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Above: Yeshiva students reverentially carry a Torah scroll. All other images: The many faces of Jewish orthodoxy.

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Jewish Orthodoxy: Coping With Secularism

by SIMON ROCKER

 

Editor: Is there a lesson to be learnt by Sikhs from the Jewish experience?  

 

In 1941, a group of rabbis and their students arrived in Japanese-controlled Shanghai.

They were refugees from one of eastern Europe's most renowned yeshivas (Talmudic academies) from Mir, now in Belarus. At the outbreak of the Second World War, they had fled to Lithuania, but as the threat of the Nazis loomed they moved once again, settling briefly in Kobe, Japan, before seeing out the rest of the war in China.

Now based in Jerusalem, the Mir Yeshiva is a thriving institution with thousands of students, including some from Britain; there is also a branch in New York.

But its survival and success tell a larger story.

The Holocaust wiped out almost all the seats of traditional Orthodox learning in Europe, so much so that it must have seemed that the devout forms of Judaism they inculcated would vanish before long. Instead, the old yeshivas were revived in Israel and America, and there are more advanced Talmudic students now than probably at any time in Jewish history.

The recovery of the strictly Orthodox, or Haredim - meaning "God-fearing" - is one of the most remarkable features of Judaism over the past half-century.

The Haredim are the most rapidly expanding part of the Jewish world. It is estimated that nearly a third of all elementary schoolchildren in Israel will be in Haredi institutions within three years.

In the United Kingdom, the Haredim have moved from being a small minority once considered on the margins of Anglo-Jewish society to an increasingly visible presence. With large families of often six or more children, they are growing at around 4% annually, concentrated largely in Stamford Hill and Golders Green in north London, Prestwich, Manchester and Gateshead, location of an internationally respected yeshiva.

One in three Jewish children under 18 in Britain is strictly Orthodox, according to the most recent survey.

Overall, the British Jewish population has dropped from over 400,000 in the 1950s to under 300,000 now. If the Haredim maintain their growth - while other Jewish streams continue to decline through assimiliation, low birth rates or emigration - they are likely to form a majority here within a couple of generations.

The Haredim do not comprise a single sect; they are made up of various Hassidic and non-Hassidic groups, some with a more mystical bent, some more worldly than others.

But they share a belief that only the most stringent religious lifestyle can guarantee Jewish survival. Whereas the Chief Rabbi's more modern style of Orthodoxy can allow him to make YouTube videos or liberally quote western thinkers in his writings, the Haredim are far warier of secular culture, frowning on such distractions as television or the free-thinking openness of the university.

While most British Jews would struggle to read a page of the Bible without the aid of a translation, the Haredim are characterised by the intensity with which they cleave to the study of the Torah and the vast corpus of rabbinic law and commentary built upon it.

The Haredim today suffer little defection from their ranks, while a survey in the mid-90s showed that more than half the children of Reform and Liberal Jews in the UK did not belong to a synagogue.

A century ago, one of the founders of British Liberal Judaism, Claude Montefiore, could declare: "The traditional conception of Judaism, both in theory and in practice, is, we think, doomed."

No one could be quite so confident now.

Reform Judaism arose in the 19th century in an attempt to adapt Judaism in the wake of the Enlightenment. But the Haredim stood firm, following the motto of the influential central European rabbi Moses Sofer (1762-1839) that "The new is forbidden."

In their rising numbers, they must see a vindication of their way of life.

The renaissance of the strictly Orthodox poses a wider question: could it be that only the most traditionalist forms of religion possess the inner resolve to withstand the challenge of secularism? 

  • Simon Rocker is a journalist with the Jewish Chronicle.

[Courtesy: The Guardian]

March 8, 2009

Conversation about this article

1: Arvinder Singh Kang (Oxford, MS, U.S.A.), March 08, 2009, 9:32 PM.

Both extreme orthodox as well as extreme liberal point-of-view lead to the decline of a religion. While the former slowly turns a doctrine into an iffy dogma, focussing on rituals and missing the original spirit of the doctrine, the latter can easily become a flip-flop of ideas, with no identity of its own. The irony, however, is that for a balanced point-of-view to exist, both extremes have to exist as well; for balance is always relative.

2: Gaganpreet Singh (Bloomington, IN, U.S.A.), March 09, 2009, 2:26 AM.

The question of being orthodox or liberal arises only when you follow a divisive "group/gang" called "religion". Truth lies bare in front of eyes but we don't want to see it : I am not a Hindu, nor am I a Muslim. My body and breath of life belong to Allah - to Raam - the God of both [Guru Nanak]. As for alliances/ groups/ religions: "Some form alliances with friends, children and siblings. Some form alliances with in-laws and relatives. Some form alliances with chiefs and leaders for their own selfish motives. My alliance is with the all pervasive truth||1||" It is in quest for truth that people cooperate with each other and become entities like the Khalsa (truthful ones), which are neither groups nor gangs, but rather people acting together in righteousness. It is not a label of a religion one needs to carry. It is the thoughts and actions that define us. The count of people like me (of my religion) is not important, but rather the count of my own thoughts and actions towards truth and service is. This is what can make my life worth living and that is what I hope everyone lives for.

3: Reuven Miller (Ashdod, Israel), May 19, 2009, 9:04 AM.

Sat Sri Akal! Arvinder Singh Kang's comments are well taken - within the context of the article, and the author's viewpoint. One man's "extreme" or "liberal" is another man's "normal", depending on one's own place within the spectrum. Much of my own great respect for Sikhi, as regards preferred practice (as opposed to what we sometimes, unfortunately, see as actual practice!)stems from the idea that, to quote Dr. Yuktanand Singh (whose essay, "Guru and Sikh" was instrumental in turning me into a warm aficionado of the Sikh Panth), "All have an important place in the divine plan. We should not argue with anyone. It is not for us to dissect the spirituality of others." The People of Israel are referred to, several times, by God as, "a stiff-necked people", and continue to be so to this very day. This trait, like all others, has both a positive and negative side. On the one hand, our divisiveness has led to our undoing on many occasions; on the other, without this stubborness it's extremely doubtful that we would have been able to resist the blandishments of the numerous civilizations in whose midst we have sojourned during the three and a half thousand years or so that we've been traipsing around the planet, sometimes in greater numbers, sometimes fewer. Which brings me to Gaganpreet Singh's thoughtful observations. I completely agree that our thoughts and actions (let's not forget, speech!) define us, but it necessarily goes beyond our own relationship with Allah, Ram, Waheguru, HaShem (Hebrew for "Naam"), or, whichever (inadequate) term we use. Without social interaction, there isn't much of a testing ground for "truth and service". Since no two individuals define these (and other) terms in precisely the same way, there exists great potential for differences of opinion - even among supposedly like-minded people. Regardless of one's own personal views (and, it requires no mean feat of honesty to take on the sometimes embarrassing task of determining whether one holds these views out of personal conviction, or, in the words of many American assimilated Jews, "In order to get along - you've got to go along"), looking to give the other person the benefit of the doubt, and remembering our common membership in that "group" or "gang" called the human race will surely go a long way towards attenuating the painful decibel level of much of what passes for social discourse these days. I extend my hand in friendship and brotherhood, and look forward to the day when we will all dwell together in mutual respect.

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