The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (Jewish Culture and Contexts) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812220471 ISBN 13: 9780812220476

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008

Synopsis

The wide-ranging portrayal of modern Jewishness in artistic terms invites scrutiny into the relationship between creativity and the formation of Jewish identity and into the complex issue of what makes a work of art uniquely Jewish. Whether it is the provenance of the artist, as in the case of popular Israeli singer Zehava Ben, the intention of the iconography, as in Ben Shahn's antifascist paintings, or the utopian ideals of the Jewish Palestine Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, clearly no single formula for defining Jewish art in the diaspora will suffice.

The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times is the first work to analyze modern Jewry's engagement with the arts as a whole, including music, theater, dance, film, museums, architecture, painting, sculpture, and more. Working with a broad conception of what counts as art, the book asks the following questions: What roles have commerce and politics played in shaping Jewish artistic agendas? Who determines the Jewishness of art and for what purposes? What role has aesthetics played in reshaping religious traditions and rituals?

This richly illustrated volume illuminates how the arts have helped Jews confront the various challenges of modernity, including cultural adaptation and self-preservation, economic diversification, and ritual transformation. There truly is an art to being Jewish in the modern world—or, alternatively, an art to being modern in the Jewish world—and this collection fully captures its range, diversity, and historical significance.

About this title

About the Author:

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Her books include Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage, Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864-1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki), and They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt). Jonathan Karp is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and History at Binghamton University, SUNY, and author of The Politics of Jewish Commerce: Economic Thought and Emancipation in Europe, 1638-1848.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Preface
David B. Ruderman

This volume originated in the activities of a research group working at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania over the course of the academic year 2000-2001. Professors Ezra Mendelssohn and Richard Cohen had formulated the proposal for an extended and interdisciplinary consideration of the place of music and art in modern Jewish culture, and from its opening seminar until its closing colloquium, the lively and sometimes contentious group of scholars who convened struggled to understand and define the relationship between Jewish civilization and the arts.

Art historians, musicologists, cultural historians, and literary critics sat across the table from each other attempting to understand each other's vocabulary, methodologies, and perspectives. Historians soon learned that such seemingly self-evident concepts as "context" could be understood in a radically different way by art historians. Scholars conversant in the languages and literatures of the Jewish experience were obliged to overcome their suspicions that others, trained exclusively in the arts, would not be able to interpret Jewish culture in new and daring ways. Those accustomed to working in the visual arts or music were obliged to engage explicitly with texts and historical data. The task of breaking down disciplinary boundaries and cultural barriers was formidable and often frustrating. The formal and informal meetings between the participants were sometimes discordant and often exhausting. By the end of the year, we all came to recognize how exhilarating they were.

It was a tremendous challenge to shape these diverse and discrete voices into a single and coherent volume. The task required not only a strong editorial presence, but a clear vision of how a collective statement might emerge from so many individual and disparate inquiries. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp have filled the roles of volume editors with wonderful creativity and diligence. Their intellectual leadership in soliciting essays, in encouraging each participant to place his or her essay in the context of their own more comprehensive vision, in editing and organizing the contributions, and in producing a masterful introduction will be clear to anyone perusing this significant book. Without their persistence and patience this volume would not have emerged. It is a pleasure to thank them, their contributors, and the others present at the seminars. Together, their work has both stimulated and enhanced serious discourse on the dynamic relationship between the arts and modern Jewish culture.

* * * * *

Introduction

The Emergence of Parallel Phenomena: Orthodox Judaism and the Modern Nonobservant Jew
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp

I. Orthodox Judaism as a Modern Phenomenon
The use of the term "Orthodoxy" by Jews in reference to "old-style" Judaism, was first adopted by German maskilim ("enlightened" Jews) toward the end of the eighteenth century. At the time, the traditional rabbinic and communal leadership took offense to its usage, as they correctly perceived its pejorative implication regarding a style of Judaism that in the minds of their adversaries was fast becoming obsolete. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, however, the more conservative elements of Central European Jewish society wore the name "Orthodox" with pride, as they claimed that its adherents were the exclusive bearers of authentic Judaism, as it had been lived in premodern, traditional society. Their basic message was that while external social and political realities had changed dramatically, and many alternative forms of Judaism had begun to be expressed, only the Orthodox had succeeded in insulating the true Judaism from these powerful influences. Any evident outward changes were in appearance only, and were not to be interpreted as a dilution of, or deviation from the religious values and lifestyle of their forefathers.

Recent study of Orthodoxy has challenged these partisan Orthodox assumptions regarding its immunity to change. Focus has been placed on the ability to choose one's form of religious expression or the lack thereof, as a fundamental characteristic that distinguishes modern Jewish life from the "taken for grantedness" of traditional society. Within such a conceptual outlook, all religion practiced in modern society, including the seemingly "ultraconservative" approaches, are modern formulations, chosen by their adherents, rather than simply inherited. This choice may lead to some type of accommodation or compromise to new circumstances. Alternatively, it may engender dramatic efforts to reject the surrounding culture. Indeed, this process of choosing has led to various types of reformulation of Jewish identity in light of new realities.

While the emphasis on the relative "newness" of Orthodoxy has not been without its critics, it has clearly established itself as the accepted approach among the leading scholars in the field. Thus, the last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of articles and monographs that have analyzed different aspects of Orthodoxy in light of its identification as a modern movement. Central to many discussions of Orthodoxy has been its relationship to Jewish groups that espoused ideologies appearing to represent a more radical departure from premodern tradition than Orthodoxy. This work explores a related topic: the connection between the development of Orthodoxy as a modern movement and its approach to the individual Jew who had ceased to follow traditional Jewish law and practice.

II. The Orthodox Reaction to Other Modern Jewish Movements
From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, Central and Western European Jewry witnessed the rise of the Haskalah movement and various forms of Reform Judaism, while the latter part of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of radical enlightenment, Zionism and the Bund in Eastern Europe. These ideological movements attracted people searching for a Jewish identity that could respond to the needs of the times. For the most part, the reaction of the traditional rabbinic and communal leadership to these groups was total rejection. This was expressed in protests to the governments, strongly worded public declarations, as well as a vast collection of polemical literature. Notwithstanding, the various conservative elements ultimately recognized in their own way that they needed to create new structures and organizations to compete with their dynamic adversaries over the souls of the Jewish population. It is these efforts and their ideological foundations, that have led many scholars to identify the emergence of Orthodoxy as a modern movement, primarily with its response to the modern ideological trends that challenged the authority of the more conservative minded rabbinical establishment. As Moshe Samet stated regarding the Hamburg Temple controversy of 1818-19:

The Hamburg Temple debate, which has been described by historians as a milestone in the history of the Reform movement, also represents a turning point in the evolution of Orthodoxy: the latter made its first public appearance as an organized movement in response to the challenge posed by this revolutionary experiment.

III. Reacting to New Ideologies and to New Jewish Lifestyles
Indeed, the ideological and political confrontations between Orthodoxy and its adversaries had a major effect on Jewish public life and led to the development of innovative tactics by each side. It is hard to conceive of a mid-nineteenth century German Jew who was oblivious to the conflict between the Orthodox rabbinate and the Reform. Similarly, the Hungarian Jewish Congress of 1868-9 and the communal split between the Orthodox and the Neologue that ensued, dominated the agenda in Jewish communities large and small throughout Hungary from the early 1870s. Further east, the yiddishe gasse (Jewish street) was filled with discussion of the Zionist idea as well as the social and political cry of the Bund, while in their study halls, yeshivah heads raged against those modern movements. Thus, it is understandable why scholarship of Orthodoxy has focused its sights on these conflicts.

Equally notable, though, was the Orthodox reaction to an issue that may, in many ways, be considered the dominant theme of modern Jewish existence. Arguably the most basic transition that has taken place in Judaism over the past three hundred years has been the gradual decline of halakhic practice as the defining factor of Jewish identity. As Peter Berger has pointed out, unlike Christianity, "observance," rather than "theory," has generally been the focal point in defining the degree to which an individual or group has moved away from normative Judaism. The transformation that took place in the modern era in the ways Jews expressed their identity, of course, was accompanied by powerful changes in communal and economic life. One cannot understand one phenomenon in isolation from the other. Yet changes in external circumstances do not necessarily lead to a complete revision in the way Jews conduct their religious life. Indeed, throughout history, due to political and economic upheavals, Jews were forced to make adjustments in their professional and residential situations in order to deal with the changes that had come about. This, however, did not engender a voluntary rejection of Jewish law. By contrast, the adjustment of a modern Jew to the new societal realties was often accompanied by abandonment of religious observance. Sometimes, this was a reflection of his or her identification with the new ideas that were being popularized in the modern world and the creation of systems—like Reform—that claimed legitimacy on the basis of original, nonhalakhic understandings of Judaism. Often, though, it simply showed that the individual was willing to neutralize aspects of his or her own particular religious identity in order to succeed within the broader society that had opened its welcoming doors.

The sense that interaction with nonobservant individuals was a universal experience for modern Jews, is expressed succinctly by Monika Richarz in her description of the process of modernization in rural Germany. Despite the fact that throughout the nineteenth century numerous isolated Jewish communities continued their practices much along the same lines they had for the past hundreds of years, nevertheless none were immune to the new realities. Richarz highlights the fact that everyone shared the experience of a native son who went off to the army or the big city and came back a different person. Specifically, she presents a prototype of how even ostensibly observant families began to loosen their ties to traditional practice:

While at home the mother often continues to maintain a kosher household, the husband opens the store on the Sabbath, sons write at school on Saturday, students at the university no longer eat kosher; adaptation to social norms is widespread.

Starting from the eighteenth century, those European Jews who remained committed to traditional observance—be they rabbinical figures, lay leaders or family members—were confronted by various expressions of the phenomenon of nonobservant Jews. As time went on, the numbers of individuals, and consequently the regularity with which issues came up, increased dramatically. In the process, Orthodoxy began to articulate a new perception of such Jews. This view had ramifications for how Orthodoxy itself was evolving into a self-conscious religious group within modern Jewish society. Moreover, it led to a new understanding of the very concept of Jewish identity that took into account the new realities that had set in.

The goal of this book, then, is to view the emergence of Orthodoxy as a modern phenomenon as reflected in the response of its leaders and adherents to their nonpracticing brethren. The focus is not, however, on the grand battles between the various emergent denominations and ideological trends. It is, rather, on the new day-to-day realities of modern Jewish society, and the strategies that were developed by the Orthodox for dealing with their Jewish counterparts who no longer maintained halakhic observance.

By no means, however, will the ideological battles that were waged throughout the period under discussion be ignored. It is, indeed, impossible to deal properly with this era in Jewish history without an appreciation for these conflicts. Yet, instead of raising them to the forefront of discussion, the ideological hostilities will serve as a backdrop to the concentration on the new dynamics that emerged within the spheres of interpersonal relations between different types of Jews and internal communal life.

Expanding the focus within Orthodox historiography beyond ideological battles, to include Orthodox reactions to the behavior of the individual, is consistent with the approach suggested by Mary Douglas in her analysis of how religions evolve:

The intellectual may succeed in creating the themes and slogans on which religious wars are fought, but these are not the same as religion. The place where religious forms take shape is in the minds of the individuals determined to cooperate, looking for compromise, or when that fails, trying to coerce one another into collective action by threatening divine sanctions. Arguing about practical implications of belief and dogma, inventing tests for demonstrating loyalty, looking for signs of disloyalty that can be used as accusations, this is how religions are clarified.

As will become clear in this book, religious coercion ceased to be an option during the course of the period under consideration. The question, however, of how the Orthodox viewed those who were "disloyal" to tradition, and what this tells us about the nature of the religious form that became known as "Orthodox Judaism", will be a focus of discussion throughout.

IV. From Deviance to Normative Nonobservance
The existence of Jews who deviated from normative halakhic practice is not, in and of itself, an exclusive reality of modern society. Rabbinic literature is replete with examples that show that like any society, there were always individual Jews who succeeded in living on the periphery. But be it individuals or groups, in traditional Jewish society there was no question regarding the fact that normative Judaism was defined by allegiance to the halakhah. Certainly those who succeeded in diverging from this norm knew they had greatly weakened their connection to the Jewish community, if not having severed it completely. The autonomous Jewish community had the power to excommunicate such deviants, although this measure was probably rarely used against individuals as the alternative was losing them to the open arms of the church. But the threat itself of herem (excommunication) was often enough to prevent most potential deserters from taking drastic action. Regarding those groups who staked claims to clearer understandings of God's word, such as the Karaites, and the Sabbateans, the Jewish community was generally less obliging. The weight of the entire population was thrown against them with the intention of destroying them as a collective body. When that...

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0812220471
• ISBN 13: 9780812220476
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464
• Editor: Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Barbara, Karp Jonathan