The modern American history of Orthodox Judaism’s thriving
Daniel Ross Goodman
In the 1950s, the future of American Orthodox Judaism looked so gloomy that the prominent sociologist Marshall Sklare predicted its imminent extinction. Sklare’s ominous forecast could not have proved more wrong. As Ralph Waldo Emerson quipped about the state of religion in mid-19th century America, “You say there is no religion now. ’Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun.”
If the historian Will Durant was correct in espousing his maxim that it is neither the meek nor the strong nor even the educated but rather the fertile who inherit the earth, then it is easy to understand why many Orthodox Jews are now feeling a growing sense of confidence, verging on triumphalism. Orthodox Jews have significantly higher birthrates than the general population. They have an average of 4.1 children per family, compared with 1.9 children per non-Orthodox families, according to the 2013 Pew survey. (This figure is even higher among Haredi, or “ultra”-, Orthodox Jews.) Fewer Jews are leaving Orthodoxy than in years past. Staggeringly high rates of Orthodox Jews also marry others who share their identity, thus making perpetuation to the next generation much likelier. Among non-Orthodox Jews, 72% report having a non-Jewish spouse. For the Orthodox, that number is just 2%. It is no wonder that Orthodoxy is the only major American Jewish denomination that is growing.
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Despite mainstream cultural depictions that border on the hateful, or at least the offensive (see the 2017 film Disobedience, both Unorthodox and My Unorthodox Life on Netflix, and other screen productions portraying the religion as something to escape), Orthodox Jews are also beginning to attain positions of considerable power and influence in American life. In the past 25 years, Orthodox Jews have served as U.S. attorney general, secretary of the treasury, and candidate for vice president. Most recently, the daughter and son-in-law of the 45th president of the United States were Orthodox Jews, making Orthodoxy more prominent than it has ever been in America.
As American Orthodoxy continues to increase in size, status, and confidence, anyone interested in American religious life — and in American life in general — would be well advised to become better acquainted with Orthodoxy: what it is, who the Orthodox are, where they come from, and what the future may hold for them. One of the best ways of doing so is by becoming acquainted with the intellectual and spiritual leaders of American Orthodoxy — those individuals whose teachings shape the minds and lives of hundreds of thousands of American Orthodox Jews.
Among these intellectual and spiritual leaders, none looms larger than Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the spiritual and intellectual paragon of American modern Orthodoxy for over 50 years during the 20th century. Soloveitchik is the embodiment of the ideal of “Torah Umadda,” the modern Orthodox rabbinic leader who, more than any other thought leader of his era, personified the ideal of attaining both mastery of rabbinic texts as well as mastery of Western philosophy. Even after his death in 1993, Soloveitchik continues to exert an enormous influence upon the American modern Orthodox community to such an extent that in certain locales his teachings are cited with the same reverence accorded to classical Jewish sages such as Rabbi Akiva and Moses Maimonides.
Like the Jewish sages of antiquity, Soloveitchik also developed many disciples. And it is these disciples who have continued to perpetuate Soloveitchik’s legacy, and who have spread his influence through teachings of their own. Some of these disciples have even become significant American Jewish thought leaders in their own right. Among Soloveitchik’s disciples who have gained primacy of place in American Orthodox life and thought, the most outstanding and influential have been Rabbi Irving Greenberg, Rabbi David Hartman, and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. They have each founded and/or headed major institutions, won awards, written highly influential works of Jewish thought, and have had important roles in both Jewish and American civil life. Greenberg served on the U.S. President’s Commission on the Holocaust, the commission that led to the creation of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Hartman’s books and ideas were quoted in New York Times columns. And Sacks, in addition to also being quoted in the New York Times with some frequency, created the siddur (prayer book) that is rapidly becoming the standard siddur in American modern Orthodox synagogues. (Although Sacks was English, he has arguably been even more influential within the American Orthodox community than Greenberg and Hartman have been.)
Greenberg, Hartman, and Sacks are all disciples of Soloveitchik, each in his own unique way, and each is among the most influential religious thought leaders for the American modern Orthodox community today. But what exactly are their ideas? And in what ways are they or are they not perpetuating the teachings of Soloveitchik? My new book, Soloveitchik’s Children, is the first book to study these three major Soloveitchik disciples closely and to examine how each of these three major modern Jewish thinkers learned from and adapted Soloveitchik’s teachings in their own ways, even while advancing his philosophical and theological legacy.
The story of religious life and Judaism in contemporary America is incomplete without an understanding of how three of the most consequential Jewish thinkers of this generation adapted the teachings of one of the most consequential Jewish thinkers of the previous generation. And as the sun now beats on a thriving generation of Jewish Orthodoxy in American religious life, it’s a story Americans and anyone interested in religion will want to follow.
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Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and an incoming postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Divinity School. His latest book, Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America, from which this is adapted, was published this summer by the University of Alabama Press.