Caught In The Middle
America may be fascinated with Joseph Lieberman's brand of
Judaism--Modern Orthodoxy. But it's endangered
BY DAVID VAN BIEMA
David Gottesman lives in Beachwood, Ohio, a town with a Jewish
majority. This demographic fact is largely the result of a 1952
court ruling that ordered Beachwood's leaders to allow the
building of a Reform temple. So naturally Gottesman assumed there
would be little objection to a plan in 1996 to open two more
synagogues, one for his own brand of Orthodox Judaism and another
for a Hasidic group. He was mistaken. A majority of Beachwood's
Jews, mostly Reform and Conservative, have fought his cause at
town meetings, at the polls and in court with an obstinacy
outstripping their own tormenters' 48 years ago. Gottesman
realized that he was not their problem. A successful
gastroenterologist who didn't wear his skullcap on the job, he
looked and acted much like them. It was the ultra-Orthodox Hasids
they despised, with their side curls and apparent
self-righteousness. Neighbors warned that the Orthodox wanted to
turn Beachwood into a medieval "ghetto."
The tale is a typically dispiriting take on American Jewish
dysfunction from Samuel G. Freedman's new book Jew vs. Jew (Simon
& Schuster; 384 pages; $26). But to the initiated, its message is
more specific: the angst of belonging to the group so often stuck
in the middle of such rifts. Gottesman is a Modern Orthodox Jew.
Just like Joe Lieberman.
It's been a good week for American Jewry. Freedman recalls
stories his mother used to tell of Bess Myerson's selection as
Miss America, "how thrilled they were that a Jewish girl was seen
as pretty enough to be chosen. In a more profound way, this
touches the same chords." But to those familiar with Judaism's
internal fault lines there is an irony in Al Gore's embrace
of--and America's fascination with--Joe Lieberman's style of
observance. For decades, Modern Orthodoxy has taken a drubbing
from its left and its right. Many were convinced it was doomed to
speedy disappearance.
Numerous writers (and ordinary Jews) have bemoaned observant
Judaism's diminishing American ranks, noting that 52% of Jews
marry Gentiles, and 50% do not belong to any synagogue. The
Columbia University journalism professor offers only a terse
aside. "It is hard to work up any optimism" that such people will
continue as real Jews, he writes. Rather, he asks, once they have
drifted off into a Seinfeld-and-bagels ethnicity, how will
American Judaism be defined?
His grim answer: through a "civil war" already in progress. "I
have witnessed the struggle for the soul of American Jewry. It
has torn asunder families, communities and congregations," he
writes. He describes the embarrassment and rage felt by more
liberal Jews at Yale University when some Orthodox students sued
to avoid living in co-ed dorms; the dismay of the alumni of a
secular Jewish summer camp in New York State upon discovering
that their alma mater had been supplanted by the ultra-Orthodox
community of Monsey; and the pressures that drove a troubled
Orthodox gas-station cashier in Jacksonville, Fla., to plant a
bomb (nonoperative, he claims from prison) in a Conservative
synagogue attended by members of his own family.
Freedman is a masterly storyteller. His thesis may be a bit
exaggerated: for all his vignettes' power, he fails to prove that
the majority of Jews feel themselves on a real war footing. But
the tensions that inform his dramas are universal, and painful
enough. And a key element in their exacerbation has been the
decline--in numbers and authority--of Modern Orthodoxy.
Orthodox Jews of all kinds make up at most 10% of America's 5.5
million Jews. The majority belong to the two large branches to
their left, the Reform and the Conservative movements. But
Orthodoxy is increasingly influential. Liberal Jews who have
stayed in synagogue are ever more interested in meaningful
ritual, and Orthodoxy operates as an informal gold standard
--something to measure oneself against even if one has no
intention of duplicating it.
Orthodoxy itself is divided, however. When Modern Orthodoxy
arrived here in the 1920s and '30s, its motto, Torah Umaddah
("Torah and worldly knowledge"), reflected the belief that one
could both fully commit to the Jewish Commandments and fully
engage the world at large. For decades the Moderns enjoyed an
Orthodox monopoly in America. Even in the 1940s, as a competing,
more inward-looking philosophy was arriving from Europe's ruined
shtetls and academies, "any Jew in the world," says Steven Bayme
of the American Jewish Committee, "would have said Modern
Orthodoxy was the wave of the future."
Any Jew would have been wrong. The new arrivals, known as
ultra-Orthodox to outsiders and haredim ("those who tremble"
before God) among themselves, did not believe in full mixing with
the outside world. They employed higher education only insofar as
it facilitated Torah study, wore black hats (and sometimes side
curls) and engaged in painstaking observance. They had more
children than the Moderns and came to control the Jewish day
schools that serve all Orthodoxy. Ultras now make up half the
Orthodox population, and with the exception of stalwarts like
Norman Lamm, president of Manhattan's Yeshiva University, the
Moderns have suffered a confidence crisis. Says haredi spokesman
Rabbi Avi Shafran: "Modern Orthodoxy is like a shadow. It doesn't
really exist as once it may have."
This shift to the right has unnerved the non-Orthodox. Members of
the more liberal branches, says Bayme, now tend to see an
undifferentiated Orthodoxy of "black hats [and] ayatullahs." A
1997 declaration by several hundred haredi rabbis that Reform and
Conservatives were "outside Judaism" did not help matters. Such
polarization suggests that in addition to losing the
unaffiliated, American Judaism could one day split into two
mutually incomprehensible and antagonistic Judaisms. If so, says
Bayme, they may rue the demise of the Moderns, the one group that
can "translate" the two sides to each other. "The community," he
says, "is on the way to losing a very important bridge group." At
least it was as of last Monday.
"Vindication would not be a bad word," says Lamm, with something
like glee. Lieberman's Modern Orthodox affiliations are
impeccable. More to the point, says Freedman, he is a "shining
example" of the movement's positive ideal, "that you can immerse
and be made stronger; that you are enriched and society is
enriched by the dynamic encounter." Will the haredim buy it? Not
likely. Says Bayme: "Modern Orthodoxy's future will not be
decided by who gets nominated Vice President. But this represents
an enormous opportunity for the movement to find its voice
again." It will also remind more liberal Jews that there is an
Orthodoxy with which they can rationally converse. And perhaps
Freedman's civil war will cool down a bit.
Al Gore, Jewish peacemaker. Not a title he sought, but it's not
chopped liver. --With reporting by Josh Tyrangiel
JOSTLING FOR JEWISH SOULS
As a Modern Orthodox Jew, Lieberman is on contested
ground--between the left and the right
REFORM
Introduced here in 1824, this movement revised traditional
Judaism severely, dropping skullcaps, most Hebrew and kosher
rules and giving the faith's moral laws priority
CONSERVATIVE
Some Jews were perturbed by Reform's reforms. They brought Hebrew
back into the liturgy, wore skullcaps and reasserted the primacy
of all 613 Commandments
MODERN ORTHODOX
Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, above, planted this strain of Judaism
here in the 1930s. Joe Lieberman practices it. It combines
strict observance of the Commandments with the belief that a Jew
may also play a full role in the outside world
ULTRA
Shmuel Bloom leads a haredi ("those who tremble" before God)
umbrella group. The best-known haredim are Hasids. Ultra-Orthodox
believers are ambivalent about outside contact
For George W. Bush, Dec. 25 doesn't come quickly enough. Last
spring he and nine other Governors proclaimed June 10 Jesus Day and
urged citizens to "follow Christ's example by performing good
works in their communities and neighborhoods." People in 450
cities across the U.S. held parades, ran food drives and
ministered to the sick as part of the event organized by March
for Jesus USA, an evangelical Christian group. At the time,
little notice was paid to Bush's support. Yet with the
presidential election nearing, Bush's office has received nearly
200 letters criticizing the act. "He is promoting a particular
religion and doing it while speaking in the name of the state,"
says Michael Weisser, a Jewish cantor
in Lincoln, Neb. Bush's spokesman counters that the Governor
signs thousands of such acts, recognizing everything from
Holocaust Remembrance Day to Fire Safety Day.
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