Author: Barry FreundelPublisher: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
ISBN: 9780881257786
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
Rabbi Freundel in 31 essays summarizes Orthodox Jewish teaching on a variety of issues.
Contemporary Orthodox Judaism's Response to Modernity
Author: Barry FreundelPublisher: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
ISBN: 9780881257786
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
Rabbi Freundel in 31 essays summarizes Orthodox Jewish teaching on a variety of issues.
Modern Orthodox Judaism: a Documentary History
Author: Zev EleffPublisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827612893
Category : RELIGION
Languages : en
Pages : 528
Book Description
Modern Orthodox Judaism offers an extensive selection of primary texts documenting the Orthodox encounter with American Judaism that led to the emergence of the Modern Orthodox movement. Many texts in this volume are drawn from episodes of conflict that helped form Modern Orthodox Judaism. These include the traditionalists' response to the early expressions of Reform Judaism, as well as incidents that helped define the widening differences between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism in the early twentieth century. Other texts explore the internal struggles to maintain order and balance once Orthodox Judaism had separated itself from other religious movements. Zev Eleff combines published documents with seldom-seen archival sources in tracing Modern Orthodoxy as it developed into a structured movement, established its own institutions, and encountered critical events and issues--some that helped shape the movement and others that caused tension within it. A general introduction explains the rise of the movement and puts the texts in historical context. Brief introductions to each section guide readers through the documents of this new, dynamic Jewish expression.
After Emancipation
Author: David EllensonPublisher: Hebrew Union College Press
ISBN: 0878200959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 535
Book Description
David Ellenson prefaces this fascinating collection of twenty-three essays with a remarkably candid account of his intellectual journey from boyhood in Virginia to the scholarly immersions in the history, thought, and literature of the Jewish people that have informed his research interests in a long and distinguished academic career. Ellenson, President of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, has been particularly intrigued by the attempts of religious leaders in all denominations of Judaism, from Liberal to Neo-Orthodox, to redefine and reconceptualize themselves and their traditions in the modern period as both the Jewish community and individual Jews entered radically new realms of possibility and change. The essays are grouped into five sections. In the first, Ellenson reflects upon the expression of Jewish values and Jewish identity in contemporary America, explains his debt to Jacob Katz's socio-religious approach to Jewish history, and shows how the works of non-Jewish social historian Max Weber highlight the tensions between the universalism of western thought and Jewish demands for a particularistic identity. In the second section, "The Challenge of Emanicpation," he indicates how Jewish religious leaders in nineteenth-century Europe labored to demonstrate that the Jewish religion and Jewish culture were worthy of respect by the larger gentile world. In a third section, "Denominational Responses," Ellenson shows how the leaders of Liberal and Orthodox branches of Judaism in Central Europe constructed novel parameters for their communities through prayer books, legal writings, sermons, and journal articles. The fourth section, "Modern Responsa," takes a close look at twentieth-century Jewish legal decisions on new issues such as the status of woemn, fertility treatments, and even the obligations of the Israeli government towards its minority populations. Finally, review essays in the last section analyze a few landmark contemporary works of legal and liturgical creativity: the new Israeli Masorti prayer book, David Hartman's works on covenantal theology, and Marcia Falk's Book of Blessings. As Ellenson demonstrates, "The reality of Jewish cultural and social integration into the larger world after Emancipation did not signal the demise of Judaism. Instead, the modern setting has provided a challenging context where the ongoing creativity and adaptability of Jewish religious leaders of all stripes has been tested and displayed."
Response to Modernity
Author: Michael A. MeyerPublisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814337554
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 518
Book Description
The movement for religious reform in modern Judaism represents one of the most significant phenomena in Jewish history during the last two hundred years. It introduced new theological conceptions and innovations in liturgy and religious practice that affected millions of Jews, first in central and Western Europe and later in the United States.Today Reform Judaism is one of the three major branches of Jewish faith. Bringing to life the ideas, issues, and personalities that have helped to shape modern Jewry, Response to Modernity offers a comprehensive and balanced history of the Reform Movement, tracing its changing configuration and self-understanding from the beginnings of modernization in late 18th century Jewish thought and practice through Reform's American renewal in the 1970s.
Cosmopolitans and Parochials
Author: Samuel C. HeilmanPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226324951
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
Far from simply vanishing in the face of modernity, Orthodox Jews in the United States today are surviving and flourishing. Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, both distinguished scholars of Jewish studies, have joined forces in this pathbreaking book to articulate this vibrancy and to characterize the many faces of Orthodox Jewry in contemporary America. Who are these Orthodox Jews? How have they survived, what do they believe and practice and how do they accommodate the tension between traditional Jewish and modern American values? Drawing on a survey of more than one thousand participants, the authors address these questions and many more. Heilman and Cohen reveal that American Jewish Orthodoxy is not a monolith by distinguishing its three broad varieties: the "traditionalists," the "centrists," and the "nominally" orthodox. To illuminate this full spectrum of orthodoxy the authors focus on the "centrists," taking us through the dimensions of their ritual observances, religious beliefs, community life, and their social, political, and sexual attitudes. Both parochial and cosmopolitan, orthodox and liberal, these Jews are characterized by their dualism, by their successful involvement in both the modern Western world and in traditional Jewish culture. In painting this provocative and fascinating portrait of what Jewish Orthodoxy has become in America today, Heilman and Cohen's study also sheds light on the larger picture of the persistence of religion in the modern world.
Cosmopolitans and Parochials
Author: Samuel C. HeilmanPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226324968
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Far from simply vanishing in the face of modernity, Orthodox Jews in the United States today are surviving and flourishing. Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, both distinguished scholars of Jewish studies, have joined forces in this pathbreaking book to articulate this vibrancy and to characterize the many faces of Orthodox Jewry in contemporary America. Who are these Orthodox Jews? How have they survived, what do they believe and practice and how do they accommodate the tension between traditional Jewish and modern American values? Drawing on a survey of more than one thousand participants, the authors address these questions and many more. Heilman and Cohen reveal that American Jewish Orthodoxy is not a monolith by distinguishing its three broad varieties: the "traditionalists," the "centrists," and the "nominally" orthodox. To illuminate this full spectrum of orthodoxy the authors focus on the "centrists," taking us through the dimensions of their ritual observances, religious beliefs, community life, and their social, political, and sexual attitudes. Both parochial and cosmopolitan, orthodox and liberal, these Jews are characterized by their dualism, by their successful involvement in both the modern Western world and in traditional Jewish culture. In painting this provocative and fascinating portrait of what Jewish Orthodoxy has become in America today, Heilman and Cohen's study also sheds light on the larger picture of the persistence of religion in the modern world.
Beyond Sectarianism
Author: Adam S. FerzigerPublisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814339549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
In 1965 social scientist Charles S. Liebman published a study that boldly declared the vitality of American Jewish Orthodoxy and went on to guide scholarly investigations of the group for the next four decades. As American Orthodoxy continues to grow in geographical, institutional, and political strength, author Adam S. Ferziger argues in Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism that one of Liebman’s principal definitions needs to be updated. While Liebman proposed that the “committed Orthodox” —observant rather than nominally affiliated—could be divided into two main streams: “church,” or Modern Orthodoxy, and “sectarian,” or Haredi Orthodoxy, Ferziger traces a narrowing of the gap between them and ultimately a realignment of American Orthodox Judaism. Ferziger shows that significant elements within Haredi Orthodoxy have abandoned certain strict and seemingly uncontested norms. He begins by offering fresh insight into the division between the American sectarian Orthodox and Modern Orthodox streams that developed in the early twentieth century and highlights New York’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun as a pioneering Modern Orthodox synagogue. Ferziger also considers the nuances of American Orthodoxy as reflected in Soviet Jewish activism during the 1960s and early 1970s and educational trips to Poland taken by American Orthodox young adults studying in Israel, and explores the responses of prominent rabbinical authorities to Orthodox feminism and its call for expanded public religious roles for women. Considerable discussion is dedicated to the emergence of outreach to nonobservant Jews as a central priority for Haredi Orthodoxy and how this focus outside its core population reflects fundamental changes. In this context, Ferziger presents evidence for the growing influence of Chabad Hasidism – what he terms the “Chabadization of American Orthodoxy.” Recent studies, including the 2013 Pew Survey of U.S. Jewry, demonstrate that an active and strongly connected American Orthodox Jewish population is poised to grow in the coming decades. Jewish studies scholars and readers interested in history, sociology, and religion will appreciate Ferziger’s reappraisal of this important group.
Judaism and Modernization on the Religious Kibbutz
Author: Aryei FishmanPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052140388X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
This work in the field of intellectual history explores religious ideas which emerged in Jewish thought under the influence of secular ideologies, and in response to the social and cultural realities created by Jewish Emancipation, Zionism and socialism. By concentrating on the major Jewish Orthodox movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Professor Fishman examines the innovative mechanisms of traditional Judaism that were activated by these movements, as they strove to accommodate new realities. The study focuses specifically on the Religious Kibbutz Federation in Israel, which (in the process of building its self-contained pioneering settlements) developed a religious sub-culture that incorporated the central values of Jewish nationalism and socialism. Professor Fishman shows that - by creating the most far-reaching synthesis of modern, and traditional Jewish, culture at the community level - the settlements of the RKF may be regarded as a test case for the measure of the capacity of Judaism to adapt to modern life.
Returning to Tradition
Author: M. Herbert DanzgerPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300105599
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
An outstanding book, original, well written, and incisive. It will become the point of departure for all other research in the area.-William B. Helmreich, author of The World of the Yeshiva Danzger's volume treats a subject that is both fascinating and complex. Especially noteworthy is his exploration of an inclusionary strain in Orthodox Jewish life that is often overlooked by sociologists and other contemporary observers.-Norman Lamm, Yeshiva University The issues raised in this book are critical for our times.-Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Founding Rabbi, Lincoln Square Synagogue In a clear and lucid style, he examines the reasons for return, the schools established by Orthodox Judaism to deal with this return, and the values and conflicts thus engendered.-Library Journal If one were to select the most important of the books on baalei teshuvah, 'returnees to Judaism, ' the choice would clearly be Danzger's Returning to Tradition. This book goes far beyond the work of Janet Aviad and others. It offers the reader a clear, unified, and comprehensive approach to understanding the world of the baal teshuvah.It is based on many years of careful research into that community, both in Israel and in the United States. The author is intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the group he has chosen to study. He knows where they hang out, what their problems are, and the diversity of backgrounds from which they originate...First rate.-William B. Helmreich, American Jewish Histor
Hidden Heretics
Author: Ayala FaderPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691234485
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
"This book concerns a cohort of ultra-orthodox Jews based in the greater New York area who, while retaining membership and close familial and other ties with their strictly observant communities, seek out secular knowledge about the world on the down low (so to speak), both online and via in-person encounters. Ayala Fader conducted her ethnographic research in these rarified social circles for years, developing relationships of trust with the mostly young married men and women who have taken to clandestine methods to find alternative social spaces in which to question what it means to be ethical and what a life of self-fulfillment looks like. Fader's book reveals the stresses and strains that such "double-lifers" experience, including the difficulty these life choices inject into relationships with wives, husbands, and one's children. Not all of these "double-lifers" become atheists. Fader's interlocutors can be placed on a broad spectrum ranging from religiously observant but open-minded at one end to atheism on the other. The rabbinical leadership of these ultra-orthodox communities are well aware of this phenomenon and of how unfiltered internet access makes such alternative forms of seeking an ever-present temptation. (Some ultra-orthodox rabbis have been sounding the alarm for years, claiming that the internet represents more of a threat to community survival today than the Holocaust did in the last century.) Fader's book examines the institutional responses of ultra-orthodox communities to the double-lifers. These include what is typically referred to as a Torah-based type of "religious therapy" conducted by trained members of these communities who as therapists and "life coaches" blend elements of modern psychiatry with ultra-orthodoxy and "treat" troubling, potentially life-altering doubt and skepticism as symptoms of underlying emotional pathology"--