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This chapter examines works on American Jewry written during the 1950s and 1960s that begin with the contrast between the pessimistic evaluations of the state of American Judaism at the end of the nineteenth century. It notes the starker contrast made between the state of American Orthodox Jewry at the time of the Second World War and at the start of the twenty-first century. It also considers Jeffrey Gurock's detailed analysis that demonstrates the first half of the twentieth century as the era of non-observance for American Orthodoxy. The chapter recounts how English-speaking Orthodox rabbinate had suffered somewhat of a reversal and was forced to take stock of its future by the 1940s. It points out the most traditional and Jewishly educated members of east European Orthodox Jewry and rabbinic intellectual elite that were most resistant to migration to the United States.

This introductory chapter discusses how two propositions from which every mainstream Jew in the last millennium would have instantly recoiled have become legitimate options within Orthodox Judaism. First, a specific descendant of King David may be identified with certainty as the Messiah even though he died in an unredeemed world. Second, the messianic faith of Judaism allows for the following scenario: God will finally send the true Messiah to embark upon his redemptive mission. The true Messiah's redemptive mission, publicly proclaimed and vigorously pursued, will be interrupted by death and burial and then consummated through a Second Coming. While the vast majority of Jews instinctively recognize the alienness of these propositions, and the Rabbinical Council of America has declared that there is no place for such a doctrine in Judaism, contemporary Orthodox Jewry effectively legitimates these beliefs. A large segment of a highly significant Orthodox movement called Lubavitch, or Chabad, hasidism affirms that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was laid to rest in 1994 without leaving a successor, did everything subsumed under proposition 2 and will soon return to complete the redemption in his capacity as the Messiah. This book is an account of this historic mutation of Judaism.

This epitaph argues that the classical messianic faith of Judaism is dying. Most Orthodox Jews may still adhere to it, but their willingness to grant full rabbinical, institutional, educational, and ritual recognition to people who proclaim the messiahship of a dead rabbi conveys the inescapable message that such a proclamation does not contradict an essential Jewish belief. Mainstream Orthodoxy now appoints heads of rabbinical courts, teachers, and principals who conclude their prayers on the Day of Atonement with the twin affirmations, ‘The Lord is God! May our Master, Teacher, and Rabbi, the King Messiah, live for ever!’ By extending this recognition, Orthodox Jewry has repealed a defining element not only of the messianic faith but of the Jewish religion itself. However, there is still hope that Judaism's criteria for identifying the Messiah can still be rescued from the brink of extinction.

This chapter reviews Esther Farbstein’s Beseter hamadregah: hayahadut haortodoksit behungariyah nokhaḥ hashoah (Hidden in the Heights: Orthodox Jewry in Hungary during the Holocaust), which investigates the attitude of the Orthodox community in Hungary during the Holocaust. The book is divided into four main sections. The first, dealing with the period immediately preceding the German occupation of Hungary (1942–1944), focuses on efforts to help religious Jews maintain their ritual observance in labor camps. The second section covers the period of German occupation and discusses rescue activities initiated by the Orthodox community. Issues of faith are examined in the third section, while the concluding section offers an overview of communal rebuilding and commemorative activities in the postwar era. Although Farbstein is one-sided in her presentation, refraining from criticism of both the rabbinic and lay Orthodox leadership, she succeeds admirably in redressing a scholarly gap. This excellent work provides much insight into an important chapter in the history of Jews in Hungary during the Holocaust.

This concluding chapter considers the exceptions to the Anglo-Jewish response to the Holocaust. It first summarises the British Jewish community's socio-political philosophy and demonstrates how it shaped this Jewry's response to the fate of European Jews between 1942 and 1945. From there, the chapter profiles the nonconformists. The first group were socialists. Strictly Orthodox Jewry was another exception to the communal rule. A third group included those few university academics and intellectuals who expressed an abiding interest in Jewish concerns. Other academics merged into the fourth category — the more extreme Jewish nationalists. All of these, as well as many involved in the World Jewish Congress, a body predicated on the idea of a global Jewish unity, were more willing to accept the concept of a supra-national Jewry and of a co-ordinated international Jewish response to crisis. To conclude, the chapter takes a look at the New Zionist Organisation, a nonconformist political institution which was particularly ostracised by the mainstream communal bodies.

This chapter offers a manual for understanding the foreign policies of the American Jews, exploring how their beliefs were an outgrowth of, primarily, the American experience, and, secondarily, the world. It begins by situating American Jews in historical context, contrasting their history with that of the Jews of Western and Eastern Europe, and highlighting how the American experience explains American Jewry's affinity for liberalism and non-Orthodox Jewry. These commitments explain the rise and endurance of the political theology of Prophetic Judaism, which, in turn, explains American Jews' cosmopolitan sensibility when addressing the Jewish Problem and the Jewish Question. The chapter ends with a discussion of the foreign policy of a transnational people and considers how the foreign policy process is informed by the linking of identity, interests, and institutions.