Religion >> Jews

In the shtetls of the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe, religion encompassed all of life for the Jews for most of the 1800's. Religious holidays divided up the year, the Sabbath separated one week from the next, and daily prayer set order to the day. By the time immigrants began settling in the United States from Eastern Europe, the all-encompassing nature of Judaism had already begun to corrode, as Jews began assimilating and becoming more secularized. The same transformation would occur at a faster rate in the United States, encouraged by a number of factors of the immigration process and American life. 

Religion There
The Holidays
The Sabbath
Prayer
The Talmud

Religion Here
The Jews Who Came
The American Setting
Jewish American Youth
The Influences of the Street
New Aspirations 
New Political Movements

Religion There: Religion for the Eastern European Jews

For the Eastern European Jews, Judaism encompassed every area of life, creating order and purpose for their existence.


(Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac; by Gerhard Wilhelm von Reutern, 1849) 

"The day, the week, and the year were shaped and parsed by ritual signposts: the day by morning and evening prayers, the week by the climax of the Sabbath, the year by the sequence of holidays." (Hoffman 1997:97)

Every holiday and ritual was wonderfully rich in meaning, connecting Jews beyond the here and now, to the realm of Jewish history, Jewish tradition, and the divine. TOP OF PAGE

The Holidays
The year was divided by the holidays. The holidays gave order to Jews' monthly lives. "Just as the week is lived from Sabbath to Sabbath, so the year is lived from one holiday to the next." (Herzog and Zborowski 1952:381) In the intervals between the holidays, Jews often were preparing for coming holidays.
Passover commemorates God's deliverance of the people of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt. During the seven days of Passover, Jews are forbidden from working and from eating bread. Instead of bread, Jews eat unleavened matzah.

In the seder ("order"), Jews remind themselves of the meaning of Passover. The youngest child asks the service leader questions such as, "What is this bread we eat?" and "How is this night different from other nights?"

On Shavuos, the Festival of Weeks, Jews celebrate God's revelation of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

                                            

Rosh Hashanah are the days of judgement, during which one's fate for the coming year is determined. One custom associated with this holiday is the blowing of the shofar (a ram's horn) to call Jews to alarm and repentance. Another custom is going to a body of water and throwing in bread crumbs, which are representative of one's sins. 
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the final holiday of repentance. Jews are supposed to be like angels on Yom Kippur. They fast and pray all day long, like angels who don't have bodies to nourish, but are spirits and so worship God unceasingly. (Hertzberg 1961:140)

(praying with the lulav; by Alex Levin)

Sukkos commemorates the journey of the Israelites through the desert to the promised land. One custom associated with this holiday is that of shaking the lulav, (a branch with palm leaves) and baskets, along with a citron (a kind of citrus fruit). During this time, Jews are supposed to pray, study, sleep, and eat in a booth called a sukkah. TOP OF PAGE

The Sabbath
The idea behind the Sabbath is that man is God's partner in his work of creation; in Genesis, God labored six days and rested on the seventh day; so too man works six days of the week and rests on the Sabbath. (Hertzberg 1961:112)


(studying on the Sabbath)

Absolutely no work may be done on the Sabbath; Jews must set aside all their concerns about the vokh (week), rest, and devote themselves to God. (Herzog and Zborowski 1952:57-58)
Setting order to Jews' lives, the Sabbath is the climax of the week, and the other days of  the week are directed toward the Sabbath. "One lives from Sabbath to Sabbath, working all week to earn for it. ... Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are 'before Sabbath,' and they draw holiness from the Sabbath that is coming. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are 'after Sabbath,' and they draw holiness from the Sabbath that is past." (Herzog and Zborowski 1952:37)
"The principal categories of work [which are forbidden on the Sabbath] are forty less one: sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, cleansing crops, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shearing, washing, beating or dyeing wool, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying a knot, loosening a knot, sewing two stitches, ripping in order to sew two stitches, hunting a gazelle [or similar beast], slaughtering or flaying or salting or curing its hide, scraping it or cutting it up, writing two letters, erasing in order to write two letters, building, pulling down, putting out a fire, lighting a fire, striking with a hammer and taking anything from one domain to another [e.g. from private domain to public domain or vice versa]. These are the principal categories of work: forty less one." (Hertzberg 1961:115) TOP OF PAGE
Prayer

Jews are commanded to pray three times a day; this routine sets order to Jews' daily lives.

When Jews pray in the morning, on the Sabbath, and on certain holidays, they wear an outer garb called a tallis, and two box-like structures called tefillin, one on their head and the other on their weaker arm. The tefillin contain passages from the Pentateuch (Five Books of Moses). 

The words of one important Jewish prayer, the shma, illustrate how a Jew's life is supposed to be directed wholly to God; He should be the goal of a Jew's existence:

You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your might.
And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to your children
and you shall speak of them when you are sitting at home
and when you go on a journey,

when you lie down and when you rise up.
You shall bind them as a sign on your hand
and they shall be jewels between your eyes.

You shall inscribe them on the doorposts of your house
and on your gates." (Rich 2007) TOP OF PAGE

The Talmud

The Talmud is "the body of the interpretations (of the Torah), clarifications, and the additional 'fence' commandments worked out by the sages." (Herzog and Zborowski 1952:108)

The Talmud clarifies the commandments of the Pentateuch (the Five Books of Moses), and applies those commandments to specific situations.

   

The regulations of the Talmud serve to guide the Jews in observing God's commandments and are a function of Judaism as a whole, the purpose of which is to keep the Jewish people close to God.

The Talmud, covering all possibilities (see regulations for the Sabbath), is analogous to Judaism as a whole, as Judaism embraces every aspect of Jewish life. Both are all-encompassing. TOP OF PAGE

Religion Here: Religion for Jews in America

Judaism was not a static religion, nor were the Jews a static people, who changed only when Jews began immigrating to New York.

 

Jews and Judaism had already been undergoing transformations, and conditions in America only facilitated and catalyzed the same changes taking place in Eastern Europe.

The most visible and important changes were less rigorous adherence to traditional Orthodoxy and greater assimilation into the American society surrounding the Jews. TOP OF PAGE

The Jews Who Came

In the 1880's and 1890's at least, "the Jewish immigrants constituted in great part the 'dissenters', the poor and underprivileged, the unlearned and less learned, and those who were influenced by secularism." (Howe 1976:61)

The Jews who immigrated to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century were, generally, less religious; this perhaps allowed secularization and assimilation to occur more quickly in America. 

The strongly Orthodox were wary of America. As one Orthodox Eastern European wrote, "Where do you travel and wherefore do you travel? You are heading for a corrupt and sinful land where the Sabbath is no Sabbath. Even on Yom Kippur they don't fast. And for what purpose are you going there? So you can eat meat everyday? But there meat is treyf  [unkosher]. No good Jew would touch such meat." (Howe 1976:27) TOP OF PAGE

The American Setting
 

 In New York, religious authority could no longer be monolithic, and the community could no longer be structured primarily along religious lines. (Howe 1976: 95)

There existed a great generational gap between the Eastern European immigrants in New York and their children. TOP OF PAGE

Jewish American Youth

In the United States, Hebrew schools were secondary to public schools, and Jewish children were exposed to outside influences:

The Jewish boy "achieves a growing comprehension and sympathy with the independent, free, rather skeptical spirit of the American boy; he rapidly imbibes ideas about social equality and contempt for authority, and tends to prefer Sherlock Holmes to Abraham as a hero."

"He begins to look upon the ceremonial life at home as ridiculous."

He develops a "growing sense of superiority...to the Hebraic part of his environment," which extends itself soon to the home. (Hapgood, pp. 24-27) TOP OF PAGE

The Influences of the Street
 

"By their mid-teens, if not earlier, the children of the immigrants begin to shift the focus of their private lives from home to street." (Howe, p. 262)

On the streets, even younger Jewish children obtained "freedom to break loose from those burdens that Jewish children had come to cherish," including religious duties. (Howe, p. 252) TOP OF PAGE           

New Aspirations

Many Jewish women aspired to positions outside the boundaries delineated by traditional Judaism.

Anzia Yezierska wished to be a great writer, but her father vehemently opposed:

"'While I was struggling, trying to write, I feared to go near him. I couldn't stand his condemnation of my lawless, godless existence.'"

"'He had gone on living his old life, demanding that the children follow his archaic rituals.'"

"Words of wrath through back and forth, but Anzia, staring at her father in his prayer shawl and phylacteries, 'was struck by the radiance that the evils of the world could not mar.'"

The father's response: "A woman alone, not a wife and not a mother, has no existence." (Howe, p. 269) TOP OF PAGE

New Political Movements
 

The fervor of some Jews was in a sense transferred from religion to new political movements; for example, socialism, Zionism, and anarchism, with some of that energy being directed squarely against the Jewish religion.

"I do not believe in religion."                                          
"Young man...when, permit me to ask, did you reach so        profound a conclusion?"                                        
"Since I wrote the essay 'There Is No God.'"                  
"When did you write it?"                                          
"Three Years ago." 
"How old were you then?"                                  
"Twelve." (Howe 1976:106)             TOP OF PAGE