Secular Jews Research Articles

People of the Book: thirty scholars reflect on their Jewish identity

A Mark Twain scholar. An African American philosopher. A lesbian feminist literary critic. A Cuban-American anthropologist. A German immigrant to the United States. A professor of English at a Jesuit university. All share their reflections on the interconnectedness of identities and ideas in People of the Book, the first book in which Jewish-American scholars examine how their Jewishness has shaped and influenced their intellectual endeavors, and how their intellectual work has deepened their sense of themselves as Jews. The contributors are highly productive and respected Jewish American scholars, critics, and teachers from departments of English, history, American studies, Romance literature, Slavic studies, art, women s studies, comparative literature, anthropology, Judaic studies, and philosophy. Nearly an equal mix of men and women, the authors of these analytical and autobiographical essays include white Jews and black Jews; orthodox, conservative, reform, and totally secular Jews; Jews by birth and Jews by conversion; past presidents of the Modern Language Association and American Studies Association and young scholars at the start of their careers.

Judiska nordbor eller nordiska judar?

The Jews in Scandinavia have always been a small minority, where the own identity and the collective belonging have been important. During this century the Scandinavian Jews have become both secularized and assimilated, and the extreme individualism of the surrounding society has influenced them also. This essay deals with how the tension between being a member of a small Jewish minority and at the same time a loyal citizen of a secularized Christian country is reflected in two autobiographies by Scandinavian Jews: Boris Grünstein’s Jude i Finland (Jew in Finland) and Jo Benkow’s Fra synagogen til løvebakken (From the synagogue to the parliament). Both authors are non-religious Jews who have a strong Jewish identity, strengthened by their experiences during World War Two and their affection to Israel At the same time they are well integrated in society and feel at home in their countries. Their feeling of affinity with the Jewish community seems to have grown after a period of distance in younger years.

Power/Knowledge/Gender: The Oranges and Grapefruit Debate

It was a large basement of an apartment house in north Tel Aviv, which was used as a meeting place for Emunathe Zionist orthodox women's organization. When I entered the room, leaving outside a sunny February morning, it was already crowded with some 60 women who had come for their weekly lesson. Most of them were elderly. A few were wearing wigs, some had kerchiefs, but the majority did not cover their heads. We were about to discuss my book, Educated and Ignorant: Ultraorthodox Jewish Women and Their World , and I was nervous. It was easier to present the book to a nonorthodox audience people eager to hear the stories behind the long sleeves and under the wigs of ultraorthodox women. Some were disappointed when I related my refusal to look into very private, intimate matters, but they found comfort in other aspects sufficiently exotic to the unfamiliar ears of non-orthodox Jewish Israelis. During the discussions that followed these presentations, I usually found that their ears and hearts were never entirely alien to the subject. Many people in the audience came from an orthodox background and were seeking to warm themselves near the rhythm and aroma of their old world, contemplating again its relevance to their current lives. There were parents of ba' alei teshuva (nonreligious Jews who become observant) who were brought to the subject by their children's choice, bouncing between anger, sorrow and guilt, and seeking to understand. Others met ultraorthodox men and women every day as doctors, social workers, civil

A Dream Come True (review)

Book Reviews 119 agenda which contained close affinities to a civic religion, while Gershom Scholem's commitment to Bildung had a profound impact on his understanding of Zionism. Although Confronting the Nation offers unique insight into the aesthetics of modern nationalism, I have a few misgivings about the book. First, the monograph draws extensively from essays that Professor Mosse has published elsewhere and, consequently, it presents no fresh material. Rather than offering a coherent investigation into the subject of nationalist movements and Jewish responses to them, the thematic connections ofthe book reflect the independent development of each of the chapters. A second· difficulty derives from the author's approach to the subject of nationalism. The assumption that the French Revolution marks the advent of modern nationalism runs counter to recent historiography which demonstrates the importance of industrialization, the secularization of European society, and other phenomena in contributing to the emergence of the nation state. What we are left with, then, is a collection of essays by Professor George Mosse that offer a poignant plea for the preservation of liberal nationalism and provide the reader with significant "food for thought." Keith H. Pickus Department of History & Philosophy Montana State University A Dream Come True, by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, translated by T. Muraoka. Boulder, co: Westview Press, 1993. 127 pp. $29.95. This slender volume of memoirs by Ben-Yehuda, published in 1917/1918, has been made available to the English-speaking public for the first time. It is a significant and welcome addition to the sparse material in English about this seminal figure. Ben-Yehuda was one of the first secular Zionists, and deserves recognition as such, but his main significance to us is in the dominant role he and his family played in the· revival of modern Hebrew as a viable language for the entire range of human expression. The magnitude of his achievement is probably less appreciated now than in past decades,. because of the very success of the Hebrew renaissance. This makes one overlook how doubtful the outcome was of the war for the primacy of Hebrew, fought in Palestine by his small group of fanatics. 120 SHOFAR Summer 1995 Vol. 13, No.4 The present volume is a sketch of Ben-Yehuda's life before the major battles in that war were joined. It describes his development from a yeshiva student to a secular Jew, then to a Russian nationalist, and finally to a political and cultural Zionist. The reader follows him from his Lithuanian village and small-town yeshiva through a stay in Paris as a medical student first, as a student-teacher afterwards, and finally to Jerusalem. The author then describes the state of the Holy Land when he reached it in 1881. The book ends fairly abruptly in the summer of 1882. When we leave the author, he .has still forty years of a productive life ahead of him. This book is thus of limited use as a record of Ben-Yehuda's life and achievement. The only English sources known to me about these are encyclopedia articles and Robert St. John's 1952 biography, "Tongue of the Prophets." What we do have, however, are some fascinating descriptions of personalities, situations, and incidents of the early Jewish nationalist period, written in retrospect by one of its most important protagonists. The actual writing took place while the author was still exiled from Palestine by the Turkish authorities and living in the United States. The Balfour declaration had just been published; it was seen by Ben-Yehuda as the fulfillment of the dream of his youth, and provided the impetus to record his vision and its genesis. Ben-Yehuda is quite generous in acknowledging the help of those who were important in his quest, and about many of them we would like to know much more than what we can find here. Among these are his early teacher, Rabbi Yossi Bloicker, who, behind the false front of a strictly orthodox principal, had the temerity to study Hebrew grammar on the sly, and worse, to read Robinson Crusoe in Hebrew translation. He introduced young Eliezer to these vices, and from there on there was no turning back...

The secular ideology of jewish ethnicity in NEW Zealand

Gans (1979) and Alba (1990) have argued that ethnicity in white America is becoming increasingly “symbolic” as the social structural factors which supported group solidarity become eroded by the forces of modernity. Jewish ethnicity has been fundamentally affected by these forces which have lessened occupational and social concentration and the cultural distinctiveness of Jews. In an era when personal identity is continually reconstructed and idiosyncratically defined, a countervailing ideology of civil Judaism has developed which stresses the survival and solidarity of the Jewish people in such a “posttraditional” environment. This paper examines the meaningfulness of the themes of secular Judaism to a sample of New Zealand Jews who were interviewed at length about the nature of their Jewish identity. Secular Judaism seems to have had a very small impact upon them. I suggest that the difference between New Zealand and the United States and Australia, where secular Judaism is seen as an important ideological force, can be accounted for by the position of New Zealand’s small, mobile and markedly unobtrusive Jewish community, in a society which has been described as being aggressively secular and egalitarian.

Avoidance and Conflict: Perceptions regarding Contact between Religious and Nonreligious Jewish Youth in Israel

This study examines the attitudes regarding civil religious issues that have developed among religious and nonreligious Jews in Israel and the perceptions of each group regarding the other. A considerable amount of social isolation characterizes the general relationships between religious and nonreligious Jews even when they live together. The subjects of this study, religious and nonreligious high school youth, were given closed questionnaires that dealt with religious observance, interpersonal contact with persons of different degrees of religiosity, tolerance for others and perceived tolerance of others for them, housing preferences, perceptions regarding religious and nonreligious groups in Israel, and attitudes relating to religion and state

The Response of Israeli Society to New Religious Movements: ISKCON and Teshuvah

A comparison is made here between the societal responses to new religious movements in Europe and the United States on the one hand, and Israeli responses to the Hare Krishna movement and to the movement for teshuvah (the return of secular Jews to Orthodox Judaism) on the other hand. Reactions to NRMs in Israel can be understood in the context of a close association between religion and state, the near monopoly of Orthodox Judaism in the provision of religious services, a division between religious and secular sectors, and the association of Judaism with Jewish-Israeli national identity. In contrast to other western societies, the most active and effective anti-cult activities in Israel have been initiated and carried out by religious interests and organizations, and especially by the ultra-Orthodox who are themselves involved in the conversion of secular Jews to a religious perspective. Even though secular Jews have depicted ISKCON and teshuvah as having similar negative effects (the break with families and the losses to the army, economy, and social welfare), the response to teshuvah has been more ambiguous than the wholly negative response to ISKCON. Whereas Israeli members of ISKCON have rejected the symbolic center of the state and society, the values and behavior in teshuvah are linked to the identity of most secular Jewish Israelis. The new religious movements (NRMs), which are widely termed cults in Englishspeaking countries, have attracted relatively small memberships, but they have become the focus of considerable attention, mostly negative, of the mass media and of official and voluntary organizations.' In his comparison of controversies in a number of countries, Beckford (1985) has emphasized that, although there is some truth to the claim of a standard repertoire of attacks against NRMs, the nature of the cult problem also varies according to the social, political, and cultural conditions of each country. A comparison of societal responses to NRMs, which is mainly a comparison of anti-cult campaigns, can deepen our understanding of cross-cultural and cross-national variations in the perceptions of, and methods of coping with, threats to the social structures and cultures of societies.

“...Only by virtue of its torah”

Intermarriage is but one of the many indicators of Jewish assimilation and secularization. While there are those who contend that intermarriage does not constitute a danger to Jewish demographic continuity, the weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. Various tactical solutions have been proposed to cope with the problem and many of these are likely to have a positive impact. However, in the long run the most powerful response is one of reconnecting Jews with Torah, their traditional religious culture. Thus, the solution to the demographic question resides in the revival of the holy community predicated on a sense of transcendent obligation.

RELATIONS BETWEEN RELIGIOUS AND NONRELIGIOUS JEWS IN ISRAEL

This study investigates the cognitions, attitudes and behavioral intentions concerning interpersonal contact between nonreligious and religious Jews in Israel. The hypothesis examined is that distance from Jewish tradition is related to a negative orientation regarding questions of state and religion, tolerance for demands on the part of observant Jews to further religious goals on the state level, and the social distance between religious and nonreligious Jews. The data for this study are based on closed ended questionnaires completed by 671 Jewish male and female Israeli university students. The findings indicate that those who identify themselves as more religious observe more ritual, have a more positive orientation toward an intertwining of religion and state on a macro level and to the specific demands for the observance of religious life in the public sector, and prefer contact with religious persons over contact with nonreligious persons. At the same time, the social contacts between the religious and nonreligious are characterized by more informal than formal isolation. These findings are discussed with regard to the question of social integration among Jews in Israeli society.

Mutual Perceptions of Religious and Secular Jews in Israel

Three hundred and eighty Israeli students in the eleventh grade, equally divided between children attending religious schools and children attending secular schools, completed questionnaires on the conflict between religious and secular Jews. Included were questions on ethnic and religious identity; amount and evaluation of interaction between the two groups; evaluation of the past, present, and future; and possible scenarios regarding solutions. In each set of questions the students were asked about their own views and how they believe the other group sees these issues. Analyses comparing the two groups revealed that in every set of questions, the secular viewed the religious significantly more negatively than the religious viewed the secular. The theory that equal status contact is a factor in conflict resolution was tested by correlating amount of actual contact and choice of solution. Correlations between evaluation of the relationship and choice of solutions showed that the more positively the students viewed the relationship, the less they accepted solutions with great intolerance and little contact. The major inference of this study, supported strongly and consistently by the data, is that the secular, believing their freedom of choice and style of life to be threatened, think, feel, and act accordingly. The religious, who do not face this problem, seem to be far less negative and extreme in their views.

Residential integration and religious segregation in an Israeli neighborhood

This study asks how religious and nonreligious Jews in an Israeli neighborhood maintain tension free relationships, given the prevalence of religious conflict in Israeli society. Neighboring patterns and interpersonal relationships of religious and nonreligious residents in a middle class Israeli neighborhood (n = 79 religious and 177 nonreligious) were investigated by observations, and through interviews using an open ended and fixed choice questionnaire concerning Jewish and Israeli symbols and interreligious neighboring practices. The findings show that both groups maintain segregated friendship patterns despite the residential proximity of religious and nonreligious Jews in the area. It is suggested that a similar orientation toward cultural and religious symbols and practices affects both groups and leads them to refrain from conflict, especially given their residence in a religiously mixed neighborhood. The segregated friendship pattern also inhibits conflict by restricting interaction that may lead to friction over religious issues.

The Proposals for Presidential Government in Israel: A Case Study in the Possibility of Institutional Transference

The politicians who call for the adoption of a presidential system in Israel assume that it will bring about the establishment of a stable and effective government capable of dealing successfully with the major problems facing Israel.' Moreover, the personality of the president would, they claim, become a symbol of national unity helping to reduce the major cleavages dividing Israeli society, namely those between the religious and secular sectors, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Jews and Arabs, rich and poor, and doves and hawks. The necessity of establishing a coalition government is singled out as the major deficiency of the present parliamentary system. The proposals to change the present parliamentary system would put an end to the almost extortionist character of the demands made by the minor coalition parties on the government. These pressures, according to the proponents of the reform, have been the main factors in undermining the stability of the government and its ability to govern and create major anomalies in the allocation of scarce national resources. The presidential system, essentially one like the Fifth French Republic, is singled out as particularly relevant for removing the shortcomings of the Israeli political system.

Psychoanalytic knowledge, Jewish identity, and Germanic anti-semitic legends.

Freud's life and thought were in part molded by the desire to aid the dispersed secular Jew. The Jew, warped and minified by the cruel paradoxes to which his life situations rather uniquely exposed him, would be returned to an adaptive life style by psychoanalysis. In particular, the analytic work of arriving at the unconscious sources of his imagery of himself and the world, along with developing rational concepts of each, would give the Jew a degree of emancipation from fantastic and undermining labels from the host population. Anti-Semitic legends extant in the Germanic culture of Freud's day depict the corrosive impact by a hostile host population upon the Jew's sense of identity. Psychoanalysis tendered the demeaned Jew a means of refurbishing his identity and strengthening its boundary.

Profile of the Alcoholic Jew

One factor contributing to low rates of alcoholism among Jews is the understanding that this in not a Jewish problem. Recognition and treatment of the disease, when it does occur, is delayed when the Jewish community and/or professionals deny its existence. Sixteen recovered alcoholic Jews described their family background, exposure to alcohol, attitudes about drinking and drunkenness, history of alcoholism and recovery. They drank primarily to relieve stress and psychic discomfort; social drinking was minimal. Shame was increased because they interpreted their behaviour as non-Jewish. Treatment was impaired because of the lack of culturally congruent facilities. No differences in attitude were detected between Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and secular Jews.

Between Existentialism and Zionism

This essay seeks to delineate the existential situation of the modern Jew through a critical but appreciative analysis of Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew. Following Sartre, it is argued that the Jews of modernity, especially in the Diaspora, are characterized by conflicting fidelities-universalism and particularism-which indelibly shape their basic sensibilities. It is then proposed that there are existentially and options to resolve this conflict. Following a discussion of the nature of the modern Jew's particularity and universalism, the thesis is advanced that an affirmation of either pole of the conflict to the exclusion of the other would constitute an existentially inauthentic resolution of the conflict. Various strategies-all in my view inauthentic-adopted by the modern Jew to reconcile his universalism and particularism are then discussed. Special attention is paid to the so-called mission theory espoused by Reform, neo-Orthodox, and secular Jews alike. The cult of Spinoza in modern Jewish thought is also used to illustrate the dilemma inherent in the modern Jew's attempt to relate his Jewishness to his universal concerns. It is then held that Zionism-the conscious choice of a Jew to live in the Jewish State of Israel-constitutes an authentic response to the existential situation of the modern Jew, for it points to a genuine reconciliation of his universalism and particularity. This thesis is supported by an analysis of the implications of the social and political normalization of Jewish life sponsored by Zionism. This interweaving of the Jew's universal and particularistic sensibilities also promises the renewal of Judaism as a metaphysical framework providing a system of symbols and cognitive structures in which ultimate and thus universal questions are addressed. In conclusion it is argued that while Zionism may indeed be an authentic response to the existential situation of the modern Jew, it is a response that is not bereft of moral ambiguity and grave responsibility.

The Faith of Secular JewsGoodmanSaulNeusnerJacob The Faith of Secular Jews : The Library of Jewish LearningKtavNew York, 1976, xiii R 301, $15.00 (paperback, $5.95)

The Faith of Secular JewsGoodmanSaulNeusnerJacob <i>The Faith of Secular Jews</i> : The Library of Jewish LearningKtavNew York, 1976, xiii R 301, $15.00 (paperback, $5.95)