Jewish Religious Definition in the Postwar United States
As Judaism moved into the American mainstream, Jewish religious definition grappled with the social movements of the 1960s.
In the postwar period, rabbis became part of the American mainstream for the first time. In his runaway 1946 best seller, Peace of Mind, Joshua Loth Liebman explained how Jewish religious principles could help all Americans in their search for psychological well-being.
Four years later, the October 15, 1951, cover of Time magazine featured Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, with the revealing caption: “The Days of Fear Are Over.” Finkelstein predicted a renaissance of Jewish life in America, based on a new interest in religion. By 1955, Will Herberg’s Protestant—Catholic—Jew had promoted Judaism to the status of America’s third religion, despite the small numbers of Jews in the United States. Both Conservative and Reform Judaism showed a new assertiveness and optimism.
Finkelstein’s call for “more religion” also spurred interest in Jewish theology. This new importance of theological writing contradicted a widely held belief that, since Judaism stressed halakhah (law) and linked faith to action, it put less stress on the formulation of religious doctrine. The postwar years indeed encouraged new interest in theology. Christian thinkers like Reinhold Niebuhr underscored the relevance of Jewish thought while the Second Vatican Council presaged an unprecedented era in Catholic–Jewish relations.
Although most observers of Jewish religious life agreed that American Orthodoxy faced a bleak future, in a prescient 1954 interview, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the intellectual leader of Modern Orthodoxy, confidently predicted an upsurge in Orthodox observance, as young American Jews would come to seek a total Jewish experience not offered by Reform and Conservative synagogues. In time, Orthodoxy indeed became stronger, facilitated by the establishment of new yeshivas, the growing prominence of the Chabad movement, and a post-Holocaust Hasidic revival spearheaded by Satmar and other sects.
By the 1960s, new challenges confronted American Jews. The 1967 Six Day War served as a sudden reminder of an existential bond with the State of Israel. On the other hand, many younger Jews began to feel a growing alienation from what they called the “Jewish establishment,” an alienation sharpened by the Vietnam War, civil rights demonstrations, and the new feminist movement. By the end of this period, as this anthology shows, probing questions emerged about the place of women in Jewish life, relations with African Americans, and the implications and lessons of the Holocaust.
The cultural ferment of the 1960s underscored social scientist Nathan Glazer’s observation that Jews did not stop being Jews but searched for innovative ways of adapting their Jewishness to a rapidly changing America. Creation of a kind of Jewish countercommunity as an alternative to suburban conformity appealed to growing numbers of young Jews. This search for new kinds of community led to the beginnings of the havurah movement.
Another major Jewish response to the counterculture of the 1960s was Jewish feminism, based on demands that women take their rightful place in Jewish religious and communal life as equals rather than as “peripheral Jews.” In 1972, a manifesto, “Jewish Women Call for Change,” addressed to Conservative rabbis, demanded that women be counted in the minyan, the quorum of ten men required for communal prayer, and that they be admitted to rabbinical and cantorial schools. In 1972, the Reform movement ordained its first female rabbi, Sally Priesand, and Sandy Sasso became the first woman admitted to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. As Deborah Dash Moore points out, these decisions by two liberal Jewish religious movements presented a clear alternative to both Modern Orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism and stimulated Jewish feminists to press for even more changes.
Leftist Jews also confronted new challenges. Old ties between Blacks and Jews, forged in the early days of the civil rights movement, began to fray because of the Black Power movement and growing tensions between Black and Jewish interests in urban politics. The New Left turned against Israel as a matter of course. As the ideal of the melting pot gave way to a new multiculturalism, why, some asked, should Jews accept Black claims to difference but deny their own identity?