Customer Reviews

Orthodox Jews in America (The Modern Jewish Experience)

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This detail-filled book ably presents the history of American Orthodoxy, from the first congregations in the 1700s to the much larger communities of today. Most of the book focuses on the 20th century, when American Orthodoxy evolved from a big tent full of not-too-observant Jews to a smaller, but much more intensely observant, group.

What caused these changes? Gurock suggests that major factors include America's increased tolerance for minority religions, the movement of Hasidic and other haredi Jews to the U.S. after the Holocaust, and modern Orthodox Jews' increased prosperity (which not only increased the market for kosher food, but also made them less interested in being rabbis and teachers, thus causing them to cede many of these positions to not-so-modern Orthodox Jews who were willing to accept lower salaries).

Although this book generally describes what happened and why, I do wish Gurock had added a few extra pages here and there discussing the logic of the arguments between Orthodox and Conservative, and between modern and not-so-modern Orthodox, Jews. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s, Orthodox Jews moved towards a consistent embrace of separate seating for men and women, while Conservative Jews moved towards a consistent embrace of mixed seating. Gurock mentions that "halacha" favored separate seating, but doesn't explain how premodern Jewish law reached this position, nor does he explain why Conservative rabbis disagreed.

Orthodox Judaism, both as individual practice and as community, has been a work in progress starting with Professor Gurock's wonderful opening chapter on a single observant man in colonial Manhattan. It remains a work in progress today as numerous subdivisions of people in modern dress and those attired only in black and white accept or decline the many opportunities that life in America affords. In between, there is a remarkable account of who came, why they came, tensions between how immigrants and native born Orthodox Jews adapted to what they found, and to the enduring institutions they created.

I found the book generally easy to read with straightforward sentence structure suitable for late high school or early college readers, though with the cadence too often interupted by words that were not part of SAT challenges, let alone customary vocabulary. The history follows chronologic order though there is an awkward transition from the post-World War II era to the current affluent times with little assessment of how the affluence occurred. Similarly some of the contemporary issues, notably the institutional adaptations to feminism or inconsistencies in dealing with misconduct within the Orthodox community, were not addressed nearly as thoroughly as those 19th and 20th century events that are more fully resolved historically.

Despite these relatively minor reservations, Orthodox Jews in America reflects a superior scholarly achievement and should find its place as required reading in many a college course on American Judaism.

A wonderful book. Jeffrey Gurock write an inclusive, insightful review of American Orthodoxy. In the process, he gives a thorough look at American Judaism in general. I recommend this without reservation.

I'm 1/3 of the way through this interesting, if not particularly compelling, book. My comment would be that Indiana University Press has done a very poor job proofreading this volume. There seems to be an error (usually grammatical or in the tense of a word) on every page or two. I don't know if a book such as this will get a second printing, but the text needs to be carefully gone through to be corrected prior to it. And, as I'm unemployed at the moment, I'd be delighted to make an arrangement to be the proofreader.