The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America

What is the reader to conclude from such seemingly incompatible verdicts on the state of Jewish theology, rendered by two prominent and astute observers, looking at similar evidence in exactly the same period? Before adjudicating this matter, some historical and intellectual context for understanding contemporary Jewish thought is essential. It is a truism that ideas do not form in a vacuum, but one cannot overestimate how much events of the last century have shaped the agenda of Jewish thinkers. The Holocaust, the creation of the state of Israel, the successful integration of American Jews, the feminist movement and the recent stirrings in American religion, have driven the discussion. This sensitivity to events results not only from the general rule of environmental impact but also from the fact that participants in Jewish thought are most unlikely to be indifferent to the realities of American Jewry—a small and shrinking element of the general population (around 2 percent in 2000). The fate of Jewry (ethnically defined) and Judaism (religiously defined) are not divisible—that is the central of theme of this volume.

To the extent that theology is limited to considerations of purely “religious” matters, it is clear that much of what we call modern Jewish thought would not fit easily into this rubric.¹ Jewish thinkers, from the beginning of modernity, have been deeply concerned with the nature of actual practice, communal health, political orientation, liturgical reform, and the like. Some, including Ahad Ha’Am and Mordecai Kaplan, approached religion principally from a sociological perspective; the former was an agnostic, the latter was more interested in the functionality of religion than in its propositional “truths.” Frequently, these practical concerns emerged from the professional orientation of the thinkers. Until recently, the most influential modern Jewish thinkers (Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Samson Raphael Hirsch, Moses Hess, Theodor Herzl) were not professors, but businessmen, journalists, and, above all, rabbis. Even today, when humanistic disciplines in the academic world have become hospitable to Jewish studies, many notable contributors to the field of Jewish thought work in rabbinical seminaries, medical and legal faculties (Leon Kass and Alan Dershowitz), and even Jewish colleges (Byron Sherwin).

The more than religious nature and professional profile of Jewish thinkers offer two justifications for preferring the term Jewish thought to Jewish theology, but there are other reasons as well. In an early attempt to locate the source of American Jewry’s indifference to theology, Eugene Borowitz, arguably the most influential liberal thinker of the last half-century, doubted that a “systematic” theology could be constructed, despite the need for an overarching interpretation, which Borowitz termed holism. The two commentators cited in the epigraph to this essay attempted to locate reasons for this failure. Arnold Eisen included American pragmatism, theology’s particularistic/elitist nature, and the lack of qualified practitioners.² David Ellenson, while offering a more upbeat assessment, also noted the lack of a pre-Emancipation past “that has denied North American Jewry even a memory of communal life, practice and belief.”³ It seems to the present author that the need for holism, grasping all of Jewry, Judaism and Jewishness in its multifaceted dimensions, is itself a serious impediment. To take in this much of the picture and produce a systematic theology, I maintain, would boggle even a Moses Maimonides.⁴

Let us take post-Holocaust theology as an example of the difficulty of forging a contemporary synthesis.⁵ The Holocaust, or Shoah, manifestly concerns more than the age-old question of theodicy addressed by the book of Job and numerous rabbinic texts.⁶ The historical magnitude of the murder of European Jewry, as Emil Fackenheim formulated it, constituted an “epoch-making event,” which challenged the very “root experience” of Jewish faith. How do we know that Jewish faith—and the Jewish people—have not been fatally wounded by Auschwitz, considering that six million individual Jews, five million non-Jews, and eastern European Jewish culture were exterminated? Fackenheim, the most wide-ranging of the post-Holocaust thinkers, integrates biblical, midrashic, philosophical, historical, anecdotal, and autobiographical evidence in his prolonged response to the Holocaust. The reasons for his catholic approach are varied. These include the existentialist influence of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, the postmodern sensibility of forcing texts to confront events, and the linchpin in Fackenheim’s argument: world Jewry’s collective response since 1945, which offers hope that the foundations (“root experiences”) of Judaism have not been punctured.⁷ Appropriately, Fackenheim speaks of responses rather than solutions to the age-old problem of theodicy pressed upon us so urgently by the Holocaust. Although Fackenheim received a rigorous training in philosophy in his native Germany and taught philosophy at the University of Toronto, midrash, with its penetrating but equivocal sense of biblical meaning, strikes him as the best language to grasp the enormity of our contemporary situation.

Do we lighten the load by asking only for Jewish thinkers in place of Jewish theologians? Jewish thought is a less rigid term than Jewish theology, but it is not amorphous. At the very least, serious Jewish thought would include the following criteria: existential engagement in the fate of the covenantal community known as Jewry, grounding in the Jewish sources, both primary and secondary, awareness of parallel problems and solutions faced and entertained by non-Jewish communities. These criteria may fall short of those for the Jewish theologian, who would be presumed to possess mastery of the modern theological-philosophical corpus and a commitment to striving for system. On the other hand, the term Jewish thinker encompasses most of the influential Jewish intellectual figures of modernity, many of contemporary Jewry’s most listened to voices, and varied forms of religiosity that eschew precisely those elements of rigor typical of theology-philosophy. On the whole, then, enlarging the category from theology to thought better captures the Jewish dialogue. Not coincidentally, it helps narrow the gap between the two judgments found at the beginning of this essay. If systematic theology is deemed a desideratum, American Jewry will continue to fall short (Eisen). If intellectual ferment is the relevant standard (Ellenson), we seem poised for another half-century of creativity.

While one could certainly organize such an essay around thematic issues of recognized importance (God-Torah-Israel, for instance), I prefer to begin with a focus on the movements, or branches, of American Judaism.⁸ American religion presents a notoriously wild and ill-charted terrain. Nevertheless, 46 percent of American Jews at any given time identify with a synagogue, and an overwhelming percentage of these belong to one of the four principal movements.⁹ (A plethora of small, independent rabbinical institutions now exist. This has long been the case within Orthodoxy; it is now true within other varieties of Judaism.) The vast majority of American Jewry’s religious leaders (rabbis, cantors, educators) continue to receive their training through the three principal seminaries and the smaller Re-constructionist Rabbinical College. Beyond this immediate influence on the putative religious leaders of the community, the constituent congregations offer the testing ground for ritual changes proposed from above and, often, the impetus for changes generated from below.¹⁰ The movements and their most representative thinkers, therefore, provide a rich array of intellectual positions and a convenient starting point for assessing the timbre of Jewish thought in America.

The validation of ethnic differences since the 1960s and 1970s, and the beginnings of what is now called multicultural America, changed the direction of Reform Judaism. When judged by liturgy, prayer books, Jewish learning initiatives, declarations of principles, and synagogue aesthetics, Reform Judaism has dramatically moved toward tradition in the quarter-century. Despite this move toward tradition, Reform continues to emphasize personal and congregational autonomy, welcomes intermarried couples more than it did a quarter-century ago, and resolutely champions equality toward gay and/or straight rabbis and cantors. Above all, in its adherence to the highly controversial patrilineal descent decision of 1983 (which breaks with traditional halakhah by tracing Jewish descent from either the father or mother), the trajectory of Reform also seems to be moving away from time-honored Jewish norms. As one observer of American Jewry puts it, Reform seems to “change in both directions.”¹¹ Certainly the era of classical Reform, which prevailed from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, is over. Classical Reform included a posture of high acculturation to general society, free adaptation of non-Jewish religious forms (mixed seating, organs, choirs), a tepid relationship to Israel, and a conscious distancing from eastern European Jewish customs.¹² All of these classical Reform positions have been abandoned; for Reform, as for American Jewry at large, earlier anxiety about integration has been entirely displaced by anxiety regarding group survival.

One figure has lived through these changes in Reform ideology and helped guide them—Eugene Borowitz, a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). Although American born and educated, the very title of Borowitz’s Liberal Judaism (1984) signals his intellectual connection to the more moderate European tradition of religious reform.¹³ Borowitz has given the name covenant theology to his attempts at bringing insights from Buber and Rosenzweig into dialogue with post-Holocaust American-Jewish realities. In Renewing the Covenant (1991) Borowitz details the dialectical components of God, Torah, and Israel, arguing the mutual responsibilities of all parties. While Borowitz’s language occasionally seems dated (e.g., the picture of American Jews in revolt from religious institutions, the assertions of Israel’s “exceptional moral accomplishments”), his arguments have an undeniable moral thrust. And, whereas the ethical remains the heart of his program (e.g., “Why the Prophets Are Important to Liberal Jews” in Liberal Judaism), Borowitz stresses the role of ritual as well.

Borowitz’s conception found expression not only in the 1976 San Francisco Platform, which he largely authored, but also in the Statement of Principles adopted by the Central Conference of American rabbis in Pittsburgh in 1999. The city was chosen deliberately: the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 is considered by all the clearest articulation of classical reform—the most recent Statement of Principles (American Reform produced major position papers in 1869, 1885, 1937, 1976, and 1999) represents a repudiation of its predecessors and a confirmation of Borowitz’s desire to point the way toward a Reform Jewish praxis.¹⁴ By praxis Borowitz means nothing less than an identifiably Jewish (though not parochial or exclusivist) lifestyle—a Judaism that is to be practiced by the committed Reform Jew on a regular basis and not only at lifecycle events, High Holidays, and temple Sabbath services. Borowitz makes no claims that Reform rabbis have a right to enforce these standards. The value of personal and congregational autonomy is too dear to American Jews to be seriously challenged and, in any event, the Reform understanding of Torah, revelation, and halakhah could not support such a use of religious authority. Ultimately Borowitz relies on the refusal of Jews to break the links with the Jewish past and its traditions. Despite some who view the Reform validation of both autonomy and the language of commandment as hopelessly in contradiction, this may be the only firm ground for a liberal theologian. But this grounding may be sufficient. As sociologist Nathan Glazer commented many years ago, the most striking fact about American Judaism has been the unwillingness of the majority of its practitioners to abandon it.¹⁵

For good and for ill, the defining feature of Conservative Judaism in America has been its status as the movement of the middle—neither Orthodox nor Reform. In the opening years of the twentieth century Solomon Schechter presented this as a virtue: Conservative Judaism represented the Jewish majority, what Schechter called Catholic Israel. Schechter propounded reforms in Judaism that were positive (i.e., unlike Reform, sought to maintain a high degree of continuity with traditional practices), but also historic (i.e., unlike Orthodoxy, accepted the interplay between Judaism and historical developments).¹⁶ Conservative Judaism benefited from this positioning. It emerged in the middle decades of the twentieth century as the natural home for second-and third-generation Jews who sought both thorough acculturation to America and a degree of Jewishness (Yiddishkeit) in the synagogue that most Reform congregations did not permit.¹⁷ Another benefit of this moderate position was the ability of the Jewish Theological Seminary, until recently the only training ground for the Conservative rabbinate, to employ teachers of widely differing viewpoints. In the periods before and after the Second World War II, respectively, Mordecai Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel were the dominant creative forces in American Jewry.¹⁸

Both Kaplan and Heschel profoundly influenced Neil Gilman, who, by dint of his long tenure at JTS, several excellent books, and role in the crafting of Conservative Judaism’s official theological works, may be considered representative of the movement. It is no disparagement of Gilman’s originality to say that he splits the difference between his two mentors. Kaplan considered Jewish life from a fundamentally sociological perspective and prioritized belonging, behaving, and believing accordingly. Gilman is more “theological” than Kaplan; the former considers the absence of an articulated system of beliefs an Achilles’ heel of modern Jewish communal health. Gilman’s Sacred Fragments (1990) attempts to steer the modern Jew toward that articulation. Yet Gilman’s intellectual touchstones tend to be other philosophers and concepts drawn from the academic study of religion; this is evident in his definitions of myth, mitzvah (i.e., commandment), ritual, and liturgy. Gilman is not, as Heschel was, a practitioner of an inwardtending “depth theology.” Unlike Heschel, whose Hasidic background indelibly shaped his theological oeuvre, Gilman works in the rationalist tradition.

In the tradition of Frankel and Schechter, Gilman carves out a large place for the Jewish community to determine what is true and authentic. But Gilman travels farther than these founders of Conservative Judaism in a populist direction. He advises individual Jews to “acknowledge that you have something to say about these questions that has value.”¹⁹ Theology, for Gilman, aims precisely at helping individuals and communities deal with their realities. Again true to the tradition of Conservative Judaism, Gilman evinces comfort with integrating both the “facts of history” and the “midrashic method.”²⁰

Unlike traditionalists and unlike the functionalist Kaplan, Gilman understands mitzvah in mythic terms. How a particular mitzvah mobilizes Jews to collective action, how the performance of a particular mitzvah invokes the covenant, how the mitzvah connects with tradition (history), how the mitzvah is invested with ethical or ritual significance, how a mitzvah is capable of spiritual enrichment, and how mitzvah becomes permanent habit—these are the multifaceted criteria Gilman applies in place of a simple assertion of divine revelation at Sinai.²¹ The resulting theology of commandment (with or without a commander) offers fine anthropocentric grounds—not reasons—for those already committed to a life of mitzvot.

Employing the language of grounds rather than reasons, Gilman explicitly rejects the notion that the Jewish theologian’s task is to persuade the skeptic: existential commitment, not reason, is the prerequisite. Unwillingness to live the life of a committed Jew is the failure of the dissenter, not the theologian. This understanding of mitzvah leaves Gilman firmly with the Conservative movement when it comes to the role of halakhah in Jewish life. Gilman asserts, “There is simply no religious authenticity in Judaism outside of a halakhic system—not necessarily the halakhic system that the traditionalists exalt, but a halakhic system that concretizes our sense of covenantedness as a community to God” (Sacred Fragments, 59). Gilman’s halakhic system differs not only from that of Orthodoxy, but also from the approach of Isaac Klein’s A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, the semiofficial law code for an earlier generation of Conservative practitioners.²² A large gap exists between asserting the need for a structure, or “a halakhic system,” and demanding Jewish adherence to halakhah as a prerequisite for what qualifies as authentic observance. Gilman’s denominational allegiance is less apparent in later works such The Death of Death and The Way Into Encountering God in Judaism.²³ These works, clearly responding to resurgent spirituality, artfully stretch the limits of the rationalist tradition.

Any discussion of Orthodox thought must acknowledge the great changes taking place within American Orthodoxy in the last half-century. The arrival from eastern Europe of an Orthodox elite during and after the Holocaust and the subsequent transformations wrought in day schools and synagogue life amount to what Jeffrey Gurock called the “winnowing” of American Orthodoxy. Until the 1950s the majority of Orthodox Jews were so out of habit, nostalgia, or social comfort. The Orthodox leadership in this period centered on Yeshiva University and followed the model of Torah study combined with secular learning pioneered in Western Europe. Today the majority of Orthodox Jews are so by ideology. The leadership of American Orthodoxy, which is more dynamic and varied than it was a generation ago, may be found in many locations, including Lithuanian-style yeshivot and Hasidic-style courts, both of which reject the combination of Torah learning and secular study championed by earlier leaders of Yeshiva University such as Bernard Revel and Samuel Belkin. On a sliding scale of “accommodation” and “resistance” to modernity and surrounding culture, the balance at present has tipped toward the latter. One figure who has resisted the resisters, the long-time president of Yeshiva University, Norman Lamm, has articulated a powerful vision of modern Orthodoxy.²⁴

Lamm, the first American-born president of Yeshiva University, considers his mentor to be Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, a figure that towered over American Orthodoxy for nearly half a century. Soloveitchik possessed encyclopedic knowledge of the rabbinic sources and received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Berlin in 1932. Soloveitchik embodied the combination of Torah and secular learning, but his legacy has been disputed by those who revere Soloveitchik the talmudist only and those who also honor him as the great thinker. Lamm patently falls into the latter category, arguing in the tradition of Soloveitchik that Orthodox Jews should strive to acquire higher education as a value in itself and not merely as a practical necessity of the modern work world. Lamm rejects literalist interpretation of the doctrine that the Torah contains all wisdom (sacred and profane) and rejects the attempt to present the formula of Samson Hirsch, “the study of Torah with the ways of the land,” as merely a concession to the times. Lamm stresses the importance of moderation in general and to the observant Jew in particular, what the medieval philosopher Maimonides called “the middle way.” Sober consideration of each situation, rather than ideology, ought to guide decision making. Typical was Lamm’s unhesitating decision in the wake of September 11, 2001, to suspend the normal gender rules of shmira (guarding the corpse) in order to let the women of nearby Stern College help fulfill this important mitzvah. Lamm also champions the principle of “community of Israel” even when it conflicts with that of policing the boundaries of Torah observance. As Lamm sees it, the love of Israel may bring Jews back to Torah observance, whereas “triumphalist arrogance” will not. (Many will consider Chabad, or Lubavitch, Hasidism the most visible exemplars of this principle.) Lamm also regards the state of Israel as an unadulterated good—a position rejected by the ultra-Orthodox right on the grounds that the state is run by Western law (i.e., not halakhah) and by democratically elected Jews of wide-ranging religious practices, as opposed to observant Jews chosen by rabbinic sages.

Lamm stands in good company in the world of modern Orthodox thought: Isaac (Yitz) Greenberg has written widely on the Holocaust. David Hartman, who has directed the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem for many years, was originally a New Yorker and has written many works in English. His emphasis on a sober view of Israel as a harbinger of the messianic era stands firmly in the Maimonidean tradition. Hartman has been an important voice forwarding a Jewish state without religious compulsion and a champion of cultivating relations between Israeli and Diaspora Jewries. Michael Wyschogrod’s seminal The Body of Faith constituted a particularly bold assertion of the demands of the divine and the inscription of the covenant on the body politic of all Israel. Marc Angell, the late Eliezer Berkovits, Saul Berman, and Blu Greenberg all rate highly as Jewish thinkers. The ultra-Orthodox (haredi) world has its own intellectual discussions, which, regrettably, lie beyond the present author’s competence.

Feminism is the single most important creative force in American Judaism today.²⁵ Any survey of Jewish thought, therefore, ought to address feminism not only as it influences activity within the organized movements of Judaism, new venues of spiritual seeking, and the attraction to syncretistic and alternatives religious expressions but also as a critique and a force on its own. Jewish feminism has transformed all aspects of American Jewish life (see Pamela Nadell’s article in this volume). To narrow my task, I will address the impact of feminism on American Judaism only, not the far larger category of the impact of feminism on American Jewish life at large. Moreover, I will not attempt to discuss the role that gender analysis plays in Jewish academic life.²⁶ Suffice it to say that gender, like socioeconomic class, has becomes an indispensable tool of scholarship.

Within the landscape of American Judaism, feminism has changed the scenery most dramatically. By the mid-1990s, there were 254 ordained female rabbis in the United States; according to Yale University’s Paula Hyman, that number has now passed 400.²⁷ In counseling and pastoral positions, in Hillel foundations on college and university campuses, and in educational roles, the impact of female rabbis is at least as great as in the pulpit. There are over two hundred female cantors. The ubiquity of batei mitzvah ceremonies in three of the four branches of American Judaism—a practice innovated in 1922 by Mordecai Kaplan but largely dormant until the 1970s—has created a generation of Jewish youth whose passage into adulthood is marked in gender-equal terms. In Reform Judaism the counting of women in prayer quorums (minyanim), distribution of Torah honors (aliyot), Torah reading, delivery of sermons (divrei torah), and inclusion in choirs prevails. As the vestiges of classical reform disappear and give way to more participatory services, the prominence of women on the bima (the dais where officiants stand) can only increase. Conservative synagogues are still debating some of these issues, but the direction of these debates points toward Reform, not Orthodox, Judaism. Retrospectively, it seems almost quaint that in the nineteenth century liberal congregations debated the appropriateness of seating males and females together. The mechitzah (divider), or women’s gallery, is found today only in Orthodox congregations. In brief, the bima has become an egalitarian site in liberal Judaism. On the bima Reform rabbis, male and female, wear the traditional Jewish regalia. In the aisles, too, male and female laity have returned to the donning of kipot (head coverings) and tallitot (prayer shawls). This return to ritual melds tradition with gender egalitarianism—a quintessentially postmodern development.

The gender revolution in Judaism finds dramatic expression in synagogue changes, but occurs along a much broader front. Formal Jewish education has been equalized, providing women for the first time in Jewish history with access to the sources of Judaism and training in the skills needed to employ those sources. Second, adult education thrived in the last 25 years as in no other period in American Jewry’s 350-year history. Testifying to this development are a plethora of programs (Melton, Meah, Elder Hostels), evening classes at universities and seminaries, and the evolution of Hebrew teachers’ colleges into centers of adult Jewish education. Jewish women, naturally, are well represented in all these domains. In traditional Judaism the adult male was more familiar with the elite, written texts of the tradition (even learned females often had even more learned husbands and/or fathers). In contemporary Judaism this is no longer the case. The Jewish mother or grandmother always played an enormous role in conveying Jewishness mimetically—this role has now been expanded to the intellectual appreciation of Judaism.

That women’s roles in Judaism have been transformed in the last generation is beyond dispute, yet feminist thought varies greatly. Differences of upbringing, organizational affiliation, formative training, and intellectual proclivities play a large role in shaping the vision of the Jewish future. A crucial distinction may be made between an egalitarian Judaism and a feminist Judaism. As Judith Plaskow, a professor at Manhattan College, explained in her seminal essay, “The Right Question Is Theological”:

Writing a few years later, Plaskow reaffirmed her sense “that while the non-Orthodox community has been willing to accept egalitarianism, it has for the most part, not been willing to confront the deeper issues of liturgical change that emerge from a commitment to exploring women’s experiences and perspectives.” Egalitarian Judaism signifies a Judaism in which men and women are entitled to play an equal role. Feminist Judaism denotes a Judaism that not only removes gender-based discrimination but that has also been rethought along the lines of a feminist critique. As Susannah Heschel puts it pungently, “Jewish feminism is not about equality with men. Why should we women want to define ourselves by imitating male Jewishness?”

To be sure, women needed a civil rights movement. The gains made in equalizing the status of men and women are crucial: in the case of rabbinic leadership and Jewish education these advances toward egalitarian Judaism are a necessary prerequisite to developing a feminist Judaism. The liberal movements were pressured to admit women to the rabbinate and to the bima precisely by the changed status of women in American society. A formally egalitarian ethos alone did not generate impetus for changing gender roles until the advent of second-stage feminism from the 1960s to the 1970s.²⁹ The distinction between egalitarian and feminist goals may not be as sharp as Plaskow suggests. To borrow Plaskow’s kitchen metaphor, any cook knows that changing the ingredients of a pie makes for a new pie. It is inevitable (and desirable) that women in traditional male roles—the rabbinate is a good example—cannot help but import female sensibilities and realities into their actions. An egalitarian Judaism, in which women fill roles traditionally filled by men without wanting to transform them, may not be a feminist Judaism, but it is already a changed Judaism.

What would qualify as examples of feminist Judaism? To begin with, women’s prayer groups, minyanim, and study groups have proliferated across this country, in both liberal and Orthodox circles. Daughter-welcoming services (shalom bat), symbolic redemption services (pidyon ha-bat) have elevated the importance of the birth of girls—traditionally marked by little more than an honorable mention in synagogue. New Moon (Rosh Hodesh) festivals as well as festivals for a variety of life cycle events, many of which appropriate the practices of women in traditional Jewish society, have been reclaimed. Historians such as Chava Weissler have brought to light a wider world of female spirituality than had previously been assumed. Eastern Europe—that most Jewish of Jewish civilizations—saw a flowering of women’s prayer books, Bibles, and moralizing literature. This literature was composed mainly by men and read mainly by women.

In addition to changes enacted by official Judaism—most strikingly the equalizing the patriarchs and matriarchs by adding the mothers (emahot) to the fathers (avot) in prayer books. Every year American Jewish women publish feminist Passover Haggadot, Jewish women’s Bible commentaries, and modern midrashim that consciously put the female experience at the center of the story and thus strive for a feminist Judaism. I mentioned before that both men and women in liberal congregations wear kipot and tallitot. New ritual items, alongside multicolored and delicate kipot and tallitot often worn by women in synagogues, have created a minor revolution in ritual expression.³⁰

Paradoxically, Orthodoxy’s insistence on a gender-specific view of religious roles has led to a distinct upsurge of feminist Judaism. In place of the bat mitzvah, still prohibited by Orthodox law, twelve-year-old girls in modern Orthodox circles nowadays celebrate this life cycle event with Torah talks, festive meals (seudot), and, in some modern Orthodox congregations, female-only services. The inability of Orthodox women thus far to become rabbis, has not stopped the proliferation of Orthodox female professors, authors, rabbinic legal aids, etc. Most of these developments are direct responses to the challenge of egalitarianism in America—some are adaptations of Israeli practices, where Orthodoxy is the governmentally approved version of Judaism.

Possibly no topic displays fault lines between feminist thinkers as clearly as those of halakhah (loosely translated—Jewish law). As Rachel Adler explains:

Those who would render halakhah more egalitarian would include such traditionally minded feminists as Cynthia Ozick and Blu Greenberg as well as such maverick Orthodox thinkers as Avi Weiss and the late Eliezer Berkovits. The majority of feminists, however, find this approach inadequate. In an essay published in Susannah Heschel’s On Being a Jewish Feminist (1983), Judith Plaskow chided Cynthia Ozick and Rachel Adler for presuming that gender inequality in Judaism could be addressed by a recipe of “add women and stir.” An egalitarian Judaism, in which women participate equally but leave the forms of Judaism unchanged, responds inadequately to a situation where Jewish women have always been players, but in a ballpark built by men. Plaskow correctly identified these issues as theological and challenged the feminist theologian to redefine the three basic terms of Judaism: God, Torah, and Israel.

In Standing Again at Sinai (1990), the first classic of Jewish feminist theology, Plaskow responded to her own challenge. Plaskow’s discussion of Torah dramatically begins with Exodus 19:15, in which Moshe warns the people: “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.” At the critical moment of receiving the Torah, “the people” includes only the men—the women are excluded from the covenant, treated as a possible source of contamination, and silenced. While the words are those of Moses, not God, and while rabbinic tradition itself attempts to correct the absence of women, the Torah’s exclusion of women at this crucial juncture is reenacted every year. “The Bible [writes Plaskow] focuses on war, government and the cult, all male spheres.”³²

Plaskow acknowledges that women have made Jewish history as much as men, but the texts of Judaism do not reflect this. The texts were written by men, about men, and for men. In Plaskow’s view, the resulting Jewish memory “defines Jewish women out of the Jewish past.” The creation of a repaired Jewish memory that includes the world of female experiences must be constructed. Since 1990 feminist historiography has blossomed; a work such as Judith Baskin’s edited volume Jewish Women in Historical Perspective simply could not have been written twenty years ago. “Historiographical research is crucial to a new understanding of Torah because it helps recover women’s religious experiences and relativizes the Torah we have.” Yet Plaskow is undoubtedly correct that other forms of expression beside historiography will be needed to extend the borders of Jewish memory to include the female experience.³³ For Plaskow, creative midrash and new liturgies must forge a new Jewish memory.

Plaskow’s projected feminist transformation of Torah hangs a major question mark over the role of halakhah. From a feminist perspective, Plaskow identifies three tiers of problems. First, the content of many of the halakhot (family purity laws, ritual worship, Talmud Torah, marriage and divorce) are simply unjust. Second, the fundamental otherness of women is presumed by the halakhah. The Talmud has tractates called “women” and “menstrual purity” but none called “men” or “masturbation.” Women are obviously the exception to the norm, defined as the male. Plaskow raises an even broader question: “is law a female form?” Her carefully wrought answer is ambivalent: “Any halakhah that is part of a feminist Judaism would have to look very different from halakhah as it has been. It would be different in not just in its specifics but in its fundamentals. It would begin with the assumption of women’s equality and humanity and legislate only on that basis.” As Plaskow describes it, a feminist halakah is so unlikely, unnecessary, and artificial that it is difficulty to see why any feminist would undertake the task of its reconstruction. But this conclusion largely reflects Plaskow’s background as a Reform Jew for whom halakhah has never held as large a place in the definition of Torah, as a liberal who is uncomfortable with the very issue of compulsion implicit in halakhah, and as something of a gender essentialist who accepts the incompatibility of law as a female mode of discourse too uncritically.

In contrast to Plaskow, Rachel Adler is an observant Jew by inclination who lived in an Orthodox community and was married to an Orthodox rabbi. By dint of her rejection of gender-specific Judaism, she is now a liberal Jew by ideology and a professor at HUC-JIR Los Angeles. Adler’s 1973 essay “The Jew Who Wasn’t There” represents a pointed rejection of an apologetic approach that relied on a “story-oriented” attempt to hold up a few exceptional women as a shield against a critique of the ways in which ordinary women have been excluded. Adler correctly noted that, with respect to women, aggadah (lore) treats exceptions; halakhah establishes the norms, and at the injustices of halakhah Adler concentrated her fire. Yet, given the heat of her critique, her postscript was remarkably tepid: “The sort of piskei halakhah [legal corrections] requested in the text of this article are genuine decisions based on sources and understanding of the halakhic process made by people who understand and observe the Torah. Rationalizations will not do.”³⁴

It became clear to Adler that piskei halakhah, legal corrections, did not adequately address the following problems: Is halakhah hopelessly enmeshed in a gendered approach? Is halakhah a fundamentally flawed medium for a feminist approach to religion? Does the halakhic process itself, not just specific halakhot, require serious revision? Do “understanding and observance” of the Torah transcend an Orthodox monopoly? Adler’s meliorist solution collapsed under the weight of these questions.

Yet Adler ultimately drew different conclusions from Plaskow regarding halakhah. Like the Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, who portrayed a lawless Judaism as prescription for chaos, Adler agrees that a Judaism that is all aggadah cannot stand—it must have a communal praxis. In Engendering Judaism, published a full quarter-century after “The Jew Who Wasn’t There,” Adler describes a third way between apologetic and rejection:

Adler provides a theoretical underpinning for this project in a chapter titled “Here Comes Skotsl” (Skotsl is a clever heroine in Yiddish folklore). Adler acknowledges that premodern praxis has become incompatible with our postindustrial, democratic, pluralistic, inclusive values. Relying on the legal scholar Robert Cover’s insistence that all law relies on an agreed-upon master narrative, we must literally talk our way into the tradition so that we are finally able to inhabit “a single nomos as partners and friends.” Thus Adler’s view of halakhah includes a healthy dose of aggadah, as we tell our stories in order to change the axioms of halakhah and create a proactive halakhah able to create new forms of Jewish life that capture what Adler calls “our moral visions.” Adler’s own contribution in this endeavor—an ingenious egalitarian wedding ceremony, which she calls brit ahuvim (“a lovers’ covenant”)—has yet to catch on as a new Jewish custom, but, given the innovative path of American Judaism in the last twenty years, it may. Adler is well aware that belief in the divine underpinnings of halakhah has been abandoned by most liberal Jews, and the Jewish community no longer has the power to compel obedience. Without an attempt a jurigenesis, the creation of an engendered praxis in which all committed Jews can partake, Adler sees little hope of avoiding communal anomie. Plaskow and Adler share a vision of feminist Judaism, but their visions are not identical, and on at least one major issue—halakhah—in tension.

“Modern” Bible study connotes the freedom of scholars to challenge the antiquity, authorship, and authority of Scripture. It also implies that academic practitioners will be free from the biases of denominational traditions of Bible-reading: Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. “Jewish” Bible study has been a millennial endeavor, but one conducted mainly in Hebrew, within a Jewish sociological context, and with very different hermeneutic goals than the secular academy. So a thorny question emerges: can Bible scholarship be both modern and Jewish? In practice there are many Jews in the academy who meet the highest professional standards, but also exhibit tendencies resulting from a Jewish education and ethnoreligious background and thereby to cultivate an approach recognized as Jewish by the academy and the marketplace. I will highlight four facets of this emerging field: its apologetic nature, its use of traditional Jewish exegesis, its insistence on the pluriformity of biblical texts, and its commitment to the priority of the redacted text.

An apologetic spirit animates modern Jewish Bible scholarship. In large measure this is a response to the Protestant biases that dominated the field for two centuries. The Jewish Theological Seminary’s leader, Solomon Schechter, went so far as to claim that the very purpose of modern Bible scholarship was to deprive Jews of their claim to greatness and challenge their legacy to general civilization.³⁶ Kaufmann Kohler accepted the methods of the modernist “Higher Critics,” who divided the Bible into different authorial sources, but shared Schechter’s view that their findings were tainted by antisemitism.³⁷ Kohler’s tenure as president of Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s seminary, opened the door to critical Bible scholarship, but the subject long remained sequestered from the rank and file.

When the impulse for a Jewish Bible scholarship resumed after the Second World War and the Holocaust, Jews continued their predecessors’ battle with the prejudicial scholarship of earlier generations.³⁸ In Understanding Genesis (1966) Nahum Sarna of Brandeis University wrote,

Sarna submerges the composite nature of Creation and Flood narratives by expounding the message of the redacted text, contrasting it at every point with Ancient Near Eastern analogues. Even Richard Friedman’s popular updating of the source critical method, Who Wrote the Bible? concludes, “In a very real way, the Bible is greater than the individuals who wrote it,” and “The question is, after all, not only who wrote the Bible, but who reads it.” Friedman promises that honest dialogue with the biblical text need not paralyze the reader.⁴⁰

Jon Levenson (Harvard Divinity School) has analyzed the Protestant nature of Old Testament theology and staked out grounds for a Jewish response.⁴¹ In Sinai and Zion Levenson wrote that it seems as if Protestant Bible scholars have been looking for new ways to caricature Jewish legalism and to repeat Jesus’s curse on the temple.⁴² This book’s title aptly signals the author’s intention to defend the Sinai/law and the Zion/temple as unfairly maligned high points in Ancient Israelite religion. His work exemplifies the sympathetic treatment accorded to legal and ritual materials once denigrated by Bible scholars. Schechter wanted the Christian scholarly world to leave Judaism alone. The current generation has a more ambitious agenda, seeking a fairer appraisal of Judaism. This challenge has largely succeeded.⁴³

Modern biblical scholarship implies a dramatic break with traditional Jewish approaches to the Bible. How, then, does the modern Jewish Bible scholar relate to the vast corpus of commentary created by prior generations? In Professor Adele Berlin’s judgment, modern Jewish academicians initially shied away from traditional exegesis, which “made no pretense of being academically objective and religiously neutral.”⁴⁴ Recently, however, scholars have found the reading skills of the rabbis useful and its lack of putative “neutrality” less bothersome. The JPS Torah Commentary, which juxtaposes traditional and contemporary scholarship, offers the lay reader two approaches to the Bible largely sequestered from each other just a generation ago—a fine example of constructing a modern Jewish approach to Torah.

Addressing the interpretive fecundity of Second Temple Judaism, Michael Fishbane asks:

Fishbane thoroughly proves the point that a diverse, native, and ancient tradition of interpretation existed in Ancient Israel. Implicitly, then, the contemporary scholar stands in an analogous relationship to the Bible, as did the rabbinic sages. For Fishbane the biblical texts themselves enjoy a dynamic, interpretative relationship. Fishbane rejects the Protestant quest for the pristine text, refuses to privilege the original traditum over against the subsequent traditio. In antiquity and today, meaning emerges in the encounter between the received tradition and the interpreter.⁴⁶

The Jewish insistence on textual pluriformity has been fueled by the Protestant quest for a biblical-theological keystone. In Creation and the Persistence of Evil Jon Levenson forwards a theology of human coresponsibility with God, relying heavily on the claim that Genesis 1 does not exhaust the biblical view of creation.⁴⁷ Contrary to the impression given by that majestic opening, the Bible is full of images of God’s striving to neutralize, subdue, and channel the forces of evil. Israel aids God in this necessary divine-human task. In Ancient Israel sacrificial service in the tabernacle and the temple was the principal medium; in the present the medium of Sabbath observance. Levenson draws a complex picture of creation from material embedded in the Psalter and Wisdom literature, two genres often ignored by Protestant theologians.

Pluriformity in the biblical text implies multiple voices. In Countertraditions in the Bible Ilana Pardes rejects Phyllis Trible’s famous reading of Genesis 2–3, which insists that centuries of expositors read male superiority into an egalitarian, if not a feminist, text.⁴⁸ Drawing on postmodern narrative theory, Pardes hears several contending voices in the biblical texts. Although acknowledging her debt to Mieke Bal, Pardes criticizes Bal’s attempt to read the Bible like any other text. Pardes unsympathetically cites Bal’s claim, “It [the Bible’s message] can be an issue only for those who attribute moral, religious or political authority to these texts, which is precisely the opposite of what I am interested in.”⁴⁹ Pardes thus carves out a middle ground between Trible’s Protestant insistence on finding an unambiguous teaching and Bal’s dismissal of the Bible as a text worthy of veneration.

Pardes challenges the traditional Christian “ending” of the Eden cycle, to which Bal also succumbs. Pardes rereads the story in light of Eve’s naming speeches in Genesis 3–4. The careful scrutiny of baby-naming formulae, and the awareness that the traditional weekly Torah portion (parsha) does not break at Genesis 3 but rather at Genesis 6:8, all constitute element s in her reading that may be considered typically Jewish. The traditional rabbinic interests in genealogy, family dynamics, and procreation—lesser themes in Christian tradition—have not been slavishly adopted; they have been leavened by the application of modern critical perspectives such as gender studies.⁵⁰ Pardes takes Eve’s role as procreator and hence as cocreator with God seriously, but does not fall into the trap of taking the text as a whole as feminist or gender neutral. Jewish interpreters find “countertraditions” within the Bible they can live with, rather than abandon the canon altogether. The Bible as well as the Talmud preserve minority opinions—you just have to look harder.⁵¹

Beginning with the German-born Erich Auerbach, many Jews have used a literary approach to tease out meaning in the biblical text. Robert Alter, Meir Sternberg, and Robert Polzin insist that the Bible expresses its religious value through its literary artistry. Alter’s ideology includes an apotheosis of “R,” a reducing of the existential distance between reader and text, and a dismissive attitude toward the value of reading the component pieces on their own. “Thus, in Speiser’s commentary it is not Jacob and Esau, but E, J, and P who become the subject of investigation. In this way the text is held at a distance for inspection, and any voice that might speak from it simagined situation to our actual one is in effect suppressed.”⁵² Alter, Sternberg, and Polzin reject a scholarly tradition which presumes the more atomistic, the more scientific.

Contemporary Jewish Bible scholarship is more than the application of traditional perspectives in a new context: the enterprise is a significant theological development. Postmodernity has validated the integration of communal commitments, traditional perspectives, and modern methods. That has afforded Jews—only recently welcomed into the secular academy as equals—an opportunity to shape the way in which the Bible is read within the academy and beyond it. The figures mentioned above serve a dual role: as practitioners of their craft and as contributors to a particularistic Jewish attempt to continue to relate to Torah on a plane both spiritually meaningful and intellectual honest. Commentary has long been a primary form of Jewish thought. The attractiveness of the Bible—and midrash—as a point of departure for Jewish reflection may be evidenced not only in figures discussed above but also in the emergence of a school of “textual reasoning,” still in its infancy.⁵³

The flowering of Jewish Bible scholarship and Jewish feminism invites a brief revisiting of my preference for thought over theology as a descriptive term. Since Levenson’s seminal essay, “Why Jews Are Not Interested in Biblical Theology” (1986), Jewish Bible theology has advanced in Israel and the United States, including such names as Tikvah Frymer Kensky, Marc Brettler, Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, and Moshe Greenberg. Similarly, Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai marked the first synthetic program of Jewish feminism, transcending piecemeal calls for legal, social, and ritual reform. Works by Ellen Umansky, Ellen Frankel, Rita Gross, Laura Levitt, Blu Greenberg, Lori Lefkowitz, Rita Gross, and many others, have considerably furthered the goals enunciated by Plaskow and Adler. Since the above-named figures evidence philosophic rigor and hold prestigious university postings, perhaps theology is the correct term, especially as both disciplines (Jewish feminism and modern Jewish Bible study) emerged in response to universal rather than particularistic Jewish stimuli? That argument notwithstanding, the reader should also bear in mind the influence antisemitism played in accelerating both these disciplines, the identity politics of consciously formulating a Jewish perspective, and the role of the Jewish community (from seminary to synagogue) in translating intellectual innovation into lay praxis and belief. In sum, if the university provides the natural home for the practitioners of these two disciplines, the germinating impulses and arenas of activism of Jewish Bible scholars and Jewish feminists alike are located outside the safety of ivory towers. Once again, it seems to this author that the usual understanding of the term theology is not nearly broad enough to encompass these emerging disciplines.

The breakdown of traditional Jewish life and the acculturation of Jews into the dominant ideologies of Europe led to widely variegated range of religious beliefs and practices. The breakdown of traditional Jewish life, without a concomitant abandonment of Jewish identity, also led to secular alternatives to Judaism. Socialism, Zionism, and psychoanalysis substituted for traditional Judaism—with Judaism and Jewishness playing varied roles in each case. America’s economic opportunities shortened the careers of several secular Jewish movements originating in eastern Europe (including socialist Zionism and a variety of Yiddishist groups). But figures such as Felix Adler, founder of ethical culture, Sherwin Wine, founder of humanistic Judaism, and even Mordecai Kaplan (a theist to be sure, but one who placed Jewish folkways at the center of his theology), displayed the power of secular conceptions of Judaism. The splintering of religious Judaism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been matched (in North America) by a dissipation of ethnic Jewishness in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It is also undeniable that the stability of Jewish identity without religious underpinnings has been challenged by life in a free society. Notwithstanding the emergence of a new spirituality (below), proponents of secular Judaism have not disappeared. David Ivry, Judith Seid, and Alan Dershowitz have all articulated Jewish agendas with religion either at the periphery or nowhere to be found.

Another quintessentially modern and American phenomenon is the range of religions being practiced that combine Judaism and some other system. The dictionary defines syncretism as “the merging of different religions or religious traditions, or the absorption of foreign elements into a particular religion. The term is often employed negatively to refer to the contamination of one religion by another.” Jewish syncretism has accelerated in the openness of the American religious landscape. Who would have anticipated twenty-five years ago that non-Western religions would not only claim many Jewish adherents but actually owe much to Jews for bringing it to the wider public? Yet this has happened in the case of American Buddhism and Hinduism, which number Bernard Glassman, Baba Ram Dass (né Richard Alpert), Jonathan Omer-Man, and others as its leading spokespersons.⁵⁴ At least for Western-born Buddhists (the immigrant Buddhist community has had little impact on American religious practices), Jews have played a prominent role. In a strange recapitulation of the end of the nineteenth century, when figures like Martin Buber embraced Eastern religion as a path to greater spirituality, the counterculture of the 1960s—itself another site of surrogate and syncretistic Jewishness—fueled much of the contemporary interest in Buddhism. Far from demanding the denial of Jewishness (or Judaism), typical of medieval confrontations with Christianity and Islam, Eastern religions invite an acceptance of one’s own background as a pathway to individual enlightenment.

Whatever one may think of JUBUs (Jewish Buddhists) or messianic Jews (the self-designation of Jews for Jesus), their emergence must be reckoned as a surprise story in modern American Judaism. Judging by the success of popular works such as Rodger Kamenetz’s The Jew in the Lotus and Stalking Elijah, the exploration of one’s own faith through that of others is very attractive. As Generations X and Y come to maturity, still other permutations seem likely.⁵⁵ Should the reader think my appraisal of secular and syncretistic Judaism has descended entirely into the world of “pop” culture, and has no echo among “serious” Jewish thinkers, I cite the following from a professor and former dean at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College:

This position, as well as those carved out by Sandra Lubarsky’s Tolerance and Transformation, goes beyond a call for interreligious dialogue. Some will think that Alpert and Lubarsky have overstepped the line of Jewish authenticity—others will not.⁵⁷ Certainly the erstwhile debate between opponents of religious dialogue (e.g., Soloveitchik) and proponents (e.g., David Novak) has ended, with reality casting the decisive vote. American Jews represent too integrated an element in American life to foreclose such dialogue: the questions are what such dialogue intends to accomplish and how may a Jewish thinker enter into such a dialogue without jeopardizing the integrity of Judaism. “Dabru Emet” (“Speak Truth”), a statement issued by the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies and signed by many prominent figures, called for a reevaluation of Jewish attitudes toward Christianity. No one could deny that organized Christianity since the 1960s has struggled significantly with its anti-Jewish past. “Dabru Emet” nevertheless provoked considerable controversy within Jewish ranks—testimony to the sensitive history of Jewish-Christian relations, but also to Jewish anxiety about the blurring of boundaries limned above. All agree that a strong postdenominational streak exists within Judaism at present, perhaps best evidenced by the creation of consciously postdenominational rabbinic seminaries.

No overview of contemporary Jewish thought would be complete without a glance at its spiritual ferment, clearly related to what some scholars have termed America’s Third Great Awakening. In both the Christian and Jewish cases a renewed search for meaning in a relativistic era, a frustration with institutional religion, a quest for community, and a desire to self-actualize one’s belief system have propelled this development. For Jews the spiritual quest has also been fueled by the ongoing revolt against the politics of assimilation. An early opponent of assimilation, the great historian-philosopher of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem, devoted his scholarly career to arguing the centrality and richness of the mystical tradition. His students and detractors have played an important role in raising Jewish mysticism from a somewhat neglected area of Jewish studies to a centerpiece.

Mysticism, kabbalah study, and meditation have won many adherents within the Jewish and gentile world. Kabbalah, which started out as an esoteric tradition studied only by a Jewish elite, has become, arguably, the most attractive Jewish material outside the Bible. The success of kabbalah centers, the popularity of red wristbands (a Jewish mystical practice), and Hebrew tatoos may be offered as a case in point. Although the public face of this development is at times faddish, the underlying desire for meaningful and authentic Jewish spirituality impulse has found serious expression.

Arthur Green, author of a slew of important works (e.g., Devotion and Commandment, Tormented Master, and Seek My Face, Speak My Name), continues the tradition of Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel as a translator of Ha-sidic pietism into forms comprehensible to an audience that did not grow up in observant or religious homes. Green combines top-notch academic credentials with a long history of institutional leadership, including the presidency of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. A professor at Brandeis University, Green is also the dean of Boston Hebrew College’s nondenominational rabbinical school. Green’s rejection of denominational and disciplinary borders strikes a deep chord, as does his determination to trace his intellectual patrimony back to the eastern European pietists (Abraham Joshua Heschel, Abraham Isaac Kook, Judah Loeb Alter of Ger) rather than the western European rationalists. As Green explained in a widely cited essay, “New Directions in Jewish Theology in America,” this latter group emphasizes intuition, inwardness, experience, depth and creation theologies. For Green “prayer is the bridge between the abstract notion of divine speech and the use of human words to speak of God. . . . Theology is dependent upon prayer.”⁵⁸

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has had an eclectic career as a university professor, organizer of some of the more important Jewish renewal groups, rebbe (rabbi-mentor) to scores of students whom he has also ordained, and prolific author of Paradigm Shift, Wrapped in a Holy Flame, From Age-ing to Sage-ing, and many more. Polish-born and Vienna-educated, Schachter-Shalomi hails from Belzer Hasidim but was trained and ordained by Lubavitch Hasidism. Schachter-Shalomi (known by his disciples and admirers as Reb Zalman) speaks of a paradigm shift in the post-Holocaust era comparable to those of the destruction of the First and Second Temples. But, rather than embracing an insular Judaism as a response to the Holocaust, Schachter-Shalomi propounds a form of Jewish renewal with emphasis on integrating a love for the diversity of the world, acknowledging the technological nature of contemporary times, and retaining the maximum of spiritual traditions that makes meaning out of this complex. Schachter-Shalomi has used the term Gaian as shorthand for the new paradigm. In his pan-universalism and postdenominationalism, though not his mysticism, Schachter-Shalomi resembles the first modern Jewish thinker—Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza.

Lawrence Kushner also carries on the Buberian task of translating Jewish mysticism (especially Hasidism) for acculturated Jews. A product of the Reform movement, Kushner stands worlds away from classical, liberal thought as expounded by somebody like Eugene Borowitz. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Kushner authored a slew of deceptively simple books that unfold the mystical tradition. In Eyes Remade for Wonder, Kushner uses the Hebrew alphabet as the prompt for a series of forays, often autobiographical, into the world of the spirit.⁵⁹ Green, Schachter-Shalomi, Kushner are only three names of many serious thinkers (including Arthur Waskow, David Wolpe, David Ariel) who seek to restore spirituality to its rightful place in Jewish life. The desire for a spiritual Judaism seems only to increase as those Jews who have committed to reclaim a meaningful Jewish identity find the contemporary alternatives either inadequate (secular Jewishness, increased communal involvement, formal participation in synagogue life) or peripheral to their deepest motivations. As in the cases of feminism and modern Bible scholarship, the new spirituality seems to be at the beginning of its attempted rejuvenation of the Jewish world.

American Jewish thought is indeed wide-ranging and diverse. There seems to be general agreement that the temper of the times discourages systematic Jewish theology, as does the premium placed on individual response and a modesty wholly appropriate to living after the Holocaust. The organized movements remain important sites of translating ideas into practice, but, unlike a century ago, much Jewish thought also takes place in the university. This development has the advantage of greater ideological independence and disciplinary sophistication. If specialized vocabularies and intellectual parochialism at times render academic discussions remote from Jewish laypeople, there appears to be no shortage of rabbis and other teachers to translate the language of the academy into more popular idioms.

It may be true that there have been no replacements for the giants of Jewish thought, from the eighteenth through the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, standing on the shoulders of giants does yield valuable vantage points. Eugene Borowitz’s covenantal theology has preserved the dialogical elements of Buber while supporting a Buberian weakness: balancing individual autonomy and communal commitments. Arthur Green, Lawrence Kushner, and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi have furthered the Hasidic-inspired depth theology of Heschel and succeeded in forwarding the dimensions of prayer, mitzvah, meditation, and movement as idioms of Jewish worship. Neil Gilman has continued the Conservative tradition of Catholic Israel and extended the democratic implications of that doctrine in an accessible North American idiom. Norman Lamm may not possess Rav Soloveitchik’s towering presence (no Jew does), but exceeds the Rav in political engagement and a willingness to publicly argue for Orthodoxy’s commitment to the entire Jewish people. Feminism, a truly revolutionary advance, is still in its youth, and the same may be said about contemporary Jewish biblical studies. In short, contemporary Jewish thought in America represents an area of considerable Jewish creativity, albeit one generally underestimated by experts and laypeople alike.

1. The two major genres of classical rabbinic literature are law (halakhah) and lore (aggadah), not statements of creed, as in the Christian tradition. Whether literal, philosophical, or mystical, commentary, rather than systematic theology, was the principal mode of Jewish expression. Nevertheless, all of the above genres are chock-full of theological views: my avoidance of the term Jewish theology is based on other grounds, explained below.

2. Arnold Eisen, “Jewish Theology in North America: Notes on Two Decades,” American Jewish Yearbook 91 (1991): 3–33.

3. David Ellenson, “The Continued Renewal of North American Theology,” Journal of Reform Judaism 38 (Winter 1991): 1–16.

4. On assessing the scope of contemporary Jewish theology, see the comments by Elliot Dorff and Louis Newman, eds., in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader (New York, 1999), 1–6.

5. An adequate discussion of post-Holocaust theology is beyond the scope of this essay. Among the more important post-Holocaust theologians are Richard Rubenstein, Emil Fackenheim, Eliezer Berkovits, and Ignaz Maybaum. For a solid overview, see Michael Morgan, Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America (New York, 2001).

6. Whether the Holocaust constitutes a novum, a new and unique historical-theological datum, is the subject of considerable discussion. See Steven Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context (New York, 1994); Alan Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Boulder, 1996). Eliezer Berkovits, Faith After the Holocaust, while agreeing that the Holocaust discredits Western Christendom’s claims to progressively increasing humanity, asserts that the problem of human evil in a divinely ordained world (theodicy) has not changed since the first human beings.

7. Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History (New York, 1970), 85ff.

8. Scholars employ a variety of terms (e.g., denomination, branch, sector, movement) to describe the various religious streams of American Judaism.

9. The figure 46 percent for current synagogue membership comes from the National Jewish Population Survey 2000. No doubt, the percentage over the course of the entire life span would be much higher. Arguably, then, the synagogue remains the single most important institution in American Jewish life.

10. On creative religious impulses from within, see Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism in Historical Perspective, Beilin Lectures 10 (Ann Arbor, 2003).

11. Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America (New York, 1993) 93–113.

12. For a deft summary of classical Reform Judaism, see Marc Lee Raphael, Judaism in America (New York, 1999), 65–66.

13. Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity. The Reform Movement in Judaism (New York, 1988) offers the authoritative portrait of the European and American models of Reform Judaism and their interrelationship.

14. Eugene Borowitz, Choices in Modern Jewish Thought (New York, 1983), 288–89, represents an early articulation of covenental theology.

15. “We must begin with something that has not happened; this negative something is the strongest and, potentially, most significant religious reality among American Jews: it is that the Jews have not stopped being Jews.” Nathan Glazer, American Judaism, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1972), 141.

16. The shift in nomenclature from Zecharias Frankel’s positive-historic Judaism to Schechter’s Conservative Judaism took place during Schechter’s tenure as head of Jewish Theological Seminary. For the earlier American roots of Conservative Judaism see Moshe Davis, The Emergence of Conservative Judaism. The Historical School (Philadelphia, 1963).

17. I am referring to such simple matters as the wearing of head covering and prayer shawls, the use of Hebrew, and the choreography of prayer. Much of this has to do with nostalgic longing and filiopietism rather than ideology—standing for the silent Amidah prayer, for instance, had little to do with belief in the content of the eighteen benedictions of that prayer, but much to do with the fact that grandpa stood up at this point in the service.

18. Joseph Soloveitchik (1903–1993), the leading figure in American Orthodoxy for roughly four decades (1940s-1980s), began to exert influence on non-Orthodox Jews with the appearance of his works in English, e.g., The Lonely Man of Faith (1964) and Halakhic Man (1944, but in English translation 1983).

19. Neil Gilman, Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew (Philadelphia, 1990), 278.

20. Ibid., xxiv-xxv.

21. Consistent with the articulation of “Emet v’Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism” (1988), Gilman considers several views of revelation legitimate for the modern Jew.

22. Isaac Klein’s A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice (New York, 1979), may be described as a Conservative Shulchan Aruch (the normative Orthodox law code), as revised with reference to the demands of modernity, for instance the Conservative decision to permit driving on Shabbat, but only to synagogue.

23. Neil Gilman, The Death of Death (Woodstock, VT, 1997) and The Way Into Encountering God in Judaism (Woodstock, VT, 2000).

24. Lamm has authored numerous studies on a wide variety of topics including studies of Hasidism and the Lithuanian yeshivot, Jewish marriage, the Sh’ma (the primary affirmation of God’s sovereignty and a centerpiece of Jewish worship services), and Jewish ethics in a democratic society.

25. Susannah Heschel, “Feminism,” writes, “In a sense, the feminist challenge to Judaism today can be compared in magnitude to other major crises in Judaism such as the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, which necessitated a shift from sacrificial to liturgical worship.” In Steven Katz, ed., Frontiers of Jewish Thought (Washington, DC, 1992) 65.

26. See Lynn Davidman and Shelly Tenenbaum, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies (New Haven, 1994).

27. Paula Hyman, “Jewish Feminism Faces the American Women’s Movement,” Frankel Lectures 6 (Ann Arbor, 1997), 1.

28. Judith Plaskow, “The Right Question Is Theological,” in Susannah Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist (New York, 1983), 223–32.

29. On the development of Jewish feminist thought since the 1970s, see Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist; Davidman and Tenenbaum, Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies; Ellen Umansky, “Jewish Feminist Theology,” in Eugene Borowitz, Choices in Modern Jewish Thought, 2d ed. (West Orange, NJ, 1995); Laura Levitt and Miriam Peskowitz, eds., Judaism Since Gender (New York, 1997).

30. Novel ritual items inspired by feminism would include kos miryam (miryam’s cup), tapuz devorah (Deborah’s orange on seder plates).

31. Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Boston, 1998), xx.

32. Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco, 1990), 20.

33. Plaskow’s distinction between history and memory relies heavily on Yosef Yerushalmi’s Zakhor. Jewish History and Jewish Memory (New York, 1989).

34. Rachel Adler, “The Jew Who Wasn’t There,” in Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist, 17.

35. Adler, Engendering Judaism, 21.

36. Solomon Schechter, “Higher Criticism-Higher Antisemitism,” in Seminary Addresses and Other Papers (New York, 1959), 35–39.

37. Kaufmann Kohler, “The Attitude of Christian Scholars Toward Jewish Literature,” in Studies, Addresses and Personal Papers (New York, 1931).

38. Nahum Sarna, Exploring Exodus (New York, 1986) devotes many pages arguing the basic historicity of the Exodus, using the tools of archaeology, and the findings of the Egyptologists. Sarna’s JPS Torah Commentary Genesis-Exodus reiterates many of his earlier themes: “The present commentary is primarily concerned with the completed edifice and only to a minor extent with the building blocks. It is not based on a coroner’s approach, that is, on dissecting a literary corpse,” xvi.

39. Sarna, Understanding Genesis (New York, 1966), xvii-xviii. The claim that “difference” is more telling than “similarity” may also be found in Joseph Hertz’s The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text, English Translation and Commentary (London, 1961), 194, 197, 498, and in the works of earlier scholars such as Abraham Geiger, Heinrich Graetz, and Yehezkel Kaufmann.

40. Friedman contends that each strand of authorship represents a legitimate “take” on reality—the multiple truths to be found in the text and in reality help explain how the Bible has communicated meaning across the generations.

41. Jon D. Levenson, “Why Jews Are Not Interested in Biblical Theology,” Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Philadelphia, 1987), 281–307, “The Hebrew Bible, The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism,” in The Future of Biblical Studies (Atlanta, 1987). Other significant contributors to a Jewish biblical theology would include the late Moshe Goshen Gottstein, Moshe Greenberg, Marc Brettler, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, and Michael Fishbane.

42. Levenson’s discussion of the relationship between Jeremiah 7 and Psalm 50 seems driven by his awareness that Protestant theologians took their cues from Israel’s own prophets. Sinai and Zion (San Francisco, 1985), 165–69, 206–9. On legal and cultic aspects of the Hebrew Bible, the works of Jacob Milgrom, Baruch Levine, and Menachem Haran deserve special mention.

43. To see the impact of a Jewish critique on academic presentations of the Bible by non-Jews, one may: 1. compare the way in which Ezra and Judaism in general is discussed in the first and fourth editions of Bernhard Anderson’s standard Introduction to Old Testament (Englewood, 1986 [1957]); 2. glance at Alice Bach’s introductory comments in Women in the Bible (New York, 1999); 3. look at the authors and subjects of the recent New English Bible (NEB) Study Edition. To fully explicate the issue of Jewish influence on modern Bible scholarship would require a separate essay.

44. Adele Berlin, “On the Use of Traditional Jewish Exegesis in the Modern Literary Study of the Bible,” in Tehillah le-Moshe (Winona Lake, IN, 1997), 173–83.

45. Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia, 1979) 19.

46. James Kugel (review of) Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, in Prooftexts 7 (1987): 269–305.

47. Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (San Francisco, 1988).

48. See Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, “Feminism and Scriptural Interpretation,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 20 (1983): 540.

49. Mieke Bal, Lethal Love (Bloomington, 1987). See Pardes’s discussion of Bal in Countertraditions in the Bible (Cambridge, 1992), 26–33.

50. Devora Steinmetz, From Father to Son (Louisville, 1991); Naomi Steinberg, Kinship and Marriage (Minneapolis, 1993).

51. Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible (Cambridge, 1992), passim.

52. Robert Alter, World of Biblical Literature (New York, 1991), 206.

53. See Peter Ochs, “B’nei Ezra: An Introduction to Textual Reasoning,” in Dorff and Newman, Contemporary Jewish Theology, 502–14.

54. On Hinduism, see Barbara Holdrege, Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture (Albany, 1996); Hananya Goodman, ed., Between Jerusalem and Benares (Albany, 1994). On Buddhism, see Jacob Teshima, Zen Buddhism and Hasidism: A Comparative Study (Latham, MD, 1995).

55. See, for instance, Lisa Schiffman, Generation J (San Francisco, 1999).

56. Rebecca Alpert, “Another Perspective on Theological Directions for the Jewish Future,” in Dorff and Newman, Contemporary Jewish Theology, 495, 497.

57. “Dabru Emet” generated considerable response, some of it critical.

58. Arthur Green, “New Directions in Jewish Theology in America,” in Dorff and Newman, Contemporary Jewish Theology, 489.

59. Lawrence Kushner, Honey from the Rock (San Francisco, 1977); Eyes Remade for Wonder (Woodstock, VT, 1998).