The term American Judaism is not as clear as it might seem at first glance. Not too long ago the term Judaism seemed clear enough. People might disagree about its specific contents but agree that Judaism referred to the norms, values, and beliefs that characterized the Jewish religion. There were those who argued that Judaism was basically a culture rather than a religion, and some even argued that the term civilization was more suitable. However, at its core, Judaism - whether a religion, culture, or civilization - contained a set of norms, values, and beliefs, many of which, all would agree, referred to God and to the relationship between the Jewish people and God. These norms, values, and beliefs existed independently of how individual Jews behaved or what individual Jews believed. In other words, there was a structure or an essence called Judaism, and the behavior or beliefs of individual Jews could be measured by the extent to which they conformed to or deviated from the norms and beliefs of Judaism.

Within the confines of these norms existed differences between Judaism in different societies. American Judaism meant the particular customs, or emphases, or variations that were characteristic of the manner in which Judaism was practiced in the United States, distinct from the practice of Polish or German or Yemenite Judaism. This set of understandings had important implications, most especially for differences between the various Jewish denominations, that is, the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and more recently the Reconstructionist movements.

Denominational Judaism did not yet exist when Jews began settling in the American colonies during the seventeenth century. The primary dividing line between Jews at that time was ethnocultural - between Sephardim, who traced their ancestry to Spain or Portugal where their families had in many cases been forcibly converted to Catholicism, and Ashkenazim, who originated from German-speaking lands. Although synagogue ritual for both groups was meticulously traditional, individual religious behavior varied widely. In keeping with European precedent, each American community maintained only one official synagogue, run by a lay board. Since there were no ordained rabbis in the country, knowledgeable congregants conducted services. Gradually, the natural growth and increasing heterogeneity of the Jewish population, internecine conflict, and the American penchant for individualism and freedom of association splintered the unified Jewish communities and led to the founding of multiple congregations in the same city.

REFORM, THE FIRST DENOMINATION

Beginning in the 1830s and continuing through the Civil War, a stream of Jewish immigrants from German-speaking lands planted the first Jewish “denomination” in America, Reform. Although it was technically the Sephardi congregation, Beth Elohim of Charleston, South Carolina, that first espoused so-called Reform Judaism in the 1820s, the German newcomers made this form of Judaism the primary American expression of the religion until well into the twentieth century.

Denominations existed in American Judaism by about 1880, but only that of Reform was clearly defined and organized. The new period would see the continued growth of Reform and the expansion on a massive scale of Orthodoxy and Conservatism. Controversy and creativity were found within all these movements.

In 1880, there were about 260,000 Jews among the over 50 million inhabitants of the United States, constituting a small minority of only 0.5 percent of the population. They were an articulate and much-noticed group, as their communal activities and synagogue sermons were often reported in general newspapers. Moreover, numerous books, essays, and the weekly Jewish press kept them and their religion in the public eye. America, as a deeply Christian country, could not ignore the Jews in its midst, the ancient denier and challenger of Christianity.

During this era, the Jewish religion as practiced in the America of 1880 was largely Reform Judaism. It had first appeared, but briefly, in 1828 and began its unbroken history around 1845. Of the dozens of Orthodox synagogues that immigrant German and Polish Jews founded in cities and small towns, all but a few “reformed” their worship by approximately 1870. Men and women no longer sat separately; prayers and the reading of the Torah were drastically shortened, and the trop (chant) of its reading was abolished; the two days of festivals were reduced to one; and the vernacular sermon by the rabbi became the center of the service.

Even in comparison with the rest of the history of the Diaspora, the relationship of Zionism and Israel to American Jews has long been notable for its ironies and contradictions. In the prestate era, even though Zionism was largely irrelevant to American Jews, their extraordinary efforts at fundraising and political support made possible the very birth of the Jewish state. Since 1967, once Israel was established, there has been no other country whose citizens have been as committed to the success of another country as American Jews have been to Israel. Nevertheless, the vast majority of American Jews have remained astonishingly ignorant of the object of their devotion. In spite of all of their support for and obsession with Israel, the Jewish state has had relatively little effect on the religious and cultural life of American Jews. The key to these apparent contradictions lies in the fact that, from the beginning to the present, American Jews’ response to Zionism and Israel has been circumscribed by American priorities and needs. From their early indifference to Zionism, through a quarter century of unequivocal support for Israel following its foundation, to the breakdown of consensus in the 1970s and 1980s leading to the present fragmentation, American Jews have related to Israel primarily through their American identity.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, European Zionists and American Jews were diametrically opposed in spirit, ideology, worldviews, and lifestyle. Classical Zionism saw anti-Semitism as all pervasive, ineradicable, and impervious to the liberalism in which American Jews had placed their trust. Believing that diasporic life was inevitably doomed, Zionists maintained that the only solution was for all Jews to emmigrate to Palestine and form a state of their own where they could fully and safely live out authentic, Jewish lives.

To evoke the American Jewish urban experience may seem like an exercise in nostalgia, indulging in a history whose bearing on the lives of American Jews today is debatable. What, after all, is urban about American Jews today? Presently, almost all Jews live in cities, towns, suburbs, and metropolitan areas that are officially considered “urban” by U.S. census standards. However, nowadays, urban holds a rather different meaning from that used in the census; it refers to the central city of a metropolitan area. More specifically, it refers to the dense and historic inner city, which has been steadily eclipsed demographically by the growth of suburbs and exurbs and by migration to developing new cities in the South, Southwest, and West. In fact, urban today has an even narrower meaning and often evokes the city of minorities, the Hispanics and African Americans, who tend to make up the greater part of the central city population. This kind of urban city brings to mind the social problems, regardless of their origins, currently associated with inner-city minorities. With this kind of city, American Jews today have little direct experience.

THE AMERICAN JEWISH URBAN EXPERIENCE

At the close of World War II, two great migrations began emptying the inner cities of Jews, leaving these areas for the most part without a substantial Jewish population. These two migratory waves resulted in a radical redistribution of the Jewish population of the United States in the thirty years after World War II. The first migration was to the suburbs; the second was to cities in California and Florida. The demographic change can be traced in the annual Jewish population statistics of the American Jewish Year Book. The data show a steady rise of the cities of the South and Southwest to the point where the second and third largest Jewish population concentrations today are no longer Chicago and Philadelphia, but Los Angeles and Miami.

Among the questions posed by sociologists of American Jewry, there is one that is perennial and basic but that has always seemed to elude easy answer: What is the content of American Jews’ “Jewishness”? What beliefs and behaviors, self-understandings and commitments do Jews embrace as a consequence of being Jewish?

Writing from the vantage point of the early 1980s, I suggested that, for a large number of American Jews, and especially for those most active in the institutional structures of the American Jewish community, many of the answers to these questions were provided by what I called an American Jewish “civil religion.” This civil religion defined a way of being Jewish that enabled its adherents to give meaning to their identities as Jews by connecting them to a great historic drama of destruction and rebirth. Such Jews made the survival of the Jewish people their sacred cause. They supported Israel and marched to free Soviet Jews. They gave generously to philanthropies in order to express their solidarity with fellow Jews and their commitment to the Jewish value of tzedakah (philanthropy and social justice). They educated their children as Jews, and they gathered at key points during their lives and during the year to publicly acknowledge and celebrate their Jewishness and their attachment to Jewish tradition. They celebrated as well their success as Americans, always wary of anti-Semitism, but feeling that in America they had found a congenial home, not just another way station in a long journey. With mostly good humor, these Jews accepted the fact that, when it came to theology and observance of Jewish law, two Jews meant three opinions.

Every religion, ancient and modern, has special rites of passage tied to both biological and sociological events that typify life. These rituals flow seamlessly from birth through puberty, marriage, and death. During the past half-century, rites have been created to match newly recognized passages. As people live longer and, in America, become more affluent and thus gain leisure time, newly conceptualized stages emerge, such as adolescence, midlife, empty nest, menopause, and golden age. In addition, family formations have shifted, leading to new rituals. In Judaism, special life cycle rituals have surrounded birth, puberty, marriage, death, and mourning. At the same time, traditional rites have been revised and expanded, particularly as a result of the influence of the women’s movement. Mothers, as well as fathers, have sought and even demanded inclusion in birth, adolescent, and marriage rituals for themselves and for their daughters.

This essay is focused on factors within and outside of the communal life of twentieth-century American Jewry that enhanced the salience of the traditional rites of passage accompanying birth, puberty, marriage, and death. Particular attention is paid to developments in the American Jewish cultural and religious context of the last quarter of the twentieth century. The contraction, expansion, and transformation of rites of passage is explored within several of the many expressions of American Judaism. The impact of the Jewish feminist movement that grew out of the Conservative movement and spread to Modern Orthodoxy and Reform, the empowering of laity through the Havurah and New Age spirituality movements, and the reintroduction of traditional rituals to Reform Judaism are considered as formative elements enhancing the significance of life cycle rituals in contemporary American Jewish life.

Historically, Jews have been defined as a religious group and continue to be so defined by scholars. Thus, an overwhelming majority of Jews define themselves accordingly. In fact, most major surveys conducted on America’s Jews that pertain to religion typically inquire about denominational affiliation, synagogue or temple membership, attendance at synagogue or temple services, and performance of basic rituals. This follows from the classic definition of religion as defined by the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), who suggested that religion is “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community, called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” However, these questions and their corresponding responses do not provide sufficient information on the religious beliefs or religious behavior patterns of American Jews. Indeed, such a perspective misses much of what most American Jews view as their religious needs and character. This essay goes beyond those data and examines American Jewish patterns of religious behavior as well as belief in a sociohistorical context. In an effort to unravel the meaning behind these actions or convictions, I examine and interpret the various patterns, their changes over time, and their relationship with the broader patterns of religious behavior and belief within American society.

Ignored at best, deemed irrelevant or divisive at worst, theological thinking has never been a priority item on the American Jewish communal agenda. American Jewry has expressed its largesse in many ways, but the training and support of Jewish theologians has not been one of them. Until recently, even Jewish theological seminaries in the United States were exceedingly lax in teaching Jewish theology or in training Jewish theologians. If the presence of trained theologians indicates a precondition for the production of theology, then their absence would seem to preclude the very existence of an American Jewish theology. Nevertheless, American Jewish theology has developed in spite of, rather than because of, the interest or support of American Jewry.

According to the British Jewish theologian, Louis Jacobs, Jewish theology may be defined as “an attempt to think through consistently the implications of the Jewish religion.” Although theology literally means “discourse about God,” American Jewry has resisted this and other such attempts for many reasons. One reason is because Americans tend to embrace activism and pragmatism, often neglecting and opposing doctrinal or ideological discourse. If Americans are basically activists, pragmatic and atheological, then American Jews are as well, and even more so. American Jews have tended to understand Judaism as a religion primarily concerned with doing things rather than thinking things, as a religion of action rather than doctrine, as an ethnic commitment rather than adherence to a transcendent faith

Jews have often regarded themselves as being exceptionally family oriented. In historical, premodern Jewish communities, and in many contemporary traditionalist societies, the family has been the basic building block of society. Societies have encouraged men and women to marry early, stay married, and remarry in the case of divorce or widowhood. A congruence of religious values, economic necessities, and cultural and societal pressures within traditional Jewish cultures have promoted marriage as the preferable marriage status providing a productive and salutary state in adulthood. This belief or conviction makes married adults and their families central, while it marginalizes the unmarried. This essay explores the impact of revisioning gender roles within the Jewish family within three contexts: the impact on society, the impact on the family, and the impact on the individual woman and man.

Jewish law prescribes specific behaviors for all members of the family unit, and thus it plays an important part in gender role divisions. For instance, little boys are socialized into the rigors of study and public prayer, while little girls are socialized into the endless demands of family and household. This dictates that women and men should share the vast majority of behaviors prescribed through a complex network of mitzvot (commanded behaviors). Thus, before Passover, males scour rabbinic texts and sources for new interpretations of Haggadic materials to bring to the Seder table, while females scour floors, cabinets, and closets.

AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST

Beginning in the 1930s, as Hitler’s Germany persecuted and eventually murdered Jews, America turned a blind eye. Until the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Americans were unwilling to be drawn into European power struggles or take sides between Hitler and his intended victims. Gallup polls from the 1930s show that Americans regarded “staying neutral” as their most important concern. Even after the Anschluss, Kristallnacht, and the Evian conference, the United States government refused to lift immigration restrictions for frantic Jewish refugees. In 1939, America refused to accept 20,000 German-Jewish children from the Kindertransport, and it also turned back the Hamburg-American Line’s SS St. Louis, a ship carrying 900 Jewish refugees that reached American shores after being stranded in the Caribbean when their Cuban visas were canceled. America also refused to press Britain to rescind the British White Paper of May 1939 that limited immigration to Palestine by European Jews fleeing Hitler. By 1942, the governments allied against Hitler were well informed about concentration camps and the tragic fate of the Jews, but they did little to mitigate it. Toward the end of the war, the United States and its Allies refused to bomb the gas chambers or the railroad tracks to Auschwitz and other killing centers.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the aptly named Know Nothings exempted America’s Jews from their suspicion of Catholics and recent immigrants. The Know Nothings felt that “however repugnant their religion may be, their religion is Republican…. Indeed, the Jews were the first Republican people in the world.” In their view, the Jews posed no threat to American democracy, having conformed their communal life and religious world view to American democratic norms and standards. With no clerical hierarchy or manifest loyalty to a foreign power, the Jews were able to accept and embrace the values of a free republic. Indeed, this Know Nothing author believed that the intrinsic and historic form of Jewish polity was republican, because of the Jews’ affinity for freedom and self-government

Despite the tarnished source, this dyspeptic compliment was correct in pointing out that the vast majority of American Jews had internalized the ethos of American democracy in a thoroughgoing way. Fundamental themes of constitutional democracy such as the derivation of authority from the consent of the governed, equality before the law, and the primacy of rights figure early on in American Jewish communal life and correspondence. The constitutions of early American synagogues, for example, transparently reflect the constitutional norms of the young democracy, often moderating earlier Jewish and republican motifs in favor of democratic egalitarianism. American Jews postulated a unique affinity between Jewish political and social ideals and those of the United States to such a degree that one scholar discerns a “cult of synthesis” as a persistent focus of American Judaism.

Sociologist and music critic Simon Frith states that the study of popular music assumes that sounds reflect or represent “a people.” This homology is described as “some sort of structural relationship between material and cultural forms.” A piece of music not only reflects but, in effect, produces popular values through its performance, and thus “gives a way of being in the world.” Popular music is a commercial industry striving to blend the artistry of music with business. The new Jewish music from the late 1960s through the 1990s is not only an artistic creation but also a positive and desirable expression of Jewish identity. “Jewish music” can be defined as a self-conscious effort to express a message, idea, or sound that is considered by its creators, performers, and listeners to be Jewish. This sphere of music, which has grown significantly over the past few decades, raises intriguing questions of expressions of Jewishness, continuity with the past, change, and the creation of a new American Jewish sensibility. It is estimated that over 2,000 recordings of Jewish music are currently available and that close to 250 records are released each year. While Jewish music is not a recent phenomenon, the creation of new Jewish music is found throughout the Jewish community in a vast range of musical styles; it represents a vehicle for the new generation of American Jews to express music with some connection to Judaism while distinguishing itself from the immigrant generation. At a time when Jewish literacy is declining, self-expression of Jewishness is increasing by means of the Jewish music industry. Interestingly, the phenomenon has concurrently spread to all segments of American Judaism, from Orthodox to Reform, religious to secular, and Yiddish to Zionist. In both religious and nonreligious contexts, this new music represents various responses to the past and has become an integral part of Jewish life in America that interconnects and shapes Jewish identity.

When the Second World War ended, the American Jewish community became aware that it had unprecedented responsibilities as the largest and most important Jewish community in the world. The Holocaust had not yet become a public concern, but it nevertheless had a sobering effect on American Jewry, who played an important role in assisting Holocaust survivors in Europe. During this time, American Jews provided economic as well as political support for the establishment of a Jewish state. Nevertheless, many American Jews understood that they needed to retain a religious as well as an ethnic identity. Although there was a renewed consciousness of their obligations, only a minority of American Jews had a clear conception of what religious beliefs they adhered to or had a consistent approach to ritual practice. Arthur A. Goren contends, “American Jews intuitively sensed that the functional consensus based on supporting Israel and defending a liberal America was not sufficient. What was needed was a doctrinal and ideological core that, while identifying the group, would also justify the operative elements of the consensus.” That doctrinal core would be supplied by the preservation and evolution of the Jewish religion in America.