Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy by Chaim Waxman

Abstract

Reviewed by: Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy by Chaim Waxman David Ellenson Chaim Waxman . Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy . Liverpool : Littman Library of Jewish Civilization , 2017 . vi + 226 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000604 In 1967, the famed sociologist Peter Berger declared that "secularization has resulted in a widespread collapse of the plausibility of traditional religious definitions of reality." 1 Almost five decades later, in 2014, Berger was moved to conclude that this observation was simply wrong. He candidly admitted, [End Page 198] "So-called secularization theory was mistaken in the assumption that modernity necessarily leads to a decline in religion." 2 In his later work, Berger argued that the pluralism and fragmentation that marked the modern social condition led to the resurgence of traditional religion and a renewed quest for spiritual expression and meaning in the modern context. This development serves as a decisive backdrop for understanding the substance and importance of Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy by Chaim Waxman. Waxman, who (along with Samuel Heilman) is the foremost contemporary sociological commentator on the state of Orthodox Judaism, writes as the paradigmatic "insider-outsider" in all his writings on Orthodox Judaism in the contemporary setting. In this volume, he draws brilliantly on this lifetime of scholarship to illuminate the history and character of Orthodox Judaism in America in a time of religious revival. His framework is self-consciously "sociological rather than ideological or religious-legal" (3). He emphasizes throughout his book that Orthodox Judaism cannot be understood apart from the contours of the sociological and historical contexts in which Orthodox Jews and their institutions find themselves. Waxman's portrait of American Orthodox Judaism shows what distinguishes Orthodox Jews and Judaism from non-Orthodox Jews and Judaism in this nation while highlighting the breadth and diversity of American Orthodox Judaism itself. At the very outset of this volume, Waxman employs the familiar categories of "Modern Orthodox" and "ultra-Orthodox" as "ideal-types" for comprehending the nature of Orthodox Judaism both past and present in America. While each group displays a commitment to halakhic observance, the birthrates of each group, their economic success in American society, and their attitudes toward a whole host of social and cultural issues demonstrate the diversity of Orthodox opinions and practices. Waxman illuminates what distinguishes all circles of American Orthodox Jews from the non-Orthodox by highlighting their demographic, political, and cultural-religious differences. He points out that in the New York area, the birthrate in the ultra-Orthodox community is twelve times that of the non-Orthodox world and that Modern Orthodox Jews have more than double the birthrate of Reform and Conservative Jews nationwide. Politically, the Orthodox world is much more heavily Republican than the non-Orthodox one, and it fails to support the traditional wall of separation between religion and state that is championed by a majority of American Jews. While Orthodox Jews have an average income lower than non-Orthodox Jews, Waxman reports that there are proportionately a larger number of households with annual incomes of more than $150,000 in the Modern Orthodox community than exist in the non-Orthodox Jewish world. This affluence among the Modern Orthodox, combined with bloc-voting among the ultra-Orthodox that assures patronage and grants from state and local governments, play key roles in sustaining ever-burgeoning Orthodox institutions and schools. Waxman pays careful attention to history by pointing out how the immigration of Rabbi Aharon Kotler to the United States in 1941 and his establishment of [End Page 199] the ultra-Orthodox Lakewood Yeshiva, along with the arrival of 140,000 Hungarian ultra-Orthodox Jews on these shores in the aftermath of the Holocaust, combined with the current-day economic and political developments mentioned above to strengthen all sectors of American Orthodox Judaism. The result of these demographic, cultural, religious, and economic factors is that Jewish day school education has become standard among the overwhelming number of Orthodox Jews in America, whether Modern or ultra-Orthodox. Orthodox Jews, unlike most of their non-Orthodox counterparts, therefore currently inhabit what can be described anthropologically as a "thick Jewish culture." The phenomenon of "nonobservant Orthodox Jews"—who belong...