The Great Orthodox Comeback

The resurgence of Orthodoxy may be the most profound, and is certainly the most surprising, transformation of Judaism in the past 60 years. 

Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz  Benjamin Brown,  YIVO Encyclopedia.  How, after spending the first 55 years of his life as an unknown rabbi in Lithuania, the Hazon Ish came to be regarded as the successor to the slain religious authorities of Eastern Europe.  SAVE

Zionism and the Middle Path  Peggy Cidor,  Jerusalem Post.  Remaining faithful to the Hazon Ish's "middle path," many Haredim observe Israel's Independence Day as a celebration—but not a holiday.  SAVE

A Sabbath Chicken  Curt Leviant,  Jewish Review of Books.  Remembered by his student Chaim Grade, the Hazon Ish was as compassionate as he was nearsighted.  SAVE

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Reconstructionist rabbinical students.

Reconstructing Judaism

At a time when all three major Jewish denominations in America—Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform—find themselves in a state of deep internal fracture, a fourth and much smaller movement, Reconstructionism, has just voted to create a unified body to coordinate the activities of its lay and rabbinical arms.

Reconstructing Halakhah  Daniel Goldman Cedarbaum,  Reconstructionism Today.  Religious law is an essential component of Jewish life, but the traditional system must be brought into line with contemporary democratic sensibilities.  SAVE

Dim-Sum Jews  Ben Weiner,  Zeek.  As a respite from the Chinese-buffet model of optional Jewishness, a young rabbi turns wistfully to the "thickness" and "dense particularity" of cultural Yiddishkeit. (PDF, 2010)  SAVE

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Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

The Virtuoso of Judaism

Religious virtuosity comes in many forms. One of them is the ability to reconcile seeming irreconcilables, like faith and freedom, piety and intellect, revelation and science. The dream of synthesis has lured many in the past two centuries. One who seemed to live it was Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

By and About  Eli Turkel,  Tel Aviv University.  A massive Soloveitchik bibliography of primary and secondary works.  SAVE

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Baruch Spinoza.

Secularism and Its Discontents

The transformations of Jewish life in the last two-and-a-half centuries still boggle the mind. Deep ruptures opened to separate the present from the past, modernity from tradition, setting terms that have defined the contours of Jewish life until today. How did people try to think their way through the change?

Is Jewish Secularism Possible?  Rebecca Goldstein,  MyJewishLearning/Bronfman Foundation.  Secular Jewishness can ground itself in the extraordinary contributions that the Jewish people have made and have yet to make to human flourishing as a whole.  SAVE

Rethinking Secularism  David N. Myers,  University of Pennsylvania Library.  An online exhibition devoted to the complex interplay between the religious and the secular in modern Jewish history.  SAVE

An Incomplete Sketch  Yehouda Shenhav,  Haaretz.  A new Hebrew encyclopedia of Jewish secularism suffers from intellectual thinness and ideological blinders.  SAVE

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Eruv

One of the more obscure municipal systems knocked out of commission by late February's blizzards along the Atlantic seaboard were eruvim. These, as the New York Times explained, are networks of poles and wires that construct symbolic boundaries around Jewish communities, thus enabling the observant to carry objects through outdoor public spaces on the Sabbath.

The prohibition against carrying is of ancient vintage, attested in the book of Jeremiah (17:21-22): ". . . and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem; neither carry forth a burden out of your houses." The Talmud (Shabbat 96b) finds it implicit in Moses' command in Exodus (36:6) not to bring donations to the Tabernacle on the Sabbath. The prohibitions are also squarely laid out in the Dead Sea Scrolls, from where, according to the talmudic scholar Charlotte Fonrobert, the term eruv itself, literally "mixing," or sharing of property, entered the rabbinic lexicon. Expanding on the communal idea, the rabbis taught that erecting symbolic boundaries effectively created a neighborhood, a group house with many rooms, or what the late humorist Calvin Trillin termed "a magic schlepping circle." 

Recourse to eruvim grew in response to the shift from the largely pastoral settings of ancient Judaism to the increasingly urban milieu of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. In today's metropolises, the recent surge in eruv-building is a further sign of Orthdoxy's mounting self-assurance and, not least, of the desire of Orthodox women not to spend their Sabbaths confined indoors with stroller-age children. Eruvim have also been flashpoints, arousing sometimes bitter opposition both from those fearing an influx of large Orthodox families and from the more stringently Orthodox who see promiscuous eruv-building as yet another falling-away from rigorous observance.

What is certain is that today's eruv-builders have stretched the boundaries of communal living—and of the halakhic imagination. Eruv is, of course, a legal fiction—not, however, a trick to obviate God's command but an effort to retain the form, principle, and abiding authority of the law while adapting it to dramatically changed circumstances. Eruv shapes an imagined community, one whose spiritual and moral power, it is hoped, will be more than a match to its textual richness and legal creativity. 

String around the City  Sharonne Cohen,  MyJewishLearning.  The basics of eruv.  SAVE

Eruv News  Eruvonline.  A cornucopia of information and history.  SAVE

On the Waterfront  Adam Mintz,  Tradition/Seforim.  The rivers, the Third Avenue El, and the origins of the Manhattan eruv.  SAVE

History & Semacode  Elliott Malkin,  Dziga.  New technologies resurrect the old eruv in Lower Manhattan.  SAVE

Eruvim I've Walked Through  Ben Schachter.  Drawings in space, with acrylic and thread.  SAVE

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