studies on Christian-Jewish topics, issue public statements on interfaith events, and run community interfaith programs. A number of these centers specialize in Holocaust studies and research. John Paul II’s papacy from 1978 to 2005 gave great impetus to the reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. The Polish pontiff had numerous Jewish friends and teachers in his youth, and he did more than any other pope in history to create Catholic-Jewish understanding and help heal Jewish wounds made by Christian antisemitism throughout the centuries. Under his papacy the  This is one of the primary reasons why IJCIC’s successful fostering of Jewish contacts with other religions and their officials has not had widespread effects in American Jewish communities. 37  For additional detail on SCA, see Jerome Chanes “The Future of Judaism in America: Judaism Is Now Choice” in this volume. 36

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Vatican began to understand the importance of Israel to Jewish-Catholic relations (Israel first appeared in official church documents as a significant aspect of understanding Jews in the 1985 “Notes”) and it extended formal diplomatic recognition to the Jewish State in 1994—a full 29 years after Nostra Aetate. John Paul II was the first pope in history to visit a synagogue in friendship (Rome, 1986), to refer to Jews as his elder brothers,38 to declare antisemitism a sin against God and man, to formally apologize for Christian persecution of Jews (including the Holocaust), and to visit the State of Israel (2000). Significantly, in Israel he met officially with Israel’s President, Prime Minister and Chief Rabbis, and at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and the Western Wall prayed for the welfare of the Jewish people and for forgiveness of Christian persecution of the Jewish people.39 These gestures moved American Jews enormously, helping to convince them that the Church now viewed Jews and Judaism sympathetically and that the Church was committed to a new positive relationship with the Jewish people. Although not without difficulties and disagreements, this developing trust led to closer relations on both religious and political grounds between official Jewish organizations, leaders, thinkers and rabbis with their Catholic counterparts.40 On the communal and personal level, there was a significant decrease in Christian antisemitism, although most Catholics and Jews (“the pew level”) remained relatively uninformed and even uninterested in these professional and ecclesiastical developments. Official and popular Jewish contacts with evangelical Christians were significantly more limited than those with Catholics and mainline Protestants. One reason was geographic: most evangelicals lived away from the American urban centers where most Jews resided, and hence Jews had little everyday contact with them. Yet

 It is apparent from its context that John Paul used this phrase as a term of endearment. It should be noted that stripped of its context, some skeptical Jewish thinkers hear in this phrase echoes of supersessionism and the old Church theology about Jews. Much of the Catholic-Jewish polemic that began in the Middle Ages utilized the typology of the fraternal strife between the biblical Esau and Jacob. Esau, after all, was the rejected elder brother of Jacob who was not included in God’s covenant. 39  John Paul’s official trip to Israel indicated the modern sea-change in the Catholic Church’s attitude toward the Jewish people and Judaism. Before the First Zionist Congress in 1897, an article appeared in the official Vatican periodical “Civilta Cattolica” explaining that Jews are required to live as servants in exile until the end of days, a fate to be avoided only by their conversion to Christianity. When Theodore Herzl approached Pius X in 1904 to enlist his support for the Jewish return to Zion, Pius X declined: “It is not in our power to prevent you to go to Jerusalem, but we will never give our support. As the head of the Church, I cannot give you any other answer. The Jews do not recognize our Lord, hence we cannot recognize the Jewish people. When you come to Palestine, we will be there to baptize all of you.” (The Diary of Theodore Herzl, Marvin Leventhal, ed., (New York: Dial, 1956) 429–30). 40  There are a number of good analyses of this evolution. See Twenty Years of Jewish-Catholic Relations, Eugene Fisher, A. James Rudin, Marc H. Tannenbaum eds., (Paulist Press: Mahwah NJ, 1986) and Egal Feldman, Jews and Catholics in twentieth Century America (Chicago and Urbana IL: U. of Illinois, 2001). For Christian Theological Documents in this era, see More Stepping Stones More Stepping Stones to Jewish-Christian Relations: An Unabridged Collection of Christian Documents, 1975–1983 Helga Croner, ed. (Paulist Press: Mahwah NJ, 1985). 38

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the greater impediments to close Jewish-evangelical relations were political, cultural, and theological: Jews had no overriding interest in a political alliance with evangelicals since before 1980 evangelicals did not play an influential role in national politics affecting Jews. In addition, while there are theologically moderate evangelicals, most American Jews felt profoundly uneasy with their biblical literalism and their commitment to converting others to Christianity. Not infrequently, Jews publicly decried any evangelical attempt at “Christianizing America.” In addition, evangelical support for domestic policies supporting prayer in the public schools, religion in the public square, anti-abortion legislation and teaching biblical creationism were antagonistic to the values and policies of most American Jews. Even Orthodox Jews, who tended to agree with some of these values, were dissuaded from relations with evangelicals by their fear of proselytizing. (Many Orthodox Jews believed that all Christians were motivated to convert Jews, but evangelicals were the only ones to say so explicitly.)41 Sporadic attempts at Jewish-evangelical relations did occur on an official level, but they failed to take root and usually faltered because of subsequent disagreement over religion or theology.42 Although both the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the ADL held occasional meetings with Southern Baptists beginning in 1969 (after evangelicals evinced strong support for Israel during the 1967 War), the first substantive official contact between organized American Jewry and evangelicals did not occur until 1975, when Rabbis Marc Tannenbaum and James Rudin of the AJC convened a three-day conference in New York City for evangelical and Jewish scholars and religious leaders.43 The conference produced agreement on the need for supporting Israel, but the evangelicals’ theological insistence on the importance of evangelizing all non-Christians (and sometimes explicitly targeting Jews) generated deep divisions, exposing the Jewish organizers to vehement criticism from within the Jewish community for reaching out to evangelical religious leaders. Though evangelicals came to be the strongest Christian supporters of Israel and the Jewish State’s policies in the late 1970’s, their commitment to evangelization proved to be an insurmountable obstacle to stable ongoing relations. Jewish organizations and individual Jews interpreted the evangelical religious principle as an assault on democracy, American pluralism, and Jewish identity. Evangelicals may have  The March 1967 responsum of the preeminent Orthodox authority of Jewish Law, R.  Moses Feinstein, stated this explicitly and forbids interfaith activity of any kind for religious Jews. Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah #43. See also David Ellenson, “A Jewish Legal Authority Addresses JewishChristian Dialogue: Two Responsa of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein,” American Jewish Archives Journal, LII, Nos. 1&2 (2000), pp. 113–128. 42  For an excellent overview of Jewish-evangelical relations during this period, see Lawrence Grossman, “The Organized Jewish Community and Evangelical America” in Uneasy Allies?: Evangelical and Jewish Relations, Alan Mittleman, Byron Johnson, and Nancy Isserman, eds. (New York, Toronto, Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2007) pp. 49–72. 43  The papers of this conference were later published as Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation, Marc H. Tannenbaum, Marvin R. Wilson and A. James Rudin, eds. (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Book House, 1978). One need only peruse these papers to discern the introductory nature of the dialogue between evangelicals and Jews in 1975. 41

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legitimized Israel, but Jews saw them as delegitimizing Jews and Judaism. Indeed, many Jews interpreted this evangelical theology as a form of antisemitism.44 The Six Day War in June 1967 changed the American Jewish community and had secondary effects on the dynamics of Jewish-Christian relations in America. Israel’s unequivocal victory over her Arab neighbors established Israel as a country whose survival was no longer in doubt—indeed as a regional power to be reckoned with. The crisis prior to the war caused American Jews to fear another holocaust of Jews in Israel, but the lightening victory filled American Jewry with robust pride in Jewish identity and peoplehood, and spurred them to greater political and social activism in defense of Jewish interests. Israel’s newly discovered military might also changed American foreign policy, as the United States began to see Israel as a critical strategic ally. On a popular level, Americans began to identify with Israel as a symbol of victory and a bastion of Western values. American Jews no longer felt themselves to be a small vulnerable people but rather newly empowered to meet their Christian counterparts on a more equal basis and to make the security and welfare of Israel central matters for interfaith discussion and relations. Israel was here to stay, as was the issue of Jewish nationalism between Jews and Christians. However not all the consequences were positive. During the pre-war crisis, when first Syria and then Egypt threatened the existence of Israel and the lives of Israelis, both the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Churches (Protestant) refused to commit themselves unequivocally to the basic principle of Israel’s survival. These shocked Jewish interfaith and communal leaders, who had been dialoguing with church leaders for years. They did not expect Christian endorsement of all Israeli policies, but they felt that Christian leadership’s failure to protest the threats to annihilate Israel or even to affirm the right of the Israelis to defend themselves was scandalous.45 After Israel’s decisive victory, a number of prominent national leaders of the liberal Protestant churches—who had never been comfortable with Jewish nationalism or sovereignty—reacted with hostile rhetoric. The former president of the prestigious Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Henry P. Van Dusen, even publicly pronounced that Israel’s victory was, “an onslaught…the most violent and ruthless aggression since Hitler’s blitzkrieg, aiming not at victory but at annihilation.”46 The rise of Israeli power engendered a proportionate liberal Protestant hostility to the Jewish State and a greater identification with the Arab cause that has set the tone for continuing tension in Jewish-Protestant relations over the Middle East

 An example of how this theological principle can evolve into antisemitism was the (in)famous 1980 statement of Rev. Bailey Smith, president of the Southern Baptist Convention: “God does not hear the prayer of a Jew.” 45  See Judith H. Banki, Christian Reactions to the Middle East Crisis (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1968); also Lucy Dawidowicz, “American Public Opinion” American Jewish Yearbook 1968 (New York: American Jewish Yearbook and Jewish Publication Society, 1968) 218–224. 46  New York Times, Letter to the Editor, June 26, 1967. 44

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conflict.47 The disagreement was not nearly as prolonged or damaging to Jewish-­ Catholic relations, as the Catholic Church strove to stay diplomatically neutral regarding the conflict. Moreover, Jewish-Catholic relations garnered sustenance from the sustained theological conversation between Catholics and Jews. There had been significantly less Protestant-Jewish dialogue on theological issues, as most of the mainline churches pursued the “social gospel” at the expense of a focus on theology. Eventually, however, the largely liberal American Jewish community and the mainline Protestant churches settled into a working alliance built around the common domestic interests in separation of church and state, opposition to restrictions on abortion, and support for women’s and LGBT rights. Evangelicals tended to see Israel in eschatological and apocalyptic terms, even more so after the seemingly miraculous 1967 victory. Zionism and Israel suggested to American evangelicals not only the realization of God’s promise of the land to Abraham in Genesis but also of God’s ultimate plan for human history. For some, Jews and Israel were the instruments of the final triumph of Christianity. Yet despite the consistent evangelical support for Zionism and the State of Israel, many Jewish leaders believed that if evangelicals were friends of the Jews and Israel, it was for the wrong reasons.48

I nterfaith Relations in the Early Years of the Twenty-First Century At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the fruits of the previous 40 years of Jewish-Christian relations were clear. Christian-based antisemitism in America had become rare49—undoubtedly in large measure as a result of the new Christian theology regarding Jews and Judaism. This flowering was particularly evident in  While this was true regarding the national leadership and some clergy in the mainline churches, it was not true of the people in the pews in Protestant churches. They, like most Americans, tended to be sympathetic to Israel, seeing it as America’s ally and a bastion of Western political values. 48  See Jack R. Fischel, “The Fundamentalists’ Perception of Jews,” Midstream 28 (December 1982). 49  Catholic textbooks had been significantly revised to purge them of negative images of Jews and Judaism. See Philip A.  Cunningham, Education for Shalom: Religion Textbooks and the Enhancement of the Catholic and Jewish Relationship (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995). America’s largest Lutheran body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, provided a prime example of how unacceptable church antisemitism had become when it formally repudiated Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic statements and writings in April 1994: “We must with pain acknowledge also Luther’s anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews…We reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations. In concert with the Lutheran World Federation, we particularly deplore the appropriation of Luther’s words by modern anti-Semites for the teaching of hatred toward Judaism or toward the Jewish people in our day.” The full text of this declaration can be found at: https://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/ Churchwide-Organization/Ecumenical-and-Inter-Religious-Relations/Inter-Religious-Relations/ Christian-Jewish-Relations/Declaration-of-ELCA-to-Jewish-Community.aspx. 47

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Jewish-­Catholic relations, and was best symbolized by Pope John Paul’s visit to Israel in 2000, when the most important Christian figure in the world dramatically acknowledged that Jews remain the people of the covenant, that Christians identify with the Jewish tragedy of the Holocaust and that Christianity desires a constructive and sympathetic partnership with the Jewish people. Meanwhile, evangelical leaders had come to mute their public advocacy of converting Jews and was looking for a Jewish alliance.50 All major American churches recognized the legitimacy of Israel, yet relations between Jewish officials and mainline Protestant church leaders were strained regarding Israel. National Protestant leaders generally blamed Israeli for the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, underplayed Palestinian violence and terrorism against Israelis, and did little to support Israel’s security or the safety of Israelis. The national policies and pronouncements of the United Methodist Church (UMC), the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), the Episcopal Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran in America (ELCA), the United Church of Christ (UCC) as well as the National Council of Churches of Christ (NCCC) came to be seen by Jews as blatantly biased toward Palestinian interests.51 At the turn of the century American Conservative and Reform were holding regular dialogues with representatives of the U.S.  Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) through the National Council of Synagogues (NCS), and even Orthodox officers of the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union began semi-­ annual meetings with American Catholic bishops to discuss matters of mutual concern.52 As indicated, contacts between Jewish leaders and the mainline Protestant churches were more problematic and less intense due to disagreement about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but both sides settled into a stable modus operandi to cooperate on protecting individual rights and the separation of church and state. The Jewish defense organizations still had active full-time directors of interfaith affairs who were national figures influencing both the Jewish and Christian communities. On the academic level, the centers of Christian-Jewish relations had developed to the point where by 2002 they formed a national organization, The Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations (CCJR), and by 2017 CCJR had grown to include 76 full, affiliate and liaison member institutions—including a few whose work included relations with Islam.53 In addition to providing courses of academic  See Grossman, pp. 56–57. Exceptions were the Southern Baptists, who at their 1996 convention, voted overwhelmingly on June 13 to “direct our energies and resources toward the proclamation of the Gospel to the Jews (Grossman, p. 59). 51  For a full analysis of each church, see “Meeting the Challenge: Church Attitudes Toward the Israel-Palestinian Conflict,” (NY: Anti-Defamation League, 2005) online at: http://archive.adl.org/ interfaith/meetingthechallenge.pdf, accessed on December 9, 2013. 52  The representatives of the RCA and OU formed their own group to meet with the USCCB, because the non-Orthodox rabbis in NCS were willing to dialogue about theological issues, but the Orthodox rabbis rejected theological dialogue in accordance with the 1965 position of R. Joseph Soloveitchik cited earlier. 53  CCJR supports a scholarly journal, Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, and CCJR’s website is found at http://www.ccjr.us. 50

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study and fostering community relations, these centers produced major public statements and books that reflected understandings of the new relationship. The most important Jewish statement was “Dabru Emet” (“Speak truth”), which was issued in September 2000 and published in the New York Times. Signed by more 220 rabbis and Jewish authorities, the statement affirmed that there exist theological differences between Judaism and Christianity, but stressed the common ground and legitimacy of Christianity for non-Jews. While not an official document of any Jewish religious movement, Dabru Emet represented what many American Jews had come to feel about Christianity. Dabru Emet engendered criticism mostly from more traditional segments of the Jewish community, and no Orthodox rabbi of any official position signed it. It also gave rise internal Jewish debate, primarily around the document’s declaration that Jews and Christians worship the same God. One important Jewish expression of the new relationship was Christianity in Jewish Terms, a scholarly volume in which Jewish authorities explored the theological, historical, and spiritual relationship between Judaism and Christianity and attempted to explain the basic ideas of Christianity to Jews.54 Another important document was the 2004 book, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth by the Orthodox Rabbi Irving Greenberg, which argued for greater Jewish appreciation of Christians and that Christianity and Judaism are parts of the same biblical covenant. Greenberg argues that it is entirely appropriate to envision that God created a number of covenants with different groups (such as Jews and Christians), each with legitimacy for that group. In addition, a significant number of Jewish professionals conducting interfaith relations and events with Christians are Orthodox.55 As mentioned, some American Orthodox rabbis have challenged the standing Orthodox rejection of religious dialogue with Christians and now engage in theological interchanges with Christians.56 In December 2015 (fifty years after Nostra Aetate), 25 Orthodox rabbis, many from the USA, published the first official  Christianity in Jewish Terms, Tikvah Frimer-Kensky ed., (Boulder CO: Westview, 2002). Both Dabru Emet and this volume were facilitated by the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore MD. 55  In addition to Shlomo Riskin and this writer mentioned above, these include Ms. Betty Ehrenberg of World Jewish Congress and Prof. Lawrence Schiffman as recent chairpersons of IJCIC. Prof. David Berger is a prominent participant in Catholic-Jewish interchanges organized by IJCIC— although in non-theological discussions, and Alan Brill occupies a chair in Jewish-Christian relations at Seton Hall University. Rabbi Irving Greenberg remains active in Jewish-Christian theological dialogue. In earlier years, Jerome Chanes of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council played a key organizational role in the Synagogue Council of America, which functioned as the coordinating body for interreligious activities. 56  In 2007, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin established the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC) in Israel, which conducts theological dialogues with Christians, often in America with American rabbis and Christian clergy. This writer was co-director of CJCUC’s Institute for Theological Inquiry, which recruited Christian and Jewish thinkers to conduct research projects on theological topics. The fruit of these theological projects were published in Covenant and Hope (Eerdmans, 2012), Plowshares into Swords? Reflections on Religion and Violence (CJCUC, 2014), and Returning to Zion: Christian and Jewish Perspectives (CJCUC, 2015). 54

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Orthodox response to the Catholic change in theology regarding Jews and Judaism and the more fraternal relationship between contemporary religious Christians and Jews. Entitled To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven, it asserted a covenantal role for Christianity within Jewish theology and advocated strong Jewish-Christian cooperation to meet the religious, moral, and political challenges facing Jews and Christians today. The statement subsequently succeeded in garnering the signatures of 98 Orthodox rabbis and scholars.57 In 2018 a small group of Modern Orthodox rabbis and scholars under the direction of Rabbi Dr. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg began semi-annual dialogues with Catholic clergy and theologians designated by the USA Conference of Catholic Bishops for the express purpose of discussing religious and theological issues common to both groups. This continuing project has gained official recognition as a formal dialogue by USCCB.58 In August 2017, the American Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America (together with the Conference of European Rabbis and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate) published their more restrained statement “Between Jerusalem and Rome.”59 It acknowledged the salutary change in Catholic teachings and advocating limited cooperation with the Church, but studiously eschewed any theological claims about Christianity and restated the Orthodox opposition to religious dialogue. Thus far, these statements have remained largely rhetorical and not led to new Orthodox-Christian practical initiatives. At the same time, the first years of the twenty-first century brought about significant changes affecting interfaith dynamics indicating that the dynamics would be different from the previous 40 years. The signal events of these changes were the more intensive anti-Israel campaigns by forces within the liberal Protestant churches, the papacies of Benedict XVI (2005-2013) and Francis (beginning in 2013), the increased population and prominence of evangelical Christians coinciding with the George W. Bush presidency (2000-2008), and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on America by Muslim extremists that led to greater American interest and involvement in the Muslim world. After Yasser Arafat rejected the Clinton proposals for a two-state solution in the final days of the Clinton administration in 2000, the Palestinians initiated the second intifada against Israeli citizens. As the Middle East conflict grew more violent and

 The text of To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven can be found at www.cjcuc.org, the website of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation. Accessed on September 12, 2022. A book of analysis and commentary on the statement, From Confrontation to Covenantal Partnership, Jehoschua Ahrens, Irving Greenberg and Eugene B.  Korn, eds. (Jerusalem: Urim Publications), was published in 2021. 58  The author is a member of this Modern Orthodox Rabbis-Catholic Bishops religious dialogue. 59  Found at http://rabbis.org/pdfs/Rome_and_Jerusalem.pdf. Accessed on September 15, 2017. 57

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Palestinians grew more desperate, powerful interest groups60 within leading mainline churches, particularly PCUSA, UMC, UCC, the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) and the Disciples of Christ, responded by increasing their identification with the Palestinian cause and raising the pitch of their anti-Israel rhetoric to new levels.61 This trend was indicated early when in 2000, the churches of the Anglican Communion (including the American Episcopal Church) sent a fact-finding group to the Middle East to examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The group’s published report contained 22 recommendations for peace, yet not a single recommendation demanded any substantive action of the Palestinians.62 All were directed at what Israel needed to do for peace in the Middle East; they made clear that from the Anglican perspective the entire blame for the conflict belonged to Israel. Despite official American Protestant churches’ recognition of Israel, church rhetoric sometimes included unvarnished expressions of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.63 It was not uncommon for American Protestant spokespersons to invoke Nazi imagery or “apartheid” when referring to Israelis and Israeli policies. The liberal churches sponsored presentations by anti-Zionist Americans and speaking tours for anti-­ Zionist groups like the Sabeel Center for (Christian) Palestinian Liberation Theology64 that regularly invoked classic antisemitic Jewish stereotypes applied to Israel and Israelis. The dispute came to a head on June 30, 2004 when the PCUSA passed a resolution by a vote of 431-62 at its 216th General Assembly calling for selective divestment from corporations doing business with Israel, specifically corporations that “support the occupation.” The PCUSA report leading to the resolution also proclaimed that “the (Israeli) occupation is the root of all evil acts" perpetrated against Palestinians and Israelis. For many years there had been anti-Israeli and pro-­ Palestinian rhetoric in member churches of the National Council of Churches of  Most “pew level” liberal Protestants are like the majority of Americans who are sympathetic to Israel, consistently favoring Israel over the Palestinians by ratios between 3:1 and 4:1. See John Green, Evangelical Protestants and the Jews: A View from the Polls, in Uneasy Allies, op cit. Table 2.10, p. 35. The anti-Israel sentiment and campaigns were organized by national “Peace and Justice” departments of these churches. For further analysis of this phenomenon, see Eugene Korn, Divestment from Israel, the Liberal Churches and Jewish Responses: A Strategic Analysis, Institute for Global Affairs, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, No. 52, January 2007 found at: http://www. jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0 &IID=1421&TTL=Divestment_from_Israel,_the_Liberal_Churches,_and_Jewish_ Responses:_A_Strategic_Analysis. 61  The reasons for the liberal church identification with the plight of the Palestinians rather than Israel are varied. See Eugene Korn, ibid. 62  See www.episcopalchurch.org/-ens/2000-235.html. 63  See “The Quest for Peace” in the September/October 2003 edition of PCUSA’s journal Church and Society. 64  The anti-Semitic rhetoric and theology of Sabeel has been well documented. See Adam Gregerman, “Old Wine in New Bottles, Liberation Theology and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 41:3–4, Summer–Fall 2004, and Dexter Van Zile, Sabeel’s Teaching of Contempt, A Judeo-Christian Alliance Report, June 2005, found at http://www. c4rpme.org/bin/articles.cgi?Cat=activist-roadblock&Subcat=sabeel&ID=161. 60

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Christ (NCCC) in America, yet it was just that—rhetoric confined to political posturing, with little political teeth. However, divestment or the threat of divestment crossed the threshold to action, and Jewish leaders interpreted it as a new dangerous sign on the horizon. Both American Jewish organizations and individual Jews were stunned at the level of vitriol against Israel and the tendentious church depictions of the conflict that overlooked Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians, which were then at its height. In October 2004, soon after the divestment resolution, the PCUSA Advisory Committee on Social Wellness Policy visited the Middle East and met with the Lebanese military group, Hezbollah, after which a Presbyterian official, Ronald H. Stone, praised the group and compared them favorably to American Jews,”65 despite the fact that the United States, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan, Israel and even The Arab League and The Gulf Cooperation Council, have classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The meeting and the statement enraged the Jewish community as well as the American government, and embarrassed moderate Presbyterians. Additional clear indicators of the continuing mainline Protestant hostility to Israel were the “Tear Down the Wall” resolution passed by the United Church of Christ at its twenty-fifth General Synod and a similar resolution passed by the Disciples of Christ in 2005. (Both of these churches also advocated divestment.) Israel had built a separation barrier in 2002 in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing campaign that succeeded killing hundreds of Israeli civilians in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Netanya. The barrier was defensive in nature, but the Protestant resolutions never mentioned terrorism or the Israeli deaths in their description of the barrier or its rationale. Nor did the churches advocate moving the barrier to the pre-1967 “green line” armistice lines, but insisted instead that it be removed altogether, thus giving suicide bombers a clear path to Israeli civilians. The UCC and DOC’s disregard for Israeli life and their insistence on eliminating obstacles to Palestinian terror outraged the American Jewish community. In a remarkable demonstration of organizational cooperation, the national Jewish defense organizations cooperated with the Jewish religious movements to fight the divestment and anti-Israel campaigns of these churches in 2005 and 2006. Often bypassing the national church leadership, the Jewish community went on the offensive by communicating with local Protestant clergy and laypersons, rallying  Stone was quoted on Lebanese radio and the American media as saying: “We treasure the precious words of Hezbollah and your expression of goodwill toward the American people. Also we praise your initiative for dialogue and mutual understanding. We cherish these statements that bring us closer to you. As an elder of our church, I’d like to say that according to my recent experience, relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders.” “Presbyterian Church USA & Families of 9/11 Victims Delegations Meet with Hezbullah“, The Middle East Media Research Institute. November 23, 2005. http://memri. org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP103105; The statement was particularly offensive to Americans since barely a year earlier, on May 30, 2003, Hezbollah was found to be responsible for the 1983 bombing in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 United States Marines, in Peterson v. Islamic Republic of Iran. Many have interpreted this anti-American judgment to be a protest and rebuke of President Bush and America’s foreign policies, at the expense of Israel. 65

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pro-­Israel Protestant leaders and organizations to action, and taking key national delegates of these churches to Israel to see the reality of the country and the conflict. These efforts paid dividends when, at its 2006 national meeting in Birmingham, Alabama PCUSA voted to rescind its 2004 divestment resolution. Moreover, the UCC passed a more balanced resolution regarding Israel in its twenty-sixth synod in 2006. Although defeated at these latter meetings, the anti-Israel forces in those churches remain focused, vocal, and influential. There was renewed talk of strategies of boycotts, divestments and sanctions (“BDS”) against Israel, while a particularly vicious anti-Israel video, “I am Israel,” replete with classic antisemitic tropes of Jews being all powerful, satanic, conspiratorial, and driven for world conquest, appeared for a time on the official PCUSA website in late 2009. The bitter dispute over divestment, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the expressions of anti-Zionism by the mainline Protestant ideologues during 2004–2009 left in tatters the alliance that Jews and the liberal churches had created based on common domestic interests. The trust built during the previous years was dealt a serious blow, and the level of official interaction between the churches and Jewish organizations fell precipitously. Indeed, the entire relationship between these churches and the Jewish community was left in doubt. Beginning in 2010, UMC, PCUSA, ECUSA, ELCA, and the UCC began to moderate their stance on Israel. They rejected divestment in 2012 and 2013 and switched their policies to encouraging positive investment in the Palestinian economy. In 2012, however, UMC called for an embargo of products made in Israeli settlements. While BDS (boycotts, divestment, sanctions) strategies against Israel gained some headway during the 2010s, their success has been primarily in unions and universities. And while BDS has been remarkably unsuccessful in achieving its objectives of weakening Israel economically and isolating it diplomatically,66 university BDS campaigns have contributed to the increase in antisemitism on American campuses, a fact that distresses American Jews and their defense organizations. The year 2014 proved to be a pivotal year in the deterioration of Jewish-mainline Protestant relations because PCUSA published the anti-Zionist document “Zionism Unsettled” on its website and voted to divest from major corporations doing business with Israel, which opened to the door for the UCC and the Disciples of Christ to approve divestment in 2015, The NCCC dialogue on the Middle East with American Jewish organizations fell apart in 2013, while its “pastors table” with the National Council of Synagogues meets but avoids any discussion of the Israel-­ Palestinian conflict. The continuing precipitous decline of the mainline churches’ membership and influence that began in the 1970’s also affected Jewish-Protestant relations, causing American Jewish organizations to re-evaluate the need to maintain close relations with these churches. Between 1965 and 2007, the membership of the six largest mainline Protestant denominations declined by more than 35 percent, while the

 See “Churches and Anti-Israeli Boycotts” at https://juicyecumenism.com/2017/12/20/churchesisrael-boycotts-bds/. Accessed at Nov. 1, 2022. 66

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general American population increased by more than 55 percent.67 In 2007, only 18.1 percent of Americans self-identified with the liberal Protestant churches, and only 12 percent of all Americans under 30 years of age belonged to those churches.68 By 2014 only 14.7 percent of Americans identified as mainline Protestants.69 The churches experienced high dropout and intermarriage rates in their younger memberships, making their remaining shrinking membership considerably older than other American religious groups.70 Moreover, all indicators point to further mainline church decline in America. Two of the most hostile churches to Israel, PCUSA and UCC, are among the churches experiencing the most precipitous decline: PCUSA membership has dropped from 2.2 million persons in 2007 to 1.57 million in 2015, and UCC membership has eroded from 1.4 million in 2000 to less than 915,000 in 2014.71 Adding to this trend is the fact that the percentage of membership in these churches of people under 50 years old is steadily falling. Radical church attacks on Israel by ideologues may be exacerbating this trend. These further undermine the credibility and influence of church leaders in the eyes of most American Protestants, whose strong sympathies for Israel remained undiminished. Since the September 11, 2001 Islamist terrorist attack on America these sympathies have increased. Through 2021, American popular support for Israel over the Palestinians and Middle East Arab countries remained between ratios of 3:1 and 2.5:1, indicating the ineffectiveness of American Protestant churches’ critiques of Israel.72 Yet the campaigns against Israel by some American liberal churches have not let up. In July 2022, PCUSA General Assembly passed resolution INT-02, declaring that “the laws, policies and practices of the government of Israel regarding the Palestinian people fulfill the international legal definition of apartheid.”73 UCC similarly continues to characterize the Israel’s policies as policies as apartheid. While these churches as well as UMC and ELCA publicly disavow antisemitism, they see no inconsistency in their ongoing unbalanced critiques of the Jewish State.  Yearbook of the American and Canadian Churches, 1968 and 2009 and United States Census.  PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life, US Religious Landscape Survey, 2008, pp. 5, 37 op. cit. 69  2017 PEW Religious Landscape Survey found at www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/ religious-tradition/mainline-protestant/, accessed on September 17, 2017. 70  Ibid, pp. 31, 35 and 39. 71  Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, 2015, found at http://www.yearbookofchurches. org, accessed on September 17, 2017. 72  A number of polls on this question are conducted regularly by Gallup, PEW, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and The Israel Project, among others. Gallup results can be found at http://www.gallup.com/poll/161387/americans-sympathies-israel-match-time-high.aspx; PEW results at http://www.pollingreport.com/israel.htm. ADL results are at http://www.adl.org/ assets/pdf/press-center/ADL_MidEastPressRelease_11_4_13_5pm.pdf. A Summary of results from 1967–2013 can be found at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/polls.html. For 2016 polling results, see http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/23/5-facts-abouthow-americans-view-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/, accessed on September 17, 2017. 73  The Presbyterian Outlook at https://pres-outlook.org/2022/07/pcusa-general-assembly-declaresgovernment-of-israel-actions-toward-palestinians-apartheid/. Accessed on November 18, 2022. 67 68

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Because of Roman Catholicism’s hierarchical structure, relations between the Jewish community and American Catholics were certain to be vitally affected by Pope John Paul II’s death in April 2005 and the election of the German cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, to succeed him as Benedict XVI. Although John Paul was a theological conservative, he had championed a stunningly progressive campaign for more than 20 years to reconcile the Church with the Jewish people. By contrast, Benedict, known for guarding traditional Catholic doctrine, he lacked the personal history with Jews that had so influenced his predecessor. Clearly a new era had begun, and Jews waited eagerly for signs that Jewish-Catholic relations would have the same priority and warmth for Benedict that it had for John Paul. Benedict’s focus on traditionalism with implications for Jewish-Catholic relations became clear in early July 2007 when he authorized wider use of the traditional Latin Mass whose Good Friday prayer contained negative characterizations of Jews and called for Jewish conversion—characterizations removed by Pope John XXIII shortly before he convened the Second Vatican Council. Although the Vatican reauthorized wider use of the Latin Mass with the intent of making ultra-­traditionalist Catholics more comfortable with contemporary church practice, many Jews and progressive Catholics saw deeper implications in this change, interpreting it as Benedict beginning to turn the Church away from the salutary reforms of Vatican II.74 Moreover, it seemed that by reauthorizing the Latin Mass with its offensive text, Benedict had lowered the priority of Catholic-Jewish relations. Alarmed, American Jewish leaders joined with the Israeli chief rabbis in a protest to the Vatican. A rancorous public debate erupted, and in February 2008 the Vatican deleted the Good Friday prayer’s reference to Jewish “blindness,” but retained the prayer’s title, “Pro Conversione Iudaeorum” (“For the conversion of the Jews”). In that month also, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the highest Vatican official responsible for relations with the Jews, published an article in L’Osservatore Romano and wrote to the President of IJCIC stating the prayer’s reference to Jewish conversion applies only to the “end of times” and that the Church leaves this matter entirely in the hands of God. Three months later, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, wrote a letter to the Israeli chief rabbis affirming Kasper’s interpretation that the prayer “is not intended to promote proselytism towards the Jews and opens up an eschatological perspective,” and that the Church wishes to continue “a sincere dialogue between Jews and Christians.” This settled the nearly 10-month public controversy but left Jewish interfaith officials with greater concern regarding the future of Jewish-Catholic dialogue. Less than one year later, in January 2009, another painful (and possibly related) controversy erupted when Benedict issued a decree rehabilitating Richard Williamson and three other bishops who had been excommunicated by John Paul II in 1988 as members of the ultra-conservative, schismatic Society of St. Pius X  For implications of the Latin Mass on the future of Jewish-Christian relations, see Anthony J. Cernera and Eugene Korn, “The Latin Liturgy and the Jews” America, Vol. 197, No. 10 (October 8, 2007) pp. 10–13. 74

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(SSPX). The society was founded by the French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a staunch opponent of Vatican II reform (particularly the changes in church theology regarding the Jews) and the society’s websites still contained vicious anti-Semitic canards that many thought had disappeared from the Church, including charges that the Jews are guilty of deicide and seek to destroy the church and achieve world domination. Benedict’s decree sought the society’s “reconciliation and full communion” with the church. Only a week before his rehabilitation, Williamson denied in a European television interview that millions of Jews were murdered in World War II, that gas chambers ever existed, and that there was a Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. This provoked another caustic controversy around the world with loud criticism of Benedict and the Church coming not only from Jews but also from prominent Catholics and political leaders in Europe and America who were scandalized by the Church’s approval of a Holocaust denier. The Vatican claimed ignorance of the interview and of Williamson’s views, and Benedict was quick to denounce Holocaust denial. Yet Jews saw once again the church’s priority of placating ultra-­ conservative voices in the Catholic community, even those that rejected Vatican II reforms and Nostra Aetate, which provided the basis for contemporary positive Jewish-Catholic relations. Stunned by Benedict’s decree, American Jewish organizations issued strong statements of protest to the Vatican and American Catholic leadership. Many interfaith officials saw the proposed acceptance of SSPX and “the Williamson affair” as undermining the strong relationship between the Church and Jews that had been built in the previous 60 years. In 2013, after protracted negotiations, SSPX refused to accept the Vatican conditions that it accept Vatican II, including Nostra Aetate and its salutary teachings about Jews and Judaism. To the relief of many Jewish leaders, its members remained excommunicated and their views officially rejected by the Vatican. Further exacerbating the relationship at this time was renewed Vatican talk of elevating Pope Pius XII to sainthood. Pius’ status was a longstanding point of emotional disagreement between some in the Vatican and many Jews, who see that pope as having failed to exercise his office sufficiently to help rescue Jews from extermination in the Holocaust. Jewish interfaith and communal leaders argued that the decision on Pius XII was best postponed until the Vatican made its wartime archives available to scholars and the entire historical record of Pius could be analyzed. Despite this request, Benedict signed a decree in December 2009 that Pius be bestowed with the title “venerable,” putting him in line for beatification and then sainthood. Perhaps recognizing that making Pius a saint before his full record was known would inject yet one more strain into Catholic-Jewish relations, the Vatican appeared to put canonization on hold after Pope Francis replaced Benedict in 2013. A third disturbing development in Jewish-Catholic relations in America occurred barely six months after the Williamson affair. In June 2009, the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an official clarification of a 2002 document written by Catholic

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consultants to the Ecumenical Committee, “Reflections on Covenant and Mission.”75 The 2002 document stated that Jews need not join the Christian faith because Judaism is “salvific” for Jews and hence campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer acceptable in the Catholic Church.” The bishops were concerned that Catholics might understand this statement as an acceptance of theological relativism, and their clarification insisted that “the fulfillment of all (biblical) covenants and all of God’s promises to Israel is found only in Jesus Christ”, that the conversion of Jews to Christian belief is essential to Christian mission and that in Catholic-Jewish dialogue “the Christian dialogue partner is always giving witness to the following of Christ, to which all are implicitly invited” (emphasis added).76 Jewish officials and participants in interfaith dialogue understood this statement to mean that the Mosaic covenant with the Jewish people is obsolete and that Catholics participating in interfaith dialogue ought to implicitly (and perhaps explicitly) attempt to bring Jews into the Catholic Church. Many Jews and Catholics believed—with significant plausibility—that the impetus for the American clarification came from Rome, since it was consistent with recent Vatican theological pronouncements and actions. The Jewish reaction was shock and dismay, and in August 2009, the interfaith representatives of the American Jewish Committee, the National Council of Synagogues, the Rabbinical Council of America, the Orthodox Union, and the Anti-Defamation League delivered an official reply to the USCCB stating that “once Jewish-Christian dialogue has been formally characterized as an invitation to apostatize, Jewish participation (in the dialogue) becomes untenable.”77 This was the most precarious moment in American Jewish-Catholic dialogue since Vatican II and the threat of Jewish withdrawal from the dialogue was sincere, since opposition to conversion represented a common principle for secular, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews. Even the Jewish personalities committed to Catholic-Jewish dialogue asked publicly if the Church sought the annihilation of Judaism.78 It was a testimony to the strength and integrity of Jewish-Catholic relations that the crisis was settled civilly in October 2009 when the bishops responded to Jewish  The full text of Reflections on Covenant and Mission can be found at: http://www.bc.edu/ research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/resources/documents/interreligious/ncs_ usccb120802.htm 76  “A Note on Ambiguities Contained in Reflections on Covenant and Mission” can be found on the official USCCB website at http://www.usccb.org/doctrine/covenant09.pdf. Many believe that the need for such “clarification” was significantly influenced by the Vatican document, “Dominus Iesus,” issued in August 2000 and signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was to become Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. A number of Jews claimed that the document indicated that Jews should be converted to the Church, although a number of Catholic theologians denied this implication. See David Berger, “On Dominus Iesus and the Jews,” and response of Cardinal Walter Kasper, America Magazine, Vol. 195, no. 7, September 17, 2001 and available at www.bc.edu/research/cjl/jcrelations/resources/articles/berger.htm 77  The full reply can be found at http://www.adl.org/interfaith/usccb_letter.asp. 78  The Jewish liturgical scholar Ruth Langer expressed this in “Seeking Integrity,” Ecumenical Trends, September 2009, pp. 6–7. 75

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protests by excising the offending passages of the clarification. The dialogue remained alive but there is no doubt that the episode exposed two serious problems. Traditional supersessionism and conversion had resurfaced once again, this time from American ecclesiastical authorities, many of whom were theologically conservative bishops appointed by John Paul II and Benedict.79 It also became apparent that after all the years of dialogue, the bishops had little understanding of Jewish feelings and concerns. They did not seek prior consultation from their Jewish counterparts and did not expect the offence taken and the forceful reaction of their Jewish partners. Nor did they have serious expertise in Judaism or Jewish history on their staff since the long-time USCCB ecumenical officer who was a scholar of Judaism, Dr. Eugene Fisher, had retired in 2007 and was not replaced with anyone with comparable background. The dialogue was back on track, but probably with lower expectations and greater caution in the Jewish interfaith community. After these three unsettling episodes, Jews were left to wonder about the direction of Vatican policy regarding Catholic-Jewish relations and the church’s commitment to the positive post-Vatican II teachings about Jews and Judaism. In the face of the church’s global concerns, the ascendancy of conservative theological opinion in the Vatican and among the bishops appointed by John Paul and Benedict as well as Vatican efforts to strengthen relations with Catholic traditionalists, it remained an open question to what extent the church in Rome and America values continued strong relations with the Jewish people. The unexpected retirement of Pope Benedict XVI and election of Pope Francis in 2013 occasioned a flurry of Vatican-Jewish activity. Many read this as indicating that Francis highly values close relations with Israel and the Jewish people. A long-­ time friend of the Argentinian Jewish community as the cardinal-archbishop of Buenos Aires, early in his papacy Francis made warm overtures to Jewish leaders throughout the world, granted early audiences to Jewish representatives of IJCIC, visited Israel in 2014, emphasized the need for increased Jewish-Catholic theological cooperation, and repeatedly declared in public that “a [good] Christian cannot be an anti-Semite.” In visits to the Vatican in 2012-2013, IJCIC leaders were received warmly in a fraternal spirit and as partners for future cooperation on both theological and practical matters. Francis has proceeded to appoint more liberal authorities in the Church, which augurs well for future Jewish-Catholic theological dialogue. Significantly, after UNESCO passed a resolution in October 2016 denying any Jewish connection to Jerusalem, Francis told a reporter that “God gave the Promised Land to the People of Israel”—the most explicit endorsement of Zionism ever to

 It was also in August 2009 that the American Bishops announced that they had changed the official text regarding this issue. The prior text of 2006 read, “Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid,” was revised to read, “To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, ‘belong the sonship, the glory the covenants, and the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh is the Christ.” The 2009 text pointedly omits any reference to continuing validity of the Mosaic covenant, thus allowing for the traditional supersessionist posture toward Judaism. 79

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emerge from the Holy See. Less significantly, Francis has disturbed some Jewish leadership by his repeated negative references to “Pharisees,” a term that has traditionally been understood to refer to Jewish religious authorities. After World War II, evangelical Christians became the fastest growing religious population in the USA. According to the 2017 PEW survey on religion in American life, more than one out of every four American voters identified himself/herself as evangelical,80 with much of this growth coming at the expense of mainline Protestant churches, especially as the U.S. population has shifted towards the Sunbelt. The political influence of the mainline churches and their constituents suffered drastically with the 2000 election of Republican George W. Bush, whose religious and political conservatism was closer to evangelical Christianity than to the religion of the liberal Protestant churches. Evangelicals constituted the largest voting bloc in the Republican Party and evangelicals like Tom Delay, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed became significant factors in American national politics. These conditions created greater incentives for the American Jews and their national organizations to reconsider broader relations with evangelicals. Evangelicals had displaced liberal Protestants in many corridors of power in Washington, and this negatively affected Jewish relations with the mainline churches. As evangelicals grew more vocal and influential in their support for Israel during the Palestinian intifadas, suicide bombings, and Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza, the liberal churches perceived the Christian right as their theological and political rivals, and in turn stepped up their criticism of Israel, American policy in the Middle East, and of Christian support for Israel. The Jewish State as well as relations with Jews became proxy victims of the intensified battle between the liberal and conservative Protestants. It is no accident that the Presbyterian Church USA divestment resolution contained a condemnation of “Christian Zionism” and that the same groups hostile to Israel published a fact sheet under the rubric of the PCUSA that excoriated Christian Zionism. For their part, evangelicals began to explain themselves and their support for Israel more effectively in terms that resonated with Jews. They emphasized that evangelicals support Israel primarily because the Bible promises that God will bless those who bless the children of Abraham (Genesis 12:3), because Israel and America share the common values of freedom and democracy, and because both are waging a war against terrorism and religious extremism. Eschatological considerations regarding the End Times or “the Rapture” come in a distant third.81 David Brog, the former Jewish executive director of Christians United for Israel, published an influential book, Standing with Israel, that explained to American Jews why evangelicals sincerely embrace the Jewish people and Israel without any threat to Judaism or Jewish interests.82  PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life, US Religious Landscape Survey, 2017, found at http:// www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/, accessed on September 17, 2017. 81  Study: American Christians and Support for Israel, The Tarrance Group, Ed Goras and William Stewart, October 3–6, 2002. See John Green, op. cit. p. 36 for a different interpretation. 82  (Lake Mary, FL: Frontline Publishing, 2006). 80

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At the grassroots level Jews remained largely uninformed about evangelicals.83 In academic circles, however, Jewish religious scholars began to meet moderate evangelicals with nuanced theological and political views with whom they could conduct constructive dialogue. At the end of 2005, Jewish and evangelical academics and organizational leaders held a two-day conference at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where they discussed their respective community’s sociology, politics, attitudes to Israel, theology as they bear on Jewish-evangelical relations.84 Similar Jewish-evangelical conferences were held in November 2007 and May 2009, though few practical initiatives or regular contact emerged from these meetings. The aggressive evangelical support for Israel combined with the abandonment of Israel by the liberal churches helps explain why mainstream Jewish groups began to meet, praise, and reconsider relations with evangelical leaders and their communities. Prior to 2000, Jewish organizational pronouncements regarding evangelicals were cautionary at best. Yet in July 2002, the Anti-Defamation League paid for a full-page ad in the New York Times that was written and signed by Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition. ADL national director Abraham Foxman, long a vocal critic of the Christian right, published an op-ed piece in the Jewish media praising evangelicals, explaining that they ask no quid pro quo for good relations with Jews, and counseling Jews not to be defensive about cultivating evangelical support.85 Foxman correctly pointed out that contemporary evangelicals are no more anti-Semitic than other Americans.86 In 2006, Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, hosted a briefing for Rev. John Hagee, president of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), in Washington DC. And in the summer of 2009, Nobel Laureate Elie Weisel spoke at a large public San Antonio event to honor Israel that was organized by Hagee and CUFI. Hagee distributed millions of dollars to Israeli causes at the event, which was but one of many CUFI “Nights to Honor Israel” that have taken place throughout America for the purposes of garnering political support and raising significant sums of money for Israel.87 Some Jewish federations have also been public in their support of Hagee and CUFI, and a number of local Jewish

 See Barry Kosmin “How Wide is the Social Distance between Jews and Evangelicals” in Uneasy Allies, pp. 39–40. 84  The conference papers were published in Uneasy Allies? Evangelical and Jewish Relations, op cit. 85  “Why Evangelical Support of Israel is a Good Thing,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 16, 2002. 86  In fact, evangelicals had, on average, better opinions of Jews than other Americans. In a dramatic change from 1964 evangelical opinion about Jews, in 2005 83 percent of evangelicals held favorable views of Jews, compared to 80percent for all American adults. See Green, op.  cit. Table 2:1, p. 20. 87  Nor is Hagee and CUFI the only major evangelical contributor to Israel and its institutions. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, founded by the Orthodox rabbi, Yechiel Eckstein, raised almost $60 million in 2007 and $70 million in 2008 for Israeli causes, almost exclusively from evangelicals. 83

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Community Relations Councils have cultivated good relations with evangelical Zionist groups like the Pennsylvania-based Friends of Israel. After 2010 there were some signs of a decline in evangelical political and demographic strength, yet in 2017 evangelicals still comprised more than a quarter of religious Americans. The 2011 PEW survey on American evangelicals indicated a slight decrease in evangelical support for Israel.88 While this development warranted the attention of American Jews, it remains an insignificant phenomenon. More significant for Jewish-evangelical relations is a group of “new evangelicals” that have arisen to challenge “mainstream evangelicals.” The members of this small group identified with the “Palestinian narrative” of history and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and began advancing anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian policies.89 In response to this and other attacks on Christian Zionism, the Institute for Religion and Democracy hosted an academic conference in Washington DC in April 2015 on the roots, history and character of American Christian Zionism. An academic book, “The New Christian Zionism,”90 documenting the conference papers given by both Christians and Jews was published in 2016, as well as a popular volume, “Israel Matters,”91 laying out the history and theological arguments for Christian support of the State of Israel. There persist wide divergences between Jews and evangelicals in geography, politics, age, and basic religious orientation.92 Most American Jews have not cultivated relations with evangelicals and still feel uneasy with the evangelical stress on the Bible, proselytizing, and religion in the public square. Thus no ongoing Jewish-­ evangelical alliance or stable and continuous Jewish-evangelical relationship has emerged. Nevertheless, these recent public and communal associations would not have been possible even in the first decade of the twenty-first century. They are indicators of a new, if tentative, reconsideration of Jewish-evangelical relations by mainstream Jewish leaders that may evolve into closer relations based on growing common interests. The rising international hostility to Israel, the desire of most evangelical leadership to develop positive relations with American Jewry, the abandonment of Israel by liberal Christian leaders, and the increasingly natural contact between Jews and evangelicals as more Jews migrate to the cities of South are powerful reasons for American Jews to draw closer to evangelical Americans. Additionally, the projected increase of Orthodox Jews and their concomitant

 PEW Research Center, “Evangelical Support for Israel,” from April 6, 2011 at http://www. pewresearch.org/daily-number/evangelical-support-for-israel/. 89  Among the leaders of this pro-Palestinian trend are Gary Burge, Rick Warren, Lynne Hybels and Cameron Strang. See, Robert W. Nicholson, “Evangelicals and Israel: What American Jews Don’t Want to Know (but Need to),“Mosaic Magazine, October 2013 at http://mosaicmagazine.com/ essay/2013/10/evangelicals-and-israel/, and Lee Smith, “Christians for Palestine, Tablet Magazine, April 18, 2012, available at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/97155/ christians-for-palestine. 90  Edited by Gerald R. Mc.Dermott (IVP Academic, 2016). 91  Authored by Gerald McDermott (Brazos, 2017). 92  See Kosmin, op cit. pp. 39–47. 88

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influence on Jewish public policy may augur well for Jewish-evangelical relations, since the Orthodox hold views that are closer to conservative evangelical values on numerous domestic issues. Like evangelicals, they are more comfortable with using the Bible for moral wisdom and political policy and they appreciate the evangelical political support for right-wing Israeli policies vis-à-vis her Arab neighbors. Importantly, the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president brought the political interests of evangelicals and Orthodox Jews into even closer alignment, as both groups supported Trump and his domestic and Middle East policies by a wide margin. In sum, Evangelical Protestants have been enthusiastic supporters of the State of Israel and the Zionist enterprise, whether because they see in a realization of God’s promise of the land to the descendants of Abraham in Genesis or because of their own millennialist belief that the ingathering of the Jews in the Holy Land is a necessary feature of the End Times. At the same time, evangelicals for the most part remain wedded to “replacement theology,” believing that Christianity has taken the place of Judaism as the only true faith and that one must accept Jesus as one’s personal lord and savior in order to gain a place in heaven. The question for Jewish movements, therefore is: Do American Jews make common cause with evangelicals on a critical issue of Jewish concern, indeed security, or do they view evangelical support of Israel as dangerous, as another example of many centuries of Christian conversionism, and retain their closest ties on social and economic issues with mainliners while agreeing to disagree on Israel?93 In 2017 there were approximately 2.05 million Muslim adults in the United States and 3.45 million of Muslims of all ages, who comprised approximately 1% of the U.  S. population.94 Fifty-eight percent of the Muslim adults were foreign born, with approximately 14 percent coming from Arab Middle East and North Africa and 55 percent entering the USA after 1980. Because the American Muslim population is growing faster than the American Jewish population. by 2040 Muslims are projected to replace Jews as the nation’s largest non-Christian religious group, and by 2050 the U.S. Muslim population is projected to reach 8.1 million, or 2.1% of the nation’s total.95 This demographic makes it impossible for American Jews and their organizations to ignore Jewish-Muslim relations in their strategic planning. Like American Jews, Muslim Americans reside primarily in the Northeast and secondarily in the South, yet a number of factors inhibited ongoing contact between the

 One of the more practical answers to this question was that of Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel from the late 1970s to the 1990s. When asked about his welcoming evangelical support (this during a period in which Israel had few friends at the international table), Begin replied. “At the end of days, when the Messiah comes, we will ask him, ‘Have you been here before?’ And he will answer, yes, or no. Until then, I can live with support of the evangelical community without being overly concerned about the theology!” (I thank Jerome Chanes for this anecdote.) 94  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-sand-around-the-world/, accessed August 21, 2017. 95  https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/01/muslims-are-a-growing-presence-in-u-sbut-still-face-negative-views-from-the-public/, accessed on November 14, 2022. 93

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religious groups and active work on Jewish-Muslim relations.96 Most of the Muslim immigrants have come from ethnically oriented, non-pluralistic, and non-­democratic cultures that lack traditions of inter-communal and interreligious activity, and they have no experience of harmonious relations between Muslims and Jews. Second, as with all immigrants to America, the priority interests for the new Muslim Americans have been internal: to strengthen their own communities economically and socially and help the new immigrants acculturate to America. This became more difficult after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks by Muslim religious extremists. Third, there is the natural disagreement over the Israeli-Arab conflict leading to mutual suspicions and hostile stereotypes of the other. Finally, the decentralized structure of American Muslim communities makes it tactically difficult for Jewish organizations to establish broad relations with Muslims, while major national Muslim organizations like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Committee for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) are often viewed by Jewish leadership as tainted by association with Muslim extremists.97 Thus despite strong commonalities in the profiles of Jews and Muslims in America, such as voting Democratic, support for separation of religion and politics, self-perception of victimization from ethnic and religious discrimination,98 and high concern about Islamic extremism,99 JewishMuslim relations have remained sporadic and a low-­priority for both communities. Even in 2000—the heyday of interfaith relations prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001—none of the Jewish defense organizations had allocated significant time or resources to Jewish-Muslim relations.100  “Muslim-Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,” PEW Research Center, pp. 1, 2 and 9, found at http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf. Geographic data is from PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life, US Religious Landscape Survey, 2008, op. cit., pp. 5, 90 97  ISNA, the largest Muslim organization in America said to fund the majority of American mosques, is a salient example. Many contend the organization was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and is funded by Saudi Arabia to promote Wahhabi Islam in the US. ISNA distributes materials authored by its ideological extremists, including Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradhawi, who authored fatwas justifying suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and condoning the killing of Americans and other Westerners in Iraq. ISNA was named by the US Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation legal case. The foundation was closed shortly after 9/11 for Hamas fundraising. Incidentally, other speakers invited to past ISNA conventions include Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, the imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque, who famously said in 2002 that Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the killers of prophets, and the grandsons of monkeys and pigs.” After Rabbi Eric Yoffe, leader of American Reform Jewry addressed an ISNA conference in 2007, he was roundly condemned by David Harris, the then executive director of the moderate and highly respected American Jewish Committee. Members of CAIR have also been implicated in association with the Holy Land Foundation. 98  CAIR was founded on the model of the national Jewish defense organizations. This is precisely because American Muslims viewed themselves as needing to overcome the same discrimination, stereotyping and misunderstandings that Jews founded their defense organizations to confront. 99  “American Muslims,” op cit, Chs. 6 and 7. 100  One relatively insignificant exception to this was the Anti-Defamation League’s positive relations with American Muslims from Turkey, who, unlike American Arab Muslims were more familiar with secular and pluralistic culture. 96

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After 9/11 Jewish-Muslim relations worsened. Although American Muslim leaders condemned terrorism generally as well as the specific attacks, many American Muslims refused to acknowledge that Arabs were responsible.101 This significantly widened the gap between themselves and American Jews, many of whom saw the terrorism directed against America as an expression of the same phenomenon as terrorism and suicide bombing against Israel by anti-Semitic jihadists in the Middle East. The attack led to a greater reluctance to engage officially with Jewish organizations. Some American-Muslims turned inward from a sense of vulnerability, and the few existing low-level Jewish-Muslim communal dialogues were suspended.102 And for Jews who believed in “the clash of civilizations,” Muslims were often perceived as their enemies in the clash. Since the initial reluctance by American Muslim communities to engage with others in the wake of the terror attacks of 2001, Jewish-Muslim relations have gradually thawed. Yet with the exceptions of the American Jewish Committee’s Muslim-­ Jewish Advisory Council founded in 2016 and its partnership with Israel’s Shalom Hartman Institute’s Muslim Leadership Institute focusing on young American Muslim leaders, no broad initiatives by Jewish national organizations or religious movements to engage American Muslims have emerged. Nor have Muslim organizations eagerly sought these out. In 2013, ISNA listed every major national Catholic and Protestant church as their interfaith partner, but pointedly named only the Union for Reform Judaism and the Center for Leadership and Learning (CLAL) as Jewish partners.103 CAIR listed the National Council of Churches and the National Association of Evangelicals as their interfaith partners, but no Jewish organization. Although the American Jewish Committee hired a professional to oversee Jewish-­ Muslim relations in 2016 and initiated the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council in that year, ferment between Jews and Muslims has been minimal; as yet there are few centers or academic institutions that study Muslim-Jewish relations, similar to the centers on Christian-Jewish relations. One exception is the Center for Muslim-­ Jewish Engagement, formed in 2008 as a partnership between Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation, and the

 According to “American Muslims” op cit., p. 51, even by 2007 only 40 percent of American Muslims believed that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attack. 102  While this occurred in a small number of local communities, the most publicized example of this was in Manhattan. In the 1990’s the ADL had established an individual dialogue between its national interfaith director and the perceived moderate, Muhammad Gemeaha, who was the imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, the state’s largest mosque. Following the September 11, 2001 terror attack on America, Gemeaha fled to Cairo, where he gave an interview explaining his need to flee New York because Jewish doctors were poisoning Muslim children in American hospitals and Zionists in the air traffic control towers were responsible for 9/11. This tragic case only increased Jewish reluctance to engage Muslim organizations and religious leaders. 103  This is slowly changing. By 2017, ISNA also was partnering with Jewish Theological Seminary of America, T’RUAH, and American Jewish Committee in the context of the latter’s MuslimJewish Advisory Council. See http://www.isna.net/interfaith-partners/, and https://www.globalmbwatch.com/2016/12/05/american-jewish-committee-partners-with-isna/ both accessed on September 18, 2017. 101

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University of Southern California Center for Religion in Civic Culture. Housed at USC, the center’s mission is to promote dialogue, understanding as well as communal and academic partnerships between Jews and Muslims in America. Another center that has expanded to include Christian-Jewish–Muslim relations in its agenda is the Institute for Islamic, Jewish and Christian Studies in Baltimore MD.104 (That center originally focused only on Jewish-Christian relations.) Perhaps as a sign of a future trend, the September 2017 annual meeting of CCJR members entertained the question of how to expand Jewish-Christian organizational encounters to include Muslims. No decisions were taken on this issue. Running against the institutional and communal grain, some organizations began early initiatives to strengthen relations with Muslims, convinced that they are strategically important for the Jewish people. The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding in New York, founded by Rabbi Marc Schneier, originally focusing on Jewish-Black relations but in 2006 began to focus also on improving understanding and relations between Jews and Muslims around the world, particularly in the United States. Tellingly the foundation avoids Middle East politics, instead stressing the common interests and values held by the American Jews and Muslims. In November 2009, it successfully “twinned” 80 synagogues and mosques around the USA for one weekend in order to build a common agenda around the values of protecting the environment, fighting poverty, supporting immigration reform, and jointly confronting Islamophobia and antisemitism. The program garnered significant media attention and was designed to establish continuous relationships between the 80 Muslim and Jewish communities to serve as a model for more pervasive Jewish-Muslim communal relations throughout the country. A few national Muslim leaders105 as well as synagogue and Hillel rabbis across the countries identified with the mission of the Foundation. Moreover, IJCIC, the coalition of major Jewish organizations, sought to include Jewish-Muslim relations in its deliberations. Whether these ventures will have an enduring impact, however, is not clear.106 Two dynamics in the twenty-first century stimulated greater cooperation between American Jews and Muslims. The vitriolic polarization of American political life and concomitant rise in hatred against minority groups beginning in the second decade of that century created greater identification with and tactical cooperation between Jews and Muslims, since both minorities perceived themselves as  Another exception is the Hartford Seminary in Harford, CT. As with the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, the Hartford Seminary employ Christians, Muslims and Jews on their faculties to teach their religions and engage in cross discussion. Harford’s impact beyond the seminary itself has been limited, and the impact of the Baltimore Institute in Muslim interfaith is hard to determine since the Muslim program was begun only in late 2013. 105  Mohammed Shamsi Ali, past imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi of the Fiqh Council of North America, and Sabeel Sahid of ISNA are a few. 106  In the twenty-first century, IJCIC’s relationship with Muslim organizations remain embryonic. In 2022 it began discussions with Dr. Mohamed Elsanousi, Executive Director of the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers and former Director of Community Outreach and Interfaith Relations for the Islamic Society of North America, for the purposes of fostering greater understanding between Jews and Muslims. 104

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vulnerable to attacks by American extremists. Significantly, a number of Muslims and Muslim groups rallied to support Jews in the wake of the lethal attacks on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and on a synagogue in Poway, California in 2019. Second, the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Republic, Bahrain, and Morocco in 2020 softened the divide between Israelis and Arabs, thus enabling American Jews and Muslims to view each other less as implacable enemies. These factors likely contributed to the survival of the small network of friendships, trust and young American Jewish-Muslim initiatives during the brief Israel-Hamas war in 2021. By the beginning of the twenty-first century religious endogamy had become the demographic exception in America; intermarriage, the rule.107 In the Jewish community, one out of every three Jews were marrying non-Jews, mostly Christians from Catholic or liberal Protestant backgrounds.108 Many of these Jewish-Christian families have become members in Conservative and Reform synagogues and thus intermarriage is bound to influence synagogue, communal, and national Jewish policies. Jewish-Christian intermarriage is both an indicator and further cause of increased American Jewish identification with Christians, yet to date this phenomenon appears to have had little effect on interfaith relations between the Jewish community and American Christians. The same is true for the increased permeability in and out of Judaism (and in all major American churches) that characterizes American religious identity and communal affiliation in the twenty-first century.109

The Trajectory of Future Interfaith Relation Rabbinic tradition warns that after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, attempts at prophecy are reserved for children and fools. Indeed, rational adults should hesitate to make predictions. This is particularly true regarding Jewish interfaith relations, which have taken so many unexpected turns in recent history. We can, however, reasonably point to the trajectory delineated by the recent events in American Jewish interfaith experience. After 2005, the national Jewish defense and communal organizations were forced by budgetary pressures to downsize and reassess their priorities, thus leaving fewer resources for organizational interfaith activity. Whereas in 2000 the American  Jonathan Sarna, “Intermarriage in America: The Jewish Experience in Historical Context” op. cit. p. 132. 108  PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life, US Religious Landscape Survey, 2008, Chap. 2. The Jewish intermarriage rate has been a subject of great disagreement, sometimes depending on how it is measured. The 2000–2001 National Jewish Population Survey claimed it to be 47percent. All sociologists agree, however, in the dramatic increase in Jewish intermarriage between 1960 and 2000. 109  Ibid. 107

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Jewish Committee, the World Jewish Congress and the ADL had influential full-­ time national directors of interfaith affairs with staff, in 2009 only the American Jewish Committee had a full-time director.110 The major rabbinical seminaries devote at most one semester to non-Jewish religions and interfaith relations. Much of the American Jewish community has mirrored a worldwide cultural and religious trend to turn inward. To Jews this means focusing on Jewish culture, continuity, and survival in a pluralistic post-modern culture. And within official Jewish organizations, today there appear to be no organizational leaders ready to advance innovative policies or theologies toward Christians, Muslims, or those of other faiths. If new directions and thinking in interfaith relations are in the offing, it will likely emerge from individual Jews. Originally, American Jewish interfaith activity was fueled by the Jewish desire to gain religious acceptance in America by achieving parity with Protestant and Catholic Americans and decreasing antisemitism. By the twenty-first century, American Jews had largely achieved these objectives and thus they no longer provide rationales for intensive future organizational interfaith activity. There is also the issue of secularization. According to the 2020 Pew study of Jewish life in America111 Jews who do not identify with any religion (“nones”) have increased to 23 percent of the entire American Jewish population. This parallels the American population as a whole. Under the circumstances it is logical for Jews as individuals to be less interested in formal interfaith relations in the future. As Abraham Heschel observed in 1966, “The first and most important prerequisite of interfaith is faith.”112 Short of a religious revival in American culture generally and among American Jews in particular, it appears that the American Jewish stake in the welfare and security of Israel will be the primary reason for Jews to be engaged in vigorous interfaith relations with American gentiles (primarily Christians). Jews understand that popular American support for Israel from gentiles is crucial to shaping American policy towards the Jewish State and hence critical to the strategic interests of Israel. All present signs point toward continuing diminished official Jewish-Protestant relations in the immediate future. Despite attempts by mainline Protestant leadership to control vehement anti-Israel campaigns and resolutions, frequent hostile rhetoric and unbalanced critiques of Israel that include anti-Zionist sentiments and classic anti-Semitic tropes still emanate from groups within these churches. The disagreement between the majority of American Jews and these groups over the Israeli-Arab conflict has severely weakened the foundations of Jewish-Protestant

 ADL restored its full-time interfaith director position in 2014, appointing Rabbi David Sandmel to that position, but again reduced it to a part-time position in 2020. 111  PEW Research Center, “Jewish Americans in 2020”, found at https://www.pewresearch.org/ religion/2021/05/11/people-of-jewish-background-and-jewish-affinity/. Accessed on November 21, 2022. One exception to this general trend is American Jewish Orthodoxy, comprising at most 10% of American Jews. See also http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-publicbecoming-less-religious/. 112  “No religion is an Island,” reprinted in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel, ed. (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996) p. 241. 110

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relations, and just as there are no signs that the Middle East conflict will be resolved soon, there are no indicators that the Jewish community and the liberal churches will reach agreement—even respectful disagreement—regarding the conflict. The precipitous decline in membership and influence on national politics of the mainline Protestant churches further reduces Jewish incentive to work toward close relations with these churches. One exception is likely to be black Protestant churches, since Afro-Americans continue to exhibit strong religious affiliation and instances of antisemitism in the black community have been given widespread coverage since 2020.113 Jewish focus on engagement with American gentiles will likely gravitate toward Latinos and Asians as growing segments of the American population. Individual American Jews continue to pursue good relations with American Protestants, but such relations can be accomplished on secular grounds, as neighbors, colleagues, and political allies far removed from official church or interfaith contexts. Moreover, a number of these churches, such as the Episcopal Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church USA face internal crises that threaten their ecclesiastical and organizational unity. These existential problems will continue to have priority in church agendas, leaving less time and fewer resources to external issues like interfaith relations generally and Jewish-Protestant relations specifically. Finally, economic conditions have forced a reduction in the staffs of all professional interfaith departments (Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic alike), further depleting the level of activity that can be devoted to interfaith relations. Indications are, therefore, that Jewish-mainline Protestant relations will likely become less important for each community going forward. The future of Jewish interaction with Catholic officials and their church in America will be most significantly influenced by the decisions of Pope Francis, his new appointees, and their resultant Vatican policies. While Benedict’s papacy placed primacy on attracting and strengthening traditionalists within the church, coming at some cost to Jewish-Catholic relations, Francis has struck a more open Vatican orientation, shoring up relations with Israel and the Jewish people and opening the archives on Pius XII’s activities during World War II. A potentially significant area of close cooperation between American Jewish officials and the Vatican is the problem of the persecution of Jews and Christians in the Middle East. Muslim intolerance of minority Christians in that region has increased dramatically in the aftermath of the political upheavals in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Gaza. As a similarly situated minority, Jews have a natural interest in forging an alliance with the Church to fight this phenomenon. Reflecting this commonality, antisemitism and contemporary persecution of Christians comprised the central topics of the International

 Two heralded examples occurred in 2022 with the statements of the popular entertainer Kanye West and professional basketball player, Kyrie Irving. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/11/04/kanye-wests-anti-semitic-troubling-behavior-heres-everything-hes-said-inrecent-weeks/?sh=2be681f95e8f, and https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/opinion/ kyrie-irving-kanye-west-antisemitism.html?smid=em-share, accessed on November 21, 2022. 113

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Catholic-Jewish Liaison committee meetings in Madrid (October 2013) and in Warsaw (April 2016), in which both sides agreed to pursue these issues together. The most the critical factor in future relations is the priority that Francis will place on Catholic-Jewish relations while he and the Vatican tackle global issues besetting the Church, i.e., the rapid loss of identity in Europe, the increasing secularization and exodus from the church by large numbers of the Catholic laity, the significant drop in the number of priests and seminarians around the world, the continuing revelations of sex abuse in the Church, the shift of the majority of Catholics to Africa and South America, and the Church’s need to establish stable relations with the Muslim world, all of which might augur for lowering the importance of Jewish-Catholic relations for Rome. Yet the fact that Francis was a long-­ time friend of the Argentinian Jewish Community while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and that one of his closest friends is Rabbi Abraham Skorka seem to make it unlikely that Francis would significantly lower the importance of Jewish-­ Catholic reconciliation. Certainly his early visit to Israel and his subsequent statements about the validity of Zionism encourage Jews to pursue continued good relations with the Vatican and American Catholics. After Francis, there is a significant likelihood that his successor will be from Latin America or Africa and have little knowledge of Jewish-Catholic history, contributing to the longer term lowering of Jewish-Catholic relations in the Vatican. The majority of American Catholics will soon be Hispanic and it remains unclear to how much time and energy the American bishops and clergy will devote to Jewish-­ Catholic relations. Supersessionism (if even in its more benevolent formulations) seems to be critical to the Church’s current theology and no new positive theological breakthroughs are likely to emerge. Jews and evangelicals will continue to have fundamental disagreements over conversion and the place of religion in American public life, and they continue to be separated by a significant social gap. Yet the singularly vocal evangelical support for Israel, the evangelical interest in cultivating better relations with American Jews, the strong influence of American evangelicals on American politics, and the increasing Jewish awareness of moderate evangelicals all auger well for the growth of Jewish-­ Evangelical relations. Given the shrinking percentage of Jews in the overall American population, the Jewish need for alliances with larger groups is bound to grow, and no group has more potential for an alliance with American Jews than do evangelicals. The bases for such relations will remain their agreement on Middle East American policy,114 opposition to Islamist terrorism, and support for such international humanitarian causes as fighting world hunger and human-trafficking.115 Although Jews and evangelicals may come to better understand the religious principles of the other, little theological ease is expected between the two groups, with the possible exception being between moderate evangelicals and some Orthodox  Assuming that the American influence of the pro-Palestinian “new evangelicals” described earlier remains limited. 115  On the potential for such alliance built around these issues, see Mark Silk, “The Future of Jews and evangelicals in American Public Life,” in Uneasy Allies, op. cit. pp. 179–186. 114

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Jews who are committed to a belief in the divine authorship of the Bible and a messianic interpretation of history. Any heating up of the culture wars in popular American culture will make closer Jewish-Evangelical relations difficult and hinder a stable status quo between the groups. Again the Orthodox Jewish community may be an exception here, since unlike the remainder of the Jewish community, both it and evangelicals have similar attitudes (and voting records) when it comes to Donald Trump and much of Republican politics. Should the issues of evangelization and conversion not be highlighted by evangelicals in the near future, Orthodox Jews and evangelicals have every reason to form close political alliances. One potentially significant event in this arena was the think-tank convened in Atlanta in May 2011 by the (Orthodox) Israel-based Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation with the U.S.-based Hebraic Heritage Christian Center (HHCC) to encourage the development of Jewish-Evangelical theological work. The meeting produced a theological statement by the HHCC officials asserting that “God’s relationship with the Jewish people has never been abrogated,” and that the previous theology of Christianity displacing Judaism is “wrong.” It also denounced efforts to single out Jews for proselytization, and defended the right of the Jewish people to the sovereignty of the nation of Israel.116 Although this fertile statement cleared away many of the theological and practical impediments to Jewish-Evangelical dialogue, little has ensued from it. The increasing visibility and growth of Muslims in American society seems likely to lead to a greater importance placed on Muslim opinion in the United States. If so, the Jewish interest in engaging with Muslim Americans will also grow. Although only slight progress has been achieved to date regarding ongoing Jewish-­ Muslim relations and while there still exist significant obstacles toward this end,117 there is significant strategic potential for closer engagement based on common interests and attitudes. Like American Jews, most American Muslims accept an Israel that could coexist with a Palestinian state,118 are highly concerned about Islamic extremism, vote Democratic, and do not support religion interfering in politics or government. President Trump and his policies strengthened the similarity of  See http://cjcuc.org/2011/05/24/hebraic-heritage-christian-center%E2%80%99s-center-statement-on-christian-jewish-relations/, accessed on September 24, 2017. 117  While the overall level of support for Muslim extremism and terrorism among American Muslims is quite low, it is higher among young Muslims, and slightly higher than other Americans. In addition, more young Muslims think of themselves as Muslims first and Americans second than do older American Muslims. This could have a slowing effect on the acceptance of American pluralistic values by Muslims in the future. See “Muslim-Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream” op cit. pp., 2–3, 31, 33, 49–56. 118  Of note is that less than 15 percent of American Muslims stem from Arab cultures and non-Arab Muslims tend to exhibit less hostility to the Jewish State. Another probable cause of American Muslims being more willing to accept Israel than are Middle Eastern Muslims--and thus Israel being less of an obstacle to future Jewish-Muslim relations—is the gradual integration of Muslims into pluralistic American culture, which is conducive to both more personal relations and tolerance between Jews and Muslims. 116

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these profiles, with nearly the same high majority of American (non-Orthodox) Jews and Muslims being dissatisfied with the President,119 strongly opposed to his restrictive immigration policies as well as being concerned with the increase in hostility toward minorities.120 Both groups have significant incentive to fight Christian nationalism, which appeared as an element in the 2022 midterm elections. They also have deep interests in fighting religious bigotry. American Muslims are unlike their European co-religionists in seeking to integrate into the national mainstream.121 Such integration will yield more American Muslim support for the American values of freedom, pluralism, pragmatism and political equality—values that American Jews also champion. As this Americanization takes place, American Muslims could emerge as the strongest voice of Muslim moderation in the world and an effective counterbalance to Islamic extremism. If so, they would represent a strategic ally with American Jews in fighting worldwide Muslim anti-Americanism, antisemitism, and anti-Zionist rejection of Israel. For this alliance to develop, however, both communities must be able to reconsider their strategic interests, learn more about each other and overcome their highly charged emotions regarding the Middle East conflict, and approach the divide in pragmatic terms. A number of factors lie outside of the control of American Jews that will likely determine the tenor and intensity of future American Jewish interfaith experience. A worsening of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and her Arab neighbors will exacerbate—and perhaps break—Jewish-mainline Protestant relations and increase the obstacles in Jewish-Muslim relations, while likely increasing improved Jewish-­ Evangelical relations. Stability in the Middle East and an expansion of the Abraham Accords the will be more conducive to reconciliation with the liberal churches and would open up more realistic possibilities for better Jewish-Muslim relations, while decreasing the impetus for closer relations with evangelicals. Conversely, further outbreaks of Muslim terror or antisemitism around the world will move Jews and evangelicals closer and distance Jews even more from the liberal churches and most American Muslim communities. The priority that the Vatican places on Jewish-­ Catholic relations and its resultant policies will substantively affect the level and temperature of American Jewish-Catholic relations. Should the Vatican make a concerted effort to canonize Pius XII, there will likely be a turn for the worse in Vatican-­ Israel relations. Any renewed theological stress on supersessionism or conversion  According to American Jewish Committee’s August 2017 poll, 77% of American Jews have an unfavorable view of President Trump. (See http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=7o JILSPwFfJSG&b=9302337&ct=15004267¬oc=1, accessed on September 18, 2017). 74% of American Muslims see Trump as “unfriendly to Muslims” while 64% disapprove of his performance. (See http://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/findings-from-pew-research-centers-2017-survey-of-us-muslims/pf_2017-06-26_muslimamericans-00-07/, accessed on September 18, 2017). 120  Again, the 10 percent of American Jews who are Orthodox form a separate cohort not conforming to the general political or sociological profile of heterodox American Jews. Unlike the 90% of heterodox American Jews Orthodox Jews share many common political attitudes and values with American evangelicals, while showing little in common with the attitudes and values of integrationist American Muslims. 121  Ibid, pp. 1–8, 41–56. 119

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from conservative Catholic theologians and officials will damage American Jewish-­ Catholic relations. Rising intermarriage and communal permeability, both of which appear to be fixed features of American life in the near future, will continue to make most American Jews more comfortable with Christians. While this will create a greater need for accommodating non-Jews in liberal synagogues and Jewish communal institutions, such comfort increases the likelihood of assimilation and religious syncretism, which may, in turn, direct traditional Jews to be more inward and drive them farther away from interfaith activity and communal association with gentiles. Eugene Korn (Ph.D. Columbia University) was formerly Director of Interfaith Affairs at the AntiDefamation League, Director of Sacred Heart University’s Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, and Academic Director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Jerusalem, which he helped found. His recent books include To Be a Holy People: Jewish Tradition and Ethical Values (Urim, 2021) and Israel and the Nations: The Bible, the Rabbis, and Jewish-­Gentile Relations (Academic Studies Press, 2023).  

Conclusion: Out of Their Comfort Zone Jerome A. Chanes and Mark Silk

The promise of the United States for Jews was articulated first, and never better, by George Washington. Visiting Newport, Rhode Island, with Thomas Jefferson in 1790 on a trip to thank states for ratifying the Constitution and to promote the Bill of Rights, Washington responded to a letter of greeting from the leader of the local Jewish community with what remains the essential declaration of equality for religious minorities in civil society. The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.1

Jews seized on this promise and in due course the country lived up to it. To be sure, there were times and places where antisemitism stood in the way. In the early decades of the twentieth century, when large numbers of poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe made their presence felt, restrictive covenants on real estate and barriers to private colleges and clubs were erected to keep Jews out. From Henry Ford’s republication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Father Charles Coughlin’s radio broadcasts, there were occasions when hostility to Jews and  https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135

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J. A. Chanes Baruch College, New York, NY, USA M. Silk (*) Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Chanes, M. Silk (eds.), The Future of Judaism in America, Studies of Jews in Society 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7_8

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allegations of their malign influence on America were publicly and prominently disseminated. But none of this stood in the way of one of the most remarkable communal success stories in American history. Jews prospered in twentieth-century America not only in spite but also because of gentile hostility. Restricted from private colleges and universities, they flooded public ones. Kept out of leadership positions in civil society, they built a communal institutional structure that was, organization for organization, second to none. Successful in business and the professions, they made their mark on the landscape with houses of worship, some of them magnificent structures, that advertised their presence to the world. And after the devastation of European Jewry in the Shoah, they stood proud as the wealthiest, most populous, most secure Jewish community in the world. It was, to be sure, a diverse community, not least in the realm of religious commitment, which ranged from groups wedded to the strict practices of the old-world shtetl to non-believers who wouldn’t darken the door of a synagogue. But by ancient rabbinic tradition, so long as they had a Jewish mother and hadn’t converted to another faith, they were all within the Jewish fold, and considered themselves as such. Jewish identity was, literally, their birthright; it was ascribed to them when they were born. For better and perhaps for worse, Judaism has been America’s most ascriptive religious tradition. The turn away from religious identity by ascription has thus posed more of a challenge to American Jews than to any of the country’s other faith communities. Can a community predicated on ascribed identity survive in a society where religious identity is understood as a matter of choice? To what extent has Judaism in America adapted, and will it succeed in adapting sufficiently, to assure its strength in the coming years? These are the underlying questions this volume has sought to answer. The demographic answer suggests that the situation is not as dire as some have feared. The total fertility rate among Jewish Americans is moving up, almost to the level where the community is reproducing itself naturally. Moreover, as Ira Sheshkin points out, even as the demographics suggest a stable Jewish population at best, surveys keep finding higher numbers. Only part of this can be explained by immigration (largely from the former Soviet Union). Wherever the rest come from, at just under seven million, Jews are, by the numbers, holding their own in America. That, however, is not the same as saying that Judaism as a religion is holding its own. Each of the principal streams of Judaism can be seen as adjusting, with varying degrees of success, to Americans’ growing sense that instead of serving as a fixed element of a person’s identity—a spiritual default mode—religion is more like a membership subscription assumed (or not) according to personal needs or desires at a given time and place. Once upon a time, Reform Judaism codified its views in “platforms”—laying down the law for its adherents and in the process alienating or antagonizing other members of the American Jewish faith community—in favor of a more pragmatic, inclusive approach. No longer. Prayer shawls, phylacteries, ritual baths, throwing

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one’s sins into moving water on Rosh Hashana—these traditional observances that fifty years ago were considered abominations in Reform are now perfectly okay, indeed encouraged.2 You get to choose. Likewise, in Reform, the rule that Jewish identity is automatic if either of your parents (and not just your mother) is Jewish, facilitates choice. So does rabbinic performance of mixed marriages and acceptance of non-Jews as members of Reform congregations. To be sure, the “anything goes” willingness of Reform to lower barriers to Jewish identification makes it easier not to opt in—as in the familiar pattern of non-Jewish spouses converting to Judaism under pressure before marriage. The question thus becomes, have Reform’s accommodations worked? So far, the answer appears to be yes, up to a point. As a proportion of the Jewish community as a whole, Reform was at 35% in the National Jewish Population Surveys of 1990 and grew to 37% in the 2021 Pew report—a 31-year period during which those identifying as “just Jewish” (i.e., not professing a Jewish religious affiliation) grew from a quarter to 41%.3 In absolute numbers, Reform has maintained itself. The fact that, according to Pew, 55% of those raised Reform remain Reform, indicates that this is a community capable of attracting roughly the same number of new members as it loses.4 Its adaptations to the new world of choice have, in short, enabled Reform to hold its own. At the other end of the spectrum, the Orthodox have also held their own. Their share of the Jewish community has grown from eight to 9%, with the likelihood that the share will increase in the coming years. That’s because the proportion of Orthodox Jews in the overall Jewish population is clearly increasing, from 3% of those 65 and older to 17% of those 18 to 29, according to Pew. In diametric contrast to Reform, they have adapted to religious identity as choice largely by making it more difficult to opt out. Within the haredi communities, opting out has always been a challenge, especially for women. To leave these tight-knit worlds means losing friends and family, as well as social and economic support systems essential for members to function. They marry early and tend to have large numbers of children, most of whom they keep within the fold. It is no wonder they are thriving. By contrast, the Modern Orthodox, who staked their claim on combining traditional Jewish observance with integration into modern American society, have not fared well.  In this respect it is important to recall that the defining moment for Reform came in 1970, with the publication of Leonard Fein’s watershed Reform is a Verb. Reform had long been afflicted with empty pews, and commissioned Fein to do a study of the movement. Fein’s conclusion, in effect: “You have empty pews because you have an empty religion.” The movement took the message to heart, and one can date Reform’s return to tradition—some enhancement of ritual observances, a beefed up service, addition of Hebrew to the service, attention paid to text—from 1970. Reform did not, however, rescind its position of rejection of a normative system (Halakha). In practice, though the movement began giving tacit approval to ritual practices that became increasingly popular, such as the wearing of the tallit (prayer-shawl) and kippah (head covering), and the use of Hebrew. One ought to note that the “Roots” movement, significant in the late 196os and early 1970s, played a role as well. 3  2000–01 National Jewish Population Survey, Berman Jewish Databank, passim. 4  Pew, 11. 2

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Maintaining high barriers to entry (choosing in) while equipping the next generation for exit (choosing out), they have found themselves losing members to both less and more observant communities. In response, onetime bastions of Modern Orthodox such as Yeshiva University have aped their unaccommodating cousins and moved to the right. Overall, the non-haredi Orthodox world has become increasingly strict in observance, less and less concerned to keep open the doors to secular society, “haredized.” And it is working for them. But the most striking adaptation to the world of choice among the Orthodox is Chabad-Lubavitch. As Lawrence Grossman points out, Chabad’s emissaries do not seek to recruit Jews to be members of their own community, but rather to engage the less observant in traditional Jewish religious practices. Believing that such practices—the performance by Jews of mitzvot—contributes to the quantum of good in the universe, Chabad has succeeded in melding its distinctive theology with the contemporary appetite for episodic spiritual engagement. Unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of any form of Judaism not its own, disdaining collaboration with other segments of the Jewish community, Chabad has nevertheless served to preserve Jewish religious practices in a community increasingly remote from them. The Conservative movement has been the big loser. Once the largest of the streams, it has fallen precipitously from 43% of the total Jewish population to 17%. Its adaptations to choice have followed, slowly and at times grudgingly, behind Reform, in line with its historic roots in an effort to provide Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe with something familiar in the way of religious practice but little that would stand in the way of acculturation into American society. It served, in other words, as a happy medium between observance and non-observance, prospering in world where Jews, like most other Americans, wanted a comfortable, familiar, unchallenging place to practice the faith they were born into. But was it a tradition that offered something worth choosing? Not so much. That is not to deny that Conservative Judaism has made programmatic efforts to teach and inspire. Its network of Ramah camps, established in the post-World War II era, have nurtured Jewish commitment across several generations. But in important respects, its most important adaptation to choice has come by way of a revolt against its own bureaucratized institutional self—through Renewal. A large portion of the founding generation of the havurah movement came out of Conservative synagogues. Imbued with the communitarian spirit of the late 1960s, Renewal set out on its own middle path between strong Jewish identification and an embrace of a range of spiritual traditions. As Magid and Chanes make clear, the neo-Hasidic rabbi Zalman Schachter provided the teachings that attracted young Jews spiritually to the movement. It is no accident that some of these teachings have ended up being incorporated into Conservative synagogues. The problem for the movement as whole, however, is that many of the synagogue members are neither with the program nor want to be; the number of “congregations of renewal” is far outnumbered by those in decline. Grossman predicts that in due course the Reform and Conservative streams will merge into one large non-Orthodox body. Reform is no longer resistant to traditional liturgical forms and practices, while the Conservative movement seems

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destined to follow Reform in accepting intermarriage and patrilineality as it accepted women into the rabbinate. The question is what such a merger would mean in the post-denominational world of contemporary American religion. In Judaism as in Christianity, a critical dimension of religion-as-choice is that denominational brands have come to mean less and less. If you join a congregation, it’s because it’s the one that meets your present needs; if you leave, it’s because your needs have changed. Increasing numbers of Americans pick and choose, sometimes simultaneously partaking of what’s on offer across religious lines—Protestant and Catholic, Christian and Jewish, Eastern and Abrahamic—that previous generations considered mutually exclusive. One way or another, for Americans of the future seeking a Jewish congregation, it looks as though there will be two broad camps, Orthodox and non-­ Orthodox, to choose between. Post-denominationalism is only part of the larger story of institutional decline in American civil society. As famously discussed a quarter-century ago by political scientist Robert D.  Putnam in his essay “Bowling Alone,” Americans no longer belong to organizations the way they used to. For the Jewish community, as Marc Stern shows, this has meant a significant weakening of the communal institutions, not least at the national level. Once upon a time, the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah, and B’nai B’rith bestrode the Jewish world like colossi, molding and mobilizing Jewish public opinion and public action, and exerting the community’s influence in the wide world. Now these organizations matter much less, and their agendas are a function less of the collective determination of members and professional staff than of the wishes of wealthy donors, who wield their pocketbooks independently in the public square. Alongside and behind this institutional decline are policy divisions within the Jewish community—divisions that relate directly to the culture wars that have buffeted American society over the past half-century. During that time a deep fissure has grown between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox over the salient culture-war issues of abortion, gay rights, and religious liberty. Increasingly, the Orthodox have become allied with the Christian right and with the Republican Party. Meanwhile, the non-Orthodox stand firmly to the left. Although the Jewish vote has remained strongly Democratic, the growing strength of the Orthodox has made it harder to establish common positions on some of the most contentious policy issues of our time. Within the Jewish community itself, no issue has created more problems than support for the State of Israel, which during the past few decades has come to dominate the policy agenda. As Eugene Korn demonstrates, this has complicated interfaith relations, above all with mainline Protestants. On the one hand, the longstanding critical stance of mainline Protestantism toward Israel has grown stronger, with a number of the most prominent denominations openly supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. On the other, evangelicals enthusiastically embraced Israel and its right-wing government even as that government embraced them and Republican politicians. For the first time since the founding of the state, Israel threatens to become a partisan issue, with Democrats—including a majority of American Jews—at odds with Israel’s expansionist policies. Whatever the impact

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of the accession of Joe Biden to the American presidency in 2021 and the switch from the centrist  Bennett-Lapid government to the rightist Netanyahu regime  in Israel in 2022, there seems little question that the ability of the American Jewish community to speak with one voice to influence national policy on Israel as on other issues will be weaker going forward. How much this matters for the future of Judaism in America is hard to say. Other religious communities, most notably Roman Catholics, find themselves internally divided on many policy issues, with leadership sometimes allied closely with the Republicans and sometimes with Democrats. It is hard to see it as anything but a strength in civil society when religious communities are not fully aligned with one political party. That support for Israel is no longer as bipartisan as it once was is more the consequence of Israeli government policy than of American Jewish preference—a consequence that may, in the long run, be a good thing for Judaism’s future. Connection to a religion should not be contingent on support for a particular politics, even when that politics has to do with an issue as intimately tied to it as Israel is to Judaism. However U.S.-Israel policy turns out, it can only be healthy for American Jews to be forced to grapple with the regime of choice. Established religions tend to ossify, and there is no doubt that some ossification took place in the postwar era, when Jewish Americans, like Americans of other faiths, settled into the comfortable business of building mighty fortresses of worship, and taking their ascribed places inside them. Crucial to the future of Judaism in America is the new role of women in the religious community and its praxis. Sylvia Barack Fishman reports on how contemporary religious and social expressions on the part of American (and Israeli) Jewish women have included innovations in scholarship and education, in arts and letters, and especially in leadership, both lay and rabbinic. Fishman develops a construct for understanding how the evolving role of women is setting a new set of contexts for the American Jewish communal dynamic, which is redefining contemporary Jewishness. The transformations described by Fishman are not merely related to intellectual and religious activity. They are transforming Judaism in America as a lived religious tradition. In point of fact, women have provided much of the spiritual energy in contemporary Judaism, in the Orthodoxies examined by Fishman and across the movements—from havurot through Reform and Reconstruction and newer post-denominational independent minyanim. Fishman’s disclaimer about gender balance notwithstanding, Jewish women have pushed organized Judaism in the direction of much of the rest of institutional religion in America, shifting the gender balance in terms of religious leadership at the congregational level, even in some segments of the Orthodox arena. It is worth recalling that when George Washington sent his thank-you letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, religion in the infant republic was not thriving. The Anglican establishments of the colonial period had disappeared and New England’s Congregational establishments were on their last legs. Less than 20% of

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the population belonged to a church; a significant portion of the intellectual elite were Deists or outright unbelievers. Within a generation, however, the country experienced the greatest revival in its history. This Second Great Awakening was, in fact, a festival of choice. Tiny sects of Baptists and Methodists used revivalism to gain waves of adherents and became America’s dominant Protestant bodies. Novel religious movements—Shakers, Mormons, Adventists—sprang up, drawing adherents with novel, controversial doctrines. The fears of the settled clergy that disestablishment—the separation of church and state by the federal government and in due course by all the states—would destroy religion proved groundless. By the Civil War, church membership had increased 20-fold, nearly twice as fast as the population as a whole. Religious institutions in America had never been stronger. The rise of the Nones in our own time represents a new disestablishment, a psychological disestablishing of the belief that identifying with a religion is a necessary part of having an American identity. Whether this new disestablishment results in a religious awakening, as happened in the early nineteenth century, remains to be seen. As we have discussed, it is especially challenging for the Jewish tradition. Where the post-World War II ascriptive regime accorded well with the tradition’s ancient understanding of Jewish identity, the contemporary regime of choice has forced Jewish institutions, secular and religious, out of their comfort zone. We have traced their response thus far. How they respond going forward will determine the future of Judaism in America. Jerome A. Chanes is an adjunct professor at Baruch College of the City University of New York. He was national affairs director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (now the Jewish Council for Public Affairs) and was associate executive director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. He has taught at Barnard College, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Tel Aviv University School of Law, Yeshiva University, and the Academy of Jewish Religion. His books include Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook, Antisemitism in America Today: Exploding the Myths, and A Primer on the American Jewish Community, and he is author of more than 100 articles, book chapters, reviews, and encyclopedia entries on Jewish issues and arts and letters.  

Mark Silk (Ph.D.  Harvard University), co-editor of the Future of American Religion series, is director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His books include Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II, Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America, and, co-authored with Andrew Walsh, One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. He is a columnist and contributing editor at the Religion News Service.  

Index

A Abortion, 39, 147, 149, 151, 152, 155–157, 164, 180, 211 Academy for Jewish Religion, 22, 123 Ackelsberg, M., 97, 98 Adelson, S., 135 Adler, R., 98 African Americans, 87 Agudath Israel of America, 175 Agus, R., 93 Aleichem, S., 89 Allen, W., 89 Alt-Right, 7, 132, 133, 135, 148, 159, 161 America, 1–12, 14, 15, 25, 48, 52, 54, 64, 69, 84, 85, 88–93, 96, 97, 106–108, 110, 117, 123, 124, 129, 130, 136, 150, 155, 166–172, 175, 176, 179, 180, 183, 185, 187, 189, 191–193, 196–202, 207, 208, 212, 213 American Catholic, 167, 170, 174, 181, 188, 189, 202 American Christian Zionism, 194 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), 134, 147, 153, 163, 164 Americanization, 14, 16, 204 American Jewish Birth Rate, 67 American Jewish Civil Religion, 89 American Jewish Committee (AJC), 83, 88, 131, 132, 135, 136, 140–142, 152, 156, 163, 176, 178, 190, 197, 200, 204, 211 American Jewish Congress (AJCongress), 88, 131, 132, 155, 156, 176, 211 American Jewish Death Rate, 66, 67 American Jewish Population, 55, 56, 60, 64, 66, 67, 130, 200

American Jewish World Service (AJWS), 165 American Jewish Year Book, 14, 54, 56, 58–61, 64, 67, 83, 84, 132 American Jewry, 10, 13, 17, 34, 38, 39, 47, 51, 64, 135, 146, 156, 178, 179, 194 American Jews, 2, 3, 6–10, 13, 18, 34, 38, 40, 51, 53, 55, 56, 58–61, 63–65, 67, 69, 85, 88–90, 95, 99, 106–109, 114, 115, 128, 131, 140–144, 148, 153, 154, 158, 163–165, 167, 169–172, 177–179, 182, 185, 186, 192, 194, 195, 197–205, 208, 211, 212 American Judaism, 8–12, 14–17, 21, 35, 55–57, 66, 67, 101, 107, 110, 112, 128, 130, 168 American Modern Orthodoxy, 48 American Neo-Hasidism, 94 American Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, 183 American Orthodoxy, 38 American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in Postethnic Society, 36 Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 157 American value, 172, 204 Andover Theological Seminary, 170 Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 88, 176, 178, 190, 193, 200, 211 Antler, J., 99 Apartheid, 184, 187 Aquarian Age, 100 Aquarian Minyan, 93–95, 106 Arafat, Y., 183 Argentina, 123, 172 Arizona, 63

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Chanes, M. Silk (eds.), The Future of Judaism in America, Studies of Jews in Society 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24990-7

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216 Arnovitz, A., 125 ArtScroll, 91 Atlanta, 63, 71, 73, 74, 76–79, 203 Auslander, S., 90 Australia, 113, 126, 128 Avi Chai Foundation, 33 Aylon, H., 125 B Ba’alei Teshuva, 135 Babylonia, 106 Bais Yakov, 113, 114 Benjamin, M., 124 Bennett-Lapid, 212 Berger, P., 14, 36, 42, 43, 50 Berkeley, 93, 106, 107 Berkovits, E., 175 Bet Breira, 32 Between Jerusalem and Rome, 183 Beverly Hills, 118 Bible, 44, 45, 102, 192, 194, 195, 203 Biden, Joe, 141, 144, 161, 212 Biden, Joseph, 161 Bill of Rights, 17, 207 Bin Salman, M., 136 Birthright Israel, 83, 84 Bitton, M., 123 Black Power movement, 92 Bloomberg, M., 149 B’nai B’rith, 211 B’nai Jeshurun, 96 Bon mot, 151 Bookbinder, H., 136 Book of Esther, 99 Boot, M., 136 Boston, 22, 71, 74, 76, 78–80, 93, 170, 175 Boston College, 176 Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS), 158, 163, 186 Brandeis University, 60, 95, 126, 127 Brentschneider, M., 99 Brit Ahuvim, 98 Broadway, 89 Brog, D., 192 Bronfman, E., 54 Bronx, 119 Brookline, Massachusetts, 114 Brooks, M., 89 Brous, S., 123 Brovender, C., 111 Broward County, 57, 77 Brown, E., 123

Index Buber, M., 95 Buchanan, P., 144 Buchdahl, A., 124 Buckley, W.F., 135 Buren, P.V., 173 Bush, G.W., 133, 183, 192 C Caesar, S., 90 California, 60, 63, 106, 133, 139, 145, 148, 198, 199 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 111 Camp Isabella Friedman, 101 Camp Ramah, 118 Canada, 20, 128, 185 Cantor, A., 97, 98 Cantor, E., 145 Cardinal Bertone, T., 188 Cardinal Kasper, W., 188, 190 Carlebach Minyanim, 96 Carlebach, Shlomo, 93, 94, 112 Carlebach, Shul, 96 Carter, J., 141 Catalogue, 95 Catholic president, 51, 172 Center-right, 136 Central Agency for Jewish Education, 33 Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), 15, 24, 30 Central European Jewish Migration, 59 Chabad, 5, 41, 42, 69, 70, 83, 84, 94, 100, 107, 210 Chabad-Lubavich, 100 Chabon, M., 90 Chadasha, S., 113 Chanes, J.A., 9, 87–108, 210 Chanukah, 41, 79–81 Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, 33 Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally, 148 Chicago, 37, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 92, 175 Chipman, J., 91, 112 Chovevei Torah, 50, 97 Christ, C., 98 Christendom, 170 Christian Americans, 169 Christian Europe, 169 Christianity in Jewish Terms, 182 Christianizing America, 178 Christ killers, 170 Church-affiliated protestants, 168 Citizens United v. FEC, 159

Index Civic Agency, 171 Civil Rights Movement, 7, 95, 110 Civil War, 15, 213 Classical Reform, 15, 17, 24 Clinton, H., 40, 136, 161, 183 Cohen, S.M., 5, 18, 19, 23, 37, 38 Colorado, 63 Commentary, 102, 135 Commission on Jewish Law and Standards, 23 Committee for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), 196, 197 Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 189 Committee on Jewish Law (CJL), 111 Common Judaism, 35 Communism, 170 Communities, 2–11, 14, 18, 20–22, 24, 29, 31, 32, 34, 37–41, 43, 46, 47, 49–53, 55–60, 62, 65–85, 89, 91–96, 99, 100, 104–108, 110, 112–114, 116, 118–120, 123, 125, 128–130, 133–136, 141–144, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152–154, 156–162, 164–166, 168, 169, 173, 176, 178–182, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 193, 196–204, 207–212 Community Relations Councils (CRC), 156, 157, 194 Conference of European Rabbis, 183 Conference of Jewish Legislators, 146 Congressional Black Caucus, 146 Connecticut, 101, 212 Conservative, 4, 6, 8, 9, 13, 16, 18, 21–24, 26–34, 37, 40, 41, 46, 51, 68, 73, 77, 92, 98, 111–113, 118, 120, 123, 136, 147, 149–151, 165, 176, 181, 188, 190–192, 195, 199, 205, 210 Conservative Ansche Chesed, 111 Conservative Jews, 23, 28, 32, 39, 58, 115, 150, 156 Conservative Judaism, 8, 16, 17, 21, 24, 25, 28, 30, 31, 34, 88, 107, 114, 210 Conservative Movement, 2, 22, 27, 29, 33, 34, 93, 98, 107, 112, 118, 122, 175, 210 Conservative Temple Beth Am, 111 Contemporary American Judaism, 19 Contemporary Judaism: Patterns of Survival, 13 Convention of the Conservative Movement, 111 Cosgrove, E., 29 Coughlin, C., 132, 170

217 Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations (CCJR), 181, 198 Covid-19, 64, 65 Creation of Israel, 171 Credo of a Modern Kabbalist, 101 D Dabru Emet, 182 Daf Yomi, 115, 116, 129 Dallas, 63 Daly, M., 98 Darkhei Noam, 99, 113 David, L., 90 Debs, E.V., 134 Defense of Marriage Act, 26 Deity, 34, 125 Democrat, 40, 141, 144, 145, 147, 151, 160–163, 211, 212 Democratic Party, 40, 135, 138, 139, 142, 144, 147, 159, 160, 166 Democratic pluralism, 171 Denver, 62, 63, 71–75, 78–80 Detroit, Michigan, 32, 76, 121 Devorah Scholar Grants, 127 Dilling, E., 170 District of Columbia, 60 Dov Ber Soloveitchik, J., 112, 114 Drisha, 112, 113, 115, 117, 122 Drisha Institute, 99 Drisha Institute for Women, 22 Drisha Minyan, 112 Duke, D., 148 Durkheim, E., 125, 129 Duterte, R., 136 E Eastern Europe, 59, 91, 93, 138, 207, 210 Eckardt, A.R., 171, 173 Edah, 50 Eden Village, 107 Egypt, 179, 201 Eilberg, A., 25 Eisen, A., 18, 23, 24, 28 Eisenhower Revival, 88 Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us About Building Vibrant Jewish, 21 Endogamy, 169, 199 Engendering Judaism, 98 English, 16, 115, 122, 124, 125 Episcopal Church USA, 181, 184, 201

218 Epstein, J., 21 Erdogan, R., 136 Europe, 5, 15, 55, 92, 100, 106, 108, 113, 136, 165, 173, 189, 202 Evangelical agenda, 136 Evangelical Lutheran in America (ELCA), 181, 186, 187 Evangelical Protestants, 168, 169, 195 Evangelicals, 3, 11, 39, 51, 136, 146, 147, 149, 152, 153, 170, 177–181, 183, 192–195, 197, 201–204, 211 Exodus, 89, 102, 107, 165, 202 Exodus, 33:18–23, 102 Expanding the Palace of Torah, 99, 121, 122 Ezrat Nashim, 25, 97, 98, 111, 129 F Fabrengen, 95 Falk, M., 124 Falmouth, Massachusetts, 94 Farber, M., 116 Father Coughlin, C., 132, 170, 207 Father Feeney, L., 170 Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, 28 Ferziger, A., 47, 113, 119, 120 Fiddler on the Roof, 89, 107 Fine, D., 32 Fishbane, M., 94 Fisher, E., 177, 191 Fishman, S.B., 10, 111 Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, 83 Florida, 22, 60, 63, 66, 72, 73, 81, 132, 133 Fogelman, E., 98 Ford, H., 207 Former Soviet Union (FSU), 59, 60, 67, 84, 208 For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 182 Forwerts, 134 Fragments of a Future Scroll: Hasidism for the Aquarian Age, 100 Francis, P., 11, 183, 189, 191, 201 Freiheit, 134 Fuch, L., 131 G Gallup Organization, 138 Gaza, 37, 140, 143, 192, 201 Geiger, A., 106 Geller, L., 118 Gendler, E., 93, 94 General Assembly of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 29

Index General Theological Seminary, 176 Geneva, 176 George Washington University’s Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership, 123 German Jews, 17 Germany, 15, 88 Glazer, N., 1, 87, 169 Gleason, P., 88 God, 14, 18, 24, 41, 45, 101–103, 105, 122, 124, 165, 174, 177, 180, 182, 188, 190–192, 195, 203 God Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, 101–103 Goldberg, J.J., 132 Goldstein, E., 99 Goodman, A., 90 Gorsetman, C.R., 116 Graduate Program for Women in Advanced Talmud Studies, 112 Green, Art, 93 Green, Arthur, 22, 94, 100, 101, 105 Greenberg, A., 138, 142, 143, 151 Greenberg, B., 98, 99, 112, 127 Greenberg, I., 96, 104, 171, 173, 174, 182, 183 Greene, M.T., 148 Grossman, L., 8, 39, 41, 42 H Hadar, K., 20, 50, 96, 113 Hadassah, 88, 127, 211 Hadassah Brandeis Institute (HBI), 127 Hadran, 116 Hagar, 124 Halakhah, 23–25, 36, 44, 48–50 Hamas attacks, 37 Haredi Judaism, 92 Haredim, 38, 40–44 Haredi Orthodoxy, 43 Hasidic Jews, 38, 41, 91, 93–96, 100, 101, 103, 106, 107, 149, 153 Hasidism, 5, 34, 91, 95, 100, 101 Hauptman, J.R., 123 Havurah, 92–96, 111 Havurah movement, 9, 18, 20, 92, 94, 95, 105, 210 Havurot, 9, 18, 92–95, 125, 126, 212 Havurat Shalom, 93–96, 106, 111 Havurat Shalom Community Seminary, 93 Hebraic prophetic tradition, 171 Hebrew, 14, 15, 17, 20, 23, 46, 90, 110, 114–119, 125, 132, 197, 209 Hebrew Bible, 1, 97, 102 Hebrew College, 22

Index Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, 97, 119 Hebrew Union College (HUC), 15, 26, 31, 33, 50 Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 83 Held, S., 97, 126 Herberg, W., 3, 17, 88, 89, 95, 171 Herman, F., 21 Heschel, A.J., 95, 171, 173, 174, 200 Heschel, S., 99, 174 Hezbollah, 157, 185 Himmelfarb, G., 135 Himmelfarb, M., 56, 151 Hispanic Jews, 60 Hobby Lobby, 152, 153, 164 Hoenlein, M., 193 Hoffman, L., 19 Holocaust, 55, 83, 103–105, 148, 170–177, 179, 181, 189 Holtz, B., 93, 96 Horn, D., 116 House of Love and Prayer (HLP), 93, 94 Houston, 63, 71, 74, 75, 77–80 Hundert, G., 94 Hunter, J.D., 51 Hurwitz, S., 112, 119 Hyman, P., 98, 136 I I am Israel, 186 Ikar, 96, 123 Illinois, 60, 133 Immigration, 7, 15, 131, 147, 148, 154, 155, 198, 204, 208 Independent Minyanim, 20, 21, 33, 36, 113, 125–126, 212 Independent Minyan Movement, 96, 125 Integral Halacha, 105 Interfaith Concept, 1, 11, 34, 167, 168, 171, 172, 174–176, 178, 179, 181–183, 188–191, 196–201, 204, 205 Intermarriage, 9, 27–30, 47, 51–53, 66–69, 72–79, 85, 89, 107, 169, 172, 187, 199, 205, 211 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, 156 International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), 176, 188, 191, 198 International Rabbinic Federation (IRF), 49, 50 International Women’s Talmud Day, 115 Interstate Highway System, 64 Iraq, 135, 201

219 Irshai, R., 122 Isaiah 55:8, 40:18, 25, 102 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), 196–198 Israel, 7, 10, 11, 18, 20, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 47, 48, 53, 55, 58, 59, 69, 70, 81, 83, 84, 89, 104, 108, 112, 113, 115–118, 120, 121, 124, 126–128, 132–136, 140–147, 149, 150, 154–160, 162–166, 168, 172, 173, 175, 177–181, 184–187, 190–195, 197, 199–204, 211, 212 Israeli Chief Rabbinate, 183 Israeli Nishmat, 112 Israeli Orthodoxy, 47, 48 J Jackson, J., 160 Jefferson, T., 207 Jerusalem, 99, 111–113, 118, 142, 147, 185, 191 Jesus, 3, 5, 58, 170, 174, 190, 195 Jewfro, 90 Jewish agenda, 144, 158 Jewish Birth Rates, 67 Jewish Bookstores, 21, 64 Jewish Camps, 64, 84 Jewish Catalogue, 95 Jewish-Christian interaction, 168, 170 Jewish-Christian intermarriage, 11, 172, 199 Jewish communal leadership, 158 Jewish Community Centers, 61, 64, 83 Jewish Community Centers of America (JCCA), 88 Jewish Council on Public Affairs (JCPA), 156, 160 Jewish day schools, 57, 64, 83, 114, 117, 120 Jewish demography, 56 Jewish denominationalism, 14–18 Jewish donors, 159, 162 Jewish education agencies, 64 Jewish-Evangelical Interaction, 169 Jewish Family Services, 64 Jewish Feminism and Intersectionality, 99 Jewish Funeral Homes, 64 Jewish Identity, 4, 5, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 23, 29, 36, 39, 45, 48, 55, 57–58, 61, 62, 65, 67, 69, 82–85, 178, 179, 208, 209, 213 Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), 135, 136 Jewish Labor Committee, 134 Jewish law, 15, 16, 23, 25, 44, 48, 90, 101, 105, 119, 121 Jewish left, 134, 163

220 Jewish Liberation Journal, 97 Jewish migration, 15, 59 Jewish newspapers, 64, 132, 161 Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), 46, 47, 49, 99, 127, 128 Jewish PACs, 162 Jewish racism, 140 Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation, 99 Jewish renewal movement, 92, 98 Jewish representation in Congress, 144, 145 Jewish Seminaries, 16, 33, 64 Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), 16, 21, 24, 25, 30, 33, 50, 95, 118, 123, 165, 193 Jewish Voices for Peace, 134 Jewish voting patterns, 131, 132 Jewish Welfare Board, 88 Jewish Women’s Archive, 127 Jewish working class, 134 Jewry, 1, 13, 51, 59, 156, 208 Jews for Economic and Social Justice, 134 Jews for Urban Justice, 92, 97 Jews of no religion (JNR), 35, 58, 67, 68, 78, 109 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), 142 Jong-un, K., 136 JStreet, 134, 164 Judaica stores, 64 Judaism, 1, 2, 4–6, 8–11, 13–16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 31, 33–38, 40–42, 45, 47, 50, 51, 64, 66, 67, 69, 79, 84, 85, 88, 90–98, 100, 101, 103–110, 112, 114, 118, 124, 125, 128–130, 150, 153, 154, 167, 170, 171, 173–177, 179, 180, 182, 183, 189–192, 195, 199, 203, 208–213 Judaism as a Civilization, 101 Judeo-Christian Tradition, 171 June 1967, 172, 179 Just Jewish Identification, 69–70, 73, 76–78, 80 K Kaye, D., 90 Kennedy, J.F., 132, 172 Koltun, E., 98 Koren, S.F., 122 Korn, E., 174, 175, 183, 184 Kranson, R., 93 Krauss, S., 49 Kristol, B., 135

Index Kristol, I., 135 Kugel, J., 45, 94 Kuhn, T., 101 Kurshan, I., 116 Kabbalah, 34, 102 Kehillat Hadar, 20 Kennedy - Nixon Presidential Campaign, 132 Kennedy’s Catholicism, 132 Kollel, 115 Kosher butchers, 64 Kosher food stores, 64 Kosher restaurants, 64 Kaplan, M., 16, 24, 101, 103 Kaunfer, E., 20, 21, 97, 126 L Lamm, N., 41 Las Vegas, 63, 72, 74–79 Lautenberg, F., 147 Law of Return, 48, 58 Leadership Institute for Congregational School Educators, 33 Lerner, M., 134 Levy, R., 24 LGBT rights, 147, 180 Libertarians, 151 Library Minyan, 96, 98, 111 Lieberman, J., 139 Liebman, C., 17, 18, 39, 44 Lilith, 98 Limmud, 22 Littel, F.H., 173 London, M., 134 Lopatin, A., 50 Los Angeles, 22, 36, 77–80, 96, 98, 111 Los Angeles Times, 39 Louis XIV, 54 Luria, I., 102 Lyotard, J.-F., 19 M Magid, S., 9, 36, 87–108 Maharat, 46, 119 Maimonides School, 114 Mainline Protestants, 11, 169, 173, 177, 180, 181, 185–187, 192, 200, 201 Manhattan, 93, 95–97, 111, 124, 126 Marseilles, 104 Marshall, L., 131 Maryland, 60, 64 Maryland Democratic Party, 160

Index Mason, J., 90 Massachusetts, 60, 94, 106, 111, 114, 212 Mathews, B., 170 McAlpin Hotel, 98 McCain, J., 40, 142 McCarthyism, 155 McKinney, C., 162 Meah, 22 Mearsheimer, J., 132, 135 Mechon Hadar, 97, 113, 126 Medicaid, 159 Menitoff, P., 30 Messiah, 41, 42, 58 Messianic Jews, 58 Messinger, R., 150, 165 Messinger’s American Jewish World Service, 150 Miami, 32, 57, 66, 71, 75, 78–80, 83 Micah Foundation, 127 Middle Ages, 102, 103, 106 Midrash Rabbah, 102 Midwest, 57, 61, 65, 69, 70, 84 Minneapolis, 71, 74, 75, 118 Mintz, A., 18, 92, 93, 96 Modern Orthodoxy, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47–50, 90, 91, 97, 176 Modern Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, 119 Mohalim, 64 Montgomery County, 64 Morgan, T.B., 53 Moses, 102, 124 Moshe, 45, 115 Muhlenberg College, 176 Musar Movement, 91 Muslim, 11, 25, 153, 167, 183, 195–204 N Nadler, J., 147 Najman, D., 112 Naomi, Z., 124 Napoleonic Germany, 15 Nashim, E., 25, 97, 98, 111 Nathan Cummings Foundation, 37 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 179 National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), 171 National Council of Churches of Christ (NCCC), 181, 184–186 National Council of Churches, 179, 197 National Council of Jewish Women, 157 National Council of Young Israel, 16

221 National Election Pool, 141 National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL), 197 National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, 156, 182 National Jewish Democratic Coalition (NJDC), 160, 161 National Jewish Population Study of 2000-01, 30 National Jewish Population Surveys (NJPS), 56, 64, 65, 67, 68, 115, 209 National Jewish Resource Center, 96 National Study of American Jewish Giving, 37 Neo-conservatives, 135 Netanya, 185 Netanyahu, B., 132, 139, 140, 143, 159, 162 Neturei Karta, 42 Nevada, 63, 81 New Age, 99, 100, 105 New England, 102, 126, 212 New Jersey, 60, 63, 147, 176 New Jewish Feminism: Probing the Past, Forging the Future, 99 New Left, 92 New Politics conference, 92 New York, 16, 20, 22, 24, 36, 40, 46, 53, 60, 63, 71, 74, 75, 78–80, 98, 99, 107, 112, 113, 123, 133, 147, 161, 175, 198 New York City, 29, 43, 63, 99, 123, 134, 148, 169, 178, 179 New York Havurah, 93, 95, 97, 111 New York’s West Side Minyan, 95 New York Times, 19, 53, 54, 116, 136, 182, 193 Newport, Rhode Island, 77 Niebuhr, R., 171, 173 Nights to Honor Israel, 193 Non-Orthodox Jews, 39, 83, 121, 149, 175 Non-Protestant, 172 North America, 83, 113 Northeast, 57, 61, 65, 69, 70, 84, 195 Nostra Aetate, 174–177, 182, 189 Notre Dame, 176 Novak, W., 92 O Obama, B., 40, 108, 132, 139, 140, 142, 144, 150, 154 Offner, S., 118 Old Right, 135 Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation, 197

222 On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition, 98 Open Orthodoxy, 49, 50, 97 Orange County, 63 Orban, V., 136 Orthodox, 1–6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15–17, 21, 25, 34, 38–51, 58, 68, 70, 73, 77, 83, 92, 94, 96–99, 106, 107, 110–115, 117–122, 125–128, 133, 136, 140, 141, 143, 149–152, 155, 165, 175, 176, 181–183, 195, 203, 209–212 Orthodox Jewish law, 16 Orthodox Jews, 10, 15, 38, 40, 43–45, 47, 48, 51, 58, 64, 89, 120, 140, 141, 149, 155, 164, 165, 175, 178, 190, 194, 195, 202–204, 209 Orthodox Judaism, 8, 15, 25, 38, 44, 176 Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), 45, 47–50, 111, 119 Orthodox Union (OU), 16, 41, 47, 119, 181, 190 Orthodoxy, 15, 17, 30, 38–42, 45–50, 90, 93, 97, 109, 113, 121, 123, 126, 149, 212 Oxford English Dictionary, 87 P Palestine, 133, 144 Palestinian intifadas, 192 Palestinians, 11, 37, 135, 142, 163, 164, 181, 183–187, 194, 203, 204 Palin, S., 161 Palm Beach County, 63 Panken, A., 26 Paradigm Shift, 101, 102 Paradigm-Shift Judaism, 100–102 Pardes, 111, 112, 117 Park Avenue Synagogue, 29 Pascal, B., 54 Passover Seder, 68, 70, 76, 79–81, 123 Paul II, J., 176, 177, 188, 191 Pennsylvania, 60 People for Orthodox Renaissance and Torah (PORAT), 50 Perot, R., 144 Pew Foundation, 34 Pew Research Center, 54, 56, 60, 64, 68, 70, 77, 140, 150 Phoenix, 63, 71, 72, 74, 76, 78–80 Pittsburgh Platform, 15 Plaskow, J., 98 P’nei (Faces of Light), 94 Poland, 106, 114

Index Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), 181, 184–187, 192, 201 President Obama, 108, 123, 132 Priesand, S., 25, 97 Pro-choice, 152, 155 Pro Conversione Iudaeorum, 188 Protestant-Catholic-Jew, 3, 11, 88 Protestant Christianity, 15 Protestant Reformation, 14 Protestants and Other Americans United, 157 Protestant World Council of Churches (WCC), 176 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 207 Purim, 99 Putin, V., 136 Putnam, R.D., 19 R Rabba, 119 Rabbinical Assembly, 16, 25, 27, 30, 98 Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), 16, 45, 181, 190 Rabbi Schneier, M., 198 Rabbi Skorka, A., 202 Rabbis Tannenbaum, M., 178 Rapoport, N., 96 Reagan Era, 136 Reagan, R., 7, 135, 136, 138, 141 Reconstructionism, 8, 17, 26–28, 30, 101 Reconstructionist, 9, 13, 24, 27, 32, 73, 111, 112, 118, 123, 126, 140, 175 Reconstructionist Federation of Congregations, 17 Reconstructionist Judaism, 16, 27 Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, 17 Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, 17, 25 Reconstruction Jews, 4, 8, 9, 17, 27, 73, 111, 140 Reform, 2–9, 13, 15–17, 21–28, 30–34, 37, 41, 58, 68, 73, 77, 92, 93, 97, 106, 107, 111–113, 117, 118, 123, 124, 126, 135, 140, 149, 153, 157, 160, 175, 176, 181, 188–190, 198, 199, 209–212 Reform-Conservative-Orthodox model, 51 Reform Jews, 15, 23, 24, 39, 150 Reform Judaism, 2, 5, 15, 25, 114, 117, 208 Reimer, G.T., 127 Religion, 1–5, 8–10, 12–15, 17, 19, 22, 27, 35, 36, 47, 51, 53, 58, 64–69, 76, 88–90, 98, 100, 105, 106, 109, 125, 128–130, 132, 146, 147, 151, 152, 154, 167, 174, 178, 192, 194, 196–198, 200, 202, 203, 208, 211–213

Index Replacement theology, 170, 195 Reproductive choice, 152, 155, 156 Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), 141, 147, 160, 161 Republicans, 40, 133, 136–138, 141, 142, 144–148, 153, 160–163, 192, 203, 211, 212 Response, 2, 6, 10, 35, 45, 68, 88, 92, 96, 97, 104–106, 119, 121, 133, 154, 183, 185, 194, 210, 213 Rev. Hagee, J., 193 Rheinharz, S., 127 Riskin, S., 112, 182 Riverdale, 46 Rome, 172, 177, 190, 191, 202 Romemu, 36, 96 Romney, M., 40, 142 Rosenfeld, D., 97 Rosenthal, R.G., 13, 14, 51 Rose, S., 92, 97 Roskies, D., 94, 111 Ross, T., 98, 121, 122 Rottenberg, D., 99 Rubenstein, R., 173 Rudin, J., 177, 178 Ruskay, J., 93 Ruth, 124, 150, 165 S Saban Institute, 136 Sabbath, 15, 29, 64, 68, 79–81, 89 Sacks-Herenstein Center, 123 Sacks, J., 123 Same-sex marriage, 26, 139, 149, 152, 155, 164 Samuel Bronfman Foundation, 20 San Antonio, 66, 71–75, 193 Sanctuary of Broadway Presbyterian Church in New York, 170 San Diego, 63, 71, 72, 74, 75 Sanders, B., 163 San Francisco, 63, 72–75, 77–80, 93 Sarai, 124 Sarna, L., 122 Sasso, S., 25 Satmar, 50 Savran, G., 95 Schachter-Shalomi, Z., 9, 94, 96, 100–105 Scheininger, P., 128 Schenirer, S., 114 Schneerson, M.M., 41, 42, 100 Schorsch, I., 21

223 Schwarz, S., 36 Seattle, 63, 72–75, 77–79 Second Great Awakening, 213 Second Temple, 106, 199 Second Vatican Council, 172, 174, 175, 188 Second Wave Feminism, 10, 97, 110, 117 Sectarian Jews, 149 Secular Humanistic Judaism, 34 Sefaria, 115 Seton Hall University, 176 Setton, S., 123 Shabbat, 23, 32, 68, 94, 97, 101, 105, 113, 118 Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, 123 Shapiro, M., 113 Shared Marginalization, 169 Shavuot, 101 Sheskin, I., 9 Shirah Hadasha, 99 Shoah, 173, 175, 208 Shtieble, 96 Siegal, R., 95 Silber, D., 99, 113 Silverman, S., 90 Simon, C., 28 Six Day War, 7, 92, 172, 179 Sleeper, J., 18, 92 Solarz, S., 148 Solomon Schechter school network, 21 Soloveitchik, J.B., 112, 175 Somerville, Massachusetts, 93, 106 Soros, G., 135, 148, 149 South, 6, 57, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 69–71, 73, 75, 76, 78–80, 82, 84, 176, 194, 195, 202 Southern Jewish Community, 83 Sperber, D., 112, 113, 121, 127 Stalin, 134 Standing Again at Sinai, 98 State of Israel, 17, 55, 89, 177, 180, 194, 195, 211 Stav, D., 48 Steinhardt, M.H., 35 Steinmetz, D., 99 Stephens, B., 136 Stern College for Women, 112 Stern, M., 10 St. Joseph’s University, 176 St. Louis, 33, 62, 71, 74, 75, 77–80 Stone, R.H., 185 Strassfeld, M., 93, 95, 96 Strassfeld, S., 96 Strikovsky, A., 112 Sullins, P., 128

224 Supersessionism, 170, 191, 202, 204 Synagogue 3000, 20 Synagogue Council of America, 41, 136 Synagogue membership, 2, 67–73, 76–78, 85, 165, 166 Synagogues, 6–8, 10, 15–18, 20–23, 26–28, 31, 32, 36–38, 46, 47, 57, 61, 62, 64–66, 68–70, 72, 73, 77, 83, 88, 89, 92–94, 96, 98, 99, 106, 107, 113, 120, 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 140, 147, 150, 153, 154, 176, 177, 181, 186, 190, 198, 199, 205, 208, 210 Synagogue Transformation and Renewal (STAR), 32 Syria, 179, 201 Sztokman, E.M., 112, 113, 116 T Tabor, M., 92 Talmud, 1, 46, 49, 97, 111, 112, 114–117, 121–123, 127, 129 Tear Down the Wall, 185 Tel Aviv, 185 Temple Emanuel, 118 Temple in Jerusalem, 106, 199 Temple Shir Tikvah, 118 Temple University, 94 Terrorist attack on the Tree of Life synagogue, 148 Texas, 63 The Christian Century, 170 The Final Solution, 173 The Institute for Judeo-Christian Studies, 176 The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007), 132 The Jewish vote, 132, 133, 137–144, 211 The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, 101 The New Christian Zionism, 194 Theological nexus, 171 The point, 24, 132, 136, 142, 161, 170, 181 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 101 The Sunbelt, 192 The Torah U Mada Journal, 91 The Williamson Affair, 189 Ticktin, M., 93 Tidewater Virginia, 72 Tikkun Community, 134 Tikochinsky, M., 121 Tillich, P., 171 To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven, 183

Index Torah, 25, 34, 39, 41–43, 45, 46, 50, 90, 96, 99, 102, 105, 110, 112–114, 118, 119, 122–124, 126, 127 Torah U-Madda, 42, 90 Toynbee, A., 54 Tradition, 14–16, 24, 34–37, 44, 48, 54, 88–91, 94, 98–101, 104–106, 110, 154, 155, 164, 196, 199, 208–210, 212, 213 Trembling Before God, 46 Trial of Adolf Eichmann, 172 Triple melting pot, 88, 167 Trump, D., 37, 40, 108, 135, 140–142, 153, 158, 160, 166, 195, 203, 204 Tucker, E., 20, 97, 126 Twain, M., 54 U UJA-Federation of New York, 22, 33, 81 Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), 6, 15, 24, 31–33, 197 Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), 6, 15, 17 Union of American Orthodox Jewish Congregations, 15–16 Union of Orthodox Rabbis (Agudath Harabonim), 15 Union of Reform Judaism (URJ), 159 Union Theological Seminary, 179 United Church of Christ (UCC), 168, 181, 184–187 United Methodist Church (UMC), 181, 184, 186, 187, 201 United States (U.S.), 1, 4, 14, 15, 17, 34, 41, 48, 87, 95, 104, 110, 114–116, 118–120, 125, 128, 136, 146, 147, 151, 164, 168, 170, 171, 179, 182, 183, 185, 187, 189, 192, 195, 198, 203 United Synagogue, 16, 30, 31 United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, 21 University of Manitoba, 94 Upper West Side of Manhattan, 36, 106 Uris, L., 89 U.S. Supreme Court, 26 V Van Dusen, H.P., 179 Vietnam, 93, 155 Vietnam War, 93, 155 Virginia, 63, 64, 72

Index W Wald, K.D., 138, 142, 143, 151 Waldman, L., 134 Walt, S., 132, 135 Washington D.C, 92, 93 Washington, G., 123 Washington Post, 162 Washington State, 63 Waskow, A., 92, 95 Waxman, M., 88 Wealthy Jews, 159 We Are All Multiculturalists Now, 87 Weisel, E., 193 Weisman, D., 98 Weiss, A., 46, 48, 49, 97, 119 Wertheimer, J., 19, 23, 25, 26, 34, 35, 52, 165 West, 57, 61, 63, 65, 69–72, 75, 77–80, 84, 95, 96, 113 West Bank, 7, 143 West Coast, 94 Western Christianity, 14 Western Wall, 177 Wexner Foundation, 22 Whitehead, D., 124 Whole Earth Catalog, 95 Wiener, E., 93 Wiesel, E., 96 Wine, S., 34 Wolkenfeld, S., 115 Women’s Rights, 110 Women’s Tefilla Groups (WTG), 110, 129 Women’s Zionist Organization of America, 127 Woocher. J., 89 Workmen’s Circle, 134

225 World Jewish Congress, 176, 200 World War II, 11, 17, 65, 95, 155, 156, 189, 192, 201 Wrapped in a Holy Flame, 100 Wuthnow, R.T., 51 X Xavier of Ohio, 176 XVI, Benedict, 11, 183, 188, 190, 191 Y Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, 177 Yawning Gap, 142 Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism, 99 Yeshiva Judaism, 91 Yeshiva Orthodoxy, 91 Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT), 49, 97, 119 Yeshivat Hamivtar, 112 Yeshivat Maharat, 46, 47, 97, 112, 119, 122 Yoffie, E., 24, 31, 33 Z Zalman, R., 9, 94, 99, 102, 107 Zuckoff, A.C., 97 Zimzum, 101–103 Zionism, 7, 9, 17, 39, 42, 50, 170, 180, 191, 192, 194, 202 Zionism Unsettled, 186 Zionist, 7, 37, 38, 42, 92, 141, 148, 194, 195 Zionist movement, 15 Zionist Organization of America, 135