A long, hopefully non-boring post, on Judaism in pre-war America

From May 22 2008

I've been trying to crank out a post on pre-war American Judaism, based on a book I finished last weekend, but it keeps getting too long, and too complicated for a DovBear post. So allow me to summarize some of the interesting points:

1 - In the years before WWII Reform Judaism was becoming more observant, and looking for ways to incorporate ritual into their theology. For instance, they brought some Hebrew back into the liturgy, began to reconsider the Zionism rejected by the Pittsburgh Platform, and so on. Some speculate that this was done because they were inspired/shamed into doing so by the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans who arrived in America between 1890 or so and 1920 or so. There are many anecdotes which support this theory.

2 - JTS was created by Reform Jews who wanted to train American Rabbis who could minister to the newly arrived Eastern Europeans and their children. In the pre-war years, a majority of JTS students were yeshiva graduates, and possessed bachelor degrees from Yeshiva College. JTS, as everyone knows, originally followed Orthodox halacha (in most important matters. The egalitarian innovations, and even the ruling that allowed people to drive to shul on shabbos, came much, much later.)

3 - The Eastern Europeans themselves did all sorts of things to try and bolster religion in their own community. There opened hundreds of shuls, or every size, shape and style. Rabbis, including the first chief Rabbi of New York, were imported from Poland at the community's expense. Yeshivas were established, some of which were expressly designed to create "American Rabbis" who could relate to the next generation. And new organizations were created including the Khilla Kdeosha of New York and the Orthodox Union. As everyone knows, these efforts had mixed results. The yeshivas grew and created Rabbis, and learned lay-people (while also creating students for JTS, though before the war the Eastern Europeans didn't all think JTS was treif, and in many ways it wasn't.) There was also widespread prikas ol, though for the most part this phenomenon affected (some) new immigrants and their children and not the Orthodox communities that were established before the Eastern Europeans arrived.

Some speculate that the newly arrived Eastern Europeans went OTD faster than those Jews who were already here because American life offered too many challenges, but a better explanation (cribbed from the book) is this: The school system in Eastern Europe didn't prepare people to exist in the world. It prepared them to exist in the shtetle. Boys were taught HOW to do things (ie: how to read an translate Talmud; how to keep shabbos; how to keep kashrus; etc) and not why these things were done. (Girls were taught almost nothing at all) When the graduates of this system arrived in America they couldn't explain to themselves why Shabbos and Kashrus were necessary, so as their new lives began to interfere the old observances were dropped. As the book notes, the Eastern Europeans came to America with knowledge that was very broad, but very shallow. Of course, the reasons for the prikas ol are many and complicated but what the statistics show is that Eastern Europeans dropped observances much more rapidly and in much greater numbers than others did.

4 - When the Hasidim began to arrive in the late 40s and early 50s they had some success recruiting from among the more observant Eastern Europeans. According to the book, Williamsburg, at that time, was a slum inhabited by Eastern Europeans who were either too poor to leave, or who wanted the comfort and convience of the schools and kosher food which were readily available. (As the Eastern Europeans became established they left slums like Williamsburg and Lower East Side. According to the book, they often ended up in neighborhoods that were heavily Jewish, but not nearly as homogenous as the neighborhoods they left behind. In Williamsburg and the Lower East Side you could be "Jewish" without actually keeping commandments. In the "areas of second settlement" --ie. the places they went nect - "being Jewish" required a little more work; in some areas the challenge was met with schools and shuls and to varying degrees of success. Schools like Shulamith and HILI, and the Yeshiva of Flatbush are the legacies of those efforts) When the Hasidim arrived, after the war, in places like Williamsburg, the Jews who remained there tended to gravitate toward the rebbas and shteibels, and for any number of reasons. The book speculates that this occurred because Judaism is primarily about rituals and practices, not cold belief, so anyone sincerely interested in Judaism seeks to emulate practices that seem more authentic. Certainly, this would also explain (see above #1) why American Reform Jews could be influenced by the Eastern European example. It also explains why Reform Judaism originally attempted to update Judaism. See below #5.

5 - According to the book, Reform Judaism was at first a positive theology. The objective wasn't to drop inconvenient rituals and to become more like the gentiles, but to fix and restore Judaism by eliminating what could be judged "inauthentic" superstitions. (in some later iterations Reform Judaism certainly became a negative movement seeking to drop practices for no good reason, but that came later.) American reformers saw the prophets, with their protests against empty ritual and demands for justice, as being more legitimate than what came later and worked to restructure Judaism along more humanistic lines. Not coincidentally, this reflected the spirit of the times. Liberal religion was on the rise in 19th century America, and Jews rethought and reworked their religion in the same way that Christians were [*] and dropped almost all the rituals on the grounds they they were inauthentic and illegitimate superstition. Of course, we know how the story ends: Judaism without practice is nothing at all (see above) and the children of these reformers saw no reason to remain Jews. Many embraced humanism, and married non-Jews. In fact, a theology of the time argued that it was perfectly okay for Jews to intermarry because, the mission of the Jewish people having been fulfilled, there was no reason for us to remain separate as a nation. As noted above, after reaching this nadir around the time of the Pittsbugh Platform, reform Judaism began to recognize the value of ritual.

Ok - that's all for now. More later.

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[*]Sharper knives in the drawer have realized that (some) 21st century Jews are doing the same thing, only, reflecting the spirit of OUR time, they are modifying Judaism in ways that make it more consistent with fundamentalist religion.

The Myth of the (Non) Fighting Jew

Cross-posted to Friar Yid.

There was a line in a Haaretz article about the upcoming Defiance movie that rubbed me the wrong way. Actually, most of the article was raising alarm bells. Not because the movie won't be good, I'm sure it will be. But the focus of the piece happened to be remarking on the fact that four or five Bielski grandkids are in the IDF, and tying this in with a family military tradition:

A family of warrior Jews, from partisan to paratrooper

It's a story made for Hollywood. The grandfather fought the Nazis, the son fought in the Yom Kippur War, and last month the American-born grandson decided to make Israel home and join its defense forces.

...While Bielski's native New York may not have presented the same challenges as those suffered by his grandfather in World War II-era Belarus, the 21-year-old has decided to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors and immigrate to Israel.

"I came to Israel on birthright when I was a freshman in college," he said. "I loved it. My whole family was in the army here."

Bielski finished college in three years, not even pausing to don a cap and gown. Instead, the day after his last class, he flew to Israel where an Israel Defense Forces uniform was waiting.

The scene was familiar for Elan's Israeli-born father, Yakow, who returned to his native land in 1973 with his brother after a stint in the U.S. to fight in the Yom Kippur War. Zus, who had settled in Israel for ten years after the Holocaust and fought in the 1948 Independence War , was reluctant to see his sons go.

Yakow himself is proud of Elan's decision to join the army, though he said that one of the reasons his own father had left Israel was because of all the wars.

While Elan echoed his father and grandfather's concern of seeing their children enlist in the army, he said: "I'd be proud of my kids to make the same decision I did."

Love, war, and genetics

...In addition to Elan Bielski, two other descendants of the brothers are serving in the IDF, and another is now in the reserves. Bielski's twin sister also plans to move to Israel; his older sister is married in the U.S. with a four-month old named after Zus.

Two, going on three, generations of parental instinct can't seem to stop the Bielskis from joining Israel's army and society. "It's just genetic," Yakow said. We're warrior Jews."

Here's the problem: the whole piece (supported by the comments of Bielski pere and fils) suggests that only "certain families" have it in them to be warrior Jews- which, of course, means that other people don't. The reason the "fighting Jew" myth is so disturbing because it is based on a false premise, and because it libels all who do not neatly fit under it as (sterotypically?) weak pacifists.

This has been part-and-parcel of Jewish sociology for well over one hundred years, since the days when the Bund cells and Hashomer societies first started rallying Jews around the concept of self-defense and pride. Back then, their opponents were the maintainers of the status-quo and the perception that Jews were meek and submissive yeshiva students who would rather beg for their lives or offer their enemy a bribe than crush his skull with a rock- in short, the rabbinical establishment.

Ironically, in those early days of the 1880s and 1900s when the "fighting Jew"/Ghetto Jew dichotomy was being set up by ideologues and propagandists, most of the recruits coming into the Jewish Socialist and Zionist movements were from religious homes whose families did not have specific martial traditions. Yet somehow they adapted when given the proper training, motivation, and community support. The same is mirrored in the history of American Jews and the modern Israeli army- one does not need to be born into a "warrior family" to become a capable soldier or tactician. Yet today in Israel there is an unspoken assumption that the Haredim choose not to fight because they are somehow incapable of fighting- a stereotype that persists despite the existence of units like the Nahal Haredim (as if the long history between the Mafdal and IDF was not proof enough that there is no reason an Orthodox Jew cannot be a warrior as well).

One could even go back further- to use just the example of one country I'm familiar with, Poland, Jews fought for Napoleon at the Battle of Warsaw and in each of that country's Revolutions. This fighting was not restricted to secularists or those drifting from the faith (Berek Joselowicz's unit was known as "The Beardlings" because they would not shave; they also demanded the Sabbath off and would only eat kosher food); there are also cases of revolutionary rabbis. Check out this story about two rabbis you may have heard of, courtesy of an old article in Polin:

Even though the hagiographies of the hasidic leaders neglect Polish politics, there is some evidence that hasidim suppoorted the 1830 revolt. We have an account that Rabbi Menahem Mendel Morgenstern of Kotzk and his pupil Rabbi Isaac Meir Rothernberg, founder of the Ger dynasty, actively encouraged the Jews to aid the Poles in their rebellion and that after the Russian victory both were forced to travel to Lemberg (Lwow), then the capital of the Austrian province of Galicia, to hide from the Russian authorities. They were only able to return to Kotzk after changing their names; Menahem Mendel changed his last name from Halpern to Morgenstern, Isaac Meir from Rothenberg to Alter.

Bet you never heard about that in yeshiva. Neither, mind you, would you have encountered it in any book about these rabbis. This is part of the split Jewish tradition over how to deal with Jews that don't fit the "peaceful" paradigm- which, by the way, is itself a construct, since there are plenty of "fighting Jews" in the Torah- and afterwards! (What would you call the Bar Kochkba revolt, or the Zealots at Massada?) We would prefer to identify "tough Jews" as a vicarious exception to the meek, pious or status-quo Jews that were the standard, rather than taking an objective look at the history and consider that, god forbid, there were revolutionary rabbis or frum soldiers fighting for Napoleon.

Look forward to the twentieth century and you see the same obfuscation when it comes to Jewish criminals- plenty of whom used violence for achieving their goals. Even before the days of Lansky and Siegel, you had organized crime in Warsaw, Lodz and Odessa. Modern Yiddish writers like Sholem Asch freely depicted the "Jewish underground" in novels like Mottke the Theif, and his play God of Vengeance. For crying out loud, prostitution was a cottage industry in Jewish Buenos Aires, and there were many layers of violence involved in maintaining business as usual.

And, ironically, when Jews took a stand against these undesirable elements within their community, preying on their weakest members, it was again, the "fighting Jews" who took action. One notable flare-up was the May 1905 Alphonsenpogrom [Pimp-Pogrom], where the Jewish Bund in Warsaw went on a three-day rampage through the city's red-light district, attacking brothels and cafes. The New York Times wrote about the Socialists' assault on not only the pimps' places of business, but also their worldly possessions:

Wardrobes, pianos and mirrors were thrown out of the windows. The mob in the streets left open spaces for the falling articles and then completed the work of destruction. In one place, a quantity of valuable jewelry was taken out and deliberately smashed with stones.

The Alphonsenpogrom left 8 dead and 100 injured. (Not necessarily the Bund's finest moment, but a "tough Jew" moment? Unquestionably.) And it was not the only incident. According to Prostitution and Prejudice (the primary source for Nathan Englander's latest novel), there were others, as well. In 1903 The Jewish Vigilance Society in Cardiff, Wales, challenged their pimps in street combat and won. In Buenos Aires in 1909, the Poale Zion beat up local white slavers after an altercation in a theater of a play critical of prostitution. In 1910 some young men in Rio de Janero accosted the "pimps' congregation" on their way back from dedicating a new Torah scroll. The pimps were attacked and the Torah scroll given to "more-deserving" folks.

We don't hear about any of this controversial history because the personalities don't fit in with cookie-cutter views of secular or religious Jews, or rich vs. poor. By doing this we do our ancestors, and our descendants, a disservice. By censoring the Jewish past we impair the Jewish present, and further limit the Jewish future to take honest assessments about who we are as a people, based on factual information.

The Bielskis accomplished an amazing thing, and no one is contesting that. But to suggest that being a "fighting Jew" is genetic also means that you are passing a judgment on all the non-warriors in the Jewish family, essentially establishing a caste system between those rough-neck toughs and those meek yeshiva bochurs. The irony is that there are plenty of cases, in history and today, where the two may be brothers. Or one and the same.

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Christmas Scandals of Yesteryear

All this back and forth about Jews and Christmas reminded me of this weird moment in American Jewish history almost ninety years ago:

Wise Unwise?

Throughout the land headlines blared RABBI WISE SAYS JEWS SHOULD ACCEPT JESUS. As the implication of those words sank in, Jews became excited and commenced to flay famed Manhattan Rabbi Stephen S. Wise right and left. The Agudath Harabonim* issued an edict against him. Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, professor of the Talmud at the New York Jewish Theological Seminary, declared: "Rabbi Wise does not represent the beliefs of a majority of Jews."

At length someone troubled to discover that Rabbi Wise had actually only said that modern Jewry must accept Jesus as a great Jewish teacher and indorse His ethical code. Later the Rabbi explained, that he had used the words "accept Jesus" in the sense of "accept Jesus as a man and a Jew." He said: "There is no question of embracing Christianity save by Christians.

For close to three weeks, Wise was bashed in synagogues across the country, traditionalist Jewish newsapers, and public rallies and press releases. Rabbi Louis Silver called his remarks heretical, and the Young Israel of Brooklyn passed a resolution condemning them as "a grave threat to Judaism."

Mizrachi and Agudath Harabonim went even further:

[Wise] has on several occasions preached publicly against the divine authority of the Bible. Because of this, he from our point of view a priori considered harmful to be placed at the head of a national Jewish movement. As a rabbinical body, we were dissatisfied with his election to the chairmanship of the UPA. Being, however, devoted to the reconstruction of Palestine, we kept silent, with pain in our hearts, and hoped that at least [while chairman] he would feel his responsibility to the Jewish community and consider their holy feelings and not offend them.

It is most regrettable that... last Sunday he preached on a subject which threatens to tear down the barrier which has existed between us and the Christian Church for over 1,900 years-- which may drive our children to conversion.

Dr. Wise's...[words] are a maneuver towards baptism, a wide opening of the doors of the churches for the youth.

(NY Times, Dec 29, 1925)

Mizrachi and Agudath Harabonim demanded Wise's resignation from the (then) United Palestine Appeal (Keren Hayesod), a 5 million dollar charity and the leading Zionist fundraising organization of the day.

And yet, as the scandal dragged on, cooler heads gradually prevailed. Not only did Wise have the backing of his Reform allies, his eloquence (and the truth about what he actually said coming to light) slowly convinced enough moderates to shift their support. Individual Orthodox rabbis and shuls started standing up for him, and the Rabbinical Assembly of JTS eventually backed him as well. Though Wise offered his resignation from UPF within a few days of Agudath and Mizrachi's criticism, many urged him to reconsider and the heads of UPF's board to reject it.

By the second week of January, Wise's resignation had been rejected and it was Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, President of Agudath Harabonim and the leader of the attacks on Wise in the first place, who wound up being forced out of the Executive Board of Mizrachi, going over to Agudath Israel (which would, in turn, start its own break-away fund to support Israel).

In many ways, the Wise Christmas scandal was a major watershed for American Jewish history in the early 20th century, where the divisions of the three movements were brought to a head once more. Of course we had already had the infamous "Trefa Banquet" in 1883 which helped convince more traditional Jews that the radical Reformers were not interested in maintaining a Jewish status-quo (and helped create the impetus for JTS), but the Wise scandal solidified the lines in the sand for the Conservative and Orthodox movements.

Recall that originally, JTS was created for the purposes of consolidating the Orthodox and the center-right moderates in opposition to Reform, and that for many years the seminary operated as a home for a kind of centrist Orthopraxy in America. However, the Agudath Harabonim had been created in 1902 to provide an Eastern European, essentially Haredi perspective and to increase its domination over the concept of what it would mean to be "Orthodox" in America. In fact, the Agudath would not even allow JTS graduates (or graduates from Western European schools, such as the Hildesheimer Seminary) to be members. By narrowing what "Orthodox" could legitimately mean, Agudath pushed Conservative Judaism and JTS further to the center simply by virtue of not being Haredi.

This background helps explain some of the back-and-forth among individual Conservative rabbis and congregations as they tried to decide where they came down on the issue of the Wise scandal, not only over the details, but also politically, over whether they would dare to challenge the Agudath Harabonim.

One outspoken defender of Wise was Rabbi Solomon Goldman, who had been a student at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva before going on to JTS. Earlier in 1925, Goldman, whose first pulpit was at an Orthodox shul in Cleveland, got involved in his own controversy when he suggested abolishing the mechitzah. He, too, was made to answer to the Agudath Harabonim. Except, even more so than Wise, Goldman essentially told Agudath to jump in a lake. Other notable Conservative rabbis who joined Goldman included Louis Schwefel, Norman Salit, and Leon Spitz, all of whom had began as "modern" Orthodox rabbis and for whom the Wise moment was a wakeup call that while they could not consider themselves Reform, there was no place for them with the Agudath Harabonim.

The 1925 scandal helped crystallize where Reform was, where Orthodoxy had decided to go, and left the Conservative movement to try to define itself by where it wasn't (the more things change...). By 1928, In just a few years, Yeshiva College would be established and all three movements would have their own separate seminaries.

In many ways, the battle of the last weeks of 1925 was the last moment for the three movements to show that they could hold their noses and unite for a common cause, supporting the pre-state construction of Israel. When Agudath Harabonim split and started their own fund, it was the definitive end to the idea that America could support a unified, if fractious, concept of a big-tent Jewish community.

While ultimately the break constituted individual victories for the movements' right to define themselves (and paved the way for, eventually, an American Modern Orthodoxy that was closer to what JTS had envisioned in the first place), I can't help but wonder if the Jewish people simultaneously lost something important that day, if only in concept. Maybe true unity is a pipe dream, but I'd like to think that at least today we recognize that there are issues that we can (or should) agree on and which trump the ongoing denominational infighting.

Now that all the Jewish movements have a place at the table (at least in America), do you think there is a greater willingness (or openness) to work together? Or has increased power just strengthened different denominations' desire to expand their reach? What ramifications does this have for countries where Orthodox Judaism has preferred or "official" status and other movements are at a disadvantage? What can we learn from this?

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