Category Archives: popular religion

No More Modern: Intuitions and Habitas

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Alan Brill | Leave a comment

Another good post at the Immanent Frame, this one is by Penny Edgell, tries to overcome seeing religion as a combination of Modernity and Orthodoxy, where the two are separate ideas that clash or need to be rationalized. For example, it wants to overcome seeing Modern and Orthodoxy as two conflicting ideas because then all discussions become mired in issues of authority and maintaining boundaries of Orthodoxy.

Edgell uses the model of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. We act intuitively and then post-hoc create rationalizations and systems. For her, religious decisions are pre-conscious. The actual pre-conscious categories are things like “respect for authority, the importance of in-group loyalty, and a drive to maintain purity/sanctity.” Those who want to keep things exactly as they are and those who like variety are playing out the same psychological positions they had in kindergarten but now they post-hoc explain it by the religious tradition. Some kids put all their toys in perfect rows and others liked them all around. Some kids felt spoiled and privileged while others liked sharing and saw play time as a collective.

In this approach, it is not a question of how much modern change the religious system can take or how one needs to listen to authority. If it were, then it would be a constant clash. Rather, one has pre-conscious vision of the world and the religious debates are post-hoc- useful for ideologues to frame as a tension of modernity and religion.

Or to use the habitas model, Gladwell mentions how professionals know in a blink how to act in their chosen field. Lawyers, doctors, firefighters, and storekeepers have different ranges of intuitions. A law partner has one intuition that this religious act fits in with his life, a social worker has a different intuition, and an IT person who is home by 5:30 has another intuition about life. They then after the fact justify their original intuitions with discussions of religious authority. Intuitions about maintaining a Life in Midwood, Brooklyn are not the same as intuitions about living in Berkeley, CA.

I once did a study of how people use the word Chumra for a talk I gave and I found that it matched this model. People don’t mind strictness that makes immediate sense with their habitas, they mind it when they intuitively feel the strictness does not fit their habitas. Most of the use of the word, occurs when different intuitions or habitas clash or even meet.

In the original 1950’s sorting hat of denominations, differences in class, caste, education, and location led to separating out into different denominations. Now that we have a wide range of habitats within a single denomination, the clashing intuitions are bound to occur.

The people who are performance-foodie-kabbalah of tu beshevat are not those of obedience-newspapers-eating the same thing. One does not have to mention authority or modernity to explain their differences. See prior discussion here.

Or the loss of modernity as temporality in modern orthodoxy and the subsequent inability for those modern to articulate any aspiration may need to be replaced with an understanding of different intuitions or that they live in different habitas. See discussion here- this older post is definitely worth returning to in order to integrate it into this post.

Read the excerpt below- then consider if we should still rarefy religion out of the full habitas of our lives.

The originating and continuing impetus behind sociological inquiry into religion has been a sense that religion is “at odds” with modernity, continually undermined by ongoing rationalization.
From this perspective, the religion that thrives in the modern world, to borrow (and perhaps misuse) a metaphor from Mary Douglas, is a pig that has learned to chew its cud, an ill-fitting social form transformed into something that fits, albeit precariously, in the modern order. The pervasive unease about whether religion can maintain its role in highly modernized societies drives the substance of sociological inquiry—can the pig keep chewing its cud, can religion continue to fit in the modern world, or is the transformation ultimately doomed to failure?
Central debates have revolved around issues of religious authority, understood as the authority of religious elites and officials to compel respect, and the authority of orthodox doctrinal statements to compel assent and to shape behaviors.
The first is suggested by research in cognitive and social psychology that views consciousness as a two-level phenomenon, with most motivations for behavior originating in an underlying, pre-rational level (the gut, or “blink,” reaction made famous by Malcolm Gladwell). Rationalized beliefs and belief systems, including religious ones, are in this view largely just that—post-hoc rationalizations of the real underlying motives for action.
These underlying motivations are pre-conscious moral, aesthetic, and practical impulses and habits—if that sounds like the habitus, that is in fact an adequate way to translate these concepts for sociologists. If religion is understood as a cultural phenomenon that expresses underlying pre-conscious moral and aesthetic impulses, that takes much of the wind from the sails of the strong program.
For example, Jon Haidt, an influential cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, calls for an approach that investigates … these include respect for authority, the importance of in-group loyalty, and a drive to maintain purity/sanctity.

Full Version

Suburban Religion

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Alan Brill | 12 comments

I have always been bothered by the enormous shift from the world of Eastern Europe Jewry to the new suburban Jewry. In its wake it has left a void of many aspects of Judaism and much of the new approach seems geared to keep God out of one’s life. Jews in their myopia tend to see it only as a Jewish or Orthodox problem, but it alters all American religion. Many Christians have noted this change from old-time religion to the new faith and attempted to discuss the new Suburban Christian, and they grasp the ironies. I recommend for the ironies – Albert Hsu, The Suburban Christian. There several other works with similar titles. But no one has yet to fully put their finger on the issues involved in the change. So it was important to see a Muslim also bristling again this immense change by making fun of Suburban Capitalist Islam.

To understand this, know that ilm means knowledge in the sense of both law and reason for the law. Rambam’s Mishneh Torah and his Guide are both fiqh and the study of which is knowledge( ilm.). When you read this substitute year in Israel, study of halakhah, shul classes for his references. In rule #12 those are references to the messianic age, in the sense that suburban orthodoxy does not acutely wait for a messiah. The author makes fun of the acquisition of knowledge and not having it interfere with one’s life. One can master halakhah and keep it out of one’s life. There is no more growth and piety. He makes fun of how their right wing is mainly characterized as those violating the materialism. History is avoided.

The author makes fun of how one can study much “contemporary law” and one can debate for weeks whether something is permitted or forbidden but that debate obscures the real issues that one is no longer living in the religious world of the past. In this set up, “Knowledge’ has been set up as this idealized form of certainty and conviction.” offering self-justification and a sense that one has the answers. Finally, these classes have degenerated into self-help and a commodity for marketing.

Any of this sound familiar?

“Suburban Capitalist Islam” – List of Beliefs

1) American culture is the primary definition of the way we dress, the food we enjoy, the entertainment we seek (Movies, TV, video games).
2) Islam can be understood practically as a filter of the ‘bad’ aspects of the American lifestyle out of ones life. The bad aspects are the obvious haraam (forbidden actions). It can also be an encouragement of the ‘good’ aspects of American life.
3) Since Islam is a filter of good and bad, one needs to obtain ‘ilm’ (religious knowledge) in order to learn how to behave. Studying ‘ilm’ is paramount in Islam, and most ‘ilm’ is in Arabic.
4) What is taught by people in classes at seminars and ‘events’ is a translation and summarization of what is considered ‘ilm’.
5) Your status is defined by how much of this seminar-event-based ‘ilm’ you know.
9) What defines a good Muslim is how well integrated he is with Suburban-Middle-class Society (job, wife, kids, house) plus the combination of his ‘ilm’
10) With real ‘ilm’ we can combat a Non Suburban-Capitalist-Islam. The end result of Non Suburban-Capitalist-Islam is a lifestyle absent of the luxuries and principles of Suburban Capitalist Islam, primarily #1.
11) Suburban Capitalist Muslims are moderate. They are moderate because they are largely indistinguishable from non-Muslim Americans within the workforce, except for a beard/Hijab and some dietary requirements.
12) Imam Mahdi (AS) and the Dajjal are topics of events far in the future. They are so far that they are largely understood as metaphors without meaning.
13) Islamic history is something left to be studied in a superficial manner, because most of Muslim history is filled with various mistakes and evil people. It is far more important to learn about the primary sources of ‘ilm’ and attend more seminars.
Suburban Capitalist Islam is inherently an American cultural product. What most Muslims in the West experience as the Islamic message is actually American culture filtered through certain Islamic injunctions. Under this paradigm, Muslims are able to argue day in and day out over details as to which particular filters/knowledge/’ilm’ they should apply in their lives, while ignoring the overarching logical breakdown and inconsistency between their belief system and their actual lifestyle, filled with TV, video games and shopping.
What are the youth to do with themselves while they are struggling in being ardent abstainers from these aspects of Western society? Surely, Islam must provide some alternative?

Largely this gap has been filled with the pursuit of ‘knowledge’. The message has been that through knowledge you are empowered to controlling your own Islamic future. While knowledge has been important to Muslims since the time of the Holy Prophet (S), it is only now that we see studying being associated so directly with piety and spiritual progress. ‘Knowledge’ has been set up as this idealized form of certainty and conviction. The more knowledge you get/purchase/sit in, the more everything about Islam makes sense, the more easier it becomes to justify the abstaining from the few ‘bad’ things surrounding us and also rationalizing our largely Western lifestyle as being halaal. And doesn’t everyone want self-justification and doesn’t everyone desire for it all to make sense.

Most of these ilm-sessions are set up as the Islamic equivalent to very secular self-help seminars. This cultural stand-in has allowed for competing institutes and community programs to emerge, each giving their own message of specific information-based knowledge. And it should be carefully noted that what is being peddled is information-based knowledge versus knowledge of the self or other forms of tacit knowledge which was how much of Islam was implemented in Muslim lifestyles.

A primary consequence of this Western approach towards Islam is the productization of ‘Ilm’, religious knowledge. What does Western society bring if not the concept of marketing? Catchy slogans, professional videos ads, hype-machines and superstar personalities have been built up to bring ‘Islamic knowledge’ into our lives. No one could deny, if given the opportunity , ‘American Muslim Institutes’ would be clamoring for some sort of witty ad selling their wares during Superbowl commercials. Frankly, if given the opportunity, they would want their own team and hijab-laden cheerleaders.

Full versions here and here.

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Tagged suberban relgion

New issue of Sh’ma – DIY Judaism

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Alan Brill | Leave a comment

Marshall Sklare’s classic work Conservative Judaism (1955) declared Orthodoxy dead because orthodoxy means Yiddish derahsas not English sermons, it means old world customs, it meant rabbis without a secular education, it meant no college and no professions. What about the rising modern orthodoxy of the 1950’s? They were few in number and most importantly when Jews who moved to suburbia in 1950 viewed their live options and their memories, it was the Orthodoxy of their childhoods. They forever visualized Orthodoxy in those terms, which justified their choices even into the 1980’s when their original vision of Orthodoxy was no longer reality.

We have a similar retention of an original childhood vision by modern orthodox who still refer to the Conservative congregations of their youth that were unlearned Orthodox synagogues without a mechitza, with a traditional rabbi paternally leading a semi-observant congregation. In those days, Conservative Jewish centers taught peoplehood and ethnicity.

The MO never ask: what is done today? What people do today is indie and DIY. When gen-y opts out of Orthodoxy for intellectual and cultural reasons -they are attracted to indie.

Well, the current issue of Sh’ma is an essential read to catch up on current affairs, especially for this snowy day. It describes the new world of Do It Yourself and indie Judaism. They want everything to be a co-op or a collective activity. They do not seek wisdom of the boomers or an organizational hierarchy, they are DIY.

[I cannot seem to create a direct link. It seems that you now have to sign up – It is still free but they get your email. Let me know if one can get in directly. Here are the links:
www.shma.com/shma-subscriptions
www.shmadigital.com/shma/201002/?u1=texterity

Steven M Cohen wrote a great article in the issue (It is on page 3) on “The New Jewish Organizing” outlining five points (1) indie and spiritual minyanim (2) culture- music, magazines, film, poetry (3)learning in LIMMUD format (4)social justice (5) new media- social networking. Cohen points out that the gen y calls themselves activists, not leaders. High quality davening is valued over building an institution. They don’t want to change the system like Boomers, rather they want to create opportunities for like minded people with similar sensibilities to gather. They don’t like the preoccupation with divisions and boundaries of the older generation. Cohen writes that they blur the boundaries of” education and entertainment., prayer and social justice, learning and spirituality.” They remain single into their 30’s and exist in a separate social realm than those settled. Religious experience is more important than numbers attending.

To develop Yosef’s comment, the younger gen y’s are moving out but not pulled by the Conservative movement circa 1975, which still lingers mainly in the imagination of the modern orthodox. It seems Yosef is affirming my original definition that the gen-y’s are in a new place. Yet all the gen-x and boomers can do is use the phrase post-orthodox and think of the issues of the 1980’since they have not visited the new minyanim. Some Boomers do not get that for the DIY movement, MO synagogues seem intellectually and cultural stagnant like a 1970’s Jewish Center. The gen y’s are pulled by the new indie vision. Yosef seems to be correct, the older generation may call them post-orthodox, but they are indie and DIY. The current issue of Shema is probably the best list itemizing what might be considered as post-orthodox to a Boomer and treated as natural to a gen y.

But just as I remember Conservative leaders were still telling people in the 1980’s that one cannot be Orthodox and go to college or be a professional. Even though no one who was mastering the halakhic world of Rav Soloveitchik students ever thought about Yiddish and the Lower East Side. I suspect that the older Orthodox will still think for years to come that the younger set is leaving to return to the liberalism circa 1978.

Post-orthodoxy and the end of the Twentieth Century –part II

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Alan Brill | 2 comments

Continued from part one on Stern’s MA here.
I will now deal with some of the specifics that Nechemia Stern thinks created this.

Back in 2004, a group of young Rabbis were discussing the various halakhic controversies including filtering water and Indian hair. I was asked what I thought and I commented that I thought it was just a structural shift of the new generation of poskim coming into their own, I assumed there would be several more such plate tectonic changes and then it would settle down. Moshe Shoshan asked in a comment, Isnt all this a structural change? Yes I agree. But Nechmeia Stern attributes considers it a vortex of controversy.

So here is my amendment to Stern, even using Stern’s premises. Stern makes it sound as if these legal decisions are based on the vortex of change. They are not. The Poskim gave their decisions based on what they thought. The vortex was created by the echo chamber world of controversy, op-eds, bloggers, and pizza place gossip.

Stern writes “I believe it is possible to point to various historical and social influences that have inspired the questions and difficulties that have led to the ‘post Orthodox’ shift.”
Stern attributes this world to the division created by Chabad messianism, 9/11 framing Orthodoxy as another fundamentalism, the Edah-YCT backlash against right, and the disengagement from Gaza.
I am skeptical if this is indeed the list of causes or if this is the list I am not sure they are being defined correctly.

Stern notes the blurring of denominations based on Jeremy Stolow’s book on Artscroll. Artscroll blurred the lines of Ultra-Orthodoxy and Centrism and it blurred the lines of right wing Conservative and Orthodoxy. He also relies on Stolow for seeing the end of the use of the word Orthodoxy and its replacement by “Torah observant.”

The transformative categories of Judaica are excellent examples of the move towards post Orthodoxy. Indeed Stolow documents: As liberal Orthodox, synagogues (or Conservative synagogues) change their texts to the Artscroll, “new relationships are being forged across and around what were once taken to behardened lines of communal affiliation, leading to an increasingly blurred division between the “right wing” of Conservative Judaism and Orthodoxy, or the “right”and “center” of orthodoxy itself (Stolow, 2007. 310).
‘Torah observant Judaism (or Jew)’is becoming increasingly popular as an alternate means of religious identification. Indeed it is very reminiscent (purposefully so) of the Artscroll’s ‘Torah perspective’.

Stern discusses the anxiety over the flipping out of kids in Israel by their parents. Stern points out that for the parents there are clear lines between Modern Orthodox and Haredim, two different dress codes, two different cultural realms. But for the kids, they have no problem wearing a black hat and still having modern interests. They will still become proper modern suburbanites even with their black hats. They were not transformed, they just crossed the parents conceptions.

Where ‘us’ represented the Modern Orthodox, and ‘them’ represented
the Haredim. I began to realize that the parents – who were educated within a field of relatively well defined denominational boundaries – simply could not grasp the ways in which their children’s religious boundaries could be so quickly transformed after only one year.
For these students, the black hat does not necessarily imply a change towards Haredism, as much as it denotes a particular kind of religio-social transformation. The students returning have not changed denominations so much as they have transcended them. They
are not ‘Modern Orthodox, nor are they ideologically Haredi. I would say that these students are ‘post-Orthodox’. In so doing they have gone beyond the bounded denominational differences that were readily apparent in their parent’s generation, and have created new theological and social divisions.

Another case for Stern is those people who cross back and forth between movements.

Rabbi Gold received his rabbinic ordination from a Conservative institution. However, he also spent two years in Israel studying in an Orthodox religious seminary that espoused a pluralistic perspective. At this time, he received certification as a Kosher
butcher from an Orthodox Rabbi.

So in these chapters, Nechmia Stern defines post-Orthodox as caused by (1) the creation of the controversy vortex (2) the use of Artscroll by everyone from traditional Conservative to modern Orthodox to Yeshivish (3) The younger generation who do not stick to their parents conceptions (4) those who cross between movements.

Stern has given us food for thought but no polished description or causes.
And I do not feel he has captured his experience within the community.

I was certainly not prepared however, for the zealous and almost fanatical response I received. After twelve years of an orthodox education, I did not consider my views heretical, and certainly not equivalent to the denial of God.

Any thoughts?

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Posted in popular religion

Tagged nechemia stern, post-orthodox, post-orthodoxy

Rabbi Morgenstern and Meditation

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Alan Brill | 31 comments

When someone mentions Jewish meditation to me the first thing I think of are the Haredi Kabbalitic mediators. I think of Y.M Erlanger who in his Sheva Eynayim and in classes in Heimishe Yeshivos is teaching Hasidut combined with Abulafia and I think of Yitzhak Meir Moregenstern who is reorganizing early Kabbalah, Ramak, Ari, and Abulafia as Hasidut. Erlanger’s starts with the statements in Sefer Habesht al Hatorah and introduces ever more esoteric material and at the end of the last volume, he introduces Abulafia with a warning that the material that he is about to teach is not for everyone, and not everyone should enter the Pardes, and even if you do enter this may not be for you. In contrast, Rabbi Morgenstern called Rav Itchie Mayer Morgenstern starts everyone on the real stuff.

R. Morgenstern is a Haredi descendant of the Kotzker and lived most of his life in England and has moved to Jerusalem and set up a Beit Midrash. You can find videos of him teaching and singing with Anglos on the web. See here, here and here.
He has attached a real following. He gives weekly public shiurim in kavvanot, in Komarno, and Ramhal. He has an email list serve for his Torah, his kabbalah, and for assorted teachings (Hebrew, English, and Yiddish). Send an email here to subscribe tc7@neto.bezeqint.net

He seems to have read some generic books on “How to Meditate” or “Meditation for Everyone” and in his work Derekh Yihud he reorganizes traditional kabbalistic practices into an order that reflects the general mediation world. The topics are sitting, breathing, visualizing, creating an avir in front of one, colors, and a unified vision. He freely takes pieces of Abulafia, Ramak, and early kabbalah to create a Jewish meditation manual in line with the non-Jewish ones. The work Derekh Yihud opens up a new path of reorganizing the older materials based on modern principles.

I see him as potentially the future. Rav Ashlag wrote in the 1930’s and took the meditation, medieval worldview and fantasy out of the Kabbalah and replaced it was science, communism, Schopenhauer, and a closed system. Now everything from the Kabbalah Centre to Bnai Baruch to Michael Leitman are his spiritual descendents. Rabbi Morgensten is teaching the young grandchildren of the Rebbes and many in Kolel and he also accepts the varied pneumatics of Jerusalem as his students. When all those students take their positions as Rebbes, Ramim, and teachers then the meditation format of breathing and visualization will be the tradition. If the trend continues, in 2050 this will be mainstream Kabbalah.

I had originally planned this post before my computer crash when I received the following two weeks ago. It offers a concise taste of Derekh Yihud. Morgenstern advises to close the eyes and see the hidden lights in order to achieve bliss. One turns from this world to the airspace and achieves a vision of the Throne. Lights, then hidden mind, and finally the source of the soul and the Throne.

When a Jew spends time in hisbodedus before his Creator, he closes his eyes so as not to be enticed by the illusory pleasures of this world because he doesn’t want to be connected to them.
When he closes his eyes in this way, he is able to see the brilliant hues that are rooted in the “hidden mind” of Mocha Sesima’ah, and he begins to derive pleasure from spiritual reality, from the fact that Hashem is revealed through a myriad of shades and hues of dveikus. He starts to feel Hashem’s light and glory within himself, and how all of the pleasures of this world are null and void, are like a mere sliver of light, compared with the delight of dveikus that is a composite of all possible forms of bliss.

So when a person seals his vision against the illusory nature of this world, he rises to the place of the “airspace” and its “membrane,” which is really the source of the human soul and its throne of glory. In that place it can be said, “From my flesh, I see G-d.” One begins to enjoy a vision of the ultimate Kisei HaKavod upon which the “form of a person sat.”
The final three plagues parallel these three states of dveikus:
First, a person must meditate and be misboded on the expansive Binah light of Hashem.
Then he must ascend to the place of the “hidden mind” which is the counterpart of the holy darkness of turning aside from this-worldly concerns to receive “light in all his dwellings.” With this, he destroys the klippah of the impure firstborn and rises further to the place of the “membrane of the airspace” and the “airspace” itself which correlates to the level of the Da’as of Atik and which reveals to him the source of his neshamah that “sits upon the throne.”
“It is revealed and known before Your Kisei HaKavod…” Meaning, through coming to the level of the Kisei HaKavod, we are able to subdue all of the klippos and utterly “smite Egypt through their firstborns.”

This past week he sent out a special Tu beShevat essay. He opens the essay stating that was asked why Hayyim Vital did not mention TuBeshevat and answers in the name of R. Haayim Cohen that it is a hidden quality. And when pressed why does everyone do it today? He turns to R. Aharon Halevi of Strashelye explaining that since we are lesser today everyone learns Kabbalah since they do not grasp the real depth anyway. The essay is a running account of his Torah and the questions he received Tu Beshevat-Shabbat Shrah. There are many interesting points in it including -We are told of the joy from the recent publishing of Vital’s alchemy and magic.

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Posted in Hasidism, kabbalah, meditation, Neo-Hasidism, popular religion, rabbis, spirituality

Tagged Ashlag, Derech yihud, derekh yihud, jewish meditation, meditation, Rav Itchie Mayer Morgenstern, Sheva Eynayim, tu beshevat, Yitzhak Meir Moregenstern, YM Erlanger

Post-Orthodoxy and loss of the 20th century definition of Orthodoxy.

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Alan Brill | 8 comments

Since it has reached my attention from people in real life -not online- that the term post-orthodoxy has gone from a meme to a buzz word, I will devote a few more posts to the term. Unlike my original post on the term among gen –y, I have been told that some people 35 years older are finding it a meaningful buzz word. I am not sure what we will have in the end of these posts, but here goes.

Let us now consider the term from the perspective of a thesis ‘POST ORTHODOXY’: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE THEOLOGICAL AND SOCIO-CULTURAL BOUNDARIES OF CONTEMPORARY ORTHODOX JUDAISM NEHEMIA STERN (unpublished MA, SUNY Binghamton, 2006.) Stern is studying for a PhD in anthropology and I assume that someday he will be a fine scholar. I thank him for providing me with a copy. However, the thesis was a journeyman’s work and he should not be judged on it. I will be reorganizing the material, providing a tighter framework than the original and a stronger conceptual scheme.

Stern claims that the clear sense of Orthodoxy as a fixed denomination as defined by the era of Rav Moshe Feinstein is over. Now we have a wide variety of practices and many lines to divide people formerly under a common banner of the term Orthodoxy. Meaning that the working definitions of the 1970’s and 1980’s are gone and people are now without a fixed order and have to work things out afresh.

Stern claims that lay people are now figuring out what it means to be Orthodox through their discussions on the internet, in turn this creates the formation of many micro cultural identities. The micro-cultures are the many echo chambers, group thinks, and blogging communities that have created new cultural boundaries.

Stern insightful point is that topics that once had a variety of accepted rabbinic opinions, in which one knew that there were liberal and strict opinions has now been reframed as whether one is a heretic, outside orthodoxy and whether one accepts rabbinic authority. Inside/outside has replaced strict/lenient. The topic that is mediated is no longer the halakhah as found in the Rabbinic books rather the topci debated is Rabbinic authority. Topics are no longer debates of two rabbinic authorities in which a practitioner accepts one position. Now, there is only one correct position and those who disagree are heretics.

Even very small decisions in the grand scheme of things, such as a decision whether to eat Hebrew National franks is not decided as a Kashrut question, but as a snowball discussion about gedolim, science, rabbinic authority, and obedience. Rather than a strict and lenient position questions open up a Pandora’s box of issues of boundary issues.

Finally, these changes are incomprehensible using older models so the baby-boomers are clueless. Stern claims that those whose model is still from an earlier decade have trouble with the new shifts and mixing of older categories. There are dozens of patterns of belief and practice, few of which continue the recognized older patterns.

In sum, Post- Orthodoxy is the sense that the older definition has faded, that everything is now pitched as question of boundary and heresy. In this new era, lay people create their own boundaries using blogs and newspapers and are thereby creating a post-Orthodox world of new identities.

In a post Orthodox world the choice of practices and rituals one performs or takes part in, tell more about a person then his/or her choice of denomination. Separations are made through practices and not so much through beliefs. This paradigm of praxis differs markedly from the ways in which Rabbi Moshe Feinstein attempted to shape Jewish Orthodoxy within the twentieth century. For Feinstein the boundary of that which is intolerable rested on ones denomination. For example, Feinstein could recognize one who desecrates the Sabbath as being within the
frame of Orthodoxy, so long as that desecration occurs out of a sense of teyavon (desire). Thus, if one is required to work on the Sabbath to feed ones family that is considered ‘desire’. If one watches television on the Sabbath out of a sense of loving television, that
too is desire. However, the instant that desecration turns into an ideology, an intolerable deviation suddenly occurs. Thus, Reform and Conservative Judaism’s acted as intolerable deviations (from the stand point of Orthodoxy) because they ignored or negated (from the Orthodox perspective) various practices and rituals out of a sense of ideology, and not desire.

In the post Orthodox era of the twenty-first century, individuals gather either on the internet, in groups, or via letters to the editor, and discuss this wave of ‘crime’. In the process of discussion, various sensibilities and ideologies are being negotiated. These negotiations pierce the philosophical heart of what it means to be ‘Orthodox’ in the twenty-first century. The definition of rabbinic authority, the role of rabbinic authority, the delineations between Science and Torah, between governmental control and communal practice, are under a constant process of negotiation and mediation. Some individuals may discuss these themes in an effort to forge definitive answers. Yet in many ways, these efforts are irrelevant. Answers have never been reached. These discussions however, serve a social function. They operate to demarcate and define social and religious boundaries between people. By discussing that which is intolerable, by questioning the very notion of the intolerable, an Orthodox group, “supplies the framework within which the people of the group develop an orderly sense of their own
cultural identity”

Whereas in the previous century the discourse rested on the interpretation of the opinions of the cultural broker (indeed there existed a plurality of mutually respected interpretations), in the 21st century the discourse has shifted slightly to the authority of the culture broker (Da’as Torah) and subsequently to the creation of theological boundaries and separations.

Thus over two packages of heretical franks…The conversation that ensued was ethnographically fascinating in that we could not discuss the legal topic of Kashruth without discussing the meta-thematic issues of Rabbinic authority.

Individuals who were primarily educated in the previous century may have difficulty comprehending religious conceptions that question classical boundaries… Where once two or three delineations were enough to categorize ones Orthodoxy, today a plethora of different delineations are being made.

Stern offers lists of the controversies of the last few years, all well known to those who are keeping up with the world of blogs. The controversies include Slifkin, metizah bepeh, organ donation, bugs in the water, shidduch crisis, Hindu temple hair, and Chabad messainism, Much of the MA is devoted to a collection of snippets about these topics.

Stern claims that these controversies eroded the fixed positions of religion and science, religious authority, and education. There are five new criteria that have destabilized the older definition: Jewish outreach, Gedolei Yisroel, the semiotics of holiness and purity, and invoking of acceptance of rabbinic authority They created unclear lines of who is on what side. And most importantly, they have served among lay people, who inhabit blogs, newspapers, and eat at pizza shops, as a means for them to argue, debate, and reach new understandings of Orthodoxy.

The new positions created in these popular venues are not intellectual or even ideological positions but cognitive frameworks for dealing with change. Reactions are in crisis mode and emotionally charged because of the need to regain a stable world order. For Stern, these new restructures, even when speaking about Rabbinic authority, are highly personal. An Orthodoxy “that is constructed of our own experiences, language, culture, and temperament”

A feeling of ‘dramatic crisis’ is created, as the boundaries and definitions of Orthodoxy are called into question…. Controversies and newly found religious stringencies are used to help reinterpret a definition of and a boundary for Orthodox Judaism.

For the purposes of this thesis, religious fundamentalism occurs when an individual (or a group of individuals) reflexively reinterpret their theological assumptions. In this paradigm, modernity acts as a backdrop to this reinterpretation. Fundamentalism then acts as more of a cognitive then an ideological framework. Martin Reisbrodt in his essay Fundamentalism and its Resurgence in Religion (2000)… For Reisbrodt religious fundamentalism refers to a“type of religious revival movement which reacts to social changes perceived as a dramatic crisis. In such movements people attempt restructure their life worlds cognitively, emotionally, and practically, reinvent their social identities and regain a sense of dignity, honor, and respect (2000. 271).

The physical sites of such controversies may be a pizza store, a kitchen, the internet, or the pages of a newspaper
The standard Orthodox meta narratives that deal with, denominationalism, rabbinic authority, and secular knowledge are no longer enshrined in stone when viewed in the light of a world “that is constructed of our own experiences, language, culture, and temperament”

Post-Orthodoxy is a term for those drawn into the vortex of ever new controversies, those who feel an urgency to deal with them, and those who use them to help create new lines.

To be continued in a Part Two with some of Stern’s examples of the new varieties and my own reaction to Stern attempt at providing historical causality. But do you think his analysis rings true?

8 Comments

Tagged orthodox heresy, orthodox Judaism, post-orthodox, post-orthodoxy, rabbinic authority

Contemporary Orthodox Death

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Alan Brill | 2 comments

Doreen Rosman in her book The Evolution of the English Churches: 1500-2000 describes the early modern concern of religion as death centered. She asserts, “People’s passage from this life to the next and their entry to heaven were…matters of major concern.” Inherent in Rosman’s assertion is the idea that since people thought that most believers did not enter heaven, they had to work very hard to earn their eternal reward through belonging to con-fraternities, appealing to saints and to the beyond, engaging in magical rites, and practicing esoteric wisdom. Modernity changed that major preoccupation.

Michel Vovelle in his La mort et l’occident de 1300 à nos jours (1983) and Ideologies and Mentalities (1990) traces the slow process by which people in the 19th century stopped referring to the afterlife, how tombstones stopped having acute references to the next stage, and people no longer related to the next life as the longer part of one’s existence. Shadal in the beginning of the 19th century was already of a modern mind, yet the American Reform movement was still producing English guides to the afterlife based on Maavar Yabok at the end of the 19th century. Maurice Lamm’s The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning oriented modern Orthodoxy away from the traditional concern with the afterlife and claimed that there are no Jewish teaching on the afterlife.

Recently, I went to a funeral and the rabbi spoke about how the deceased will return to be at the wedding of the children and at the wedding we will invite the deceased back.

The formulation for this idea is the Zohar.

Even though the father and mother have left this world, the joy of the [wedding] is attended by all of its partners.. Because we have learned, when a person joins Hakadosh Baruch Hu to the joy of his [wedding], then Hakadosh Baruch Hu comes to Gan Eden and takes from there the other partners, the father and mother and brings them with Him to the joyous event. All are in attendance, and the people are unaware.

But modern circles do not generally follow the traditional Kabbalistic customs; they are not listed in Maurice Lamm’s Jewish Way in Love and Marriage. I emailed a number of my older, and more rationalist, pulpit rabbi friends to find out how customary this was. The general response that I received was that this started at modern weddings in the 1980’s and at that time it seemed surprising to them. It has grown more prevalent since then. Let me know if anyone has any more information about whether it would have been heard at a wedding in the 1970’s or how it came back in.

This comes back because of our current vision of the family staying together after death. There were several studies a decade ago that the American vision of the afterlife is where the family stays together. This was one of the attractions of Mormonism in 1980’s and 1990’s because that is a specific part of their teaching and firmly grounds the idea of family values.

It also comes from our acceptance of the long and complex process of mourning, beyond anything in the halakhah, where mourning becomes a process of temporary magical thinking. People continue to relate to their deceased long after the death. The most poignant reckoning with our current worldview is Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005).

We claim to be rational and project magical thinking onto other religious groups, but we should first look at ourselves and the function the irrational has in our lives. (This may come up again when we return to Habermas’ critics who state that he does not give enough credit to the irrational.) The Zohar did not return because of the study of Kabbalah or haredi influence, rather from our own need to make sense of our losses.

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Tagged doreen rosman, jewish funeral, jewish wedding, joam didion, life after death, maurice lamm, Michel Vovelle, zohar

Hasidism and George Harrison: Living in the Material World

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Alan Brill | 5 comments

Hasidism, which is currently 270 years old, has gone through many changes over that long period of time.

Modern types look to Hasidism for new age and then find something else completely different when they look the eighteenth century texts. For example, the main literary disciple of the Baal Shem Tov Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polonoye wrote the classic volume of Hasidic Torah, the Toldot Yaakov Yosef.
He presents the story of Yitro as our fight against materiality, luxury, and excess. I do not tend to hear many homilies against the physical anymore, and barely any against excess. Torah is no longer a means to get beyond the material world. Now, we get Hasidic homilies about the need to embrace the physical world and the earthly part of our lives.

“Yitro heard,” then he came to meet the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai. “What was it that Yitro heard that caused him to come?” “He heard about two things: the splitting of the Red Sea and the war against Amalek” (Zevachim 116 cf. Mikhilta and Rashi).
First, why should he have been impressed by these two miracles in particular? Second, why should that have led him to come to the Jews? [Third, why do we care what happened “What was was” The Torah is not a story. This verse has a moral lesson for every individual at all times.—- I will deal with this below]

A human being is composed of materiality and form: the body and soul. Our soul is constantly aflame to cling to our Maker. But our physicality interrupts that clinging with its desires for physical things, such as sex and food…. The influence of our physicality creates an obstruction between ourselves and God. When we sin, an additional barrier is formed since the physical grows stronger than the form and seeks excesses of luxuries, more than a person needs in order to sanctify himself.
Yitro represents the state of withholding ourselves from the excess (Play on the word yitro for additional). To remove the obstruction of our physicality and the barrier of our sins, we need the splitting of the Red Sea and the war against Amalek.
[Rest of homily is from Alsheikh and Olalot Ephraim on splitting of Red Sea and defeat of Amelek as representing a splitting of materiality and a defeat of our evil inclination.]
When we hold ourselves back from unnecessary pleasures, represented by Yitro–we overcome the two obstacles that divide us from God. Our physicality, which is represented by the splitting of the Red Sea, and we overcome our sins, which is represented by the victory over Amalek.

In contrast, 180 years later the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Basi Legani spoke about using physicality to serve God, there should be dirah batahtonim. As an example of the new type of homily on Yitro, here is one by my friend Professor Tali Loewenthal.

The Midrash is intriguing. It says this first word Anokhi is Egyptian, because G-d wanted to speak with us in the language we had learnt while we were in Egypt. G-d does not want to relate to us only on the sacred, spiritual level of our lives, represented by Hebrew, the holy language. He wants to reach the earthly “Egyptian” dimension as well. We should not try to pretend that we do not have this lower aspect. Rather, we should try to control it, then elevate it and ultimately transform it into something holy.

I could have done this post equally well with Mitnagdut. We do not give the homilies of the Vilna Gaon and other eighteenth century Lithuanians who were puritanical or ascetic, other-worldly, fasting often, avoiding sleeping and eating, hiding from the sunlight and seeking inner angelic guides. Herman Wouk stated that we are clearly not the Vilna Gaon anymore. Currently we seen to have effaced this difference and portray a GRA of our own presentism.

What happened to our tradition of transcending the physical? Maybe serving God with the physical has reached its limits for our age and we need to return to the Jewish tradition of getting beyond our physicality?

George Harrison: Living in the material world

I’m living in the material world
Living in the material world
can’t say what I’m doing here
But I hope to see much clearer,
after living in the material world

I got born into the material world
Getting worn out in the material world
Use my body like a car,
[skipped the middle of the song]

While I’m living in the material world
Not much ‘giving’ in the material world
Got a lot of work to do
Try to get a message through
And get back out of this material world

My salvation from the material world

To return to what I skipped above in the homily by R. Yaakov Yosef:
Third, why do we care what happened “What was, was.” The Torah is not a story: “The Torah of Hashem is complete” This verse has a moral lesson for every individual at all times.

Rabbi Yaakov Yosef .does not value treating the Torah as an accounts of the past or as a story of earthy matters. What was, was! The past is past. To matter the Torah has to be eternal and not in the past. The Torah is eternal wisdom beyond its story. In this, he undercuts those who treat the Bible as literary narrative or as history. Rather than fit the Bible into a modern category, it is treated as eternal wisdom for the adept. I do not hear much of that anymore either. But I do find a serious rejection of history.

This past Sukkot, while sitting in a Sukkah with many people, I mentioned that I can date a hasidic story to within about ten years. Especially since most of them are 20th century inventions, reflecting the issues of that decade. In an instant, someone sitting at the other end of the Sukkah declared: “That is just like a Bible critic. You cannot date Hasidic texts because that is what Biblical critic do.”

5 Comments

Posted in Neo-Hasidism, popular religion, Uncategorized

Tagged George Harrison, hasdism, hasidic stories, Lubavitcher Rebbe, materialism, Tali Lowenthal, toldot yaakov yosef, Vilna Gaon, yitro

Happiness, Salinger, and Popular Religion.

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Alan Brill | 1 comment

Rav Soloveitchik in his famous footnote number four in Halakhic Man spends over two pages decrying the seeking of happiness and solace through religion. For him, true religion is about psychic upheavals, pangs, and torments from anxiety, anguish and tension. He claims that those who seek the stillness of peace and tranquility are non-Orthodox Jews and are “Typical of this attitudes the Christian Science movement.” Leaving aside the empiricism of this statement, he would not be sanguine about the current Orthodox emphasis on instant happiness through Torah, outreach by promising happiness, or the goal of producing studies to show the happiness quotient of Orthodoxy.

In today’s NYT, there is a review of recent literature that critiques happiness. The quotes speak for themselves on the happiness industry as silly. There are five basic principles of a benign happiness that would apply to the followers of any denomination or Church. And that true happiness is a fleeting emotion related to the peaks of the transient not to a warm bed, friends, and a job.

Smart people often talk trash about happiness, and worse than trash about books on happiness, and they have been doing so for centuries — just as long as other people have been pursuing happiness and writing books about it. The fashion is to bemoan happiness studies and positive psychology as being the work not of the Devil (the Devil is kind of cool), but of morons. “

In “Bright-Sided,” Barbara Ehrenreich recently looked with dismay at what she views as the industry of happiness, a culture bludgeoned by insistent — even aggressive — good cheer.

We could canvass Gore, Rubin, Gilbert, the Dalai Lama and the many authors on the happier.com Web site and produce the Fundamentally Sound, Sure-Fire Top Five Components of Happiness: (1) Be in possession of the basics — food, shelter, good health, safety. (2) Get enough sleep. (3) Have relationships that matter to you. (4) Take compassionate care of others and of yourself. (5) Have work or an interest that engages you.

The real problem with happiness is neither its pursuers nor their books; it’s happiness itself. Happiness is like beauty: part of its glory lies in its transience. It is deep but often brief (as Frost would have it), and much great prose and poetry make note of this. Frank Kermode wrote, “It seems there is a sort of calamity built into the texture of life.” To hold happiness is to hold the understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies.

In honor of Salinger’s death, many tributes have been placed on the web. (I am still waiting for an Abrahm Sutzkever tribute with content.) Fifty years ago, a theologically oriented literary critic noted that the success of J. D. Salinger was to offer us the torments of hell that we can enjoy. Salinger’s characters rejected the cant of society including its petty views of happiness for a more exquisite torment of those who truly hope.

The literary critic Donald Barr wrote “Saints, Pilgrims and Artists” for Commonweal more than fifty years ago, in 1957, but its analysis remains sharp and insightful

Most of Salinger’s work, therefore, is about those who think they are in hell, a place where the soul suffers according to its qualities, and without escape.

Ordinarily, we all are interested in hell. Ten people have read and enjoyed the Inferno for every one who has read the Purgatorio or the Paradiso. It is fun; like looking at real estate, it gives us a sense of our own possibilities. But Salinger’s hell is different. It is hell for the good, who can feel pain, who really love or hope to love. On the gate of this hell we do not read the words, “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.” Hope is not abandoned here—hope is the implement of torture, hope deferred. We identify ourselves both with the victims and the devils. And it is not strange real estate. It is home.

Salinger wrote in the 1950’s. Hudnut-Beumler in his Looking for God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream and Its Critics. 1945-1965 points out the role of solace and happiness in 1950’s religion and the importance of the jeremiads against it by the intellectuals.

In 1946 Rabbi Joshua Liebman, a leading Reform rabbi promised happiness through organized religion in his best seller Peace of Mind, which reached #1 on the NYT charts. In the 1950’s, many Churches took his advice. As did most modern Orthodox rabbis in the RCA who wrote definitive books on the Jewish Way in Love and Marriage or in Death and Mourning. Happiness and psychological well-being was promised as the immediate reward of the rituals.

We have just lived through a period similar to the 1950’s, with simple answers and projected resolutions of all problems through organized religion. Barbara Ehrenreich and Amy Bloom now and Salinger and Rav Soloveitchik in the 1950’s, remind us that there is more to religion than simplistic quotients of happiness.

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Tagged amy bloom, barbara ehrenreich, frank Kermode, happiness, Hudnut-Beumle, Joshua Liebman, Looking for God in the Suburbs:, Rabbi Soloveitchik, salinger

1980’s and the coining of the term post-orthodox

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Alan Brill | 1 comment

I first heard the term post-orthodox in the mid 1980’s. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s some people chose to attend the new resurgent Orthodox institutions and pick Orthodoxy as their religious choice. They were part of a small elite group that first attended the new after HS year in Israel programs, first learned to speak of a halakhic universe, and first accepted Torah uMadda. Whereas many of their peers still thought of Orthodoxy as the urban ethnic traditionalism that still looked backwards to a Yiddish orthodoxy, they were a new vanguard of an upper-middle class educated triumphalist Orthodoxy.

By the mid-1980’s, however, there was already a minority group that went oops!! What did we do? They wanted out. The word post-orthodox meant that in the sorting hat of the 1980’s they chose to be orthodox and they were already over that ill fated decision. The term did not catch on because most people who used the term, with time, left orthodoxy for other denominations. A variety of authors used the term post-orthodox in the late 1980’s But only a very small number of tortured souls kept the drama going for decades. The most famous of those who kept the drama going for years is Rebecca Goldstein, who even moved to Teaneck and then to Highland Park before checking out. There is a review of her new book in Today’s NYT.

Seltzer’s rebellions — rejecting Orthodox Judaism, shrugging off the influence of a controlling mentor, and coming up with a theory for the meaning of life and love that excludes supernatural agency — mirror Goldstein’s own. These preoccupations recur throughout her work. In her 1983 novel “The Mind-Body Problem,” she wrote of a dishy lapsed Modern Orthodox Jewish philosophy student who ditched faith for scholarship, then tried to acquire genius by marrying one.

Even in her nonfiction, like “Betraying Spinoza” (2006), a study of the famous philosopher who was ejected from Amsterdam’s Jewish community for his heretical views, she merged her personal history with her idol’s. Now almost 60, Goldstein remains fascinated by the codes and beliefs she absorbed in her Orthodox girlhood and continues to transmit her defiance and doubts to her characters.

Goldstein shows that philosophers and scholars may construct as many proofs or disproofs of divinity as they like. But to people of faith such questions remain as inarguable as the persistence of kugel.

Her 1983 novel “The Mind-Body Problem” presented most of her frustrations with Orthodoxy and her fantasies of life outside of Orthodoxy. Yet, since Orthodoxy was still growing in institutional strength and social capital, her critiques were waved off as bad personal experience. Or at best, it offered glimpse into some of the more risqué parts of Upper West Side Modern Orthodox life. – the occasional sin, libidinal encounters, and philosophic doubt was socially within the bounds of a society created by collective Shabbat meals. But the term post-orthodoxy disappeared because either one chose to move to an orthodox neighborhood or one did not. Religion was in vogue for the next 25 years. and why gripe about things when all is going well?

As an aside, in the 1990’s, the term had a brief life when those who had been trained as Orthodox and who taught Kabbalah and Hasidut gravitated to the Renewal movement and New Age worlds. They could claim to offer the best of the “secrets” of the Kabbalah but in a freer, eclectic, non-traditional, post-Orthodox way.

In both of these cases it referred to isolated individuals, not to a mood or social change, and certainly not to anything in liberal modern Orthodoxy.

Update- But neither of these two prior uses has much to do with the current sense that seems, at least to me, as similar to the phrase post-evangelical. A moment that will have diverse sociological implications. In the current version there is a sense that the last 25 years are over, and that for those of gen y – millennials orthodoxy has lost its former coolness, people are seeking to create new definitions and/or ignoring current ones, and that the last 25 years is treated in a more limited and humble way accepting its strengths and faults. Time will tell what it brings in all directions. But I dont see it as connected to baby-boomer liberalism. Even among the Evangelicals, it is used by diverse groups including those who have opted out, those who have created the more spirit driven Emergent Church, those mainline Evangelicals who have started new projects, and as a name for a new era that would also include the opposition. And now back to philosophy. I will report on Habermas and Theology next week.

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Posted in popular religion

Tagged modern orthodoxy, post-orthodox, post-orthodoxy, rebecca Goldstein

Tu bShevat Seder -with Text

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Alan Brill | 8 comments

One year on tu b’shevat someone (a second career retiree) brought Rav Soloveitchik some bokser before shiur. After chuckling, Rav Soloveitchik told a story about how Rabbi DZ Hoffman would ask on his oral semikha exams – where is Tu bshevat in the shulkan arukh? (ANS-tahanun). Then someone (I don’t remember who) mentioned that Rav Kook on is exams would ask: what to do when you fnd a mistake in the Torah during Torah-reading?

Tu bshevat generated a piyyut for the amidah – found in the Cairo Genizah and is mentioned already by the Maharil in the 15^th century. But by the end of the 17^th century, in grand baroque age, the holiday generated a detailed seder of collecting 30 fruits. (There is a ton of painfully incorrect history about Tu bShevat on the web)

Twenty years ago, it was still hard to collect 30 fruits. But with the revolution in eating habits and the opening of new markets (Fairway, Whole Foods) one can now collect 30 fruits with ease. In 19^th century Russia, even mid-summer one could with great difficulty only collect half the number.

It has made a come-back in certain circles. The seder will probably remain limited in its practitioners for a variety of reasons.

1] To collect 30 fruits based a set typology is a very tactile, crunchy, foody, techie activity. Most American Orthodox Jews don’t regularly shop for papaya, fresh lychees, gooseberries, dragon fruit, guavas, tamarind fruit, hickory nuts, and kumquats.

2] The seder assumes that one is comfortable with Zohar as one’s table talk. In America, this limits it to academics, Renewal Jews, Neo-Hasidim, and Moroccans.

3] The seder is a performance ritual. Most modern orthodox Jews have a difficult time with ritual. performance. Watch them struggle to get into hoshanot.

4] One has to have a visionary and narrative religion.

5] One has to have a meaningful understanding, beyond rationalism and irrationalism, of tikkunim, theurgy, magic, and religious cause and effect.

6] When you are told that Rav Kook avoided onions because they are all kelipot – it must resonate with you. .

Once, when Rav Abraham Kook was walking in the fields, lost deep in thought, the young student with him inadvertently plucked a leaf off a branch. Rav Kook was visibly shaken by this act, and turning to his companion he said gently, “Believe me when I tell you I never simply pluck a leaf or a blade of grass or any living thing, unless I have to.” He explained further, “Every part of the vegetable world is singing a song and breathing forth a secret of the divine mystery of the Creation.” For the first time the young student understood what it means to show compassion to all creatures. (Wisdom of the Mystics)

For those emailing me requesting sources:

Here is the traditional Pri Etz Hadar in English. This is the entire Seder- go for this.

Hillel Collegiate shortened version

A Chabad crib sheet

A nice article- with footnotes Tu Bishvat in Contemporary Rabbinical Literature

Reb Shlomo on Tu Bshevat

Excursus on Hemdat Yamim.The printed edition of the seder comes from the beautiful work Hemdat Yamim, which teaches the “customs of Safed” in a first person narrative, pretending to be a 16^th century person from Safed. .According to current research, the work includes quotes of various Kabbalist customs from 1550 to 1715 from a variety of kabbalistic groups in Jerusalem, Safed, Italy, Turkey, Greece, and Amsterdam. Much of this material was attributed to the Ari, since anything based on Safed must be Ari. In this 150 period, there are over 300 little minhag books of Safed custom. Hemdat Yamin has many of them and collates them for us. To do any serious work on these customs one has to really be prepared to look at a large number of these books.

Isaiah Tishby places the editor in the circle of Kabbalists from Smyrna, and Benayahu attributed it to one member of the group, Israel Yaakov Al Ghazi, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.

The book mixes customs based on Cordovero, Luria, Azikiri, ibn Makir, the Peri Hadash of Amsterdam, Nathan of Gaza and others. A recent article by Moshe Fogel in JSJT, shows that even if it has Sabbatian hymns written by Nathan of Gaza (such as the Atkinah Seudata for Yom Tov), it has no explicit Sabbatian theology or belief in Shabbati Zevi. And for those following Lithuanian tradition, both the Gra and Haayim of Volozhin accepted Hemdat Yamim.

(Think of using a potential Sabbatian custom as similar to the tune to Birkat Hamazon sung today in every Day School, which was commissioned by Mordechai Kaplan. It does not make those schools into Reconstructionist ideologically. It only shows that there are cultural overlaps and that one is part of a larger set of concerns called American Jewry. )

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Posted in holidays, kabbalah, popular religion

Tagged DZ Hoffman, hemdat yamim, kabbalah, moshe fogel, peri etz hadar, pri etz hadar, Rav Kook, tu be shevat, tu bishevat, tu bshevat

Post Orthodoxy and Post Evangelicalism again

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Alan Brill | 8 comments

Since many did feel there is something to the comparison between Post-evangelical and Post-Orthodoxy, I will continue exploring it a bit more.

Sometimes there are moments that capture a certain feeling. 1946-7 was the feeling of the returning GI not going back to his hometown. 1959-was the threat of nuclear attack, 1968 was the sexual revolution and the counter-culture, and 1984 was the year of the Yuppie.None of these moments create a denomination they affect all denominations. The returning GI’s created all the suburban congregations of all denominations.

And the social mood of the returning GI’s- should not be quickly conflated with Film Noir and French Existentialism of the same years. Different trends and mood can occur at the same time.

This year is a sense of the post-Evangelical era. (There is also post-Mormonism) It may not really kick-in for another few years. (The same way that those people who watch MadMen are able to see that things are unraveling toward the late 1960’s.) Evangelical religion was driven back by a variety of things such as the Scopes trial and Elmer Gantry in 1926. It retreated and then in the 1950’s wanted to be modern, educated and relevant. It wanted to show that it does not have to be seen as backwards, rather it should be seen as intellectual and modern. It started growing again as a reaction to the 1970’s. By the 1990’s they were seen as mainstream. They could show themselves as doctors, lawyers, and politicians; they are no longer backward.

Traditional Orthodoxy was Yiddish speaking and seen as not modern, not scientific, not family oriented, not democratic, not educated. Post WWII Modern Orthodoxy responded to these limits with concern for the modern. Then, with the return to religion in the 1980’s, Centrist Orthodoxy embraced conservative positions on social and cultural issues combined with an identification with Yuppie values (The latter point itself is big and important topic). And like the new Evangelicals, it effaced history and had a non sacramental approach (mizvot no longer change the worlds and performance is not cultivated). It shared a dispensational eschatology with evangelicals, Biblical promises are happening now but only as applied to Israel.

To return to the original Post-Evangelical post. The Christian Blogger IM in his post What Do I Mean by Post-Evangelical? August 7, 2006 notes some the history outlined above. He notes that Evangelicals were “Attempting, and largely failing, to establish a non-fundamentalist identity.” He offers a variety of thought of new turns of thought including: there is more possibilities in the classic texts and more relevant interpretations than currently taught; the boundaries of in and out matter less and the current boundary may not be true, creed is important but it is not to be used in an authoritarian way, show respect to those of other denominations; interpretation only occurs in a complex human matrix; the meaning does not fall from the sky in a magical or timeless way; He also notes that he does not worry if some post-evangelicals are heretical or out of step- it will sort itself out over time. He states that the clergy’s role is not to define who is right and wrong. We need to return to the sources and to the spirit (experience, prophecy, intuition).

We must be aware that there is far more in the Bible than the Reformation dealt with, and that many of our problems today are addressed by those hitherto unnoticed or undeveloped aspects of the Bible.

Those who want to bang the drum for a 450-year old tradition are dooming themselves to irrelevance. Our only concern is to avoid being beat up by them as they thrash about in their death-throes. I mean that I do not recognize the boundary lines of American evangelicalism as the boundary lines of true Christianity. I mean that creeds and confessions have positive and defining roles, but do not function as popes and unassailable authorities.

I mean that it has become virtually impossible to practice any form of Christian community that does not interact in some way with the larger church in history and reality. (I salute those who attempt to practice pure forms of fundamentalism, etc. They have my respect.) I mean that I do not share the hostility and suspicion of all things Catholic or catholic that is endemic to evangelicalism. I mean that I recognize that Christian belief emerges from a matrix of the text of Holy Scripture, the history of interpretation, cultural and sub-cultural presuppositions, the use of reason, the place of experience, the wisdom of the teachers of the larger church and the work of the Holy Spirit in revealing more light. I embrace this more complex understanding of Christian belief as part of the great stream of Christian existence, and I reject any notions that Christian belief falls from the sky as a magic book that exists apart from other components of human experience.

I mean that words like “postmodern,” “emerging” and “missional” are in the process of being defined and filled with meaning, and are not to be ridiculed and rejected out of hand because some who use them are out of step or even heretical.

I mean that I reject the idea that the primary role of a minister is to define other Christians as wrong. . I mean that the death of evangelicalism opens the door for a return to the sources…I mean that our reverence for previous epochs and events in church history must be tempered with an awareness that the work of the Holy Spirit in the church continues, and what was believed in the past is not immune from the light that may break forth in the ongoing present.

Full version here.

And in the article on the Emergent Church that I posted here “The Emergent Church and Orthodoxy” the author listed at least four points worth considering: Prophecy, greater focus on worship and ritual, not being worried about boundaries, and liberal politics.

I ask the Gen-Y/Millennials out there: How do they see themselves different than Centrism? What do they think are the sins and excesses of Centrism?

I ask again: How much of this is applicable to changes within Orthodoxy? Does it sound familiar? Are their differences? Is this change inevitable? Which of these will change Orthodoxy more and which will change it less?

If I wanted I could collect the Facebook answers to the info line “Religious Views” to show that something is up. I have hundreds of examples of those raised Orthodox defining themselves in all sorts of convoluted ways. Don’t worry I will not do it, but a such a listing of self-identifications bespeaks a mood.

Remember, this is a moment or a mood – not an ideology or denomination. Post-evangelical is like Yuppie or returning GI – a set of values that will play itself out in a variety of diverse ways. How will these winds blow over the face of traditional practice? What will be the VARIED responses? I await details from those in the field.

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Posted in popular religion, sociology

Tagged post-evangelical, post-orthodox, post-orthodoxy

Hybrid Orthodoxy: American religion and sexuality

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Alan Brill | 3 comments

Orthodox graduate students are comfortable speaking of the influence of Greek ideas on Judaism, and will even homiletically explain it as zeh leumat zeh (that Jewish ideas correspond to the outside world.) And they are comfortable with their treating the Guide of Perplexed as Aristotelian (even if Maimonides himself thought the content was Torat Moshe). But most are not as comfortable situating twentieth century Judaism in those terms.

My online reader feed of web sources contains material from many faiths and they often reports on the same events occurring in several communities, within several months of the other communities and sometimes within weeks or even days. For example, having a gay speaker come to speak to the community and then the follow-up issues has occurred in many Evangelical colleges in the last year. Here is a story of a gay Christian speaking to an Evangelical college. I am not interested in the GLBT issues or the “Torah view” or identical “Christian view.”

I am interested in what is the conception of history that makes this possible? How do we formulate the way Jews are cultural embedded with Christians in America. What is the cultural construction? What is the hybrid? Why does the issue arise in the same months? Why does it get resolved by having a panel? Why are the arguments on both sides the same? Why does the institution react the same way on both sides? Why does the negative reaction seen similar to the Christian response rather than the traditional Jewish language and practices of tikkunim? When Anglicans, Episcopalians, the Conservative movement within Judaism all debate the same points within a 2 year span, it seems natural. But when Orthodox Jews and Evangelicals do the same thing within months, as they do, is it just as natural?

01/11/2010 – Jonathan Odell A gay Christian speaks to fundamentalists

Last year I got a call from an administrator at a Midwestern seminary with a reputation for its “take no prisoners” conservative theology. He had permission to conduct a series of seminars on hot-button issues like abortion, stem-cell research, and gay marriage. His plan was to bring in a succession of speakers, one to take the pro side of an issue, followed by a second to present the opposing view. I took a deep breath. I knew what was coming next. “We want you to take the pro side on homosexuality,” he said.

“Yippee,” I thought. “I get to argue for Satan.” So I asked him, “Why me?” Why me indeed…. Several years earlier I had given a reading on the same campus. It was from my novel. But I hadn’t come out as gay then, only as a Baptist.

“Actually,” the caller said, “I had heard you were gay before you showed up.” He told me that when the dean found out I was coming, he had done his best to cancel my reading. I had not known at the time that my gay presence was sufficient to cause a scandal. What would happen if I were to actually talk about it?

The administrator pleaded his case. “I want you to come here not only because you’re gay, but because you’re religious. You’ve obviously held on to your spiritual beliefs.” I didn’t tell him I’d been able to retain my faith by steering clear of the hateful fundamentalists that universities like his turned out. Instead, I lied and told him I’d think about it.

His reaction afterwards

I’m here because whether I like it or not, you are in my life and I need to somehow make peace with that part of my life.”

But something interesting happened next, during the Q and A. The questions were not the ones I had expected. Instead, students asked thoughtfully about my life and my struggle with religion. “How do you as a gay man experience the presence of Christ in your life?” “How do you handle Christians who reject you without knowing your story?” “If your parents had not accepted you, what do you think you would have done?”

I would like to say everybody involved went on to live happily ever after, but life doesn’t work that way. A few professors whose students were at the session complained to the dean about my being allowed to speak. Some of the seminarians attending the session decided to push for a campus support group for friends of the GLBT community. The dean, alarmed, charged a committee to create a list of faculty and students who challenged the institution’s policy on homosexuality.

Read the full version here.

I am only interested in how we explain this culturally and historically. Is the historic process any different than Centrism’s adoption of supply-side economics and moral majority rhetoric during the Reagan era? Is this any different than everyone responding to premarital sexuality in 1966-1970? Those are the years when the youth groups started having sessions on the tensions and difficulties of keeping “negiah” where everyone gets to state their difficulties in keeping the prohibition. And the thousand year tradition of a “pot of filth” became a “hedge of roses” (find the article by Jonah Steinberg online for more details.

How does the hybrid of Judaism and American religion work?

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Posted in popular religion

Tagged hybrid relgion, Orthodox gays, Orthodox sexuality

Catholic Schools and Jewish Day Schools

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Alan Brill | 25 comments

In the 1960’s the Catholic Ghetto walls came down. In the 1950’s Catholics went to Catholic school, lived in Catholic enclaves, and had all their social needs met by the catholic community. One only left for graduate school or when certain professions required one to have non-Catholic co-workers. In the nineteen sixties, everything changed. Catholics wanted in live in new locations, new suburbs and exurbs, the idea that one should only live around Catholics declines and the cultural revolution of the 1960’s called into question the provincialism and parochialism of these enclaves. Some of these Catholic Ghettos dissolved entirely – from near total allegiance to the Church to minimal attendance, and even then only by the elderly.

Catholic teaching taught that building a parochial school is more important than a Church and that one would lose one’s faith in public school. Jews at this point were in favor of public schools, and many of the orthodox saw day schools as entirely unneeded for girls and a hot bed of Zionism.

The question is: Can the Orthodox Jewish community learn anything from the Catholic example? Are there things to learn about rapid declines of enclaves? Are there any reasons it wont happen to places like Teaneck? Will the young gen y- millennials share their parents Modern Orthodox provincialism? What about when they move to new cities, new professions or disdain living with the gen-x’ers? Dont just say we are committed to our religion in a way that Catholics are not. Catholics were more committed and had a much longer tradition of day schools.

Let’s turn to day schools. The Catholic system lost most of its attendees in the nineteen sixties. By the end of the decade they were down to 15%. N ow 40 years later they find themselves as an unsustainable system strapped for cash and may have to close. What can Orthodox Jews learn from it? I am not sure but we should ask ourselves what we can learn.

The quotes below are from a variety of papers. Some are based on a 2007 Notre Dame Study and some from the Bergen county schools. One factor they cite is that without nuns they have to pay real salaries for teachers. Is anyone here old enough to remember when Jewish day school teachers were seriously underpaid? We cannot go back to hiring Holocaust survivors who don’t live in our communities or to being months behind on salary payments.

Also many Jews and Catholics went to parochial school to avoid the public school in immigrant neighborhoods. We don’t live in immigrant neighborhoods anymore and many public schools are of the same class and caste as the parochial schools. The article also points out that we expect more. We are not first generation college bound anymore. There are currently high expectations for a school. When parents were lacking in either general or Jewish studies they expected less. Now what?

Many parents of children in Catholic schools attended these schools themselves and look back nostalgically at a day when Catholic schools, just a step past “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” were staffed by nuns, brothers and priests. Today, however, they account for a mere 4% of the staff, many of them in administration.

The glory days of the U.S. Catholic parochial school are gone, according to a new University of Notre Dame report, and the church must rethink its mission in order to recapture the school system’s lost luster.
The nuns and priests who educated generations of American Catholics are almost gone, retired or deceased.. Faculty salaries are too low while tuitions and costs are rising, the report says.

Catholic schools are in steep decline, their enrollment having “steadily dropped by more than half from its peak of five million 40 years ago.”Among the better-known reasons: 1) nuns and priests who once staffed teaching positions have retired and their ranks have not been renewed in the near-total absence of new American “vocations”; 2) as urban Catholics suburbanized over the past two generations, Church officials for various reasons did not choose to follow them out by establishing suburban schools in large numbers; 3) having fully entered the mainstream of American life, Catholics are less drawn than previously to separate institutions.

There was a time when parochial schools seemed almost omnipresent, when the daily migration of kids in plaid clothes seemed to fill every street. However, with enrollments plummeting and one school after another closing its doors, the torrent of Catholic school kids has become a trickle, and it looks like the days of Catholic education may well be numbered.

When it comes to Catholic education in America, the numbers are downright startling. In 1965, approximately half of all Catholic families sent their kids to parochial schools; today, roughly 15% do so. While there are numerous reasons for this, the big one seems to be that the cost of parochial school has vastly increased. Once upon a time, Catholic classes were largely taught by clerics. Today, however, fewer Catholics are choosing to enter the priesthood or the nunnery; in fact, one statistic states that there are presently more nuns over 90 than under 50 years old.

Another concern has been a reduction in religious definition. For many people, Catholicism has become less of an all-consuming lifestyle and more of a part-time identity. Where Catholic education was once a responsibility for Catholic parents, it is increasingly becoming an expensive luxury.

Furthermore, in areas where public education has improved, parochial education has suffered. For example, in Northern Virginia, where I grew up, Catholic schools once offered the best educational choices. However, as the area’s schools have improved, Catholic education has simply become a more expensive option.

You might have not seen the former paragraphs which were from NYT and other papers. But what about those who live in Bergen county? Did you not see the Bergen record two months ago? Has anyone called any of the Catholic parochial schools to see if anything can be brainstormed together? This article is on the remaining 15% of Catholics still going to parochial school having to leave because of the 2009 recession. They closed 40 out of 137 schools in the last few years. In addition, the local public schools which uses licensed teachers are currently seen as offering a superior education.

Bergen Record – Catholic schools enrollment drop blamed on economy
Friday, November 13, 2009 BY TONY GICAS

CLIFTON — The economic downturn has created frightening unemployment rates, forced many Americans to foreclose on their homes, brought sticker shock into the nation’s grocery stores and has even changed the way people plan their children’s education.

More specifically, many New Jerseyans have either decided to take their children out of parochial schools or send them to public schools because of the financial commitment required at most Catholic schools.

According to Brian Gray, a spokesman for the National Catholic Education Association, enrollment at America’s Catholic schools reached its peak in the 1960s with about 5.2 million students. By 1980 that number had dropped to approximately 3.1 million and last year the nationwide enrollment hit 2.19 million.

In September 2000, the Newark Archdiocese had 137 grade schools in Union, Essex, Hudson and Bergen counties. Now, it has just 97. The school population in neighboring Paterson jumped by 1,000 students this year, a 3.5 percent increase in the district that has about 28,000 students, the district reported.

“I think down the line if the economy continues this way the tuition at parochial schools will remain unaffordable to many and the numbers will continue to decline,” Tardalo said.

“Therefore they may desire a private education for their children, but if they have to they’ll opt to send their children to a public school.”

He said parochial schools offered “an equivalent educational experience” during his time as a Catholic school principal, however he did stipulate their teachers do not face the same licensing requirements as public school teachers.

I exclude from my discussion the wealthy Jewish prep schools like Ramaz becuase they are based on having a financial endowment and have a different constituency. The question remains- Will the average Jewish days schools decline the way the Catholic schools did? Why not? Why do we think we have a more sustainable system than the Catholic schools? Even if everyone struggles to keep their kids in their current day school, will those 10 years younger than you want to enter this rat race? Will your kids want to continue this struggle? Anyone have good data about those moving to the new Sun Belt suburbs? I have no solutions, only historical questions.

This post came from running into a neighbor HF in the grocery for whom this is a major concern. It is a write-up of a discussion that occurred by meat aisle. I do want to write this up as an op-ed at some point.

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Tagged day school tuition, day schools, yeshiva tuition

Religious Experience Reconsidered

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Alan Brill | 7 comments

There is an interview with Ann Taves, professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa. Her latest book is Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things.

Her first book was a great analysis of religious experiences from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century Fits, Trances, and Visions: experiencing religion and explaining experience from Wesley to James. “From the mid-18th to the early 20th century, believers and skeptics clashed over the question of whether God was supernaturally present in these experiences, or whether they were merely natural expressions of physical disease or psychological disorder. William James, who argued that charismatic spirituality was both natural and religious.” She showed how American charismatics waiting for grace to move their souls moved to a more external revivalism. She also showed that religious experience became identified with the psychological unconscious, which was opposed by those who believed we only have Locke’s conscious mind.

This was great because it helped explain in detail the unfolding of Eastern European Hasidut and Mitnagdut as the nineteenth and twentieth century progressed. Besht, Maggid of Mezerich, Kotzk, and Rav Kook could all be placed in a sequence in the domestication of the supernatural. The eastern European topics of devekut, a sense of providence, God as immanent in the mind each found a similar chapter in Taves. She was also very good for dealing with topics like the angelic visitors –maggid of the Vilna Gaon and the rejection of much of the Gaon’s thought by Neo-Orthodoxy and Modern Orthodoxy, the latter basically following Locke. The Jewish tradition had the supernatural ever present in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In her new book, she writes from the current perspective in which mysticism and religious experience are outdated terms. She wanted to reframe the discussion to special experiences that we frame as religious. In this book she is now theologian-theoretician. We do not have the traditional supernatural sense of God anymore, so what do we label as religious? She works on the psychological and the social together.

In the last 20 years or so that approach came in for sharp criticism. Many scholars wanted to get away from it because it seemed to suggest an experiential essence of religion and turned instead to analyzing discourses about experience. But I don’t think we can afford to throw experience out, because embodied experience is where culture and biology meet.

First of all, rather than “religious experience,” we can talk about “experiences deemed religious.”

Next, I locate experience under the broader heading of consciousness studies, ranging from highly reflective, self-aware meta-consciousness to unconscious processes. Once we can put experience in that kind of framework, it is possible to look at the interpretive processes, or what I call attributional processes, to understand how certain kinds of experiences in certain kinds of contexts come to be understood as religious.

In my “building-block” method, I distinguish between single experiences and the way that those experiences get caught up in more complex formations. I was challenged by Robert Sharf’s writes about a Buddhist ceremony in which an abbot turns into the Buddha. I compare it with the Eucharist in Christianity; in both of those rituals, there is an experiential dimension. But the wafer turning into Christ or the abbot turning into the Buddha, according to each tradition, happens regardless of whether a given person who is present at the ritual has an unusual sensory experience. The social dimension, therefore, cannot be ignored; the event’s significance can’t be understood by focusing only on individuals.

It is interesting to me, for example, that researchers are finding parts of the brain that they can stimulate to cause people to have out-of-body experiences. While probably everybody who has an out-of-body experience is going to think it is unusual and interesting—if not scary—they will probably interpret it differently if they know that they’re sitting in a laboratory having neurological tests done than if they have that experience in the context of a religious worship service.

I’ve agonized a lot about the second-order terms that scholars should use, and I finally came upon the idea of “specialness.” Specialness has to do with ascriptions of value. In other words, it signifies how important something is to people. In some cases these things have a kind of Durkheimian sense of sacredness; they are considered so valuable that they’re set apart and protected by taboos. Specialness is a term that allows us to investigate where people position things along a continuum of value rather than simply assuming that people consider things in terms of binary oppositions such as “sacred” and “profane,” or “religious” and “secular.”

The idea of specialness will capture most of the things that people on the ground would describe with terms like “religious,” “sacred,” and sometimes even “secular” as well.
There are, inevitably, some practices that scholars would think of as religious that are so much an everyday part of practitioners’ lives that they don’t think of them as special. But if we look carefully at how people behave in relation to those things, we might be surprised. For instance, the practice of crossing oneself with holy water when entering a Catholic church may be so habitual for longtime Catholics that it feels totally ordinary. But if the practice were challenged or questioned in some way, they would probably have a sense that, in fact, this is a thing that sets them apart from other kinds of Christians. It is thus a special sign, so to speak, of participation within that tradition.

OK, so what is labeled as special in Judaism? Where are the things or rituals that seem to have a specialness even if they seem mundane? For some negel wasser in the morning may be more special than saying blessings and prayer, for others learning Gemara in the beit midrash has that quality- but they do not get the specialness outside of the beit midrash. What are the habitual rituals of special importance? Which are the rituals that are “special” and used to demarcate the “tradition”? And to return to her first book, which of these are rejections of the traditional supernaturalism and which are transformations? I would suspect that some of the most halakhic have the least continuity with the traditional moments of religious experience. Does experience show up more now as magic and fetish? Do all the various groups of modern orthodoxy have the same or different senses of special moments?

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Posted in popular religion

Tagged ann taves, mysticism, relgious experience, supernaturalism

Category Archives: popular religion

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Post-Orthodoxy and loss of the 20th century definition of Orthodoxy.

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Post Orthodoxy and Post Evangelicalism again

Hybrid Orthodoxy: American religion and sexuality

Catholic Schools and Jewish Day Schools

Religious Experience Reconsidered

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