American Jewish Identity Politics

From Fluidity to Rigidity: The Religious Worlds of Conservative and Orthodox Jews in Twentieth-Century America

From Fluidity to Rigidity: The Religious Worlds of Conservative and Orthodox Jews in Twentieth-Century America Jeffrey S. Gurock Conservatism and Orthodoxy in America, circa 2000 By the close of the century, it had become clear that most Conservative and Orthodox Jews in America were living increasingly within two very different religious worlds. More than any other time in their history in this country, the minority of America’s Jews who attended Orthodox synagogues —from the shtibls of Brooklyn to the af›uent congregations of suburbia —adhered to the requirements and demands of Jewish law with ever intensifying punctiliousness.1 Conversely, Conservatism’s larger contemporary rank and ‹le, while af‹rming the importance of Judaism in their lives, did not view the strictures of halacha (Jewish law) as essential to their religious existence. The 1990 American Jewish population survey, for example , revealed signi‹cant gaps in religious observance and synagogue attendance between these two religious groups. Whereas 64 percent of all self-described adult Orthodox Jews reported that they always maintained separate meat and dairy dishes in their homes—a sure sign of adherence to kashruth—only 18 percent of Conservatives did so. Regarding Sabbath observance , 54.4 percent of Orthodox Jews refrained from “handling money on the Sabbath,” while only 13 percent of Conservatives were thus constrained . More than half of the Orthodox adults surveyed attended synagogue “once a week or more.” Only one in eight of their Conservative counterparts were similarly disposed. 159 This essay was originally presented on March 16, 1998, at the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The 1990 survey also suggested that the future would witness Orthodox and Conservative laypeople drifting even further apart in their religious lifestyles. Orthodox “baby boomers”—people then in their late forties and early ‹fties—who presumably were in community leadership positions even as they were raising the next generation of youngsters—were more punctilious in their observances and commitments than the overall Orthodox group. Nearly eight of ten of these middle-aged people attended synagogue once a week or more, and more than eight of ten of them always used separate dishes and refrained from using money on Saturday. Concomitantly , Conservative “baby boomers” were keeping the Sabbath, following kosher laws, and going to services to almost the same degree and at the same rate as were all other Conservative adults.2 For all the punctiliousness of this Orthodox pro‹le, there still were American Jews who identi‹ed themselves as Orthodox but who did not live in accord with that denomination’s teachings. For example, as late as 1986 an Orthodox rabbi who had served congregations in Youngstown, Ohio, and Providence, Rhode Island, could point out that in America’s smaller cities, “religious observance and knowledge” among members of Orthodox synagogues “are in a sorry predicament.” It was his unhappy lot to minister to “non-practicing” Jews, “who almost always view . . . faith in sociological and ethnic terms.”3 Meanwhile, if Orthodoxy still had its soft underbelly of graying nonobservant constituents,4 Conservatism had its own committed cadre of those who adhered to traditional practices, and perhaps did so with a zeal comparable to that of their Orthodox counterparts. As of 1986, some 20 percent of the Conservative group regarded Sabbath, kashruth observance, and weekly synagogue attendance as essential religious values. They were reading Jewish law differently than their Orthodox counterparts; but their conclusions led them as well to assertively observe the traditions. Still, on balance , the denominations’ rank and ‹le lived more and more their separate Jewish lives. The rabbis who served these two very disparate communities were raised and educated within these very different religious environments. Among the younger men and women ministering to Conservative congregations —those ordained circa 1985 to 1990—close to 70 percent hailed from homes that were af‹liated with the Conservative movement. There they received their earliest training and indoctrination within congregational Talmud Torahs or religious schools. Unlike prior generations—about which we will have much to say later—almost none of these rabbis (3 per160 american jewish identity politics cent) came from Orthodox homes. The close to one-third of younger rabbis who did not come from within the United Synagogue community had been raised mostly within Reform or unaf‹liated families.5 And if by 1998, approximately 10 percent of the rabbis who served in Conservative synagogues were ordained at “Yeshiva...