Search Results

This chapter examines the historical and sociological context of Orthodox Jewish women in London, and applies concepts of community to analyse the religious geography of Orthodox Jews in Britain. The term 'community' is used by British Jews, generally in one of two distinct senses: the first, refers to all Jews who identify as Jews and participate in Jewish activities, the second, indicates a particular subgroup, the members of a particular synagogue. Most Jews who identify as belonging to the Jewish community also belong to several of these 'subcommunities,' all of which overlap with family and social circles within the Jewish and wider communities, and most of which are not mutually exclusive. Community affiliation thus exists at several levels and in several modes, with an individual's particular combination of networks and community memberships providing basic parameters of his or her individual Jewish identity. This complex, layered character of modern Jewish identity complicates the definition of the term 'Orthodox'. Current denominations include Liberal Judaism and Reform Judaism; Masorti Judaism; and Orthodox Judaism. Earlier tensions between traditional expectations for women and new ideas about their role in the wider society were reflected in developments within the British Jewish community: the foundation of Liberal Judaism. Orthodoxy has been slow to respond. The very word 'feminist' carries negative connotations in most Orthodox communities, even among women who profess strongly feminist views in economic and political matters.

This chapter considers developments indicating significant ritualistic departure not only from ultra-Orthodox norms and values but from what had been traditional Jewish religious behaviour since the last half-century. It examines both organizational and institutional developments and informal sources on the Modern Orthodox sector as a significant component of American Orthodoxy. It also refers to the role of women as the most discussed and pressing concerns for many Modern Orthodox Jews. The chapter looks at the increasing numbers of modern Jewish women who feel that they have a very limited or no place in the Orthodox synagogue or the organized community. It points out the variety of attempts that have been made to expand the educational opportunities available to Orthodox women and give them a greater role in synagogue life since the 1960s.

This chapter describes the new politics that emerged in fin-de-siècle Europe, which challenged liberal democracy and bourgeois society. Zionists and Autonomists espoused the idea that Jews were a nation entitled to its own national life either as a majority in Palestine or a national minority in Europe. Both developed the concept of “assimilation” to denigrate emancipation's pernicious effects. In eastern Europe, all the Jews' political parties—emancipationists, Zionists, Autonomists, Bundist Socialists—embraced a version of national minority rights. Meanwhile, the Bund represented a Jewish socialism that dreamed of a classless society to solve the Jewish Question. Orthodox Jews mobilized to press their own causes and to counter the multiple threats of the organized secular political parties. Ultimately, the developments of the fin de siècle were to shape Jewish life in the first four decades of the twentieth century.

This chapter ethnographically traces the contemporary crisis of authority to the Jewish blogosphere or “Jblogosphere” in the mid-2000s, which created an alternative, anonymous heretical public both online and in person. It analyzes the public that referenced an earlier crisis of authority, the Jewish Enlightenment from mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries in Europe. The chapter describes the generation of Jewish men that were exposed to the European Enlightenment and used innovations in print culture to take on traditional Judaism and its leadership. It looks into the connection between secret life-changing doubt and the internet that began roughly in 2002 or 2003 when disillusioned Modern Orthodox and ultra–Orthodox Jews began to blog. It also discusses the Jblogosphere that gave anonymous public voice to a range of private interior life-changing doubt.

This chapter explores the problems of studying Orthodox Jewish women, in particular the 'double invisibility' they experience, first from the perspective of male Orthodox Jews, and, second, in the lack of knowledge about them in the non-Jewish world. Orthodox women engage in a wide range of communal and domestic religious activities, in spite of their exclusion from an active role in worship in synagogue and from some areas of Torah study. Activities defined by Orthodoxy as the supreme religious privileges of women, such as keeping a kosher kitchen, preparing food for sabbath and festivals, and nurturing and educating children, remain largely invisible to Orthodox men. Standard descriptions of women's practices in the domestic and individual spheres omit many widespread customs and practices, often characterized as 'superstitions' although they form an integral and meaningful part of many women's religious lives. A major problem in studying women's religious lives and the ways in which they differ from and intersect with those of men is imagining how women fit into one's overall picture of Jewish religious activity. Neither the 'separate but equal' apologetic nor the simplistic identification of 'oppressed and oppressors' made by some feminists provides an adequate way of thinking about the relationship between male and female lived experience of Judaism. Given that Orthodox Judaism is undeniably patriarchal, it may reasonably be asked whether women have any access to power or agency within the religious life of the community, particularly in matters of ritual and correct practice.

This chapter sketches a way in which Orthodox Jews can relate to non-Orthodox Jews and their understandings of Judaism. Furthermore, this must be done in a way which avoids the language of ‘legitimate versus heretical’ without at the same time adopting a pluralist position which sees all (or almost all) expressions of Judaism as equally acceptable. Labelling non-Orthodox Jews and interpretations of Judaism as heretical is too exclusive, while true pluralism is too inclusive. The chapter thus seeks some middle ground which will allow an Orthodox Jew to participate in Jewish unity while still adhering to the doctrine according to which the Torah was given in its entirety to Moses by God on Sinai. In other words, the chapter attempts to arrive at a position of tolerant respect for non-Orthodox Jews and Judaisms without being forced to adopt a position of relativistic approval of them.

This chapter focuses on Orthodox Jews. These Jews at the end of the twentieth century are divided into a number of groupings, each following its own specific pattern of religious conduct. It describes the Sephardi Jews that are generally content to have their religious life modelled on the traditional behavioural norms of their ancestors without too much reflection on its theological underpinning. The Ashkenazi Jews have been compelled to become more theologically inclined due to the great impact made on European Jewry by the Emancipation and the Enlightenment. The chapter gives details on the Ashkenazim that are divided into the haredim or ultra-Orthodox and the Modern Orthodox.

This chapter discusses the challenges faced by Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg and the rest of the German Jewry during the Nazi regime. Aside from the political challenges in Nazi Germany, there were many pressing religious issues brought on by the policies of the regime. It was in this area that Weinberg assumed a prominent role. The chapter thus embarks on a few of the halakhic issues with which he had to deal, to illustrate the difficult circumstances in which Orthodox Jews found themselves. Despite these challenges, however, the chapter also shows that Weinberg and the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary experienced a rather productive period, as the seminary became the focus of German Jews' social, cultural, and intellectual engagement — and all this was accomplished without government interference. The chapter also describes the decline of the Torah im Derekh Eretz ideal among the younger generations, despite Weinberg's attempts to defend it. To conclude, the chapter closes with the events of the Kristallnacht and the closure of the seminary despite Weinberg's persistently optimistic views regarding the Nazis' treatment of the Jews.

This chapter studies the long historiographic tradition in search of a definition of the Haskalah. It suggests reducing the historical parameters of the Jewish Enlightenment so that it can be recognized as a trend in which modernizing intellectuals aspired to transform Jewish society. Despite the obvious diversity and dispersion of the Haskalah, and the difficulty in defining it precisely, the chapter enumerates a number of essential criteria, elaborating on the self-consciousness of the maskilim and paying special attention to their militant rhetoric and awareness of belonging to an avant-garde, redemptive, and revolutionary movement. It also sketches a portrait of the typical maskil, surveys the history of the movement and its various centres, and elucidates the dualistic nature of its ideology, explaining its links to the processes of Jewish modernization and secularization. Ultimately, the Haskalah was the intellectual option for modernization that triggered the Jewish Kulturkampf which, still alive today — especially in Israel — separates modernists and anti-modernists, Orthodox and secular Jews.

This chapter recounts the secret social lives of double lifers as they experimented with other ways of living, writing, and feeling in digital and face-to-face spaces. It describes the inescapable changes the experiments on double life wrought on exterior forms, such as on bodies and clothing, in writing or speaking. It also looks into the exterior changes of double lifers as efforts to feel more comfortable in their own skins and hints to their loved ones that they were slowly changing inside. The chapter explores the double life of Jews that are manifested in rebellious, sexualized partying in the comfort of ultra-Orthodox settings and sampling of objects, tastes, writing, and experiences based on ultra-Orthodox imaginaries of the secular world. It analyzes how double lifers pursued newfound values of autonomy, self-expression, and personal fulfilment yet stayed close to the emotional attachments of ultra-Orthodox sensibilities.

This chapter provides some tentative explanations for Chabad messianism. One of these explanations is the ideal of unity and the avoidance of communal strife. Every practising Jew has heard countless sermons about the imperative to love one's neighbour, particularly one's Jewish neighbour. While rhetoric about this value cuts across all Orthodox—and Jewish—lines, it is especially compelling for Modern Orthodox Jews who maintain cordial, even formal relations with other denominations and pride themselves on embracing an ideal of tolerance. No Orthodox Jew believes that everyone committed to the Jewish community has the right to serve as an Orthodox rabbi because of the value of unity. The appeal to this principle is relevant only after one has concluded that Lubavitch messianism is essentially within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. Since this is precisely what is at issue, the argument begs the question. The chapter then considers the explanations concerning orthopraxy, the balkanization of Orthodoxy, and Orthodox interdependence.

This chapter disputes the common assumption that media-driven popular culture has weakened ethnic-religious ties of community with each advance in communication technology and has been detrimental to tradition-centred groups such as Orthodox Jews. It mentions popular-culture theorists who have long asserted the notion of popular works against the survival of ethnic-religious groups. It also talks about Russel Nye, who claimed that the idea of popular culture, associated with urbanization and industrialization, depends on artists and agents who exploit media and create cultural standards. This chapter discusses how the process of popularization depends on a mass audience that consumes secularized cultural expressions that became accessible in Western societies through communication media. It analyses the advent of popular culture purportedly that diminishes the need for public space and peer pressure.

This chapter shows the construction of a more coherent and popular form of Jewish anticlericalism in the aftermath of the Mortara affair of 1858. The affair began as papal authorities removed a Jewish boy from his parents after their maid claimed she had baptized him in secret. In the aftermath of this scandal, which marked a turning point in Jewish polemics against the Catholic Church, Jewish periodicals and Jewish intellectuals increasingly accepted the vision of a world divided into two camps: one progressive and liberal and the other, Catholic and anti-modern. This language also penetrated inner-Jewish conflicts, as reform-oriented Jews increasingly denounced Orthodox Jews for “resembling” Jesuits or conservative Catholics. The few Jews who expressed sympathy with the papacy during this period were increasingly isolated. Secularist understandings of religion and critiques of improper religiosity were now, more than ever, identified with opposition to Catholicism.

This chapter focuses on the diversity of people living life-changing doubt and their still-religious spouses. It highlights the distinctive experiences and implications for men and women in double life marriages. It talks about double lifers that elaborated and navigated a changing morality influenced by liberal values, often in conflict with the ultra-Orthodox morality of their still-religious spouse and children. The chapter looks into the tension between revelation and secret keeping for people living double lives that meant choosing between self-fulfilment and comfortable familiarity, as well as between individual truth and protection of their family. It also reviews how double lifers secretly began violating the religious laws and obligations under the very noses of their still-religious spouses all the while appearing as ultra-Orthodox men and women to friends, family, and their communities.

This chapter focuses on formerly secular Jewish women who have become Orthodox Jews, baalot teshuvah, through the outreach efforts of Chabad Lubavitch Hasidism. Despite the emphasis in our culture on self-actualization and freedom of choice, Orthodoxy—even Chabad-style Orthodoxy, which involves great sacrifices in personal autonomy—is staging something of a return. For increasing numbers of Jews, Jewishness has become a focal element of their identity. The chapter explores identity formation, a process that usually takes place below the level of consciousness. It looks at people who undergo radical life changes, since in such cases the process of identity formation and negotiation becomes conscious, as it also does for those living in cultural margins. The baalot teshuvah typically experienced a sense of “not fitting in” in their earlier lives. They report a sense of betrayal and/or disillusionment before finding their new Orthodox lifestyle. For these people, embracing Chabad-style Orthodoxy made the difference; they found a home and the beginnings of a meaningful identity.

This introductory chapter gives a brief background of the differences between Jewish communities in Israel, America, and Britain. Jewish denominational affiliation differs sharply in the two countries: in Britain, Orthodoxy — even if of a nominal kind — is still the default position of the majority of synagogue-affiliated Jews (69 percent), while in America Orthodox Jews are very much in the minority (10 percent). The chapter notes that trends in Israel typically take many years to filter into the Anglo-Jewish world. While women play a relatively larger role in Jewish practices in Jerusalem, Orthodox Jewish women are not only uninterested in greater ritual and study participation but are actively hostile to the idea. Though there have been some outstanding anthropological studies of Jewish women in both America and Israel, little research of this sort has yet been undertaken in Britain. The chapter elaborates that the book attempts to make a contribution to the understanding of current trends among Orthodox Jewish women worldwide by focusing on women in the unique context of British Jewry.

This chapter explores how Lubavitcher hasidim, based in Brooklyn, New York, have used broadcasting, video, and the Internet, among other media, to advance their distinctive mission during the past half of the century. Unique among ultra-Orthodox Jews, the hasidim deploy media extensively in their outreach campaigns, which strive to encourage other Jews to become more observant of traditional religious precepts. Media also play a provocative role in the group’s messianism, which has become more complicated since the death, over a decade ago, of the last Lubavitcher rebbe, who left his followers without a successor to his leadership. Consequently, the extensive inventory of media documentation of his public appearances has come to serve many of his followers as a “virtual rebbe,” providing them with a source of devotional inspiration and solidarity as an international religious community.

This introductory chapter contains reflections on Jewish legitimacy in response to a growing crisis looming within the Jewry and Judaism. This crisis refers to the growing number of mutually exclusive and mutually intolerant Judaisms, primarily expressed through the conflict between Orthodox and non-Orthodox movements. The chapter also discusses Maimonides at length. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), known in English as Maimonides and in Hebrew by the acronym Rambam, is a major topic of discussion in the following chapters. It considers Maimonides' thoughts on inclusion and provides a brief exposition of Maimonides' understanding of the nature of human perfection and the criteria which must be satisfied for inclusion in the world to come.

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.