Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry (review)

Those who are partial to the lachrymose view of Jewish history will find Jew vs. Jew to be an enormously entertaining book. We American Jews are expected to shudder when Samuel G. Freedman, a journalist and professor at Columbia University, describes our decline with these stories: a Zionist summer camp in the Catskills is now inhabited by Satmar Hasidim; rabbis in Denver disagreed over an interfaith relationship, marriage, and conversion of one partner to Judaism, though the family seems to be doing rather well; a congregation debated whether a feminist addition should be included in its liturgy, and included it; a dim-witted Meir Kahane supporter attempted to bomb his own synagogue, but failed; Orthodox Jews moved into an already Jewish neighborhood in Ohio, threatening property values; five ultra-Orthodox students called the Yale dormitories "Sodom and Gomorrah" (I went there, and can assure readers that they are not).

In all cases Freedman suggests that Orthodox Jews are both dominating the American scene and insisting that their way is the only authentic one. The rest of us are merely keeling over, victims of Americanization. Freedman concludes that in the absence of American antisemitism, we are now at one another's throats, less ritualistic Jews versus Orthodox ones, and that the Orthodox are winning, indeed, have already won. Note his summation:

"In the struggle for the soul of American Jewry, the Orthodox model has triumphed. . . . [T]he portion of American Jewry that will flourish in the future-and is flourishing already against a backdrop of ever more complete assimilation-is the portion that has accepted the central premise of Orthodoxy that religion defines Jewish identity," (p. 338).

One can almost hear Cantor Rabinowitz wail "I have no son." But Cantor Rabinowitz and the kind that have bemoaned the Shulchan Aruch as our only possible salvation have been moaning now for seventy-five years, at least since the release of The Jazz Singer, which is one of our first serious texts on the fate of tradition in melting-pot America. And still a vast majority of us are neither Orthodox nor disappearing. Three times in his book Freedman is shamed by his argument into admitting that the Orthodox are less than one-tenth of the American Jewish population. That is still a rather high estimate, I think. Samuel C. Heilman puts the figure at one-twentieth, using separate dishes and synagogue affiliation as his baseline for Orthodox observance.¹ Five percent. Granted, the ultra-Orthodox (who are the real source of Freedman's tension, and not the modern Orthodox) generate a lot of ink in the American press. That trend is not different from other fundamentalist groups and is not a very able indicator of vigor, just public relations. Perhaps if Freedman had turned to the general phenomenon of American fundamentalism, he would have recognized that mainstream Christians are just as embarrassed by their self- righteous, intolerant, politically powerful minority as mainstream Jews are.

Now let's turn to how 95 percent of American Jewry behaves, again according to Heilman. We consistently celebrate bar and bat mitzvahs, have rabbis officiate our weddings, and conduct our funerals according to Jewish law. Seventy-seven percent of Jews light Hanukkah candles, while 86 percent attend some sort of a seder, making Passover the most widely observed Jewish holiday in America. Eighty-eight percent of Jews go to synagogue at least once a year, though many do not go more than once. Sixty-one percent fast on Yom Kippur and about the same percent go to services for some of the High Holy days.²

Let me suggest my own short list of indications of American Jewish identity and affiliation, which does not include significant synagogue life though it does not preclude it either. Like most Jewish Americans, I prefer to go to Jewish museums, see Jewish...