Judaism in Flux

...Reviewed by Barbara Miller Solomon THIS BOOK is an interpretation of the growth of American Judaism...

...Thinking Jews who are troubled about their own attitudes toward their inherited religious tradition will profit from this penetrating excursion into the issues...

...For Jews, piety is a way of life determined by their sacred law rather than an inward experience of faith...

...In background the East European groups were either more rigid in abiding by the tradition or more radical in rejecting it altogether...

...Capitalizing on the present American mood of religious revival, Reform rabbis have also been able to impart the Reconstructionist attitude to their congregations, who are no longer German but East European in their antecedents...

...This social reaction against the Orthodox tradition was solidified by critical attacks of Jewish intellectuals, influenced by the rationalism of the European Enlightenment...

...But the East European Jews, who arrived later, could not accept the original Reform pattern...

...theology itself is minimal and taken for granted...

...With refreshing honesty and lack of sanctimoniousness the author presents a brief historical survey of Jewish religious life in America against the background of the successive settlements of different Jewish groups during three centuries...

...From these responses to the new status of Jews in modern society, the beginnings of Reform Judaism came in Germany...

...Reform Judaism, which aimed to make the Jewish religion one denomination among others, was the solution of German Jews in the United States as well as in Germany...

...After European Jews emerged from their medieval ghettos and attained rights as citizens, some rabbis and lay leaders in the Nineteenth Century viewed many of the traditional religious forms as meaningless, chaotic, or undignified...

...Finally, Glazer describes most convincingly the plight of still others who find the various institutional solutions "medieval" and yet affirm in multiple activities and tastes that they "choose" to be Jews...

...Likewise, since World War II the Reconstructionist movement of the Conservatives has been utilitarian, drawing upon any element (religious or otherwise) to enrich the "content of Jewish life...

...However different the Reform and Conservative solutions were in effect, both were prompted, in typical American fashion, by rational, pragmatic motivations...

...Unchanging in theory, the law is adapted to practical living through the interpretations of the holy members of the Jewish community...

...In both instances the aim has been to find a workable means of keeping Judaism alive one way or another...

...But America offered an even more challenging environment for modern Jewish religious fulfillment...

...Unfortunately those who are unfamiliar with the positive elements of that tradition will learn little about them here...

...The author admits he does not know what religious tradition of their fathers can hold for these Jews in the future...

...Nevertheless, as an introduction to American Judaism in the series of the Chicago History of American Civilization, Glazer's interpretation conveys clearly the variety of Jewish approaches to a peculiar religious dilemma...

...For the children of such traditionalists, Reform Judaism seemed alien and sterile...

...The climax of this survey is the religious dilemma of modern American Jews to which the author relates the historical analysis of the past...

...they proposed to make Jewish services conform to Western standards...

...Something "negative"—the refusal to stop being Jewish—is "the strongest and potentially, most significant religious reality among Jews...

...Here Jewish immigrants and their descendants practiced their religion in any way they chose...

...On a quite different level, American Judaism might well remind social historians of the need for further studies of American religions analyzed comparatively, not only in the context of our diverse society but also in relation to religions in other parts of the world...

...To meet their needs, conservative rabbis compromised with the Jewish laws so that the Jews could still "be a people...

...In the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, German and East European Jews in various stages of immigration and Americanization met the issue in different ways...

...How could Judaism then survive as a religion separate from the communal existence of the people...

...Free from external restrictions of the Old World and removed from their own internal authorities, the decision became increasingly a personal choice, whether to remain Jews, and to decide what being Jewish meant...

...Thus, according to the Orthodox belief, the Old Testament, which records the early national history of the Jews, and the Talmud, which consists of rabbinical regulations, constitute a divinely given law, by which good Jews live...

...The answer has varied among Jews for the last two hundred years...

...A commentary rather than a systematic treatment of the subject, Glazer's volume raises more questions than it answers...

...While Jews lived in restricted, self-contained communities, apart from the other inhabitants in European countries, Judaism, though a religion, was in effect synonymous with the life of people...

...That dilemma stems from the character of traditional Judaism, for, in its ancient past, and, still more in its medieval existence, Judaism sustained an organic unity between religion and nationality...

...The dilemma was born with the gradual emancipation of Jews in the various western European countries in recent centuries...

...In addition to these strong deviations from traditional Judaism, the Orthodox religion still draws faithful adherents and, moreover, inspires other devout revivalists in small Hasidic groups...

...In essence, the Jewish law governs every aspect of human behavior...