In this impressive book Jack Wertheimer maps the new American Judaism that contemporary Jews have invented amid a recession among almost all American religions. Using three lenses, he considers first the religious beliefs and practices of ʿamkha, the people, illuminating their lived religion, what they believe and do. Wertheimer plumbs what they feel about God (mostly skepticism), what compels a relatively small proportion of Conservative and Reform Jews to worship regularly (not prayer), and why tikkun ʿolam, reinvented as social justice, has become a “surrogate religion” (universalism) (42). No one will be surprised to read that for non-Orthodox Jews, key sites of religious performance are child-centered rituals and peak life-cycle events. Obviously, these are important also to the Orthodox, but their lived religion is wider and deeper.
Structural differences set the Orthodox apart. Marrying earlier, becoming parents sooner, and having more children than other American Jews, they transition quickly as young adults into communal institutions. They join synagogues within walking distance of their homes and send their children to day schools. Whether they are Haredi, Modern Orthodox, or Sephardic—an often-overlooked minority—Orthodox Jews remain different from the rest of America's Jews.
Despite pronouncements to the contrary, Orthodoxy, encompassing a variety of beliefs and practices, has always been affected by wider currents. Today they come in the form of new technologies enabling and challenging observance. Orthodox Jews can turn their high-end refrigerators to a Sabbath setting to avoid violating religious law by inadvertently turning on a light as they open the door. Meanwhile, thanks to the Internet's limitless resources, rulings, once the province of a small elite, are open to all. Today some Orthodox Jewish women and men act as their own legal decisors.
Wertheimer's second lens focuses on the Jewish denominations, “leaky vessels” that have already lost much of their influence (101). As is well known, Reform Judaism is now the largest of the movements. Open for decades to the intermarried, who now make up large segments of its synagogue members, Reform Judaism centers autonomy, choice, and social justice at its core. Despite its successes, Wertheimer is pessimistic about its future. Few Jews raised Reform join the movement's synagogues when they grow up. Few attend regular worship. Some Reform rabbis despair over their congregants’ “terrible Judaism” (115).
For Reform Judaism, Wertheimer starts with success and portends decline. With the Conservative movement he opens with its failures—the hemorrhaging of members, mostly to Reform, some to Orthodoxy, and who knows how many to assimilation; the graying of those left behind; and the historic rift in praxis and belief between rabbis and laity. This time, however, he ends optimistically, finding renewed vitality among the movement's remaining synagogues as they experiment with new forms of spirituality and energize their services with song and dance. He takes comfort in reminding us that when it comes to levels of religious observance, only Orthodox Jews score higher than the Conservative. But surely, this has long been true among American Jews. Is Wertheimer unduly hopeful? The reader should remember that he has spent his entire career at the Jewish Theological Seminary, training Conservative Judaism's future rabbis and leaders.
As for the Modern Orthodox, despite apparent success in transmitting their values to the next generation, they too face difficulties. Their population remains static while the Haredim, with their much larger families, make up a growing share of the Orthodox world. Wertheimer rightly points to the disturbing cognitive dissonance Modern Orthodox Jews experience over women's limited religious status, especially their inability to initiate divorce, which violates the gender norms these men and women uphold elsewhere in their lives.
With denominationalism under critique across American religion, Wertheimer writes positively about successful transdenominational initiatives, such as Birthright with its free Israel trips for youth, the many communal Jewish adult education programs, and day schools. Nevertheless, expecting the movements to survive, he prescribes what they must do to reinvigorate themselves—unsurprisingly, fundraising—and what they must not do—make ideological pronouncements irrelevant to today's Jews.
The denominations have declined, as Wertheimer notes in his final section, amid the “rise of religious start-ups” (7). He trains his third lens on a variety of Jewish renewal initiatives—such as spiritual communities, emergent congregations, and Orthodox outreach—that sit on or just beyond the margins of organized Jewish life. His evidence comes from personal visits to several hundred synagogues, scores of interviews with rabbis and communal leaders from across Judaism's spectrum, and decades of observation of the American Jewish scene. He argues successfully that this new American Judaism is a “cafeteria religion” (9). American Jews—individuals and rabbis— pick and choose from a panoply of rules, rituals, and practices those that appeal to them. If today we can mix playlists to hear only what we like, it should not be surprising that contemporary Jews mix their own playlists of American Judaism.
Wertheimer opens his book by stating that “Jewish families without religion don't stay Jewish for very long” (20). For him, ethnicity and peoplehood are insufficient to transmit Jewish identity to the next generations. Absent antisemitism with its powerful paradoxical effect of strengthening Jewish identity, he believes religion holds the key to the future of this “ever-dying people” as Simon Rawidowicz called them.
Will this new American Judaism be sufficient to preserve the Jewish people? Wertheimer wonders. He leans towards doubtful, since he advises American Jews to stop misconstruing their religion as a universal faith and instead calls them to reconnect deeply to “Jewish memory, community, and particularistic content” (272). The question remains: Will American Jews heed his call?
