Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America

By Steven M. Cohen and Samuel C. Heilman

Book Overview

Far from simply vanishing in the face of modernity, Orthodox Jews in the United States today are surviving and flourishing. Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, both distinguished scholars of Jewish studies, have joined forces in this pathbreaking book to articulate this vibrancy and to characterize the many faces of Orthodox Jewry in contemporary America. Who are these Orthodox Jews? How have they survived, what do they believe and practice and how do they accommodate the tension between traditional Jewish and modern American values? Drawing on a survey of more than one thousand participants, the authors address these questions and many more.

Heilman and Cohen reveal that American Jewish Orthodoxy is not a monolith by distinguishing its three broad varieties: the "traditionalists," the "centrists," and the "nominally" orthodox. To illuminate this full spectrum of orthodoxy the authors focus on the "centrists," taking us through the dimensions of their ritual observances, religious beliefs, community life, and their social, political, and sexual attitudes. Both parochial and cosmopolitan, orthodox and liberal, these Jews are characterized by their dualism, by their successful involvement in both the modern Western world and in traditional Jewish culture. In painting this provocative and fascinating portrait of what Jewish Orthodoxy has become in America today, Heilman and Cohen's study also sheds light on the larger picture of the persistence of religion in the modern world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226324966
• ISBN13: 9780226324968
• Release Date: October 1989
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

One Traditional Subculture's Blueprint For Revival

While this book does have some minor shortcomings--such as a restricted sample and neglect of the "ultra-orthodox" wing of Judaism--I still give it five stars, in part because the authors have done us the rare favor of delving into the subject of how a traditionalist, religious subculture can not only survive but thrive in the midst of an alien dominant culture. It was not that long ago when assimilationist Jews and non-Jews alike were confidently predicting the inevitable demise of traditionalist Judaism... Yet at the same time there were other Jews who foresaw that the assimilationist or integrationist strategy could only lead to extinction. They imported traditional Jewish rabbis from the old country to lead their communities and funneled as many of their children as possible into Jewish religious schools, which the authors regard as decisive for traditionalism's unexpected success. Consequently, their faith remained sufficiently intense and their social cohesion and collective identity sufficiently strong to maintain birth rates comfortably above replacement level, high rates of religious observance, and low defection rates, even while their more secularized counterparts saw their birth rates plunge to a level persistently below replacement and their children begin to outmarry at a high rate. Not only did traditionalists defy the integrationists'confident prophecies of doom, but they seem to be growing even more traditional; that is, judging from the sample used for this book, the younger generation is actually *more* religiously observant than their traditionalist parents... Although the literary style of this academic treatise is dry, I very highly recommend it to anyone interested in the survival of embattled or endangered subcultures...