Rupture and Reconstruction

The essay that forms the core of this book is an attempt to understand the developments in orthodox Jewry that have occurred over the past half-century and their implications. The prime change is what is often described as ‘the swing to the Right’, a rupture with pre-existing attitudes and patterns of behaviour that has had major consequences not only for Jewish society but also for Jewish spirituality. For Haym Soloveitchik the root of this change lies in the migration from eastern Europe to the New World. The move from a corporate state to a democratic one, and from a deeply ethnic milieu to an open society, meant a shift from a self-contained world to one where ways of thinking and acting were moulded by new influences. In multicultural America and other centres of migration, far from the largely self-contained Jewish environment of eastern Europe, religious practice could no longer be transmitted mimetically by home and street as it had been for centuries. Acculturation to American society diluted the role of the family in transmitting religion, compromised its authenticity, and, finally, delegitimized it. In a world where only the sacred texts were regarded as authentic, religious life had to be reconstructed anew from them and from them alone. Traditional conduct thus lost its prescriptive force, and behaviour once governed by habit was now governed by rule. However, religion as inscribed and religion as received, as handed down over the long arc of generations, are scarcely identical. As religion increasingly came to be conducted by the book, the older generation—practitioners of the centuries-old, mimetic religiosity—discovered that their parents’ teachings were now for naught and that the habits of a lifetime no longer met the new standards.

This dramatic increase in the power of the written word and its new role as the touchstone of religious authenticity has had far-reaching effects which are explored here in depth. Not only has it altered the very nature of religious performance, it has also transformed the character and purpose of religious education, redistributed political power within the religious world, and defined anew the scope of religion in the political arena.

Long established as a classic in the field, the publication of this seminal essay in book form allows the author to deal with criticisms raised since it was originally published, enabling readers to gain a broader perspective on a topic central to today’s Jewish world and its future development.

Haym Soloveitchik is the Merkin Family Research Professor at Yeshiva University in New York. He is the former Director of the School of Jewish Studies at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has taught at the Hebrew University, the Sorbonne, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has published books in Hebrew on pawn broking and usury, Jewish involvement in the medieval wine trade and the use of responsa as a historical source.