Orthodox Jews in America (review)

From a strictly Orthodox point of view, there can be no history of Judaism. Being of divine origin, the Torah is eternal and, therefore, the faith and practice of loyal Jews must remain unchanged. But there can be a history of its practitioners. Orthodox Jews live within history, subject to its vicissitudes and—despite affirmation of the perfection of their faith and its metahistorical demands—have differed significantly in their interpretations and practice.

In an engaging manner Jeffrey Gurock, the leading historian of American Jewish Orthodoxy, in this volume tells the story of Jews who claim to be Orthodox but vary significantly in the consequences they derive from that identification. Gurock's focus is not on the religious leadership, not on the rabbinical and lay organizations, but on amkha, the Orthodox Jews on the street. As an Orthodox Jew himself who has taught and administered at Yeshiva University, Gurock is clearly an insider. Yet his history is free of apologetics and, except for a special sympathy that he harbors for his own rabbi, Avraham Weiss of Riverdale, presents an impartial, indeed refreshingly critical account. Although we possess numerous books on American Orthodoxy written from a sociological perspective, this is, to my knowledge, the first full-scale historical treatment.

Early American Jewry, according to Gurock, was religiously "out of control." Unlike the "old country," there were no rabbinical authorities or communal pressure to enforce conformity. Transplantation of the old ways did not work, and new ones appropriate to the American scene had not yet emerged. Those who remained loyal saw themselves as the she'erit, the remnant that remained, and sometimes they even used that term in naming their synagogues. By the eve of the eastern European migration, few Jews in America remained fully Orthodox. Men had cut their beards, women disposed of their wigs. The large influx of Jews escaping economic stagnation and antisemitism in tsarist Russia and seeking upward mobility in America did not produce a lasting surge of observance. Some came as secularists; others were not able to pass their landsmanshaft loyalties on to their children. Many in the second and third generation remained Orthodox by self-designation, but their practice through the interwar period was far from scrupulous.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of this volume is Gurock's analysis of this period in the history of American Orthodoxy that lies between the immigrant generation and the resurgence of more recent years. In light of today's increasingly stringent Orthodoxy, it is remarkable to recall just how liberal it was during the 1920s and 1930s. In some Orthodox congregations men and women sat together, especially during late Friday evening synagogue assemblies (the Friday evening service at a fixed hour had been invented by the Reformer Isaac Mayer Wise almost a century earlier). In the synagogue there were mixed choirs, microphones on the Sabbath, and confirmations of young people. Sabbath desecration did not prevent the perpetrator from being called up to the Torah. Nearly all of the men worked on Saturday, which meant that many of them and their wives attended services only on the High Holidays, when "mushroom synagogues" sprang up, often in Yiddish theaters. Outside the synagogue Orthodox men and women danced together at weddings and Orthodox Jewish college students hid their Jewish identity. In the virtual absence of day schools, children from Orthodox families attended public schools and received only meager supplementary Jewish education. Gurock suggests that what then kept American Jews together, including the Orthodox among them, was less their faith and practice than their residential propinquity.

By 1971 only 11 percent of American Jews identified themselves as Orthodox. Although Orthodoxy still today continues to lose more members than it gains from non-Orthodox streams, it has since that time unquestionably undergone a resurgence in numbers (due mainly to births and lower mixed marriage rates), in fervor, and in influence. Gurock attributes the origins of this renewed vigor to the leadership presented by Rabbis Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the modern side and Menachem...