Orthodox Rabbis Research Articles

The Role of the Periodical in the Organization of the American Orthodox Rabbinate: Beit Va’ad laChachamim (Hebrew, 1902–1903)

Abstract This article documents the first significant Orthodox rabbinic periodical published in the United States: a Hebrew monthly that first appeared in 1902 and was continued by a weekly. BVC featured a broad array of rabbinic genres—among them responsa, Talmudic novellae, and religious-law treatises, homilies, opinion pieces, memoirs, hagiographies and even poetry—as well as public notices and advertisements. The article also proposes a theoretical framework, taken from organizational theory, for analyzing the periodical’s purpose, its structure, and its intended role within the specific historical and institutional circumstances of its emergence. Understanding “organization” as both a verb and a noun, it interprets the periodical itself, as well as the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in the United States that published it, as organizations attempting to organize the American Orthodox rabbinate as a self-conscious, authoritative, and autonomous entity. This effort, in turn, was a means for organizing Orthodox—mostly immigrant—Jews, their congregations and their religious life, as a coherent social entity.

The Holocaust as an (UN)Exceptional Phenomenon: Development and Change in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Outlook

Abstract This article examines the evolution and transformation in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s perspective concerning the Holocaust. It traces the Rebbe’s viewpoint on the Holocaust by analyzing his various insights and observations in his sermons and writings over the years, and highlights a significant shift in his stance whereby he reached the conclusion that the Holocaust is exceptional and does not fall into the terms of sin, punishment, or even Tikkun (metaphysical rectification)—concepts which he himself previously utilized in earlier stages of his life. In his most recent phase, the Lubavitcher Rebbe posited that the Holocaust is an unprecedented and exceptional occurrence, both on historical and theological grounds. This assertion is not commonly espoused by traditional Jewish theologians and orthodox rabbis, thus rendering the Lubavitcher Rebbe relatively distinctive.

Queering Eve: Imagining Transgender Acceptance in Orthodox Judaism

While the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements have made a concerted effort to welcome transgender Jews in the last twenty years, transgender congregants are often shunned by Orthodox rabbis and synagogues in the United States. Studies about Orthodox Judaism’s relationship with transgender identity often focus exclusively on Talmudic justifications for the acceptance or rejection of transgender Jews, ignoring the increasingly sizeable effect that secular politics has on the American Orthodox community. To address this gap in the academic understanding of transgender Jewish issues, this analysis takes a more holistic approach to the issue of transgender acceptance in Orthodox Judaism by (1) assessing the potential for the acceptance of transgender Jews in ultra-Orthodox and Modern Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States using halakhic rulings on intersex and transgender issues and (2) tracing the potential effects of the American political landscape on the Orthodox community’s acceptance of transgender identity.

Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Reviewed by: Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein Christoffer H. Grundmann Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice. Edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein. Interreligious Reflections Series. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2021. Pp. 442. $49.00, cloth; $39.00, paper. This book is a collection of essays published on the occasion of the seventieth birthday of Israeli Orthodox Rabbi David Rosen, hailed by the volume’s editor as “Judaism’s first and only interreligious ambassador” (p. 401). Gifted with remarkable personality traits—including being hospitable, able to build genuine trust, and able to communicate well across religious divides—Rosen gained an international reputation while heading the Anti-Defamation League’s Jerusalem office of interreligious relations from 1985 to 2001 and, subsequently, becoming director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee while simultaneously serving as “honorary advisor on matters of interfaith” to the Chief Rabbinate (p. 387). The forty-three essays are bookended by the editor’s introduction, which explains the origin of the project and its design and structure, and his conclusion, which highlights insights gained from the articles, [End Page 616] followed by the endnotes and brief remarks about the contributors, all of whom are “friends of David” (p. 2). Goshen-Gottstein also contributed a piece about the Dalai Lama. This is a very personal volume, not just regarding acquaintanceship but also regarding the very content of the pieces, because authors were asked to write about “a figure who inspire[d]” their own “interfaith work”(p. 3) Thus, the book reads almost as a “Who’s Who” of interreligious dialogue past and present at “the high end of the interfaith arena” (p. 379), as the numerous high-profile authors and senior religious dignitaries (cardinals, rabbis, ulama presidents, acharyas, swamis, archbishops) indicate, many of whom are also members of the Jerusalem-based Elijah Interfaith Institute. Averaging eight pages in length (except for a longer piece written by the honoree’s spouse Sharon), the contributions come with a portrait of the person or persons presented, save for the one about “The Anonymous Hero” by William Vendley of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. The fact that Christian, especially Roman Catholic, contributors predominate is owed to the longstanding engagement of Rosen with the Vatican, causing someone to dub him “the pope’s rabbi” (p. 387), a quip not unjustified because the honoree was once considered to become Israel’s first ambassador to the Vatican state. What makes reading this book so exiting is to see how almost all writers testify with affection to their personal role models for involvement in interreligious/interfaith dialogue and practice, some taking their inspiration from individuals outside of their own faith tradition. A Muslim writes about a Christian (A. Abadi about Hans Küng); Jews write about a Palestinian Muslim (Rabbi M. Melchior about Sheikh Abdulla Nimer Darwish) and about a Hindu (Rabbi D. Sperber about Swami Dayananda Saraswati); and Christians write about a Buddhist (S. B. King about Thich Nhat Hanh) and a Muslim (Archbishop R. Williams about Akbar Ahmed). What is also interesting to note is that, in nearly all presentations, the specificity of each religious tradition of the authors remains discernible. This diversity makes for a very rich, colorful florilegium and fitting tribute to yet another “interreligious hero.” It is also a captivating showcase of why and how one should engage in interreligious dialogue. It motivates joining with “faithful presence” (p. 250) in “the dance of dialogue” (pp. 238 and 25 ff.), the rhythm of which is set by honest, authentic encounters of people firmly rooted in their faith tradition who desire to communicate judiciously with others of the “family of believers” (p. 220) about the Unfathomable—once one realizes the limitations of any human comprehension of the truly Ultimate and [End Page 617] recognizes responsibility for joining hands in fostering global peace and care of the environment. Christoffer H. Grundmann Tūbingen, Germany Copyright © 2022 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

Jewish and Muslim Women in France: Religious Gender Justice and Its Discontents

Abstract: Jewish and Muslim women seeking to claim certain rights in the religious realm in France today, such as access to religious study, ritual space and public religious roles, are confronted with obstacles to gender justice both in Orthodox Judaism and in mainstream Islam. In this article, I begin by taking a brief look at strategies used by women in other countries to curtail male monopolies while remaining inside Orthodox Judaism and mainstream Islam: creating all-female spaces, partnering with men and advancing from within hegemonic institutions. These have produced new religious functions for women, including women imams and female Orthodox rabbis, Jewish and Muslim female spiritual guides ( maharat, murshidat ), women experts and counselors in Islamic and Jewish law ( alimat, yo‘atzot halakhah ), Jewish legal advocates ( to‘anot rabbaniyot ) and female judges ( qadiya ) in shari‘a courts. I then survey the situation in France, where few such innovations have taken hold. I conclude by suggesting some explanations for their absence (in Orthodox Judaism) or their very slow evolution (in Islam) in the French context.

To Be a Holy People: Jewish Tradition and Ethical Values

To Be a Holy People: Jewish Tradition and Ethical Values

The Heralds of Zionism as Theological Revolutionaries

In historiographical research, there is an approach that perceives the ideologues who preceded the Hovevei Zion movement (1881) and the Zionist movement (1896) as “heralds of Zionism”. These ideologues operated, or at least proposed the idea of the Jews’ return to the Land of Israel and establishment a political entity in the Land, beginning from the 1860s. The researchers are divided, however, on the identification of the heralds. Some locate them even earlier, in the 17th century, while others deny their very existence. This article wishes to claim that the heralds of Zionism were Orthodox rabbis, such as R. Kalisher, R. Alkalai, R. Friedland, R. Guttmacher, R. Bibas, and R. Natonek, who operated in the early half of the 19th century and transformed the Jewish theology that advocated a passive-spiritual-Divine redemption into an active-practical-natural redemption. For this purpose, it is necessary to immigrate to the Land of Israel and cultivate the land. They contended that once the People of Israel would do so, the redemption would arrive.

From Medical Halakha to Jewish Bioethics

ABSTRACT Scholars of applied Jewish ethics often describe the 1959 publication of Jewish Medical Ethics, by Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, as the birth of Jewish bioethics. The decades following its publication saw prolific scholarship, predominantly by Orthodox rabbis, that examined questions about medical practice and technology through the lens of halakha, or Jewish law. This article offers an alternative genealogy of Jewish bioethics, proposing that the field actually emerged around the 1990s, when academic ethics scholars began offering critiques of the earlier scholarship, which is better understood as medical halakha. This article outlines key features of medical halakha as compared with Jewish bioethics, clarifies differences between the two, and argues that drawing a distinction between these two genres will enable greater diversity and creativity in Jewish bioethics discourse. The article closes by discussing ways to incorporate Jewish philosophy into Jewish bioethics under this new framework.

Prophetic Disappointment and Ideological Change among Israeli Settlers’ Rabbis: The Case of Rabbis Yehuda Amital and Shmuel Tal

In this article, I examine the role of prophetic disappointment in creating ideological change. I discuss the response of two Orthodox rabbis, Rabbi Yehuda Amital (1924–2010) and Rabbi Shmuel Tal (b. 1962), to the crisis of faith they encountered regarding the role of Zionism in the messianic drama. This research describes the process of religious switching they have gone through due to failure of prophetic faith. This work argues that their transformation was an attempt to cope with the tension that results from cognitive dissonance in two different instances while blaming a third party for misunderstanding the true will of God. Their religious switching was an act of theodicy, justifying God’s justice, while renouncing their previous held beliefs.

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

Reviewed by: Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life by Zev Eleff Jody Myers Zev Eleff. Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. 311 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009421000404 Zev Eleff has devised a fruitful and interesting way of describing developments within American Orthodox communities and the tensions between the Modern Orthodox and the Orthodox Right. He focuses on the quest for authenticity, a concern that has been central in the United States since the early nineteenth century. Authenticity in religion is a subjective judgement rendered by adherents who believe there is a correct form of beliefs and practices unsullied by financial, [End Page 498] political, and external cultural influences. One might think that for Orthodox Jews conformity to Halakhah determines authenticity. Eleff repeatedly shows, however, that among the Orthodox the charge of inauthenticity is leveled against an innovation when religious authorities deem it problematic but cannot fault the innovation on halakhic grounds; they therefore delegitimize it by declaring it new and contrary to Torah values. The Modern Orthodox, who have sought explicitly to incorporate elements of American liberal culture into their lives, have been most often accused of initiating inauthentic practices even though all Orthodox Jewish communities have developed new rituals, pedagogies, and rules. Furthermore, Eleff argues that scholars have underestimated the extent of American religious culture's influence on Orthodox Judaism, a corrective he demonstrates. Authentically Orthodox is not a historical narrative. It consists of nine case studies, each constituting a separate chapter focusing on a separate post–World War II innovation. Eleff arranges these in three sections. Part 1, "Halakhah and Change," examines kitniyot prohibitions on Passover, the Bat Mitzvah, and the yarmulke. Part 2 deals with the changed image of Orthodoxy in response to a Yeshiva University student team's victory in a College Bowl program on national TV, the creation of toys and games for Haredi children, and the life span of a Modern Orthodox Baltimore yeshiva. Part 3 focuses on "protected male space" through Yeshiva University regulation of co-ed social events, women's engagement in Torah study, and separate women's prayer groups. Each chapter can stand alone. Strictly speaking, none of the innovations were in violation of or required by Halakhah. For example, the case study on the yarmulke shows that in the 1960s American Orthodox Jews began to consider it imperative for men to wear a yarmulke during their waking hours no matter their activity, a position at variance with halakhic codes; they also began to describe the practice as a proud display of Jewish identity—certainly an American interpretation. In the 1980s, when the obligation to wear a yarmulke conflicted with a high school basketball league's rules prohibiting head coverings during playoffs, a yeshiva high school's leaders and supporters mounted a legal challenge. (The importance they attached to the sport is also an obvious sign of Americanization.) In Menora v. Illinois High School Association, the plaintiffs claimed that the prohibition violated the students' First Amendment Free Exercise right, and they won the two-year battle. At about the same time, some Orthodox rabbis and organizations began to oppose the long-standing Jewish community stance that the Constitution's Establishment Clause required strict separation of church and state and precluded state aid to religious schools. For this and related issues, the Orthodox were aligning themselves with Christian conservatives and asserting their distinctive American Orthodox identity. Similarly, in "Mitzvah Merchants and the Creation of an Orthodox Children's Culture," Eleff describes the school contests, trading cards, and toys developed by Orthodox educators that parallel those made by evangelical Christian educators. Both groups share the conviction that children's games should be "practice" for authentically religious adults. Their alternatives to American youth culture nevertheless promote the "American" values of competition, individual achievement, and acquisitiveness. [End Page 499] Eleff's frequent references to American religious history and historiography make his treatment of American Orthodox Judaism especially insightful. For example, in his chapter on Orthodox Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, Eleff builds upon the observation by historian Frederick Jackson Turner (and Shari Rabin's application of it to nineteenth-century American Jews) that there has...

Review: Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement, edited by Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube

Review: <i>Theosophy across Boundaries: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Modern Esoteric Movement</i>, edited by Hans Martin Krämer and Julian Strube

Tribute to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Tribute to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Bodily Citationality and Hermeneutical Sex: Text, Image, and Ritual as Tools for Queer Intimacies

Bodily Citationality and Hermeneutical Sex: Text, Image, and Ritual as Tools for Queer Intimacies1 Shlomo Gleibman This article discusses queer images of traditional Jewish clothes and objects-the prayer shawl, the ritual undergarment, and the phylacteries-in contemporary photography and novels, in relation to the biblical and rabbinic texts (the Hebrew Bible, Talmud, and Midrash). The selected cultural productions of the turn of the millennium that represent the intersections of Judaism and male-male desire include works of fiction and visual art from Canada, the United States, Israel, and Germany. Michael Lowenthal’s The Same Embrace (1998), set in the early 1990s, follows Jacob, a secular and openly gay Jewish man, who, while visiting his religious twin brother Jonathan, becomes infatuated with Ari, an Orthodox yeshiva student who is his brother’s study partner. Evan Fallenberg’s novel Light Fell (2008) depicts a passionate romance between two Jewish male scholars in the 1970s: Yoel Rosenzweig, an Orthodox rabbi, and Joseph Licht, a university professor. André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name (2007) delineates a love relationship between two Jewish men in the 1980s: Elio, a professor’s son, and Oliver, a doctoral student and Elio’s father’s research assistant.2 In all of these works, Jewish religious references serve to establish the immediacy and totality of the intimate connection between male lovers. The photography of Benyamin Reich, produced between 2005 and 2020, and of Oscar Wolfman, produced in 2010–11, employs biblical and rabbinic tropes to represent contemporary Jewish queer experience. Sarah Rosen’s and Tom Stokes’s blog Porn4Jews3 and Duncan Pflaster’s Naughty Jewish Boys Calendar (2015) introduce eroticized Jewish religious references and ritual objects into the contemporary popular culture.4 Drawing upon the works of queer theorists such as Judith Butler and José Esteban Muñoz, I propose to look at these literary and artistic productions as examples of subversive citationality and (dis)identification that construct queer subjectivity by rethinking traditional religious images and cultural practices across texts and [End Page 41] genres, through particular modes of intertextuality and cultural translation. Like a number of works in Jewish critical scholarship (see e.g. Lefkovitz; Pellegrini), I approach Jewish identity, along with gender and sexual identities, as a performative category enacted in cultural productions through interpretation and reworkings of earlier texts. Judith Butler’s description of identity as performative ritual includes the notion of bodily inscriptions, which, through compulsory citationality, establish textual authority as a form of conventionality and normativity. In Bodies that Matter, Butler defines sex as “citational practice” (71–72). She understands citation as a way of accumulating “the force of authority” through “a prior, authoritative set of practices” (171–72) in which the law is produced through citation (xxiii). Citation produces the norm (xxii), yet it also produces “a viable subject” (177). Butler makes a distinction between “forced citations” and “subversive citations” (232). The very mechanism of sex being “produced as reiteration of hegemonic norms” (70) allows a possibility of “a form of cultural iterability or rearticulation, a practice of resignification” (70). Citation can invite reappropriation and recontextualization (169). The texts and works of art that cite the tradition differently could be seen as examples of such subversive citations, as instances of bodily citationality through queering biblical and rabbinic texts and religious rituals associated with these texts. The classical religious texts are cited in liturgy, performed in ritual, and enacted by, with, and upon the queer male bodies through subversive erotic performance. When discussing his art, Benyamin Reich draws a parallel between religious ritual objects and sexual fetishes: “Fetish […] is connected to holiness. In religion, fetish is when a person makes kiddush, if he puts tefillin […]. You take an object, and you make of this object much more than what it is. This is the whole idea of art” (Schmoozing 3:54–4:24). The similar roles of imagination in erotic fantasies and in religious concepts bring together sexual practices and religious rituals. This strategy of queer reclamation of traditional images could be understood in light of José Esteban Muñoz’s theory of disidentifications. In his discussion of the relation of queers of colour to their mainstream, traditional cultures, Mu...

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

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...

‘The Detours Required’: Sarah Kofman and the ‘Black Milk’ of Hidden Children

Sarah Kofman’s belated memoir, Rue Order, Rue Labat, narrates the experiences of a hidden Jewish child in Paris, living out the war in a vexed relationship with two mothers – her biological mother, a Polish immigrant and wife of an Orthodox rabbi, on the one hand; and a Catholic French woman who saves them, on the other. Reading the memoir alongside literary reflections by other child survivors, such as Aharon Appelfeld and Louis Begley, the article focuses on the snippets of literary, cinematic, and artistic analysis published elsewhere that Kofman has interpellated into the autobiographical details. Taken together, these critical readings and the personal narratives gesture towards the internalization and aftereffects of the Shoah for hidden children.

Halakhic Flexibility and Communal Unity: R. Marcus Horovitz and the Schächtfrage

Abstract Unlike his mentor, R. Esriel Hildesheimer, and his chief antagonist, R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, R. Marcus Horovitz, the “communal Orthodox rabbi” (orthodoxer Gemeinderabbiner) of Frankfurt am Main at the end of the nineteenth century, has received relatively little scholarly attention. Horovitz was both a creative halakhic mind and a passionate communal leader devoted to Jewish unity at a time of intense ideological and political division. This article considers Horovitz’s analysis of the halakhic permissibility of stunning an animal with a blow to the head after slaughter, a practice that was being advanced by animal protection groups in Switzerland and Germany at the time. In a lengthy responsum on the topic, after a thorough reading of halakhic sources, Horovitz argued that the practice was permissible and called for a united Jewish response. The responsum illuminates both the virtuosity of its under-studied author and the complex social and political forces faced by Orthodox rabbis at the time of the Schächtfrage (the controversy over the legality of kosher animal slaughter in German-speaking lands).

Making Judaism Safe for America: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism by Jessica Cooperman

Reviewed by: Making Judaism Safe for America: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism by Jessica Cooperman David Weinfeld (bio) Making Judaism Safe for America: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism. By Jessica Cooperman. New York: New York University Press, 2018. 224 pp. In February 1943, the SS Dorchester, a US military vessel, was sunk by a German submarine. As the vessel went down, four military chaplains [End Page 147] gave up their lifeboats, sacrificing themselves to save their comrades. They led the crew in prayers as the ship sank, representing America's three major religions: two Protestants, one Catholic, and one Jew. It's a great story, but it was not the first time the military served as a laboratory for religious pluralism in the United States. Jessica Cooperman's excellent book convincingly demonstrates that the framework for "Tri-Faith America," a phrase generally applied to the post-World War II era, in fact began with American involvement in the First World War. Government policies and institutions begun in 1917 "unintentionally" challenged Protestant domination and "created space for Judaism and Catholicism to enter the pantheon of American religions" (8). Cooperman helps elucidate American religious pluralism, an ideal that championed shared values and loyalties while allowing distinctions in beliefs to be maintained. She demonstrates the importance of a narrow time frame—the bulk of the action occurs in 1917–1918—in the Americanization of Jews and Judaism. American Jewish military service in World War I strengthened the major Jewish denominations and flattened the differences between Jews of German and Eastern European origin. Cooperman's story is mostly about the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), an organization created in 1917 by the War Department whose function was to care for the social, cultural, and religious needs of the soldiers. The JWB operated as the equivalent to the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), which catered to Protestants, and the Knights of Columbus, which served Catholics. The JWB crowded out other organizations to become the official group in charge of the welfare of Jewish servicemen on bases at home and overseas. The JWB had a direct influence on nearly 250,000 American Jewish soldiers in a way that the Young Men's Hebrew Assocation, B'nai Brith, and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) did not. The JWB founders were "elite New Yorkers" often affiliated with the AJC (41). These included some well-known figures, including lawyer Louis Marshall, financiers Jacob Schiff and Felix Warburg, and, most importantly, Cyrus Adler, the president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism. Jacob Rader Marcus, future rabbi and American Jewish historian, served as an army clerk and unofficial JWB representative during World War I and was another important actor in this drama. These lay leaders sought to create a recognized space for Judaism in America, but also to create a new kind of Jew. Most American Jews serving in the military during World War I were of eastern European origin. A third were born outside the US; many spoke mostly Yiddish. Some were Orthodox, while others were Zionists or radical socialists. The JWB helped these soldiers Americanize [End Page 148] through classes in English language and American history and civics, as well as more modernized prayer services. Their efforts led to a few hiccups. When some Jewish soldiers and civilians requested kosher food, their request was ultimately denied, as offering different food was seen as too divisive. The JWB put more energy into directing forms of worship. Unlike dietary laws, religious services had a direct Protestant and Catholic equivalent. It was more important that the troops ate together than that they prayed together. Unsurprisingly, the JWB's attempt to standardize prayer services for Jewish soldiers met with complaints. Orthodox Jews felt they were being coerced into adopting Reform Judaism, while Reform Jews disliked the JWB's prayer book, thinking it too traditional. These divides emerged again in the selection of military chaplains. Orthodox rabbis often lacked the qualifications required by the War Department, like a secular college degree, while, in Adler's words, "Reform Rabbis 'do not touch the spot,' but that is not the fault of the...

Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism ed. by Alan Slomowitz and Allison Feit

Reviewed by: Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism ed. by Alan Slomowitz and Allison Feit Richard Ruth and Joseph Kosowsky Alan Slomowitz and Allison Feit, eds. Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism. New York: Routledge, 2019. Pp 370. Hardcover, paper, and ebook. ISBN 9781138749498, 9781138749467, 9781315180151. This pioneering book comes at an important historical moment. To some publics, both psychoanalysis and Orthodox Judaism constitute marginal, and marginalized, belief systems, and their adherents are small minorities with little importance or impact. However, psychoanalytic therapies are winning increased recognition as more effective than other treatment models,6 and both the percentage and growth rate of U.S. Jews identifying with Orthodoxy are increasing steadily.7 Thus, the communities, intellectual traditions, and bodies of practice this book brings into dialogue are wellsprings of influential contemporary developments. Feminist scholarship, with which we identify, asks that we acknowledge the grounding of our thinking in our personal contexts. One of us (RR) grew up in a Yiddishist family as a secular Jew; he found his way toward religion and observance, as a Reconstructionist, when he and his male partner decided to marry. A psychologist-psychoanalyst, he has done research on how Freud's conflictual relationship with his Jewish identity influenced his theory of the psychoanalytic method. The other of us (JK) grew up in a traditional Orthodox Litvish/yeshivish community as a frum cisgender male. When he became aware of his sexuality, he felt there was no possibility to [End Page 138] live as both Jewish and gay. Currently, through his reading and through organizations for queer Jewish people, he is coming to appreciate his intersectional identities and possibilities. He is simultaneously a student in a psychodynamically oriented doctoral program in clinical psychology. The diverse perspectives and voices that enter the conversation in Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism echo these reviewers' own journeys. Contributing authors are men and women, spanning generations, most from Orthodox backgrounds (whether or not currently observant) and some not; there are learned and respected Orthodox rabbis (of diverse views), psychoanalysts (mostly from the interpersonal tradition), psychoanalytically oriented clinicians, and research biological and social scientists. Lesbian, gay male, and transgender perspectives are represented, as are thoughtful contributions from family members of LGBTQ Orthodox Jews. The styles of writing, too, range—from poetic personal accounts, to clinical and basic scientific contributions, psychoanalytic theory, and Jewish textual and halachic exegesis. In its compendium of included material, the book is reminiscent of the tone and breadth of a satisfying volume of Talmud. Valuable new ideas often emerge when lines of deep thinking from different contexts meet up. Two examples stand out among the psychoanalytic contributions to this volume. Interpersonal psychoanalysts have developed the notion that the self is not unitary, but composed of shifting self-states; some, because they are intolerable, dissociated. Conceptualizing these unintegrated "not me" states, it is argued in this book, offers a way of understanding how some LGBTQ Jews dissociate their LGBTQ, or Jewish, identities. Winncott's notion of the true and false selves8 is used in the volume to help understand how LGBTQ Jews navigate the overlapping domains of community, family, social, and self experience in Orthodox environments. Novich, a contributing author, draws out how LGBTQ Jews, valuing the relationships and sense of community they develop in the Orthodox experience, may develop false selves not just in infancy, as Winnicott proposed, but throughout development, as a way to protect the emerging queer true self from both intrapsychic and community pressures. The contributions from rabbinic and lay Orthodox perspectives acknowledge the specificity of daunting halachic and sociocultural challenges LGBTQ Orthodox Jews face, from gender-segregated roles in worship and ritual to expectations of heterosexual marriage and child-rearing. These writers serve both Orthodox and non-Orthodox readers by tracing and explicating textual sources that guide dominant halachic practices and normative Orthodox community customs, including source texts traditionally interpreted as prohibiting lesbian and gay male sexual acts and transgender and non-binary gender identities and expressions. There is no flinching from hard questions, though no contributing writer supports conversion therapy. Yet what stands out in Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism is consensus, among writers differing on much else, on [End...

AIDS Was Our Earthquake: American Jewish Responses to the AIDS Crisis, 1985–92

AIDS Was Our Earthquake:American Jewish Responses to the AIDS Crisis, 1985–92 Gregg Drinkwater (bio) On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on an unusual cluster of Pneumocystis Pneumonia among five previously healthy young gay men in Los Angeles. That report is generally understood as the first official documentation of the epidemic that was briefly called "gay cancer" and then "Gay Related Immune-Deficiency" (GRID) before being labelled "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" (AIDS) in the summer of 1982. By 1985, 15,000 Americans had been diagnosed with the disease. Nearly 13,000 of them had died.1 The majority were gay and bisexual men and intravenous (IV) drug users—all populations that were widely stigmatized at the time. From the beginning of the AIDS crisis in 1981 through 1985, American Jewish leaders were largely silent. We do not see evidence of widespread Jewish communal engagement with AIDS in the United States until September 24, 1985, when two young and charismatic rabbis in San Francisco delivered Yom Kippur sermons on AIDS in their respective Reform synagogues: Congregation Sha'ar Zahav (serving primarily LGBTQ members) and Congregation Emanu-El (with primarily straight members). Both sermons, and the rabbis who delivered them, profoundly shaped liberal American Judaism's responses to AIDS. [End Page 122] The Sha'ar Zahav sermon, delivered by Yoel Kahn, a 26-year-old gay man newly ordained as a Reform rabbi, suggested a Jewish path forward on HIV/AIDS grounded in the insights of the Gay Liberation Movement and an approach that centered gay and lesbian lives. The Emanu-El sermon, in contrast, delivered by Robert Kirschner, a 34-year-old straight man newly promoted as his congregation's senior rabbi, called upon Jewish compassion in the face of a public health crisis affecting stigmatized populations. Yet both shared common ground. Rather than framing the religious and moral issue at the heart of HIV/AIDS as a need to proscribe sexual behavior coded as dangerous and aberrant, as was common among evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox Jewish leaders, the rabbis who delivered both of these sermons reflected the emergence of a new moral calculus in which acceptance and tolerance of gay and lesbian people became a Jewish moral litmus test among liberal Jews. The Jewish AIDS initiatives that followed in the wake of the conversations these sermons helped spark were rarely about policing the sexual and intimate behavior of gay and lesbian people. Instead, most of the Jewish AIDS programs that emerged in the US in the late 1980s focused on providing support and social services to people with AIDS (hereafter PWAs) and their families; raising awareness about the risks of AIDS; making AIDS more visible in Jewish communities; and modifying the behaviors of non-gay Jews toward gay and lesbian people.2 In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, conservative American Christian religious leaders, such as Jerry Falwell, had insisted that AIDS was God's punishment for sinful "homosexual" behavior. A 1986 Gallup poll, five years after the AIDS crisis emerged, indicated that 42 percent of Americans agreed with him.3 Such religious bigotry in the early 1980s was one factor that gave political and cultural leaders license to minimize the threat of the disease and to openly mock those suffering from AIDS.4 Few Jewish leaders outside the ultra-Orthodox community, however, made claims about AIDS that explicitly invoked God's wrath as the cause of AIDS. One exception was the Modern Orthodox Rabbi Barry Freundel—the same rabbi who was arrested in 2014 for voyeurism at a Washington DC mikvah (ritual bath)—who wrote in a 1986 essay that—although one can cite Jewish proof texts arguing both for and against divine punishment—"[b]y far, the greater evidence indicates that God's retribution plays a role in epidemics such as AIDS." Yet even Freundel quickly dismissed the question as irrelevant to the Jewish obligation to "heal and prevent death wherever possible."5 More often, Orthodox Jewish leaders joined conservative Christians in describing AIDS as the consequence of what they saw [End Page 123] as abhorrent or even pathological behavior, although the vast majority still held that regardless of...

“Jewish Mindfulness” as Spiritual Didactics Teaching Orthodox Jewish Religion through Mindfulness Meditation

Since the late 1990s, the expression “Jewish Mindfulness” has become ubiquitous in Jewish community centers (JCCs) and synagogues in America, in Israel, and in the Western diaspora. “Mindfulness”, a secular meditation technique originating from Buddhism which has been popularized in Western culture through its recontextualization within the Western therapeutic culture, has been increasingly used in Jewish Religious settings, including Modern Orthodox. How do Modern Orthodox rabbis describe their use of “Mindfulness” in their religious teachings? Why do they refer to Mindfulness Meditation rather than to Jewish Meditation? In this article, I comparatively analyze the discourses spoken—online, and in print—of American rabbis from various Modern Orthodox trends as a case to study strategies of adaptation in the current context of globalization. By identifying three types of use of Mindfulness—through, and or as Judaism—I seek to highlight the various ways in which today’s Orthodox educators use “Mindfulness”, both as a meditation technique and as a spiritual mindset, and how this is reshaping the way they teach Jewish religion. Observing contemporary Orthodox discourses on Mindfulness within Jewish religious pedagogy can help us better understand the processes of cultural appropriation and translation as well as religious change in the making, as part of a boundary maintenance work within today’s cosmopolitan cultures.