Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff

Abstract

Reviewed by: Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff Michal Raucher (bio) Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life. By Zev Eleff. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. 311 pp. Boundary-policing has become a defining feature of Orthodox Judaism. Social science research reveals the elusiveness yet realness of these boundaries. Historians have largely presented a picture of Orthodoxy in America as a "slide to the right," wherein Orthodox Jews have moved to more stringent religious attitudes over the last century, thus pushing out many of those who might otherwise consider themselves Orthodox. However, amidst a sustained focus on how American Orthodoxy has changed despite an internal narrative of stasis and adherence to a singular tradition, we can now identify more clearly the many ways Orthodoxy has transformed, responded, and divided over the last century. [End Page 435] Authentically Orthodox demonstrates that throughout the twentieth century, Orthodoxy has not shifted its boundaries to the right but moved them in different directions depending on surrounding cultural and religious factors. Zev Eleff takes a broad view in developing a theoretical framework for thinking about how Orthodoxy has defined itself in twentieth-century America. Diving into nine case studies, Eleff argues that authenticity is what determines whether something—peanut oil, Binyan Blocks, or women's prayer groups, for instance—remains within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. Authenticity is subjective, contested, and a moving target. It is a feeling that is determined by "a web of experiences mediated by any number of cultural forces" (3). Those cultural forces come from a combination of what Eleff terms America's "indigenous religious culture" (by which he often means Christianity), European immigrants, and leading Israeli Orthodox rabbis (22). He argues that this quest for authenticity is what defines the boundaries of American Orthodoxy. Eleff illustrates how American Orthodox Jews have dealt with tensions over authenticity. The first case study concerns the permissibility of eating peanut oil on Passover and the influence of Hasidic emigres from Eastern Europe. The second chapter shows how bat mitzvah ceremonies became an accepted practice within Orthodoxy. The third chapter details the authentication of a religious norm for men—wearing a yarmulka in public. Chapter four focuses on how Modern Orthodoxy enlivened their youth with Mighty Mites, the Yeshiva University quiz squad. Next, Eleff looks at how the Orthodox right produced a faith-based youth culture through the Bracha Bee and rabbi trading cards. Chapter six tracks the rise and fall of Yeshivat Rambam, a Modern Orthodox day school in Baltimore that was ultimately rendered inauthentic because of the "religiously inhospitable soil" of Catholicism and the Orthodox right (143). The next three chapters focus on gendered spaces. Chapter seven explores the struggle over female college students at Yeshiva University. Chapter eight tracks the acceptance of women's Talmud study, as Eleff argues that this counterintuitive authenticity was due in large part to the decoupling of women's Talmud study from feminism. Chapter nine shows how this decoupling was not successful among women's prayer groups, which ultimately led to the elites not granting them authenticity. Eleff does important work in rooting Orthodoxy in its American framework. One powerful example of this can be seen in the chapter on peanut oil. Eleff shows how American consumerism of the early twentieth century "purchased more than a modicum of religious authenticity and helped peanut oil secure its foothold in Orthodox homes" (38). However, Hungarian Orthodox opposition to peanut oil ultimately influenced [End Page 436] American Orthodoxy only because of the conservative turn in American Protestantism. Hungarian Orthodoxy was deemed a more authentic expression of Orthodoxy in America because the American religious context had an anti-modernist, separatist, and conservative trend. The concept of authenticity is a productive theoretical approach to thinking about how boundaries are constructed. The case studies highlight the malleability of the concept. What ultimately authenticates a practice or innovation is not whether it is considered in line with Jewish law. Instead, the book reveals that at times the question was whether something was authentically Orthodox, like a bat mitzvah ritual, while at other times, the question was whether Orthodox Jews could be authentically American, like when they...