A Far-Flung Fraternity in a Fertile Desert: The Emergence of Rabbinic Scholarship in America, 1887-1926

Abstract

Writing in 1926, bibliophile Ephraim Deinard found little that distin- guished the rabbinic writing that he had studied in Europe from the kind produced by immigrant rabbis in the U.S. The only difference, he explained, was that ''in America, they have essentially ceased to publish talmudic novellae because they realize that there is no one in this country who is capable of comprehending rabbinic casuistry.'' 1 Deinard counted just over two dozen books printed in the U.S. that one might classify as ''Hiddushei Torah,'' rabbinic novellae. These sorts of casuistic works, distinctive for their theoretical style and analytical solutions to resolve contradicting statements in the Talmud and its commentators, constituted just a sliver of the nearly 1000 Hebrew books included in Deinard's catalog of American Hebrew books. This, then, was something of an indictment of American rabbinic cul- ture since Hiddushei Torah was the most elite form of traditional Jewish scholarship. Deinard's sentiment contributed to a long-lasting perception that American Jews did not begin authoring Hiddushei Torah until the post- Holocaust period. But his assessment was somewhat of an overstate- ment. To be sure, American rabbis around the turn of the twentieth century produced far fewer Hiddushei Torah than did rabbinic scholars in Europe. When American rabbis did publish, as we will see, many produced other types of rabbinic writing. Yet, Deinard was also unaware of scores of surviving works and periodicals printed in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. 2 Given that ignorance, Deinard could not detect a quiet but significant Orthodox rabbinic movement taking place in the U.S. Outside forces greatly aided these writers in reconstructing the rabbinic culture they knew so well in Europe. Like many writers in America, these men (rabbinic writing by women is a much more recent phenomenon) benefited from tremendous technological advances in the area of book manufacturing in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Better ma- chine-made paper and improvements in bookbinding production