Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry

by Samuel G. Freedman

Book Overview

Explores the meaning of Judaism in America today, concluding that beneath its prosperous exterior, American Jews are bitterly divided along sectarian and political lines.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684859440
• ISBN13: 9780684859446
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.8"

Customer Reviews

One shiksa's opinion...it's good to care, even if it means you sometimes have to fight...

Freedman spent two years and nine months researching and writing this book; the subject is obviously close to his heart but he has worked hard to be scrupulously fair. He skillfully weaves history, both ancient and modern, American and Israeli, into the twentieth-century American events he has chosen to illustrate conflicts between different Jewish factions. A chapter is given to each of the following: 1963 (Camp Kinderwelt, New York) - the story of Sharon, from a Labor Zionist family, and what the camp meant to her; the camp's decline in popularity and eventual replacement by an Orthodox settlement, hostile to Zionism, whose mayor says of Kinderwelt, "Secular Judaism is failure." 1977-1983 (Denver, Colorado) - an unprecedented experiment in cooperation among Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis to educate converts, which fails when the Orthodox withdraw, declaring that such conversions should not be considered valid. 1987-89 (Los Angeles) - the Library Minyan conflict over whether prayer to the Matriarchs should be included in the Amidah - after much anguished discussion, a vote permits the prayer, but over a period of time, few choose to include it... 1993-97 (Jacksonville, Fla.) - the story of Harry Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew who plants a supposedly dud bomb in the Conservative Jewish Center, hoping to keep people from hearing Shimon Peres speak. 1995-99 (New Haven, Conn.) - a group of Orthodox young people sue Yale, desiring to be permitted to live off campus rather than in coed dormitories with roommates who do not share their moral standards. 1997-99 (Beachwood, Ohio) - the identity of a suburb which has been a comfortable home for assimilated Reform Jews is threatened by an Orthodox building project - the new neighbors judge the liberal Jews and fail to support the public schools which the liberal neighborhood has built. "So what's the big deal?" might be your response, if you aren't Jewish, or you are Jewish but don't keep up with this stuff. Isn't it a lot of fuss over nothing? Well, no. When you read about the people involved, the history behind their points of view, the diversity of their backgrounds which often means that they "stand all over the issue" rather than just on one side...you begin to appreciate the incredible diversity of Judaism, and you sympathize with all who are caught in the conflict between liberal and conservative - by their caring. I read this book because my best friend these days is a Jewish lady and I have begun to get to know her family and celebrate Passover with them. Before this, I lived in Miami and sang in a Conservative Temple choir in the 1980s - our music was piped in to the sanctuary. I did not appreciate until now how recent it was for a female cantorial soloist to be allowed. I was fascinated by what I learned about Judaism during that time, and wanted to know more. Although Friedman's book challenged this relatively uneducated shiksa, he was clear enough for me to unde

An engaging communal portrait

It has been thirty years or more since I left America , but I do have some sense of what has gone on with the American- Jewish community in that time. And I believe that Samuel Freedman accurately describes many of the processes, including the assimilation, intermarriage, strengthening of the Haredi world, decline of a kind of ethnic secular Judaism. Freedman has also suggested a decline in the kind of consensus within the community, and an increase in conflict over vital issues of identity and self- definition. Freedman is excellent in giving pictures of various 'scenes' of American Jewish life as they have been transformed in time. Considering however the unpredictability of Jewish history, and the remarkable transformations in time I would hope that there would be a revival of American- Jewish community life in surprising ways. And this of course in connection with an even more thriving Israel which is the heart and center of Jewish communal identity.

Splendid!

Freedman explores the foremost in what is affecting Jews today. His stories, his words, and his writing are all excellent. I recommend this to anyone curious about the current state of Jews in relation to one another. Brilliant book!

Perceptive look at American Jews at the right moment

I read this book in 2001 on the recommendation of a friend and just reread it. For this generation of American Jews, post-Boomer, post-post WWII, it's the closest thing to a definitive study that we'll probably have. The last chapter is the heart of Freedman's argument, but it won't make sense unless you read the previous chapters. Some reviewers criticize Freedman's journalistic format, but within the limitations of the genre, he's done an excellent job. He has the big picture right: American Jews are splitting up into factions or sects, and the broad "center" of American Jewish life, defined by secular "Jewishness" and the marginalization of religion, is in decline. Here in Boston, the secular Jewish agencies now define themselves in overtly religious ways unthinkable 30 years ago. This definition attracts and keeps the "affiliated," but inevitably puzzles and alienates the "periphery" or "just Jews," as Freedman calls them. One of the things that strikes me more now is his secondary point about the impact these changes are having on American life. Secular "Jewishness" led American Jews into passionate involvement in politics and culture during the last century and hugely disproportionate influence on the rise of a modern, pluralist America and its public institutions like the welfare state, civil rights, and public schools. In the last 30 years, these institutions have been on the ropes, and it's safe to say that New Deal liberalism is essentially dead. As American Jews split into the affiliated and the periphery and the affiliated withdraw somewhat from American public life, does it not imply that much of the energy and passion that went into American liberalism is no longer there? I don't know what's cause and effect, so I'm speculating. Secular Jewish life in the 1990s, before the new eruption of war in Israel, was shaped by a nostalgia for the heyday of liberalism and an obsession with the Holocaust and antisemitism. Both grow out of a fear of assimilation. Non-American reviewers might not see what I mean, but the American ones will understand. Since September 2000, of course, much has changed. The ultimate point here is that diaspora Jewish life since the late 19th century has been defined by a search for some cultural or political substitute for religious identity. That search has failed, although the search for acceptance and assimilation in America has succeeded beyond what anyone could have imagined a century ago. Boise and Jacksonville eat bagels and watch Seinfeld. You can't lead a "culturally" Jewish life with that degree of cultural interpenetration. Religion and/or moving to Israel are the only viable alternatives.

The Religious Wars

Samuel Freedman does a superb job of reporting on the religious divisions among American Jews today. He alternates chapters of exposition with reports from the field, vividly recounting recent battles waged between secularists and religious Jews. Though the background chapters may be old news to those who are up on these schisms, the journalistic chapters, which describe actual cases, are illuminating and compelling. The epilogue, summing up the author's own conclusions, is highly insightful. Freedman not only reports, he distills. This book fills a gap, defining the intractable dilemmas of faith and identity facing American Jews in the coming decades -- at least, those who remain to carry on the debate.