From the "Gloomy" Scholars
Cohen, Steven M
From the "Gloomy" Scholars Deceptive Images. Social Science and the Study of American Jews by Charles S Liebman Transaction Books, 1988 110 pp, $27 95 Reviewed by Steven M Cohen For almost a...
...Historian Paula Hyman has called one group the "happy school of Jewish sociologists," and I suppose we could call the other, by extension, the "gloomy school" In Deceptive Images, Liebman presents the most cogent case yet published for the "gloomy school...
...It offers much both to specialists and to the general reader interested in the current condition and future prospects of American Jewry...
...For Licbman, the standards for assessing Jewish vitality embrace "fidelity to the Jewish past or the Jewish tradition, in short fidelity to Judaism," The problem is that we all have different ideas of what constitutes "fidelity to Judaism...
...Social Science and the Study of American Jews by Charles S Liebman Transaction Books, 1988 110 pp, $27 95 Reviewed by Steven M Cohen For almost a decade, social scientists have been engaged in a vigorous debate about the current quality and future prospects of American Jewry Observers have tended to divide this small world of battling but friendly scholars into two camps...
...One key strength of Licbman's work is that it is replete wilh far-reaching speculations as yet unsupported by "hard" evidence, (I recall using survey research in the early 1980s explicitly and successfully to validate insights he had published a full decade earlier...
...58 MOMENT • APRIL 1989...
...herein lies the fundamental argument in Deceptive Images...
...MICAH PUBLICATIONS MJlbj[T?Mxy QSi945yj American and Israeli Judaism, One reason for this apparently anomalous situation (i.e., our friendship and his somewhat misguided conclusions) is that the "happy71 and "gloomy1'1 schools arc not all of one stripe...
...As a traditionalist, he is "inclined to evaluate some forms or Jewish activity [even though they are distinctively Jewish] as stages in a process of assimilation...
...Licbman's sympathy for the modern Orthodox (that, to use a phrase of his, L'bubbles beneath the surface") is matched by his contempt for what he regards as an immodest and pretentious social science of Jews...
...True, he qualifies the observation, noting the small and possibly unrepresentative number of informants...
...He argues that religious behavior is the engine that drives other aspects of Jewish identity, that "meaning, culture and symbol," central concepts in the sociology of religion, are overlooked features in the study of American Jewry...
...Liebman seeks to explain the rise of Orthodox extremism Here he fruitfully defines extremism as the expansion of the scope, detail and rigidity of Jewish law (halacha), as well as growing social isolation from and cultural rejection of the non-Orthodox world He claims that to ask for an explanation of religious extremism is to ask the wrong question Religious systems tend toward extremism The right question is to ask why the restraints toward moderation have broken down, and here Liebman offers some compelling insights Among them is the notion that modernity has provided extremist Orthodox Jews with the affluence and social independence to construct their own communities free of the constraints imposed by involvement with the larger Jewish world...
...Going further, he claims they do so because "students of American Jewish life don't consider the religious behavior of American Jews worthy of study...
...Liebman's view of the current quality of American Jewry is that it's pretty awful: "I find a growing tendency to ignore and even to deny the pathologies of American Jewish life [that] raise serious questions about its quality and signal threats to its future " Clearly, preliminary to any assessment of American Jewry is that one first needs to decide what is Jewish—not who is a Jew, but what is Judaic, what is Jewishness...
...Each, in facth contains moderate and extreme wings...
...in fact, we're now collaborating on a l>ook documenting the divergences between MICAH PUBLICATIONS u The Publishing Arm of JEWS FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS AND THE SOURCE FOR JEWISH VEGETARIAN PUBLICATIONS ? Check us out: Send for our FREE catalogue...
...The slim volume is insightful, provocative and above all, highly readable...
...But one key weakness in his wort is, you guessed it, the far-reaching speculations as yet unsupported by "hard" evidence...
...Even if Liebman is diplomatically less than explicit in these essays, the principal object of his critique embraces almost all of Reform and Reconstruct ion i st Judaism and a good chunk of what passes for Conservative Judaism in America today...
...The gross division of social scientists into "happy transformationists" (who see lots of change, but not much trouble) and "gloomy traditionalists*1 (who sec every change as troubling) papers over important differences within the camps...
...It is their impression thai the Jewish knowledge, human skills, general competence and even Jewish commitment...
...In other words, what is critical is not only how many American Jews light Chanukah candles or have two sets of dishes (the types of activities our surveys generally measure), but what sorts of meanings they attribute to these symbols, how these acts reside within a larger religious cultural framework...
...Steven M Cohen is visiting professor of sociology at the Jewish Theological Seminary oi America...
...Informants active in Conservative synagogues . . , complain about their difficulty in finding suitable rabbis to fill their pulpits...
...But 1, for one, still would have trouble going to press with comments as unsubstantiated as these appear to be...
...Moreover, I am more inclined than is Licbman to recognize as Jcwishly legitimate and interesting that which I, as a Jew, personally disdain and even abhor...
...As Licbman himself says, "one's evaluation [of American Jewry] depends on one's own conception of Judaism...
...and, maybe more quietly, "Why didn't I write that...
...The next essay lays bare the mechanisms by which the non-extremist Orthodox maintain their moderate posture...
...He vigorously attacks the recent work of Charles Silberman, Calvin Goldscheider and Alan Zuckerman, and shoots some critical arrows in my direction as well...
...Even if one Deceptive I: accepts the validity of making cultural judgments (as Licbman does), one need not use the modern Orthodox/right-wing Conservative standards Liebman implicitly utilizes...
...Liebman contends that analysts ought to apply a traditional "Judaic" standard for measuring the state of American Jewry...
...Remove the conception of tradition," Liebman writes, "deny the argument that there is a Judaism, aflirm the right of Jews to formulate Judaism as they see fit without regard to the past and there is no basis for argument with anyone's Jewish claim...
...At the same time Liebman seeks to explain how modern Orthodox maintain fidelity to Orthodoxy, citing, among other factors, the closed nature or their yeskivot and communities...
...Despite our apparently profound intellectual disagreement (here's the full disclosure statement), Licbman and I remain close friends and colleagues...
...of the younger generation or Conservative rabbis is below that of a previous generation...
...His next two essays apply this disciplinary perspective to the study of Orthodoxy...
...His recent books include American Assimilation or Jewish f-Vv.ir-.-ji "= (Indiana University Press, 1988) and American Modernity and Jewish identity iMethuen, 1983...
...Given the state of our collective knowledge, and given what I think Licbman himself knows, 1 would have trouble committing myself in print to some of the observations found in Deceptive Images, Arc the following remarks "gutsy" or chutzpaditc...
...Here, in addition, he is "impressed, I should say overwhelmed, by the importance Orthodox Jews attribute to family and the extent to which they utilize religious ritual, consciously or unconsciously, to integrate their families...
...His first substantive chapter takes the social science profession to task for failing to utilize adequately the tools of the sociology of religion to study American Jewry...
...On the other hand, far more often 1 came across numerous sparkling little insights and said to myself, "My God, that's good...
...He cites their "adaptationism" to modern exigencies and the ' 'compart-mentalization" by which modern Orthodox Jews live in and affirm "two distinct worlds " To the modern Orthodox Jew, the following observation must be as welcome as the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard' "The majority not only compartmentalize their lives but, even within the realm of the sacred, choose those haiachot that they will observe with greater or lesser rigor and those they will ignore (i.e violate...
...About these matters he writes, at various points: "I have absolutely no faith in social science's predictive capacity and I have a measure of contempt for colleagues who take social science too seriously . . . , Sociologists, one hopes, are influenced by what they find: but what they find, and the interpretation of what they find is influenced by what they expect to find and what they would like to find.1' Having set the stage Tor a critique of the "happy school," Licbman then lambastes some of its most prominent members for denying "an essential Judaism.1' For Licbman...
...My own view, as it ought to be clear by now, is that Licbman's conception of the Judaically valid is exceedingly narrow...
...I agree...
...Deceptive Images is a compelling collection of ihcmaiically unified essays that is must leading for any serious observer of American Jewry...
...what Jews do"—even if clearly dilTcrent from what non-Jews do—docs not automatically assure "the vitality of Jewish life...
Vol. 14 • April 1989 • No. 3
