The American Synagogue: A Historical Dictionary and Sourcebook (review)

THE JEWISHQUARTERLYREVIEW,XCII, Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 2001) 216-218 KERRYM. OLITZKY. The American Synagogue: A Historical Dictionary and Sourcebook.Westport,Conn.:GreenwoodPress, 1996. Pp. xiii + 409. Rabbi KerryOlitzky is the present-daymasterof the Jewish "self-help" book. A prolific writer and editor, with literally dozens of books to his credit, he has helped Jews deal with a myriadof personaland familial crises . His ken rangesfromworksthataddressmethodsof recoveryfromdrug and alcohol addiction, to techniques for coping with suffering and loss, to ways of finding spiritualityin simple everyday life. When not dealing with personalpain, he has found time to acquaintthe uninitiatedwith the intricacies of Jewish religious practiceto sparenewcomers to Judaismthe usually unavoidablediscomfortthey experience when they fail to graspor comprehend whattakes place in the sanctuaryand/orin an observantJewish home. An Encyclopedia of AmericanSynagogue Ritual (Westport,Conn., 2000) is his most recent contributionin this area.Therehe attempted,andgenerally succeeded, in elucidatingbasic Jewish practices and he did so with regard andsensitivity for differencesin style anddetail amongthe several contemporaryJewish expressions or denominations.Along the way, in writing for ostensibly lay Jewish audiences, Olitzky also has found time to co-edit a volume of what he has determined are among the most importantdocumentsin Jewish history;a primer,if you will, for differenttypes of novices. Thankfully,Olitzky'smission to help Jews help themselves out of dilemmas , impasses, and uncomfortablesituationsextends to the scholarly community as well, anotherneedy groupindeed with its own welter of pent-up frustrations.In both this present work and his earlier ReformJudaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Source Book (1993) also published by Greenwood Press, Olitzky assumed the onerous task of wading throughhundredsof turgidcommunalhistories, masses of self-congratulatory synagogue chronicles, and scores of less than self-effacing rabbinical biographies to cobble together basic information about several hundred Orthodox,Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionistcongregations that presentlyserve Americancommunities.In so doing, he has done immeasurably importantlegwork in bringing esoteric datato the fingertipsof oftenoverwhelmedscholars . This volume is invaluable for anxious researchers, like myself, who write in the area of 20th-century American Judaism and who can use a helping hand. To cite but one example of how Olitzky's labors have met my needs: Recently, in examining, and in attemptingto reinterpret,what Jewish religious life was like in this country during the 1920s-1940s, I have been working with sketchy lists of hundredsof congregationswhich OLITZKY, THEAMERICAN SYNAGOGUE-GUROCK 217 were enumeratedas membersof the reportedlyConservativeUnited Synagogue of America (USA) or the ostensibly Orthodox Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU). My thesis is that USA and OU congregationsandtheirrabbisthen had much in common in termsof synagogue structure,governance and above all, ritual practice. Olitzky'sbook is, for me, a crucial first step in getting at the saga of these congregations. Ittells me who theirrabbinicalandlay leaderswere, something aboutorganizational and ritual life, when did disruptive splits, if any, occur within congregations, and some sense of how different in approachand mission were synagogues that served differentconstituencies within the same state or city. (The dictionaryis arrangedstateby state.) And, of course, if I need further information, a useful bibliography leads me back to the sources Olitzky used. The only weakness with this essential reference work-though and through no fault of the author-is the denominationalimbalance among congregations. Far more Reform and Conservative congregations are detailed than their Orthodoxcounterparts.(The few Reconstructionistsynagogues get their fair share of treatment.) And among those Orthodox synagogues examined almost all the selected synagogues areof the modern variety.Shtiblsreally do not appearin this volume. Moreover,much of the informationon Orthodox shuls is derived solely from personal interviews the perspicacious Olitzky conducted with rabbinical and lay leaders. Accordingly ,these entriestend to be terse andelliptical, while the descriptions of liberal synagogues are generally expansive and highly informative.Not incidentally, these present imbalances are highly reminiscent of those that have always plagued attempts at national congregationalsurveys. For example , almost a centuryago, the editors of the AmericanJewish Yearbook triedto get dataon hundredsof its contemporarycongregationsonly to find thatwhile so many Americanizedsynagogues-mostly incipient Conservative and Reform Temples-reported who their rabbiswere, where their lay leaders came from, and what they did for a living, Orthodoxinstitutionsgenerally immigrant landsmanshaften-largely did not respond. All we have from that early effort are asterisks next to the names of those...