Young Israel At 100: An American Response to the Challenge of Orthodox Living, 1912-2012; by Yaakov Kornreich, Joel Saibel, Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald Strober; National Council of Young Israel, New York; ISBN 978-1-4751-5792-5 ©2012, $24.95, p. 237
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California — To believe that during most of its history, Judaism represented a single strand of thought and practice would be to accept a falsehood as fact. During the lifetime of Jesus, Jews divided themselves among four sects, the Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, and Essenes. Soon after his death, the Sadducees and Zealots disappeared and several forms of Judeo-Christianity appeared, as did the opposing schools of Hillel and Shammai.
The Karaites challenged rabbinic Judaism beginning in the eighth century, and by the Middle Ages, Ashkenazic and Sephardic forms of Judaism functioned side-by-side. Within a century of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, Jewish Mysticism became normative Judaism for many living in Northern Palestine. In the seventeenth century a form of Jewish messianism, known as Shabbetaism, captured the imagination of Sephardic Jews so much that a significant number of them sold all they owned to follow Shabbetai Zvi.
Hasidic Judaism appeared early in the eighteenth century as a result of the failure of Shabbetaism and other similar messianic movements, resulting in the splintering of Judaism into the Orthodox, known as the mitnagdim and the Hassids.
Reform Judaism developed and grew in Germany along with nineteenth century European Enlightenment, called the haskalah, as did Conservative Judaism, which became institutionalized in America during the twentieth century. Mordecai Kaplan founded Reconstructionist Judaism in America during the first quarter of the twentieth century, while the Orthodox movement further splintered into the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi Judaism), many forms of Hasidism, and the Modern Orthodox Movement. Today, even more forms of Judaism exist, including Secular Humanist Judaism and Jewish Renewal, which are often lumped into the general category of Progressive Judaism.
Between 1880 and 1924, the year Congress passed quota laws, over two million Jews immigrated to America from Russia and Eastern Europe, where many of them had lived in poor villages known as a shtetls. In these backwater towns Jews more or less enjoyed the conveniences of living a Jewish life: readily available kosher food, a Sabbath-observing community, easy access to a rabbi, and so forth. Upon their arrival in America, they quickly discovered great differences between American and European culture. The shtetl’s safety net disappeared, replaced by the twin forces of democracy and capitalism, giving rise to alienation from Old World practices and assimilation into American society. By 1912, these circumstances gave birth to a Jewish countermovement, the Young Israel Movement, which set about providing a modern, nurturing environment for Orthodox Jews who wished to remain Orthodox amidst the American dream.
Young Israel at 100 is an easy-to-read and easy-to-digest history of the Young Israel Movement from its auspicious start, offering adult education classes and meaningful traditional services using English rather than Yiddish, among the young Orthodox Jews living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the present day, a time of unprecedented international growth. The authors continually reinforce through cogent examples and in clear and concise statements the purposes of Young Israel and what it means to be a member of the movement. They also offer short biographies and vignettes of the “heroes of the movement,” individuals of whom few would know about outside Young Israel, yet important to the successful integration of modern Orthodox Judaism into American culture.
Young Israel at 100 gives us insights into its growth and workings during World Wars I and II as well as the Great Depression, and the birth of Israel. We learn that over the years Young Israel’s leaders not only played an important role within the movement, but interacted with other Jews on national and international levels to provide kosher meals for soldiers at home and abroad and to assist them as they hunt for shomer shabbos jobs upon their return, coordinating humanitarian aid to endangered Jews throughout the world, and purchasing Torahs for troops in the field.
Perhaps because Young Israel at 100 is written by Young Israel Jews and published by the Young Israel Movement in honor of its 100th birthday, the book tends to become a cheering section for the movement, focusing on the positive outcomes while ignoring the internal battles. Nonetheless, Young Israel at 100 is an important effort to delineate the movement’s role in the life of American Jewry during the twentieth century and a very worthy read.
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Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached at fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.