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Christian Science and American Jews

Ellen M. Umansky

in From Christian Science to Jewish Science: Spiritual Healing and American Jews

This chapter discusses the three main reasons why Jews are attracted to Christian Science: physical, social, and spiritual. Jews initially turned to Christian Science due to its promise of health, ... More

This chapter discusses the three main reasons why Jews are attracted to Christian Science: physical, social, and spiritual. Jews initially turned to Christian Science due to its promise of health, peace, and comfort. Others were attracted to the possibility of social elevation. However, most affiliated themselves with the Christian Science Church for spiritual guidance.Less

Introduction

Ellen M. Umansky

in From Christian Science to Jewish Science: Spiritual Healing and American Jews

This introductory chapter presents the author’s explanation of the rationale behind this volume. Specifically, he sought to understand the growing Jewish attraction to Christian Science. He discusses ... More

This introductory chapter presents the author’s explanation of the rationale behind this volume. Specifically, he sought to understand the growing Jewish attraction to Christian Science. He discusses the subsequent responses by the Jewish communal leaders, and the attempts of several individuals to combat the inroads made by Christian Science against the counter movement of Jewish Science.Less

The Six Day War and American Jewish Life

Michael L. Morgan

in Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America

The impact of the Six Day Israeli–Arab War of May–June 1967 on American Jewish life and especially in the way American Jews perceived Israel and the Holocaust is considered. The events of that summer ... More

The impact of the Six Day Israeli–Arab War of May–June 1967 on American Jewish life and especially in the way American Jews perceived Israel and the Holocaust is considered. The events of that summer and the changing character of American life shaped the constituencies for the post‐Holocaust Jewish thinkers; they also helped to shape them and their work. The chapter discusses the reactions of the young Jewish radicals, and the various (sometimes bizarre) groupings of thinkers that emerged. To some, the Six Day War enabled the Holocaust to move to a central focal location in Jewish identity, so that by the mid‐1970s, the Holocaust and the Israeli victory of 1967 were intertwined with Jewish pride and sense of responsibility to respond to threat with strength and self‐confidence.Less

Apples and Oranges: A Critique of Current Trends in the Study of Religion, Spirituality, and Health

Gail Gaisin Glicksman and Allen Glicksman

David E. Guinn (ed.)

in Handbook of Bioethics and Religion

In recent years a new approach to the study of religion in the social sciences has emerged. It differs from the classical approach in four important ways. First, it treats all specific religious ... More

In recent years a new approach to the study of religion in the social sciences has emerged. It differs from the classical approach in four important ways. First, it treats all specific religious traditions as subsets or specific expressions of some underlying domain that is universal across all groups. Second this new approach treats religion as generally beneficent, and in this way it differs from both those theoreticians like Durkheim and Weber, who saw a more complex relationship between religion and society, and those such as Marx and Freud, who generally took a negative view of the effect of religion. Third, adherents of this new approach claim to be able to identify a therapeutic effect of religion on the physical and mental health of individuals, treating religion as a “health behavior”. This chapter asks whether this new approach accomplishes the goals of its proponents. It examines the Jewish identities felt by American Jews sixty-five years of age and older as a test case.Less

Privatizing national Interest—the Israel Lobby

Lawrence Davidson

in Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest

Incidents of anti-Semitic discrimination in the US during the interwar and World War II period heightened the feelings of insecurity among American Jews. Realizing that they could not rely on reason ... More

Incidents of anti-Semitic discrimination in the US during the interwar and World War II period heightened the feelings of insecurity among American Jews. Realizing that they could not rely on reason alone to change potentially dangerous prejudices that lurked with society, they began to adopt a more aggressive posture. Their efforts mainly focused on domestic issues, such as the fight for civil rights up until the 1960s, when they started taking up the cause of the Zionist Organization of America to promote Jewish colonization of Palestine and provide aid to Israel. However, following Israel's victory against Egypt in 1967, American Jewish organizations abandoned their liberal principles of tolerance and equality for all and formed alliances with right-wing conservative forces that uncritically backed Israel. Out of this policy shift came the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has been described as “the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel.” The AIPAC and its allied American Jewish lobbies have been accused of taking their cue from Israel instead of the American citizens they claim to represent. But because of their inordinate power and influence, they continue to pursue policies that directly contravene American national interest in the Middle East.Less

Emil Fackenheim: Fidelity and Recovery in the Post‐Holocaust Epoch

Michael L. Morgan

in Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–9, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Emil Fackenheim, a ... More

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–9, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Emil Fackenheim, a Jewish theologian and philosopher, who has radically changed his thinking since 1967. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.Less

“The Law of the Land Is the Law”: Jews Respond to the Volstead Act

Marni Davis

in Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition

This chapter examines how American Jewish leaders struggled both publicly and privately to agree on a communal response to Prohibition. Too many Jews refused to adhere to the law and many others ... More

This chapter examines how American Jewish leaders struggled both publicly and privately to agree on a communal response to Prohibition. Too many Jews refused to adhere to the law and many others remained openly contemptuous of it. How to change American Jewry's collective mind and transform their behavior so that both aligned with American law? How to convince Jews to choose the universal over the particular, and to acquiesce to an aspect of American culture so discordant with Jewish history and practice? This dilemma confounded Jewish leaders, including many who had themselves spoken against temperance legislation in the past. Now they needed to do more than reorient their own political stance and rhetoric; they were tasked with convincing the American Jewish population to concede to and abide by a law that they had all collectively denounced as unnecessary, puritanical, and in direct contradiction to both Jewish culture and American values.Less

Alfred Geiger Moses, New Thought, and the Applied Psychology of Judaism

Ellen M. Umansky

in From Christian Science to Jewish Science: Spiritual Healing and American Jews

Reform rabbi Alfred Geiger Moses formulated and promulgated teachings he termed as “Jewish Science” to counter the growing influence of Christian Science in the American Jewish community. He used the ... More

Reform rabbi Alfred Geiger Moses formulated and promulgated teachings he termed as “Jewish Science” to counter the growing influence of Christian Science in the American Jewish community. He used the techniques and aims of Christian Science, applied psychology, and New Thought to raise awareness of God’s presence. He also urged the incorporation of the more personal goals of health, success, and happiness into Reform’s ideological understanding of ethical monotheism.Less

The Foreign Policies of an Uncertain People

Michael N. Barnett

in The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews

This chapter argues that the future foreign policies of American Jews will depend on the future of American Jews, their identity, how they imagine themselves in relation to the particular and the ... More

This chapter argues that the future foreign policies of American Jews will depend on the future of American Jews, their identity, how they imagine themselves in relation to the particular and the universal, and how such projections connect to contemporary practices of tribalism and cosmopolitanism, especially as they relate to the Jewish Problem and the Jewish Question. It sets out two scenarios that are most likely because they represent a combination of the past and the present. One future is defined by tribalism and the overshadowing of the Jewish Question by the Jewish Problem. The alternative to the tribal is the cosmopolitan, which treats the Jewish Question as relatively more important than the Jewish Problem, wants to see a Jewish people that is connected to humanity, and expresses greater ambivalence toward a more nationalistic Israel.Less

The Reception of Post‐Holocaust Jewish Thought

Michael L. Morgan

in Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America

An examination is made of some of the responses to the work of the five main Jewish thinkers/theologians, which was addressed in Chs. 6–10, and to the work of other post‐Holocaust Jewish thinkers. ... More

An examination is made of some of the responses to the work of the five main Jewish thinkers/theologians, which was addressed in Chs. 6–10, and to the work of other post‐Holocaust Jewish thinkers. This is done by looking at the popular response (that of ordinary Jews), the response of young Jewish radicals, and that of Orthodox Jewish thinkers. The dissenting thoughts of various thinkers as to the centrality and use of the Holocaust in Jewish America are discussed.Less

The New Tribalism

Michael N. Barnett

in The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews

This chapter examines the two decades following 1967—the year when American Jews turned into the zealots they are said by some to have always been. Israel's victory in 1967's Six-Day War gave ... More

This chapter examines the two decades following 1967—the year when American Jews turned into the zealots they are said by some to have always been. Israel's victory in 1967's Six-Day War gave American Jews a renewed sense of power and pride, and their Jewishness became increasingly defined by the twin experiences of suffering (the Holocaust) and redemption (Israel). This new Jewish identity created something of a tension for American Jews: their domestic political theology continued to run toward liberalism, but their foreign policy beliefs began exhibiting greater traces of tribalism. Moreover, global cosmopolitanism was developing in ways that were not necessarily sympathetic to Jewish concerns. The human rights movement became increasingly viewed as a possible threat to Jews and especially to Israel. Fortunately, this was also a moment when American Jews could rely on something better than human rights—American power. An American Jewry that once saw security as bound up with a culture of acceptance now found greater reassurance in the threat and use of force.Less