Sifting Through Tradition: The Creation of Jewish Feminist Identities

In recent decades, feminists have been questioning patriarchal religions. As a result, many find themselves ambivalent about their religious and spiritual identities. This paper presents a model of identity formation that addresses the processes by which potentially conflicted identities are integrated. This model is based on research about how women who identify themselves as both Jewish and feminist create unconflicted Jewish feminist identities. Through a process ofsifting through their available options, they have chosen to identify with only those aspects of Judaism and feminism that satisfy their feminist, religious, and perhaps most importantly, their spiritual, needs. Because these needs vary, what it means to be a Jewish feminist is not static. Three types of Jewish feminist identity—inclusionist, transformationist, and reinterpretationist—are identified.     

An Atlantic Jewish republic of letters?

Atlantic port Jews began publishing English-language periodicals, pamphlets, and books during the 1840s as a means to advance an enlightened, observant form of Judaism, identified in large part with Sephardic rather than Ashkenazic religious culture and history. Three of their Jewish periodicals, the Voice of Jacob, edited by Jacob Franklin, Morris Raphall and David Aron de Sola and published in London, the Occident and American Jewish Advocate, edited by Isaac Leeser and published in Philadelphia, and the First Fruits of the West, edited by Moses N. Nathan and Lewis Ashenheim, and published in Kingston, Jamaica, provide historical evidence of the persistence of Atlantic port Jewish networks of commerce, communication, kinship and community well into the Victorian era. Publishing in a non-Jewish vernacular, and printing almost entirely in a non-Hebrew alphabet, this new “Atlantic Jewish republic of letters” did not however represent a secularizing trend. Rhetorically, ancient Jewish wisdom was invoked as the foundation, not the antithesis, of progress. The primary forces against which these editors, authors, and translators were reacting were religious, not secular in nature, namely Christian proselytizing and Jewish religious reform. Their self-conscious, programmatic activities led to the establishment of new kinds of enlightened religious educational institutions. Taken together, these phenomena constituted an Atlantic haskalah. I offer here my deep thanks and appreciation to Jonathan Karp, David Ruderman, Lois Dubin, and Kenneth Stow for their close readings and criticisms of earlier versions of this paper.     

Jewish Origins of Freud's Interpretations of Dreams

For many years, it was assumed that Sigmund Freud was never exposed to Jewish religious education and had no knowledge of the Hebrew language, the Bible or Jewish history. Freud himself considered this a neglected part of his education which he regretted. But the research of people such as Rainey reveals that Freud actually attended Jewish religious schools which offered intense religious education that included Hebrew language, the Bible and the Talmud, and Freud himself was an honor student in these subjects. The implications of this for our understanding of Freud's theory of dreams are explored.     

Identity Change Among Ethno-Religious Border Crossers: The Case of the Former Amish

The present study explores identity among the former Amish. While sociologists of religion have long been interested in religious identity, there has been less attention to religious identities among those who cross religious borders. Much of the literature suggests that individuals abandon former religious identities, including ethno-religious ones, when they join a new religious denomination (e.g., Sandomirsky and Wilson in Soc Forces 68:1211–1229, 1990; Sherkat and Wilson in Soc Forces 73:993–1026, 1995). While scholarship on the Jewish case challenges this assumption (e.g., Phillips and Kelner in Soc Relig 67:507–524, 2006; Sharot in Contemp Jew 18:25–43, 1997), research on other religious groups has largely overlooked these insights. This study extend insights from the Jewish case by examining holdover identities among the former Amish and comparing them with the former Ultra-Orthodox Jewish case, making use of Davidman’s (Becoming un-orthodox: stories of ex-Hasidic Jews, Oxford University Press, New York, 2014) research. Analysis of in-depth interviews with 59 former Amish adults reveals that, while those who have left the Amish no longer define themselves as religiously Amish, they do not abandon their Amish identities entirely. Instead, they reconstruct the meanings of their Amishness in varied ways in their non-Amish contexts. Comparison of these patterns with former Ultra-Orthodox Jews illuminates contextual factors, including the Amish practice of adult baptism and differing normative conceptions of Amish and Jewish identities, that contribute to variation in holdover identities across these cases. Altogether, these results suggest that ethno-religious identities are not mutually exclusive of other denominational identities and support the conceptualization of religious identities as complex, multilayered, and constructed in particular contexts in interaction with existing notions about religious groups.     

Dimensions of belief about miraculous healing

Although social scientists have convincingly demonstrated relationships between religious beliefs/practices and mental health, almost none of the empirical findings or related theory apply specifically to Jews. To address this limitation, we investigated the role of Jewish religiousness in anxiety, depression, and happiness, in a large Jewish community sample (n = 565). Several facets of global Jewish religiousness were examined, as well as a theoretically based Jewish religious variable, trust in God. A self-report measure of trust in God was created, and factor analyses yielded two reliable and valid subscales: trust in God and mistrust in God. Contrary to our hypotheses, global Jewish religiousness was on the whole unrelated to mental-health functioning. As expected, higher levels of trust in God were associated with less anxiety and depression, and greater personal happiness, whereas inverse associations emerged for the unanticipated but robust mistrust subscale.     

Judges and Jews: congregational conflict and the Protestant secular in 19th-century America

This article shows how 19th-century Jews embraced the American legal system. In spite of the rhetoric of ‘religious freedom’ the fact that religious congregations were legal corporations meant that they were never fully ‘free’ from government oversight. In the absence of clear religious authorities, American Jews regularly invited state oversight into their religious affairs, and, seeking legal victory, they worked alongside judges to fit the dictates of Jewish law to the Protestant assumptions of American secularism. Three instances of Jewish congregational strife, dealing with practice, employment, and membership, are closely analyzed to demonstrate how outsider religious communities strategically navigated a legal system that was allegedly neutral but presumptively Protestant.     

Hues of adjustment: Landsmanshaftn in inter-war New York and Tel-Aviv

Jewish immigrants in New York City and Tel-Aviv founded landsmanshaftn – local associations of those arrived from the same country, region, city or village. Comparing these civil organizations' goals, structures, and activities during the interwar period illuminates noteworthy aspects of emerging modern Jewish cultures. Landsmanshaftn advanced various forms of immigrant acculturation in New York and Tel-Aviv. They reflected and enhanced economic, social, political, religious and linguistic circumstances, as well as they unveiled differing urban attitudes, multi-layered national and ethnic identities, and divergent sentiments and ideologies regarding the East-European shtetl. Although Landsmanshaftn reveal distinct modes of adjustment in New York and Tel-Aviv, they also disclose similarities, responding in both cities to the immigrants' need for communal experience. Anat Helman: I would like to thank Eli Lederhendler for his interesting remarks and helpful suggestions.     

Impact of Summer Trip to Israel on the Self-Esteem of Jewish Adolescents

Psychological research has identified many positive effects of adolescents being aware of their religious and cultural backgrounds (Fiese, 1992). Religious rituals and community support facilitate developmental transitions. They also instill a stronger sense of identity. Mainstream North American society's emphasis on autonomy and individuality has meant that people are less reliant on religious and cultural rituals as a source of community strength. The lack of defined traditions and spiritual goals has left many of today's American adolescents confused. Jewish American adolescents, in particular, may not achieve a full sense of their religious and cultural background due to the preponderance of Christian symbols and ideology as well as to a de-emphasis of religion due to America's scientific/secular world view. A trip to Israel, the Jewish homeland, gives Jewish adolescents the chance to meet other Jewish people and to spend time in an environment which promotes Jewish ideology, history, and culture. Although past research on Jewish adolescents has found that a trip to Israel enhances a sense of Jewish identity, personality, and leadership skills (Kafka, London, Bandler, & Frank, 1990), no recorded empirical research has looked at possible changes in self-esteem. The goal of this research project was to determine if learning about and experiencing Israeli religious practices and culture foster greater Jewish self-esteem, Jewish identity, and/or self-concept for Jewish adolescents. The compiled data reveal that Jewish identity and Jewish self-esteem have a direct and positive bearing on each other. Jewish adolescents with a strong sense of Jewish identity are more likely to develop a higher level of Jewish self-esteem. Likewise, enhanced Jewish self-esteem is connected to a greater sense of Jewish identity. Although scores on the Jewish Identity and Jewish Self-Esteem Scales did not significantly correlate with self-concept scores on the Piers-Harris Children’ Self Concept Scale (1984), and the Piers-Harris scores did not significantly change over time, these results may be due to the above average pre-test self-concept scores of the participants. Adolescents from both the Camp and Israel groups scored in the above average range on the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale prior to and following the summer excursion. Directed at parents, scholars, and communities, this study calls attention to the importance of religiosity and culture to adolescent development. This research project also confirms this study's hypothesis that sending all Jewish adolescents to Israel between Middle and Late Adolescence lessens developmental ambiguity and strengthens self-esteem. By gaining an understanding of roots, identity, and self-esteem, adolescents and adults may become more accepting of themselves, thus enhancing their ability to be open and accepting of others—much needed qualities.     

TO MAKE SPANISH A SACRED LANGUAGE: WRITING AND THE CRYPTO‐JEWISH ALLEGORY IN SABINA BERMAN’S LA BOBE

The prominent Jewish‐Mexican author Sabina Berman explores her relationship to Judaism in the semi‐autobiographical novel La Bobe (1990; Bubbeh, 1998) via a loving portrait her grandmother. Undeterred by her Ashkenazi background, Berman employs a Crypto‐Jewish allegory in her portrayal of the grandmother. Through this allegory, Berman is able to restructure Jewish identity as female centered and mouldable. The allegory also opens up a tradition of women’s religious knowledge and prayer that becomes the foundation of the narrator’s future as a Jewish‐Mexican writer. In her narrative, Berman argues for a spiritual identity based not on strict observance of ritual form but on the devotion with which the rituals are undertaken, be they the transmission of a sacred text, the performance of domestic chores, or the writing of stories and plays.     

“The Religion We Plant in Their Hearts”: A Critical Exploration of the Religiosity of a German Jewish Family at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

The long-standing historiographical consensus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German Jews suggests that they were largely “beyond Judaism.” Most historians concur that German Jews abandoned a particularistic faith and the restricted social life of the autonomous community in exchange for cultural tropes of the dominant bourgeois culture as they strove to integrate into the surrounding society. While most German Jews no longer practiced the Judaism of their fathers or their fathers’ fathers, this did not necessarily mean that religion or belief had become irrelevant. In this essay I explore, through a close reading of a set of diaries, the religiosity of one Jewish family—that of William and Clara Stern and their three children, Hilde, Günther, and Eva. In the process, I seek both to address a gap in the research and to contribute to an ongoing discussion in the historiography regarding modern Judaism. While religiosity among German Jews had increasingly become a matter of individual, and not collective, action and choice, I argue that Jews of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still engaged in a quest for meaning for themselves and future generations specifically as Jews. The religious worldview and education that Clara Stern aimed to impart to her children reflect precisely this search for personal religious meaning and exemplify the individual nature of early twentieth-century German Jewish religiosity.     

Christians,Muslims, Jews,and their religions

Depending on the context, Christians, Muslims and Jews have constructed their own religion, perceived the religions of others, and articulated relations between religions in different ways. This paper examines the rise in history of the three communities, which came to identify themselves through their religions and have been highly sensitive to differences. It indicates common features and parallels of which adherents may have been more or less conscious. The central question in such research is what persons and groups mean in particular situations when they call themselves Christian, Muslim or Jewish. The variety of personal and group identities in the three religious communities has been concealed partly by religious leaderships concerned with the survival of their flocks, and partly by the use of the general concepts of Christianity, Islam and Judaism with which believers have been called to identify. These concepts have shut people into separate religious pigeonholes and could thus be used to support ethnic, social and other rivalries. This pigeonholing has also confronted more spiritually‐oriented people with problems of social identity, religious belonging and spiritual authenticity.     

A JEWISH CONCEPTION OF HUMAN DIGNITY

This paper depicts the meanings of human dignity as they unfold and evolve in the Bible and the Halakhah. I posit that three distinct features of a Jewish conception of human dignity can be identified in contrast to core characteristics of a liberal conception of human dignity. First, the original source of human dignity is not intrinsic to the human being but extrinsic, namely in God. Second, it is argued that the “dignity of the people” has precedence over personal autonomy and liberty, which are core liberal pillars. The third characteristic pertains to the potential conflict between personal autonomy and liberty, and God's commandments. The theoretical analysis of human dignity is then examined in light of several Supreme Court decisions in Israel during the 1990s. I illustrate that Jewish religious and secular‐liberal conceptions pull in different directions in the rulings of liberal and religious Justices in Israel.     

Orthodox Peer Supervision and Orthodox Group Therapy: Two Groups—One Religion

Group Psychotherapy with Orthodox Jewish patients creates specialized benefits for members such as homogeneous cultural and religious goals plus feelings of camaraderie and familiarity. However, heightened sensitivity to social stigma in Jewish circles and the fear of being judged cause greater difficulty for such patients. This paper reviews the experience of the group members and the experiences of the author in leading such groups. Similarities and differences between Orthodox Jewish therapy groups and an Orthodox Jewish Peer Supervision Group are explored.     

The Multidimensionality of Motivation for Jewish Religious Behavior: Content, Structure, and Relationship to Religious Identity

The present study examined the content and structure of self–reported motivation for Jewish religious behavior. Initial items were generated from comprehensive and detailed responses to a semi–structured interview and an open–ended questionnaire. Principal component factor analysis with orthogonal rotation was carried out on the responses of a sample of 323 research participants to two parallel sets of the 111 items produced by the above process. The factor structures for each of these sets of items were highly similar to each other and consisted of the following five reliable factors: belief in a divine order, ethnic identity, social activity, family activity, and upbringing. These factors appear to reflect the way religious behavior can contribute to the satisfaction of a number of general human motives. Persons with different religious identities were found to attribute their performance of religious ritual to different motives, providing a partial explanation for the apparent anomaly of the performance of religious ritual by persons who identify themselves as secular.     

The phenomenology of being a target of prejudice.

The effects of preceived prejudice upon affect and self-evaluation were explored by experimentally investigating the reactions of Jews to failure in an interpersonal situation. Subjects attributing their failure to religious discrimination by gentiles reported feeling more aggression, sadness, anxiety, and egotism on the Mood Adjective Check List than those who could not invoke anti-Semitism as an explanation for their failure. Moreover, they indicated less "social affection," particularly when one of the prejudiced opponents constituted the audience for their self-presentation. Finally, in response in perceived prejudice, subjects also evaluated themselves more favorably on positive traits underlying the Jewish stereotype. These findings were explained in terms of a stress interpretation.     

Collective memory in the making of religious change: the case of ‘emerging Jews’ followers of Jesus

This study explores a facet of the construction of a new worldwide religious tradition that fuses the beliefs, rituals, and identity claims of both Judaism and Christianity. The Brazilian ‘Messianic Anussim’ comprise former Charismatic Evangelicals that adhere to a variety of Jewish practices. Unlike Messianic Judaism, where Jewish-born people identify themselves as believers in Jesus, or Christian Zionism, where Evangelicals emphasise the eschatological importance of the Jews and Israel this particular community maintains the veneration of Jesus and calls for a purification of Charismatic Evangelicalism while observing Jewish laws. Their calls for a ‘pious restoration’ are guided by a recovered Jewish identity that is inspired by the historical figure of the Bnei Anussim. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2013 and 2015, this study explores the formation of a new hybrid religious group.     

Acculturation orientations towards Israeli Arabs and Jewish immigrants in Israel

The State of Israel can be characterized as having two integration policies: an assimilationist one towards “valued” Jewish immigrants and a somewhat ethnist one towards its “devalued” national minority, namely Israeli Arabs. Using the Host Community Acculturation Scale (HCAS), this study explored Jewish undergraduate (N = 153) acculturation orientations towards “valued” Jewish immigrants of Russian and Ethiopian background and towards “devalued” Israeli Arabs. Results showed that Jewish undergraduates mainly endorsed the integrationism and individualism acculturation orientations towards Jewish immigrants. However, they were more segregationist and exclusionist towards Israeli Arabs than towards Jewish immigrants of Russian and Ethiopian background. Assimilation was weakly endorsed towards both Jewish immigrants and Israeli Arabs. Based on an extensive questionnaire, multiple regression analyses showed that each acculturation orientation had a distinct psychological profile. The integrationism and individualism orientations were endorsed by undergraduates who were tolerant towards ethnic diversity, felt secure personally, culturally, and militarily, and did not endorse the social dominance orientation (SDO). In addition to not feeling threatened by the presence of Israeli Arabs, integrationists and individualists were identified as secular Israelis and Labour Party sympathizers rather than as religious Jews. In contrast, the assimilationism, segregationism, and exclusionism orientations were endorsed by undergraduates who felt insecure personally, religiously, culturally, and militarily, who tended to be less tolerant towards ethnic diversity, and who were more prone to endorse the SDO. In addition to feeling threatened by Israeli Arabs, they avoided close relations with Russian and Ethiopian immigrants. Segregationists and exclusionists were identified mainly as Jewish nationals. Orthodox Jews, and as Likud Party sympathizers. Exclusionists were distinctive in also feeling threatened by the presence Jewish immigrants of Russian and Ethiopian background. While taking into consideration the context of intergroup relations in Israel, results are discussed using the Interactive Acculturation Model (Bourhis, Moïse, Perreault, & Senecal, 1997).     

American Rabbis in the 2000 Elections

The 2000 elections were watershed elections for the Jewish community. Joseph Lieberman, an observant Orthodox Jew, was nominated to be the Democratic vice presidential candidate and the events in Florida and New York highlighted the important role of the Jewish community in American politics. The 2000 elections were, therefore, a perfect time to assess the Jewish religious community's connection to politics. Although the central place of American Jews in the Democratic coalition has been long established and continued in 2000, the role of rabbis in maintaining that connection has not been explored empirically. We investigate how rabbis of the four great Jewish movements sustain Jewish political connections, asking: How do rabbis participate in politics, how do their political agendas resonate with their political action, how did they respond to Lieberman's candidacy, and what political information did they transmit to their congregations?     

Essays: RELIGIOUS MEDICAL ETHICS: A Study of the Rulings of Rabbi Waldenberg

This article seeks to examine how religious ideas that are not the focus of a particular halakhic question become the crux of the ruling, thereby molding it and dictating its bias. We will attempt to demonstrate this through a study of Jewish medical ethics, based on some of the rulings of one of the greatest halakhic decisors of the previous generation: Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg (1915–2006). Rabbi Waldenberg molds his rulings on the basis of a religious principle asserting that the legitimacy of any medical procedure is qualified and limited. Rabbi Waldenberg rejects certain accepted medical practices, including plastic surgery, in vitro fertilization, and organ transplants. Even if these procedures are regarded by other halakhic decisors as being legitimate, for Rabbi Waldenberg they are ethically and religiously improper, and therefore they are halakhically forbidden.     

Freud's atonement

The authors explore Freud's preoccupations with death and dying. In particular, they focus on the day of Freud's death, which was the Jewish Day of Atonement and the Jewish Sabbath. The significance of this event, which the authors think was “planned,” was not just in order to obliterate years of pain and suffering from cancer, but also to overcome a lifelong burden of conflict and guilt about his relations with his family and colleagues as well as his Jewish cultural/religious upbringing. The authors consider whether the timing of Freud's death represented a premeditated return to his cultural and religious roots.