In Search of Identity and Spirituality in the Fiction of American Jewish Female Authors at the Turn of the 21st Century. Dorota Mihulka
successful careers as politicians, businesspeople, professionals, and athletes. They have also established numerous philanthropic organizations and social projects which offer temporary financial support, aid the new immigrants in accommodating to the American society as well as provide for the welfare of the less fortunate among the Jewish communities.
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The United States with its freedom and equality had a significant impact on the evolution of the American Jewish community as well, leading to “a multiplicity of religious outlooks, successful absorption of diverse subgroups, and a broad choice to identify with the Jewish collectivity” (Goren, 1980: 597). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the American Jewish experience continues to be full of surprises and developments, yet at the same time American Jews are still eager to search for new ways to ensure their survival.
1.2 Religious Dimensions of American Jewish Community
American Judaism is as unique, dynamic, and diverse as American Jewry, whose variety, as Nicholas de Lange points out, “reflects the different waves of [Jewish immigrants] and their experiences of adapting themselves to a free and open society” (2002: 13). The three dominant Jewish religious movements of twentieth and early twenty-first century America are: The Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Movements which emerged as a response to both the Enlightenment and Emancipation. These three movements have their own separate congregational associations, rabbinical assemblies and rabbinic seminaries. A later offshoot is Reconstructionist Judaism, which developed only in the United States with its own institutions, and in recent years there has been a proliferation of less formal, ‘alternative’ Jewish religious groups as well (cf. Lange, 2002: 14; Raphael, 2003: 4).
The major focus of Section 1.2 in Chapter 1 is on the presentation and discussion of the role of Jewish women in the development of American Judaism as well as the position they occupy in the particular branches of American Judaism nowadays. Concurrently, the main differences between the various strands of Jewish religion on American soil are also highlighted and briefly discussed in this section.
Reform Judaism, also known as Liberal or Progressive Judaism, was the first branch of American Judaism to be formally organized into a denomination. In the last quarter of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first centuries, it became the largest Jewish denomination in the United States with respect to the number of formally affiliated members – Pew Research Center Survey of U.S. Jews conducted in 2013 indicates that slightly above one-third (35 percent) of all American Jews identify with the Reform movement (“A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” 2013: 10).
Beginning in Germany early in the nineteenth century, the Reform movement quickly spread to the United States, where it has enjoyed its greatest institutional success ever since. The basis for American Reform Judaism was initially laid down by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise in the Cleveland Platform (1855), and later extended in the Pittsburgh Platform (1885) to include some more radical formulations. The more radical reformers, led by Rabbis David Einhorn, and later by his son-in-law ←32 | 33→Kaufman Kohler, sought a more Americanized expression of Judaism and wished “to reshape Judaism anew, and jettison most of the rituals connected with the diet, circumcision, the Shabbat and festivals” and adopt new ones so that Judaism could function in the modern world (Unterman, 1999: 202). They perceived the Bible as containing the obsolete ideas of the past although still highly valued as the source of Judaism, and believed that only the moral teachings of Judaism could be binding, together with any rituals which sanctified the life of the modern Jew (cf. Unterman, 1997: 166; Unterman, 1999: 203).
Since the nineteenth century, the Reform movement in the United States has faced numerous challenges, including religious laxity, lack of ideological clarity, and severe criticism from more traditional Jewish denominations. Orthodoxy, in particular, does not recognize the authority of Reform rabbis and refuses to accept proselytes converted by them as Jews. Neither does it recognize mixed marriages between Jews and Gentiles performed by Reform rabbis as valid on the grounds that there are no religiously reliable witnesses present. Any children born from such marriages, that is between a Jewish father and a gentile mother, are not regarded as Jews by Orthodox rabbis according to the principle of matrilineal descent. Finally, one of the on-going serious issues between Reform and Orthodox Judaism is the divorce procedure used by the former. A married woman who does not undergo a traditional divorce is still considered by the Halakhah as married and cannot remarry. Any children born from a subsequent marriage are mamzerim,11 and this stigma is permanent, transmitted over all the mamzer’s future generations (Unterman, 1999: 204).
As far as the Jewish women’s evolving role in Reform Judaism12 is concerned, it must be observed that the leaders of Reform Judaism in the United States have often emphasized and celebrated their movement’s central role “in emancipating Jewish women from the many restrictions that Judaism has traditionally imposed upon women’s ability to participate in and lead public worship” (Goldman, 2006: 533). It was only in the United States – as opposed to Germany, where the German Reform ←33 | 34→leaders made half-hearted attempts to ensure women’s equality – that practical innovations adopted by the Reform movement actively redefined the nature of women’s participation in public worship. The most important among Reform Judaism’s liberating innovations were the abolition of a separate women’s gallery within the synagogue in the 1850s,13 the ordination of the first American woman rabbi, Sally Priesand, in 1972, and the first female cantor, Barbara Ostfeld Horowitz three years later. What is more, many Reform congregations employed choirs of mixed male and female voices, challenging in this way kol ishah (Hebrew for ‘the voice of a woman’), the usual Orthodox prohibition against allowing women’s voices to be heard during worship services. Furthermore, the introduction of the confirmation ritual, seen as the primary adolescent rite of passage, indicated to some extent at least, their regard for the Jewish religious education and identity of not only Jewish boys but also girls (Goldman, 1998: 1136–1137).
In addition to these important institutional changes, Reform congregations have also enabled Jewish women to find appropriate venues where they could make sense of the tensions between changing societal expectations for women and the roles associated with traditional Jewish practice. First of all, the activation of female energy for the benefit of the congregation, for example by encouraging them to attend to the physical, charitable, and social needs of the community, was an essential step in the direction of extending the synagogue sphere beyond the formal worship service. The Reform Movement’s National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, under the leadership of Carrie Obendorfer Simon, was created in 1913. The aim of this Reform organization as well as its Conservative and Orthodox counterparts, founded in 1918 and 1926 respectively, was to coordinate the work of local groups that were crucial to shaping their communities and defining Jewish women’s public roles (cf. Nadell, “National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods,” 1998: 979–982; Goldman, 2006: 535–537; Goldman, 2008: 108).
The progress towards equality for women in the Reform movement went erratically through the 1950s and 1960s, as the larger society became more interested in the questions of gender egalitarianism and equality of opportunity. The validation of women’s participation in synagogue life as well as their intense involvement in and support for the Reform movement through their practical work for the sisterhoods directly contributed to the transformation of women’s political status within Reform Judaism. The next two decades finally saw the recognition of women’s religious voice, and Jewish women were granted full participation and access to formal religious leadership in Reform Judaism.
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The ordination of Sally Priesand, and approximately 300 Reform women rabbis in the subsequent years, is perceived by many as the ultimate realization of women’s religious equality by the Reform movement during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Despite the fact that women rabbis initially encountered hostility and are still