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Part I. American Habad Shaul Magid Fundamentalism is arguably one of the most widely used and least understood terms in the popular discourse about religion. We find it applied to all kinds of groups, religions, communities, even societies. The formal term applies to a defined group of American Protestants at the beginning of the twentieth century who viewed themselves as part of a particular spiritual trajectory that extended back at least to the 1740s in America and likely to the seventeenth century in England. 1 In its modern context it usually refers to Protestant communities who strictly adhere to five basic principles: 1) biblical inerrancy or scripturalism; 2) virgin birth; 3) substitutionary atonement; 4) bodily resurrection; and (5) Christ’s divinity.2 Fundamentalism has more specifically been applied to various branches of Judaism both in Israel and in the Diaspora. It largely applies to three distinct communities: 1) Hasidism, 2) non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodoxy, and 3) religious ultra-nationalism (i.e., the settler movement in Israel).3 The first and second have coalesced into an umbrella group that has become known as haredi Judaism.4 A portion of the ultra-nationalist camp has also taken on a haredi persona under the term hardal (haredi leumi, or haredi national religious). These fundamentalist Jewish communities do not view themselves as partners. In fact, many are vehemently oppose one another. For example, the Satmar branch of Hasidism (the focus of a subsequent essay) is at war with the ultra-nationalist Zionist “fundamentalists” in Israel.5 And the Habad branch of Hasidism has been in an ideological war with “America Is No Different,” “America Is Different”—Is There an American Jewish Fundamentalism? “America Is No Different,” “America Is Different” Part I :: 71 Satmar for decades. While there is more sympathy between Habad and the ultranationalists , Habad does not view itself as Zionist, which is the backbone of the ultra-nationalist ideology in Israel. And even within these subcultures there is dissent . Some are more tolerant toward Zionism, others are vehemently opposed to it. Some are accommodating to secularism and even study in universities, others shun secular knowledge except as they apply it to vocational needs.6 Jay Harris is surely correct that fundamentalism is a subjective term, used as a pejorative, the definition of which depends on where the accuser stands in the trajectory of tradition . Yet it seems too dismissive to simply abandon the term as describing certain contemporary Jewish movements, especially in America.7 Almost all the studies on Jewish fundamentalism focus on postwar communities , suggesting by implication that ultra-Orthodoxy in prewar Europe, while similar in tenor and even in substance to its postwar progeny, cannot properly be called fundamentalist. This is curious for a numbers of reasons. First, it raises the question of whether Jewish fundamentalism is a post-Holocaust phenomenon. Second, given that postwar Jewry has two main centers, Israel and North America (smaller haredi communities do exist in other parts of the Jewish Diaspora), it raises the question of whether Jewish fundamentalism can exist only in 1) a society where Jews comprise the dominant culture (Israel) or 2) a society where religious freedom and disestablishment are the societal norms (America).8 That is, does the activism necessary to constitute contemporary Jewish fundamentalism require a level of freedom of expression that exists only for Jews in Israel and other democratic countries where freedom of religion is assured?9 Moreover, while Israel and the United States both offer conditions conducive to Jewish fundamentalism, each has distinctive qualities. Thus it would be necessary to view American and Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy as different not only in context but also in substance. One of the deficiencies of the many excellent studies on Jewish fundamentalism is that they generally do not distinguish between Jewish fundamentalism in Israel and in the United States. While it is true that many of the ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel have companion communities in the United States and vice versa, those communities are situated in very different social and political contexts that produce different programmatic agendas, if not in principle then certainly in practice. In this essay and the one that follows I focus on two Jewish fundamentalist groups in the United States: Habad and Satmar. I argue that their fundamentalism agendas, while originating in prewar Europe, are products of the United States and thus particular to the American context. Here I respectfully disagree with those who argue that fundamentalism is not applicable to Judaism.10 In part my...

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