Word: rabbies
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Paradoxically, during roughly the same period, assimilation ran into a countertrend. Orthodox and Conservative Jewry experienced a pronounced new growth in the U.S. Orthodox Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik describes the change: "When I came here in the 1930s [from Germany], there was a certain naivete, a great pride, a confidence in the American way of life. I'm not sure what the American way of life was, but everyone?including a great many Jews ?thought it was best. Jews wanted to disappear." That attitude began to shift, first merely in reaction to the Nazi disaster that had befallen Germany...
...moment, the answer appeared simple, even if it was not. Most Jews seemed to decide that to be a Jew was to commit oneself to Israel. In the five years since then, that answer has apparently remained sufficient for many Jews. Says Rabbi Robert Seigel, Hillel Foundation director for North Carolina: "Israel's survival is our survival...
Jews in this group may be completely secular?even atheist?or sometimes members of a denomination like Reform Judaism. They simply do not feel that formal ritual or denominational affiliation is crucial. Though a rabbi himself, Philadelphia's Jacob Chinitz insists that "it is membership in the Jewish people that ties a Jew to Judaism, not his membership in a synagogue...
...Rabbi Soloveitchik, Orthodoxy's most brilliant interpreter in the U.S., in sists that Orthodoxy and modern life can go hand in hand. A pre-eminent Talmudic authority at Manhattan's Yeshiva University, Soloveitchik sees the "divine disciplines" of Orthodoxy as part of "a great romance between men and God." Halakhic Precepts, he argues, are a natural dialectic of "advancement and withdrawal" ? six days of work, one of rest; 16 days of the month when husband and wife can have intercourse, twelve when they cannot because of restrictions surrounding the menstrual period. "Detail is important," says Soloveitchik. "Ethics pays attenion...
...that there are two categories of kosher food ? regular kosher, acceptable to most Orthodox, and glatt (smooth) kosher* preferred by the more rigorous ultraOrthodox. More serious disagreements revolve around whether a Gentile who is converted through non-Orthodox procedures is in fact a Jew, or even whether Orthodox rabbis can engage in interdenominational conversations with less observant rabbis. Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, a leading theologian of the Orthodox left, has joined Reform and Conservative leaders on New York's Board of Rabbis, but such cooperation is anathema to the ultraOrthodox...