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.

Many have pondered if there is any such thing as Jewish art, while others have wondered if there is any such thing as Jewish American art. In fact, critics and historians in America have tried to describe the nature of Jewish art for decades. While Jewish artists have acknowledged that aspects of their cultural and religious experiences and backgrounds as Jews inspired them and their art, most have refused to admit that there is something called Jewish art. Even though many American artists were and are Jewish, virtually all of them have denied the label of Jewish artist. Thus, by the artists’ very standards, neither Jewish art nor Jewish American art can be said to truly exist. Nevertheless, discernibly Jewish works have been called an art done by any Jew, an art with Jewish subject matter, as well as an art that applies only to liturgical objects. In addition, it has been considered to be overly intellectual, overly emotional, and given predominantly to abstract or figurative formulations. Some had contended that true Jewish art would ultimately make its appearance either once Jewish artists were properly supported or in a Jewish national state, in reference to Israel. However, the former never truly occurred and the latter would lead to an Israeli, but not a specifically Jewish, art. Nevertheless, one commonality of so-called Jewish art currently exists: Virtually all assessments of it encompass only ancient and modern works, sidestepping the multitude of intervening works that held any Jewish content and affected both its audience and creator in the process.

As the appearance of this Cambridge Companion amply demonstrates, the study of American Judaism has, at long last, come into its own. For much of the past half-century, scholars of American Jewish life neglected “religion” and focused upon the Jewish “people.” Ethnic studies and American studies supplied the field’s dominant paradigms, while religious studies, largely the province of Christians, languished in the shadows. Those who did pursue the study of the Jewish religion were, for the most part, rabbis. Trained in Classical Judaism, they examined American Judaism through the prism of Jewish texts and history, rather than through comparisons with American Protestants and Catholics. The stunning freshness of Lou Silberman’s pioneering essay in 1964 on “Judaism in the United States in the Early Nineteenth Century,” which examined the Charleston Reform Movement (1824) against the background of the rise of Unitarianism in that city, is the exception that proves the rule.

Religion is an inherently comparative subject. Unless one is familiar with at least two religious traditions, scholars like Diana Eck remind us, one cannot claim to understand even one. The best of the articles in this volume do make reference to the larger scholarship on American religion. Indeed, Jonathan Woocher’s work on “civil religion” and Rela Mintz Geffen’s study of “rites of passage” both apply to the study of Judaism concepts initially developed by scholars working in far different arenas. It is precisely this kind of cross-fertilization that the study of American Judaism demands.

• More Jews than most other Americans respond “None,” when asked “What is your religion, if any?”

• More Jews than members of most other American religious groups think of themselves as “secular”rather than as “religious.”

• Fewer Jews than members of most other American religious groups belong to a temple, synagogue or any other religious institution.

• Fewer Jews than members of most other American religious groups agree with the essential proposition of religious belief that “God exists.”

These items were taken from one of the most recent studies on religious identity in the United States among contemporary Jews. Compared with other Americans, it appears that American Jews “are not a very religious lot.” The survey further reveals the following:

The task of this chapter is to move beyond the survey data themselves to explore how social scientists come to their interpretative findings of the data. While doing so, we will discover that statements about religiosity and religion in the lives of contemporary Jews are not as straightforward as they might first appear.

Learning and teaching have been central to the Jewish tradition since its early beginnings. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 states the following: “These words, which I myself command you today, are to be upon your heart. You are to repeat them with your children and are to speak of them in your sitting in your house and in your walking in the way, in your lying down and in your rising up.” Building on this dictum, the tradition held that Jewish study was both a mitzvah (commandment) in its own right and a prerequisite for the observance of all other mitzvot. The Talmud abounds with legends and sayings emphasizing the power and importance of education; later rabbinic authorities, such as Maimonides, included communal expectations about learning in their codes of Jewish law.

With the Emancipation, as European Jews entered more fully into the larger society, the value of Jewish learning began to recede while the value of secular learning increased. Schools in Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries strove to offer the right mix of traditional text study, Hebrew language instruction, and secular subjects; not surprisingly, each educator’s view of the correct proportions of these elements varied with his (they were all men) religious and political ideology.

As Jews immigrated to North America, the process of adapting to the values of secular society accelerated. The earliest immigrants took care to provide for the Jewish education of both their own children and the indigent children of the community; there was even a brief period, from about 1845 to about 1865, when Jewish day schools sprouted in eighteen cities. By 1870, when public schooling became the norm, Jewish parents enthusiastically enrolled their children in public schools, and Jewish education was relegated to supplementary settings. Jewish schools sponsored by congregations and communal agencies met anywhere between one and four times per week; in addition, private classes and tutors were widely available.

Most American Jews today are the descendents of immigrants who arrived about a century ago, especially during the decades between 1880 and 1920. They came from Tzarist Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe, politically repressive and anti-Semitic societies with little religious freedom for Jews. While the United States and much of Western Europe were experiencing rapid industrialization and economic modernization, the countries where Jews lived were still characterized by intense poverty and the virtual absence of economic opportunity. Russian Jews were also subject to religious persecution that took the form of severe crowding and restrictions on economic activity, with the result that their standard of living was among the poorest in a poor country. Even in the less repressive countries, when Jews moved to the cities, their economic advancement was often blocked by anti-Semitism or even legal restrictions on Jews.

The journey to America was both difficult and costly, but it was an investment in the future for the Jewish immigrants and their children. The United States at the turn of the twentieth century was arguably the most technologically advanced and fastest growing economy in the world. New York, the most common port of entry for Jewish immigrants, led the country in both respects. Although anti-Semitism was present, it was not nearly as prohibitive as in Europe and Jews could move up the socioeconomic ladder. The American economy was large enough for the Jews to be absorbed without difficulty; it was vigorous enough for them to find prosperity; and it was sufficiently open for them to unleash their latent creativity and in turn make some important contributions to economic development.