Diner-Jewish Leadership.Pdf
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Contents 0M These volumes have been published 42 with support from the Ostow Family Fund. 347 Volume II 200.2- V In Eastern Europe Vs 3 Three Religious Leaders Cope with Crisis: A Comparative Discussion of the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, and Rabbi Israel Salanter Imrnanuel Etkes 403 Reflections on the Russian Rabbinate Michael Stanislawski 429 The New Jewish Politics and the Rabbinate in Poland: New Directions in the Interwar Period Gershon Bacon 447 VI. In Western and Central Europe Old Orthodox and Neo-Orthodox Rabbinic Responses to the Challenges of Modernity in Nineteenth-century Germany Steven Lowenstein 481 Rabbinic Leadership in Modern France: Competing Conceptions, Paradigms, and Strategies in the Emancipation Era Jay R. Berkovitz 505 Constituency Definition: The Orthodox Dilemma Adam S. Ferziger 535 Authority and Leadership in Rosenzweig, Levinas, and Strauss Leova Batnitzky 569 VII. In the United States O Copyright 2004, by Looking for Leadership in All the Right (and Wrong) Places: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America The Place of the Laity in the History of American Judaism Hasia R. Diner 591 ISBN: Volume One: 0-87334-097-3 Rabbinic Leadership in Small-town America, 1880-1940 Volume Two: 0-87334-098-1 Lee Shai Weissbach 61 1 Set: 0-87334-009-X Serving the Jewish People: The Rebbetzin as Religious Leader Printing and Binding by G & H Soho Inc. Shuly Rubin Schwartz 633 . ,. ., .. Looking for Leadership in All the Right (and Wrong) Places The Place of the Laity in the History of American Judaism Hasia R. Diner CC ewish religious leadership" implies, almost automatically, the rabbinate, the cadre assumed to provide direction and shape to Jthe religious component of Jewish communal life. Much, indeed nearly all, of the history of the Jewish people has transpired during the era of "rabbinic Judaism," a vast period in which duly ordained men, and lately women, have molded the religious experience of the Jewish people. Rabbis, according to conventional thinking, made Judaism possible. According to historians, rabbis far outweigh and outrank any other element in the community as those who have been and con- tinue to be considered leaders of Jewish religious life. The over- whelming tendency in both popular and scholarly discourse to equate Jewish religious leaders with the rabbinate in America, in particular, grows out of at least two different and contradictory so~rces.~ Most broadly, the talmudic tradition ensured that for almost two millennia, rabbis created and monitored the fundamental struc- tures of Judaism. Anchored as the tradition has been on the law and its interpretation, Judaism, as constructed by rabbis and monitored by rabbis, made them gatekeepers of communal life. They alone served as the halachically sanctioned arbiters of behavior and pos- sessors of the knowledge for fixing practice. They judged and marked the permissible and the taboo and the circumstances under which changes could be made. 1. The Amerrcan Rabbmnate: A Century of Contrnlnzty and Change, ed. Jacob Rader Marcus and Abraham J. Peck (Hoboken,N.J.: KTAV, 1985). Looking for Leadership in All the Right (and Wrong) Places 593 As long as adherence to and reverence for the law shaped Jewis The valorization of the clergy operated in tandem with Ameri- life, rabbis, the legal experts, wore the mantle of the religious leader- can, or perhaps more broadly Western, notions that religion ship of the Jewish people. Other functionaries performed certain involved matters of sacred cult and public worship. For an event or limited acts--circumcision, kosher slaughtering-while any compe- an act to be "religious," it had to emanate from the spiritual realm, tent man could lead services. Some of these possessed knowledge requiring some kind of prayer service directly or indirectly invoking which allowed them to decide on practice within their limited the divine, articulated by a member of the clergy. spheres, but only rabbis judged whole communities. Furthermore, Americans respected religion while they evinced Ironically, American conditions helped boost the stature of rah- much more ambivalent feelings about ethnicity (loosely understood bis as leaders. The irony grows out of the reality that in fact Ameri- as group feelings of loyalty to another nation-state, to groups of can conditions played havoc with the legal authority of rabbis. The people living outside of America's borders, or to a culture different voluntary nature of religious affiliation in a society that separated from that of mainstream America). Public events comfortably high- civil and religious life made rabbis dependent on the consent of their lighted Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, and rabbis, all invok- congregations, the dues-payers whose good will gave them their ing a common American creed and addressing a common God. authority. In a corporate sense, the congregations belonged to the American civic society rarely accorded this kind of public recogni- tsustees or boards of directors, who in turn represented the majority tion to the leaders of, for example, Irish, Italian, Polish, Chinese, or of members. These elected boards hired and fired rabbis. They nego- German community institutions. The clergymen (and women) digni- tiated contracts and limited the scope of rabbis' actions and words. fied inaugurations of presidents, the convening of legislatures, or, in From an organizational point of view, rabbis in the United States thousands of communities, public school.graduations. Despite the had to learn bow to share religious leadership. non-establishment clause of the First Amendment, states granted the Additionally, American Jews, with some important exceptions, clergy the right to minister to the needs of military personnel and to in the main did not consider halacha binding, so that the most pow- inmates of prisons. Religious institutions enjoyed the benefits of tax- -erful weapon in the rabbinic arsenal in "traditional" settings weak- exempt status and certain protections of the law. All of this meant ened in America. American Jews weighed in on matters of halacha in that the clergy in America merited a high degree of respect, as Amer- both words and deeds as they debated amongst themselves about the icans invested them with an aura of prestige that other communal nature of synagogue life and the conduct of religious services. Mixed leaders lacked. seating or separate seating, organ or no organ, head coverings or As such, the public prestige of the rabbinate grew in part out of bare heads, sermon or no sermon; English, German, Yiddish; aliyot the American equation of the clergy with the rights of leadership. for women or just for men-these constituted just some of the reli- The early history of Jewish chaplains in the United States military gious questions about which many rabbis had strong beliefs, but provides an example. The men in the heavily Jewish 65th Regiment which ultimately were decided by lay people as they molded their during the Civil War elected Colonel Michael Allen, a Hebrew congregations. teacher, not an ordained clergyman, to be their chaplain. This put Yet America's Protestant-inspired religions needed ordained the regiment in trouble with the Young Mens' Christian Association, clergy to minister to their communities and represent congregations which had been empowered by Congress to supervise the chaplaincy. to civil society, particularly at ceremonial events. According to dom- The law not only required that all chaplains be Christian, but they inant American views, weddings and funerals needed to be solem- had to be "regularly ordained." The religious discrimination against nized by a person "of the cloth." Religious services seemed nearly non-Christians could only be protested and redressed once Allen naked without a sermon, delivered from above the congregation by stepped down and the men voted in Arnold Fischel, who had served someone referred to as "Reverend," "Minister," "Pastor," or as rabbi of New York's Congregation Shearith Israel. "Father," ordained by a recognizable denomination. This American The Board of Delegates of American Israelites rejoiced when reality preserved the status of the rabbi as religious leader. Judaism achieved equal treatment with Christianity. It paid no atten- ing for Leadership in All the Right [and Wrong) Places 595 tion, however, to the fact that the law, passed and admi e rabbi-centric thinking, in this book and in scholarship as a Christians, required Judaism to alter itself to conform to Am d history of its richness by ignoring the fluidity of notions of religion and religious leadership. After all, the nd the contributions of many. For example, it erased the reli- incumbent on a chaplain in the American mil leadership of Paula Ackerman. Ackerman was, for part of her sick and the injured, arranging for burial, and le in 1919, the wife of Rabbi William Ackerman, not require smikhah. Allen, as a Jewish man, had as mu of Congregation Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi. While and obligation, to perform these religious acts as did ~ischel.' shand lived, Paula Ackerman taught the pre-confirmation The narrative of the Civil War chaplaincy demonstrates the religious school and led services when "the rabbi" had to "clergyization" was imposed on American Judaism. Yet h. uring the course of his long illness. In 1950, after and other commentators have thought little about Jewish ty-six years as an occasional substitute rabbi, Paula Ackerman leadership beyond the confines of the trained, the ordained ame a widow. She also became a rabbi. The congregation, devas- titled, reflecting in scholarship conventional Ameri d by the death of William Ackerman, turned to the person they about religion and religious leadership. and asked her to stay on and be their religious Except when considering the early period o isapproval of Maurice Eisendrath, president of history, the era before 1840 when no rabbis made n Hebrew Congregations, the members of Beth North America, historians have analyzed the de considered Paula Ackerman their rabbi and their leader.