Kol Hamevaser

Judaism in America

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:00:43 +0000

The latest issue of Kol Hamevaser, “Judaism in America” has been published! The full issue is available in PDF format here, the individual articles are available below, and open to comments. Continue reading to see articles in this issue: The ArtScroll Revolution Examined: Religious Print Culture in the Information Age BY: Shlomo Zuckier. The Limits of Orthodox Sociology BY: Yitzchak Ratner. Submitting to Divine Religious Authority in a World of Personal Autonomy: The Challenge of Choice BY: Jacob J. Schacter. An Interview with Rabbi Dr. Moshe D. Tendler BY: Shaul Seidler-Feller. Jewish Thought, Philosophy, and the Efficient [Read More...]

The ArtScroll Revolution Examined: Religious Print Culture in the Information Age

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:52:15 +0000

BY: Shlomo Zuckier. Reviewed Book: Jeremy Stolow, Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2010). Price: $24.95. Known as “the people of the book,” Jews, one might say, are perhaps the religious community most connected to print culture. From the Bible to the Talmud to the writings of the medieval philosophers, Jewish texts have historically had significant contemporaneous impact on the cultures in which they were situated, and those very same texts still have lasting influence today. Which Jewishly-connected individual is unaware of [Read More...]

The Limits of Orthodox Sociology

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:51:36 +0000

BY: Yitzchak Ratner. Reviewed Book: Jeffrey S. Gurock, Orthodox Jews in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). Price: $24.95. A primary goal of a historian is to place a subject – be it a person, event, or idea – within a chronological context. We would do well, then, to analyze Jeffrey Gurock’s Orthodox Jews in America by attempting to place his work on a historiographical spectrum. An exacting reader could take issue with the book’s overly expansive title, as one might infer that Gurock’s tome purports to present the definitive history of American Orthodoxy, something [Read More...]

Submitting to Divine Religious Authority in a World of Personal Autonomy: The Challenge of Choice

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:51:10 +0000

BY: Jacob J. Schacter. After having lived in the United States of America for more than three hundred and fifty years, it is fair to assert that Jews have flourished in this country. Although the religious discrimination and intolerance that faced the initial group of Sefaradim who arrived here in 1654 persisted more or less for over a century, the situation of Jews significantly improved after the founding of our country in 1776 and has only gotten better with the passage of time. Jews in the United States have achieved great heights in all areas [Read More...]

An Interview with Rabbi Dr. Moshe D. Tendler

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:50:50 +0000

BY: Shaul Seidler-Feller. What was Orthodox Judaism like in the early part of the 20th century in America? What were the difficulties and/or opportunities presented to Jews coming over to the U.S. from Europe? I grew up in a small, isolated, ghettoized European town called the Lower East Side of Manhattan. All the adults were first-generation immigrants. They dressed as they had in Europe, they spoke as they had in Europe, but all lost their children to assimilation. America was a treyfer land (a country unsuited to Jewish religious life), and they knew that going [Read More...]

Jewish Thought, Philosophy, and the Efficient Slaying of Multiple Birds

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:50:23 +0000

BY: Alex Ozar. Reviewed Book: David Shatz, Jewish Thought in Dialogue: Essays on Thinkers, Theologies, and Moral Theories (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2009). Price: $65.00 I am not aware of any discipline which exhibits more anxiety about whether or not it exists than does Jewish Philosophy. I have it on good word, in fact, that before embarking on their careers, all professors of Jewish Philosophy take a solemn oath (with their right hand resting on a copy of The Guide, of course) that they will never begin teaching a course without first discussing the [Read More...]

The Limits of Learning Without Any: Reflections on Limmud 2010 by Two Orthodox YU Students

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:49:32 +0000

BY: David Marks and Nathaniel Jaret. Several years ago, one of the authors of this essay was interning for a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. His boss, a recent convert to Orthodox Judaism, was known to wear his kippah in public. An elderly congressman with the home zip-code and distinct accent of a Bible-belt state once approached the two in the Capitol building and engaged them in small talk. When introduced to the congressman as a young Jewish intern, the congressman responded with levity, “I was just at the JCC in Savannah, and boy, those [Read More...]

Was Herzl the Messiah? Thoughts on American Zionism Today

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:49:05 +0000

BY: Ayelet Mael. Are we living during messianic times, the first inklings of Aharit ha-Yamim (the End of Days)? The Jewish people have returned to Israel and have worked to build it up, yet, at the same time, there are still countless imperfections to the modern Jewish state they established. Can Israel really be the Holy Land of which Jews have dreamed for centuries – a country that is currently rife with political corruption and is engaged in constant war? This question, which very much probes the minds of contemporary Jews, especially those who are [Read More...]

In Search of Liberty: An Important Interaction of Hazal’s Values and Mankind’s Unalienable Rights

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:48:29 +0000

BY: Chesky Kopel. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles [Read More...]

Enemies of the Synagogue?: Seeing Beyond the Symptom

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:47:22 +0000

BY: Ori Kanefsky. In this article, I would like to address two phenomena that take place in our synagogues: “Kiddush Clubs” and “talking during davening.” I present these two phenomena not to evaluate them in and of themselves, but rather to examine some of the critical responses to each of them. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the conclusions of these reactions, I believe, they should be viewed as representative of a larger mode of critical response and of a wider trend, a trend that I find saddening and unfortunate. The first phenomenon is that [Read More...]