Syllabi

Special Topics 1: Orthodoxy in America

Prof. Adam Mintz
Spring 2006
Brooklyn College

Description

This course will analyze the history of Orthodoxy in America focusing on the personalities and movements that created both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities in the United States. At the conclusion of the course, students will be familiar with the personalities who participated in the development of Orthodoxy, the institutions that were instrumental in its growth and many of the issues that defined Orthodoxy and distinguished it from other denominations.

Required Readings

• Gurock, Jeffrey S., American Jewish Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective
(Hoboken, NJ, 1996)

• Joselit, Jenna, New York’s Jewish Jews (Bloomington, Indiana, 1990)

• Course packet

Course Outline

1. Conceptual Overview

Emmanuel Rackman, “Orthodox Judaism” in Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, edited by Arhur A. Cohen and Paul MendesFlohr, pp. 679-684

2. American Orthodoxy in the 18th and 19th Centuries

• Gurock, pp.63-90

• Moshe Sherman, Bernard Illowy and 19th Century American Orthodoxy, pp. 71-98

• Resolution Regarding Sabbath Observance, October 6, 1859 in A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 1654-1875, edited by Morris U. Schappes, pp. 392-394

• Editorial, “Hebrew Rabbinical Education,” The New York Herald, July 22,
1872 in Schappes, pp. 554-557

3. New York Orthodoxy and the Selection of a Chief Rabbi

• Gurock, pp.103-116

• Abraham J. Karp, Jewish Continuity in America, pp. 145-190

4. The Rise of American Orthodoxy 1900-1920: The Evolving Synagogue

• Gurock, pp. 265-298

• Adam Mintz, “The St. Louis Eruv: Social Realities and Early American Orthodox Judaism”

5. Founding of The Jewish Theological Seminary

Hasia Diner “Like the Antelope and the Badger: The Founding and Early Years of JTS: 1886-1902” in Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, edited by Jack Wertheimer, pp.142

6. Founding of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Rabbinical Seminary

Aaron RakeffetRothkoff, Bernard Revel, pp. 1770, 94-114

7. Defining American Orthodoxy in the Interwar Years: The Synagogue, the Rabbi, the School

• Joselit, 25-146

• Rabbi Leo Jung, “What is Orthodox Judaism?”
http://www.yutorah.org/_materials/5i.pdf

8. American Orthodoxy in the Post War Period: The Case of the Mechiza

• Baruch Litvin, The Sanctity of the Synagogue, pp.299-338

• Jonathan Sarna, “The Debate over Mixed Seating in the American Synagogue” in The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed, edited by Jack Wertheimer, pp.363-394

9. Defining the Movement: Modern Orthodoxy

• Rabbi Sol Roth, “The Idea of Synthesis”
http://www.yutorah.org/_materials/ACF4B2B.pdf

• “Orthodox Modernism: An Exchange (Dr. Irving Greenberg and Rabbi Shelomoh Danziger) The Jewish Observer, December 1966
http://www.yutorah.org/_materials/ACF13E4.pdf

10. Defining the Movement II: The Role of Women

• Blu Greenberg “Judaism and Feminism” in The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives edited by Elizabeth Koltun, pp.179-192

• Rachel Adler, “Innovation and Authority: A Feminist Reading of the
‘Women’s Minyan’ Responsum”
http://www.yutorah.org/_materials/10.%20Rachael%20Adler%20%93Innovation%20and%20Authority%94.pdf

11. Syrian Orthodoxy

Joseph A. D. Sutton, Magic Carpet: Aleppo in Flatbush,pp. 333, 7491

12. Sectarian Orthodoxy

• William Helmreich, The World of the Yeshiva, pp. 1893

• The Jewish Observer, January, 1967
http://www.yutorah.org/_materials/ACF13DF.pdf

13. The State of Orthodoxy Today