Alternatives to Assimilation: The Response of Reform Judaism to American Culture, 1840-1930 (review)

Book Reviews 143 influence through a social learning process; a sense ofpennanence; social integration into the larger community; opportunities for active learning; involved adult role models; a faith characterized by indigenous rituals, ceremonies, and special rites; and a followthough program at time of transition from institutional care to the community. Since this enumeration of recommendations is limited to the administering of residential children's centers, no mention is made ofpreventive measures which would obviate the need for "orphanages." Today's public policy favors such early preventive measures as adoption, foster care, and wrap-around social services for young people ready to embark on parenthood that would stabilize family life and improve childrearing practices. Such public mental health measures at a critical stage of development are expected to reduce delinquency and other youthful deviance. Nonetheless, Professor Goldstein has prepared a useful guide, despite its reiterative style, for those responsible for administering children's homes which are expected to survive for some time to come. Whether the example of the Rochester Jewish Children's Home is applicable to other settings remains a moot issue. In any event, The Home on Gorham Street is a fascinating contribution to the ethnography of a particular historical period and to the culture ofan "orphanage" that was a productof those times. Werner Israel Halpern, M.D. Rochester, New York Alternatives to Assimilation: The Response of Reform Judaism to American Culture, 1840-1930, by Alan Silverstein. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England,1995. 275 pp. $19.95 (p). Alternatives to Assimilation attempts to provide a new look at the rise and development of Refonn Judaism in America. It assertively takes the position that the movement to create new, more modem forms ofJudaism in America in the nineteenth century needs to be seen as an effort to preserve tradition. Silverstein joins historians like Michael A. Meyer in Response to Modernity (1988) in this view of Refonn as a holding action against the loss ofJewishness, rather than as profound rejection ofpast practice. Unlike Meyer, however, Silverstein sees American Refonn as having its own history and inner developments. It was not, according to Silverstein, an import from Central Europe. Similar to Leon Jick's older, but still hardy, The Americanization ofthe Synagogue (1976), Silverstein's book stresses the pragmatic, lay-inspired, situational nature of American Refonn, as opposed to its more ideological, and rabbi-driven, Gennan counterpart. This volume makes a number of important contributions. First, it presents the 144 SHOFAR Summer 1997 Vol. 15, No.4 development of Reform Judaism in the congregations and not in the various rabbinic conferences that have heretofore dominated the scholarship. While, for example, Silverstein treats the 1885 Pittsburgh meeting of Reform rabbis and its important platform, he subordinates it and its significance to the activities, make-up, and structures of a number of key Reform congregations. In fact, Silverstein's chronology is not driven by the "high culture" sources as understood by Reform rabbis, but rather by the changing nature ofthe membership. Silverstein's contribution is not just that few other scholars of American Judaism have emphasized the power of laity, and the!efore his book offers a different view, but that he is the one who got it right. American Jews have behaved in their synagogues not by virtue ofrabbinic visions and pronouncements but as a result of their own world-views and sensibilities. The congregations reflected the laity more than the clergy, and Silverstein has done an admirable job highlighting this insight. In this context he has placed the activities and concerns of a group he called the "national lay leaders," associated with the Union ofAmerican Hebrew Congregations, at center stage. The rabbinic body, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, is surely mentioned here and treated, but in a supporting rather than starring role. Again, Silverstein needs to be copunended for this approach. Finally, Silverstein does not fall into the trap ofdescribing, and deriding, Reform as a shallow imitation of prevailing Protestant modes of worship. The Reform lay leaders and the rabbis whom they employed made a range ofdecisions about the nature of worship, the manner of synagogue governance, congregational activities and ancillary programs, and the relationship between congregations based on...