Modern Denominationalism in the Jewish Journal

My grandmother pointed out this article to me as she raised questions about the current challenges and opportunities for Reform and Conservative Judaism today (really she just wants me to get a job in the future). Given our reading about the formation of Jewish denominations, I wanted to post the link here. While the founders of Reform Judaism were responding to a need, do the choices we make in Jewish institutions today reflect a true understanding of the population or are we grasping to find that niche that clicks?

Pastrami on Rye

Regarding our discussion about the impact of both our positive and negative anxieties on our interpretation of the Jewish story, here is more information about the Jewish food industry. Check out this article about Jewish delis and this one about the case of Langer's Bagels in the frozen food revolution. Note the excellent title of the second article.

How has food played a role in your Jewish story? How does our definitions of Jewish food reflect our regionalization and histories?

A crazy, super fascinating history of the term "Jewboy" as used by Israelis about Americans....

Courtesy of Chemi Shalev on Haaretz: Israeli anti-Semites and American Jewboys, From Dan Shapiro to Wyatt Earp


           

Early Documents of American Judaism

In an attempt to find the text of Shearith Israel's first constitution, modeled after the United States Constitution, I found this link to a Library of Congress exhibition of documents related to the history and development of American Judaism. Check it out here. I also discovered that the original constitution sold for $7,500 at a Sotheby's auction.

I was struck by the similarities between the conversations happening in the constitutions and charters of these earlier congregations and those we have today. We still are concerned with whom a congregation serves, how the community engages with the congregation and the meaning of membership. The balance between our American and Jewish heritage continues to influence our identity and engagement with American Jewish communities.

What other similarities exist between this early period of American Jewish History and today? What can we learn from the establishment of these communities to enlighten us to the conversations we will continue to have as organized Judaism changes and adapts?

Help Wanted: Cantor (Rabbis need not apply)

I was very surprised by the passage in the Marcus article that rabbis were not employed within synagogues until the early-1800's.  It was in fact cantors who were most commonly found in colonial America.  What trends of the colonial Jewish community may have led to this, and what do you think caused the sudden communal desire for rabbis to play a larger role?

Washington's Letter to the Newport Congregation

Here is a link to the letter! The last two paragraphs are particularly meaningful.  Can you spot the Kabbalistic teaching?

Getting ready for the beginning

Arnoldo di Arnoldi (Flemish, fl. 1590-1602)
America
Facsimile of a copper engraving, 36.4 x 47.0cm
Siena: Matteo Florimi, ca. 1600
Osher Collection
Overlay by Seth Klenk, 2001

If only...

Longfellow's "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport"

"The Jewish Cemetery at Newport"

Henry  Wadsworth Longfellow

 (from poetryfoundation.org)

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,

      Close by the street of this fair seaport town,

Silent beside the never-silent waves,

      At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep

      Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,

While underneath these leafy tents they keep

      The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,

      That pave with level flags their burial-place,

Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down

      And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.

The very names recorded here are strange,

      Of foreign accent, and of different climes;

Alvares and Rivera interchange

      With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

"Blessed be God! for he created Death!"

      The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace;"

Then added, in the certainty of faith,

      "And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease."

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,

      No Psalms of David now the silence break,

No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue

      In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain,

      And not neglected; for a hand unseen,

Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,

      Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,

      What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o'er the sea — that desert desolate —

      These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,

      Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;

Taught in the school of patience to endure

      The life of anguish and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread

      And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,

The wasting famine of the heart they fed,

      And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears.

Anathema maranatha! was the cry

      That rang from town to town, from street to street;

At every gate the accursed Mordecai

      Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand

      Walked with them through the world where'er they went;

Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,

      And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast

      Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,

And all the great traditions of the Past

      They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus forever with reverted look

      The mystic volume of the world they read,

Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,

      Till life became a Legend of the Dead.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!

      The groaning earth in travail and in pain

Brings forth its races, but does not restore,

      And the dead nations never rise again.