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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2018
Concern for the plight of Soviet Jewry grew steadily from the early 1950s. The rise of this issue to the forefront of American Jewish consciousness, however, was driven by the broader protest movement that emerged in the mid-1960s. Its central goal was to ensure civic and religious rights for Jewish residents of the Soviet Union, with a particular emphasis on the ability to emigrate. The movement's peak impact was in the 1970s. This decade witnessed the proliferation of grassroots organizations throughout the United States, along with the adoption of a more activist orientation by large segments of the American Jewish establishment.
To date, minimal attention has been paid to the place of the Soviet Jewry movement in the religious history of American Judaism. The article's investigation of American Orthodoxy's role is intended to confront this lacuna and describes the central role played by Orthodox Jews in the rise and development of the Soviet Jewry movement. Through their actions, the members of this segment of American Jewry experienced a role reversal in which they helped to redefine the nature of the Jewish relationship to the public sphere. Simultaneously, such activism sharpened the internal divide between Modern Orthodoxy and its traditionalist counterparts who opposed demonstrations, encouraged quiet diplomacy, and were loathe to work in unison with the broader Jewish community. Through their involvement in a core Jewish activity that entailed partnership with non-Orthodox Jews in efforts for their common brethren, a generation of Modern Orthodox leaders arose that made Jewish solidarity a central expression of their Orthodox religious identities.
1. “Refusenik” is the popular term that was used to describe Soviet citizens, particularly Jews, who were denied the right to emigrate. See Rapoport, Louis, “The Refuseniks,” in the Encyclopaedia Judaica Year Book, 1988/89 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1990), 76–83 Google Scholar.
2. On the Lookstein rabbinate at Kehilath Jeshurun, see Ferziger, Adam S., “The Lookstein Legacy: An American Orthodox Rabbinical Dynasty?” Jewish History 13, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 27–49 Google Scholar; and Medoff, Rafael, Rav Chesed: The Life and Times of Rabbi Haskel Lookstein (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 2008)Google Scholar. On the involvement of the students of Ramaz—a Kehilath Jeshurun sponsored Jewish day school—in Soviet Jewry activism, see Gurock, Jeffrey S., “The Ramaz Version of Orthodoxy,” in Ramaz: School, Community, Scholarship, and Orthodoxy, ed. Gurock, Jeffrey S. (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1989), 75–77 Google Scholar.
3. Rabbi Dr. Haskel Lookstein, interview, Jerusalem, July 19, 1995.
4. The term “American Jewish establishment” is itself open to interpretation. Generally, this refers to the major organizations and their leaders who served as the quasi-official representatives of American Jewry in public life throughout much of the twentieth century. Until the 1970s, they rarely had an Orthodox figure at their helms. Most of these bodies are members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that was set up as an umbrella group in 1953. Indeed, some of the Orthodox figures highlighted below, such as rabbis Israel Miller, Herschel Schacter, and Haskel Lookstein, were identified at various points in their careers with the establishment. I suggest, however, that through the Soviet Jewry movement they demonstrated an assertiveness that was more reflective of rising Orthodox independence than of their capacity as official representatives of the establishment. On the American Jewish establishment, see Goldberg, J. J., Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996)Google Scholar; Goren, Arthur, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 110–31Google Scholar; and Mittleman, Alan, Sarna, Jonathan D., and Licht, Robert, eds., Jewish Polity and American Civil Society (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 1–234 Google Scholar.
5. For broad treatments of American Orthodoxy, see, for example, Gurock, Jeffrey S., American Jewish Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1996)Google Scholar; Gurock, Jeffrey S., Orthodox Jews in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Heilman, Samuel C., Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Liebman, Charles S., “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” American Jewish Yearbook 66 (1965): 21–97 Google Scholar; Soloveitchik, Haym, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” Tradition 28, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 64–130 Google Scholar, reprinted in Roberta Rosenberg and Chaim I. Waxman, eds., Jews in America: A Contemporary Reader (Hanover. N.H.: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 1999), 276–320; and Waxman, Chaim I., “From Institutional Decay to Primary Day: American Orthodox Jewry since World War II,” American Jewish History 91, nos. 3/4 (September and December 2003): 405–21Google Scholar.
6. In his unpublished memoir, Rabbi Avi Weiss, the activist and former chairman of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, describes the decision in the late 1970s to reinvigorate the American campaign for Soviet Jewry by focusing on the Shcharansky case. Both representatives of Israel and the American Jewish establishment initially opposed this approach. According to Weiss, they felt that Shcharansky's involvement with non-Jewish Soviet human rights dissidents like Andrei Sakharov would divert attention from the particular Jewish cause. They were also uncomfortable with the association of Avital Shcharansky, her husband's most visible public advocate, with ultra-nationalist Israeli Religious- Zionist circles. See Avraham Weiss, “Chapter Seven—With Avital and Anatoly,” unpublished memoir, 1–4, author's copy archived in Bar–Ilan University, Faculty of Jewish Studies, room 206.
7. Some may point to the December 1987 Washington rally, attended by more than 250,000 people, as an alternative event for marking the conclusion of the movement. For the most comprehensive work to date on the efforts to revive Soviet Jewry and facilitate emigration, see, most recently, Gal Beckerman, When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). Other principal critical studies and collections on the American Soviet Jewry movement include Stuart Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom: The History of the Soviet Jewry Movement (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); Frey, Marc E., “Challenging the World's Conscience: The Soviet Jewry Movement, American Political Culture, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1952–1967” (Ph. D. diss., Temple University, 2002)Google Scholar; Friedman, Murray and Chernin, Albert D., eds., A Second Exodus: The American Movement to Free Soviet Jews (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, Andrew, Passover Revisited: Philadelphia's Efforts to Aid Soviet Jews, 1963–1998 (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 2001)Google Scholar; Lazin, Fred, The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics—Israel versus the American Establishment (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005)Google Scholar; Orbach, William W., The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Ro’i, Yaakov, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 1948–1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8. See Gerlis, Daphne, Those Wonderful Women in Black: The Story of the Women's Campaign for Soviet Jewry (London: Minerva Press, 1996)Google Scholar.
9. A recent exception is the fine study by Shaul Kelner, “Ritualized Protest and Redemptive Politics: Cultural Consequences of the American Mobilization to Free Soviet Jewry,” Jewish Social Studies 14, no. 3 (Spring/Summer 2008): 1–37. He notes, “Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry's strong links to Modern Orthodoxy…” (130). In Jonathan Sarna's brief treatment of the topic, American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 317–18, he directs attention to the role of Soviet Jewry in “‘religious action’ programming” of the 1970s and 1980s. To the best of my knowledge, Eli Lederhendler and Charles Liebman are the only other scholars of American Jewry to highlight the significance of the central role played by the Orthodox in the Soviet Jewry movement. See Lederhendler, Eli, New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950–1970 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 188 Google Scholar; and Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” 92.
10. On distinctions between Modern Orthodoxy and traditionalist (also known as haredi, yeshivish, yeshivah world, Torah) Orthodoxy, see the sources listed in note 5.
11. Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” 42–67; see also Charles S. Liebman, “Left and Right in American Orthodoxy,” Judaism 15, no. 1 (Winter 1966): 106–7.
12. Grossman, Lawrence, “Decline and Fall: Thoughts on Religious Zionism in America,” in Religious Zionism Post-Disengagement: Future Directions, ed. Waxman, Chaim I. (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2008), 31–54 Google Scholar.
13. Heilman, Sliding to the Right, 4–5, 47–62; Finkelman, Yoel, “An Ideology for American Yeshiva Students: The Sermons of R. Aharon Kotler, 1942–1962,” Journal of Jewish Studies 8, no. 2 (Autumn 2007): 314–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” 67–89; Sarna, American Judaism, 227–31, 296–306.
14. Ferziger, Adam S., “Church/Sect Theory and American Orthodoxy Reconsidered,” in Ambivalent Jew—Charles S. Liebman: In Memoriam, ed. Cohen, Stuart and Susser, Bernard (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2007), 107–24Google Scholar; Ferziger, Adam S., “Between Outreach and ‘Inreach’: Redrawing the Lines of the American Orthodox Rabbinate,” Modern Judaism 25, no. 3 (October 2005): 237–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waxman, Chaim I., “Needed–New Typologies: The Complexity of American Orthodoxy in the Twenty-First Century,” in Ambivalent Jew, ed. Cohen, and Susser, , 135–56Google Scholar.
15. Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 19; Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 91, 97.
16. Fishkoff, Sue, The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad Lubavitch (New York: Schocken, 2003), 68, 143Google Scholar; Wolf, Zusha, ed., Diedushka: Ha-Rebbe mi-Lubavitch ve-Yahadut Russiyah (Kfar Chabad: Yad ha-Hamishah, 2006), 36–112 Google Scholar.
17. Lazin, The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics, 23–28; Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 101–5, 115–16.
18. For an extensive description of the trip, see Bernstein, Louis, Challenge and Mission: The Emergence of the English Speaking Orthodox Rabbinate (New York: Shengold, 1982), 167–78Google Scholar; and Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 116–17, 236.
19. Frey, “Challenging the World's Conscience,” x, 28, dates the Soviet Jewry movement (various responses of American Jewry to the plight of Soviet Jewry) beginning in 1952. His definition of what constitutes a movement, however, is unclear. Moreover, Frey himself qualifies this date by stating, “Until the mid-1960s … these Soviet Jewry advocates did not identify themselves as a self-conscious movement” (x). He cites the address of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to a meeting of major American Jewish organizations sponsored by the Synagogue Council of America that took place on October 7, 1963. Heschel criticized the American Jewish community “for indifference and insufficient forcefulness in dealing with the plight of Soviet Jews” (65).
20. See Decter, Moshe, “The Status of Jews in the Soviet Union,” Foreign Affairs 41, no. 2 (1963): 3–13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There was actually one public rally for Soviet Jewry held on April 12, 1962, to protest the denial of matzah distribution before Passover—both locally baked and shipped from abroad—by the Soviet authorities. The demonstration took place at the Soviet Mission in Manhattan and was organized and led by Orthodox students of the Yeshiva University High School (MTA). See Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 18.
21. On the AJCSJ, see Frey, “Challenging the World's Conscience,” 77–80; Lazin, The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics, 28–30; Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 24–27; and Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 193–202.
22. Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 240–41. On Miller as chairman of the AJCSJ and later chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, see Frey, “Challenging the World's Conscience,” 94–95, 117, 121; Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 30, 33, 72; and Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 201, 211, 219, 400 n. 292.
23. Rabbi Saul Berman, telephone interview, May 15, 2006.
24. Wiesel, Elie, The Jews of Silence (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966)Google Scholar. It appeared originally in Hebrew as a series of articles in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot.
25. Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 27. In 1966, Rabbi Dr. Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, then full-time rabbi at the Orthodox Riverdale Jewish Center, professor of history at Yeshiva University, and vice-chairman of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), decided to take a partial sabbatical from his rabbinical duties in order to raise funds for the Soviet Jewry movement. He and Mel Stein created the Center for Soviet Jewry and set out to convince the Jewish establishment of the need to lend significant financial support to this endeavor. The response to their appeals was very weak. Greenberg, who later championed the role of an Orthodox rabbi with great standing among broader American Jewry, recalls commenting at the time, “Now I know why the Shoah happened, due to the apathy of the American establishment.” Rabbi Dr. Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, interview, Jerusalem, June 10, 2006.
26. On the rise of grassroots organizations, see Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom; Harrison, Passover Revisited; Kahn, Douglas, “Advocacy on a Communal Level,” in A Second Exodus, ed. Friedman, and Chernin, , 181–99Google Scholar; Lazin, The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics; Micah Naftalin, “The Activist Movement,” in A Second Exodus, ed. Friedman and Chernin, 224–42; Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 206–12; and Walter Ruby, “The Role of Nonestablishment Groups,” in A Second Exodus, ed. Friedman and Chernin, 200–223.
27. On the Leningrad trials and their influence on the movement, see Friedman and Chernin, eds., A Second Exodus, 116, 173, 233; and Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 52–58
28. Since 1986, Hoenlein has served as the executive vicechairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. See http://www.harrywalker.com/speakers_template.cfm?spea_id=256.
29. Malcolm Hoenlein, interview, May 26, 2006. See also “Selections from 120 letters received for the commemoration of Jacob Birnbaum's 40 years of service to the Jewish people” typescript, archived in Bar–Ilan University, Faculty of Jewish Studies, room 205.
30. “Selections from 120 letters.” See also Freedman, Samuel G., Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 280 Google Scholar.
31. “Selections from 120 letters.” See also Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 203, 212.
32. See Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 42–49, 55–60, 68–72, 135–40; Chernin, Albert D., “Making Soviet Jews an Issue: A History,” in A Second Exodus, ed. Friedman, and Chernin, , 32 Google Scholar; Frey, “Challenging the World's Conscience,” 79, 86–87; Naftalin, “The Activist Movement,” 229; Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 20–21, 25, 30–33, 41–42; and Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 208–9.
33. Lazin, The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics, 41. When the Center for Jewish History produced a timeline for 350 years of American Jewish history, the founding of the SSSJ, in 1964, was designated as the symbol of the beginning of the public movement for Soviet Jewry. See www.jewsinamerica.org. See also www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/timeline/haven-timeline_index.html.
34. On Kahane, Soviet Jewry, and the reaction of American Jewry, see Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 155–64, 167–71, 228–36; Dolgin, Janet, Jewish Identity and the JDL (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 32–40 Google Scholar; Russ, Shlomo M., “The ‘Zionist Hooligans’: The Jewish Defense League” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1981), 149–92, 306–526Google Scholar; Yossi Halevi, Klein, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), 77–79, 83–89,114–20, 155–62Google Scholar; Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 55–58; and Ruby, “The Role of Nonestablishment Groups,” 207–8. See the ambivalent comments of Lazin, The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics, 41.
35. Bayer, Abraham, “American Response to Soviet Anti-Jewish Policies,” American Jewish Yearbook 1973 (Philadelphia: American Jewish Committee, 1973), 211 Google Scholar [cited in Lazin, The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics, 41].
36. On Nathan Birnbaum, the early Zionist and Yiddishist leader who subsequently became an Orthodox activist, see Fishman, Joshua A., Ideology, Society, and Language: The Oddysey of Nathan Birnbaum (Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1987)Google Scholar.
37. Halevi, Yossi Klein, “Jacob Birnbaum and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry,” Azure 17 (Spring 5764 / 2004): 27–57 Google Scholar. See also Klein Halevi, Memoirs, 52–54; Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 72–85; and Jonathan Mark, “Yakov Birnbaum's Freedom Ride,” Jewish Week, April 30, 2004, 1, 16–17.
38. On Yavne, see Kraut, Benny, The Greening of American Orthodox Judaism: Yavneh in the 1960s (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2011)Google Scholar.
39. On early Soviet Jewry activism at Yeshiva University, see Dagi, Lora Rabin, “‘Justice, Justice You Will Pursue?’ Orthodox Jewry and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1970” (B.A. thesis, Harvard University, 2006), 70–74 Google Scholar; Lightman, N., “A Call to End the Apathy towards Our Brethren,” Hamevasser 3, no. 2 (February 1965): 5 Google Scholar; Michaelson, H. L., “Plight of Soviet Jewry Arouses Concern, Confusion,” Hamevasser 2, no. 5 (May 1964): 3 Google Scholar; and Raskas, Stanley, “From Out of Town,” in My Yeshiva College: 75 Years of Memories, ed. Butler, Menachem and Nagel, Zev (New York: Yashar Books, 2006), 250 Google Scholar.
40. On American Jewish responses during the Holocaust, see Finger, Seymour M., ed., American Jewry during the Holocaust (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984)Google Scholar; Lookstein, Haskell, Were We Our Brother's Keepers? The Public Response of American Jews to the Holocaust (New York: Hartmore, 1986)Google Scholar; and Medoff, Rafael, The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust (New York: Shapolsky, 1987)Google Scholar.
41. See, for example, Garrow, David J., Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: Vintage Books, 1988)Google Scholar. The outspoken Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was a notable exception to the generally apathetic mode of most American Jewish leaders in the early 1960s. See Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 64–68; and Sarna, American Judaism, 310–11, 317.
42. The transcript of the original letter was provided by Jacob Birnbaum.
43. On the founding meeting, see the file “SSSJ Founding Meeting—4/27/64,” SSSJ Archive, Gottesman Library, Yeshiva University, box 1 file 1 (hereafter referred to as SSSJ Archive).
44. Ibid., 28. A DVD of the May 1, 1964, rally can be found in the SSSJ Archive, box 7.
45. Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 79–80; Klein Halevi, “Jacob Birnbaum and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry,” 35, 36, 41.
46. Copies of most of the printed material are preserved in the SSSJ Archive.
47. Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 211–12. See also SSSJ Archive, box 1, files 1–14, box 197, files 1 and 2.
48. Rubin, Ronald I., “Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry,” Hadassah Magazine 48, no. 4 (December 1966): 7, 34–35Google Scholar.
49. Jacob Birnbaum, “Jewish Redemption Ritual in Jacob Birnbaum's Struggle for Soviet Jewry in the 1960s: The Role of His Family Heritage” (May 22, 2006), typescript, 3.
50. See, for example, Richard Bernstein, “Thousands in March on 5th Ave. Support Jews in Soviet Union,” New York Times, March 23, 1983, 1.
51. Birnbaum, “Jewish Redemption Ritual,” 3, refers to the first two years of the SSSJ as “the Shofar Period.”
52. See Sherwood Goffin, “Songs of Hope for Soviet Jews,” recorded July 30, 1970, SSSJ Archive, reel-to-reel case, side 2. On Carlebach, see Ariel, Yaakov, “Hasidism in the Age of Aquarius: The House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco, 1967–1977,” Religion and American Culture 13, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 139–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 125–28; and Danzger, M. Herbert, Returning to Tradition: The Contemporary Revival of Orthodox Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 50 Google Scholar.
53. Bin-Nun, Amitai, “Motivations and Symbols of the Early Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), 1964–1970” (B.A. Paper, Yeshiva College, 2004), 19 Google Scholar; Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 129–30. See the extensive discussion of the role of religious symbolism and “ritualization” in Kelner, “Ritualized Protest and Redemptive Politics,” 8–23.
54. Yaakov Birnbaum, “Additional Comments,” e-mail correspondence, June 6, 2006. On traditional, premodern Judaism as opposed to Orthodoxy, see, for example, Ferziger, Adam S., Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 1–2 Google Scholar.
55. Lichtenstein is a leading figure and thinker in contemporary Orthodoxy and religious Zionism and is the son-in-law of the preeminent theologian of American Modern Orthodoxy, the late Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. During the 1960s, he was the head of the kollel (advanced talmudic fellows program) at YU and an instructor in English Literature at Stern College for Women. See Alan Brill, “An Ideal Rosh Yeshiva: By His Light: Character and Values in the Service of God and Leaves of Faith by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein (KTAV),” Edah Journal 5, no. 1 (Summer 2005), available at http://www.edah.org/backend/JournalArticle/5_1_Brill.pdf, downloaded March 31, 2011.
56. Lamm, a leading ideologue of American Orthodoxy, is the chancellor of YU and served as its president from 1976 to 2003. See Lamm, Norman, “There Is Only One Yeshiva College: A Memoir,” My Yeshiva College, ed. Butler, and Nagel, , 219–25Google Scholar.
57. On Heschel, see, for example, Kaplan, Edward K. and Dresner, Samuel H., Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.
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59. Prell, Riv-Ellen, Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press: 1989), 92–93 Google Scholar; Rabbi Professor Arthur Green, telephone interview, May 25, 2006.
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61. Birnbaum, “Additional Comments.”
62. Cited in Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 28.
63. Beckerman, When They Come for Us, 128, 131. His work received the Jewish Book Council's National Jewish Book Award for 2010.
64. Yossi Klein Halevi, telephone interview, May 21, 2006.
65. Weiss, memoir, chap. 4, 16; Kelner, “Ritualized Protest and Redemptive Politics,” 13.
66. Birnbaum, “Jewish Redemption Ritual,” 2. See also Frey, “Challenging the World's Conscience,” 79–80, who describes the SSSJ as “drawing its members largely from New York's Orthodox community.”
67. Green, telephone interview.
68. Glenn Richter, telephone interview, May 5, 2006; transcript of responses of Glenn Richter to Lora Dagi, July 26, 2005.
69. Richter, telephone interview, referred to Riskin as the “chief inspirer” due to his role as a central speaker at many of the rallies. Similarly, Birnbaum, “Additional Comments,” highlighted Riskin's “thunderous speech making at events.” Birnbaum met him originally in Israel in 1960 when they lived in the same building. On Riskin, see Abramson, Edward, Circle in a Square (Jerusalem: Urim, 2008)Google Scholar.
70. On Greenberg, see for example, Katz, Steven T., “Irving (Yitzchak) Greenberg,” in Interpreters of Judaism in the Twentieth Century, ed. Katz, Steven T. (Washington, D.C.: Bnai Brith Books, 1993), 59–90 Google Scholar; and Katz, Steven T. and Bayme, Steven, eds., Continuity and Change: A Festschrift in Honor of Irving (Yitz) Greenberg's 75th Birthday (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2011)Google Scholar. On Sheer, the longtime chaplain of Columbia University, see www.rabbis.org/news/article.cfm?id=100797.
71. On Weiss, see Beckerman, , When They Come for Us, 460–63, 475–76Google Scholar; and Ruby, “The Role of Nonestablishment Groups,” A Second Exodus, 215–18.
72. Birnbaum, “Additional Comments”; Birnbaum, “Jewish Redemption Ritual”; Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, interview, Jerusalem, May 29, 2006; Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, interview, Jerusalem, June 6, 2006; Rabbi Avi Weiss, telephone interview, May 9, 2006; Richter, telephone interview; Weiss, memoir, chap. 5, 5.
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74. Richter, telephone interview; Aba and Ida Taratuta, “Interview of Glenn Richter,” September 2005, http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/soviet_jews_exodus/English/Interview_s/InterviewRichter.shtml.
75. See Baumel, Judith Tydor, “Kahane in America: An Exercise in Right-Wing Urban Terror,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 22, issue 4 (1999): 317–19, 323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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77. See Dollinger, Marc, Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Svonkin, Stuart, Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.
78. Medding, Peter, “The New Jewish Politics in America,” in Terms of Survival: The Jewish World since 1945, ed. Wistrich, Robert S. (London and New York: Routlege, 1995), 92–93 Google Scholar. See also Mendelsohn, Ezra, On Modern Jewish Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 95–103 Google Scholar; Goldberg, Jewish Power, 133–62; and Zeitz, Joshua Michael, “’If I am not for myself … ‘: The American Jewish Establishment in the Aftermath of the Six Day War,” American Jewish History 88, no. 2 (2000): 253–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Zeitz offers a slight adjustment to Medding's position by arguing that the emphasis on broad liberal considerations within the Jewish approach to the public domain did not dissipate even after the introduction of greater particularism.
79. Medding, “The New Jewish Politics in America,” 94–95.
80. Grossman, Lawrence, “Mainstream Orthodoxy and the American Public Square,” in Jewish Polity and American Civil Society, ed. Mittleman, , Sarna, and Licht, 284 Google Scholar.
81. See Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews, 191–92. A significant exception to the Orthodox tendency to follow the lead of the American Jewish establishment was the advocacy led by traditionalist Orthodox figures for government rescue efforts and changes in immigration policies during World War II. Although the main vehicle utilized by the Orthodox was shtadlanut, quiet diplomacy, they were also responsible for the 1943 “Rabbi's March on Washington.” This was the only major public demonstration by American Jews against government policy that took place during the entire war period. See Kranzler, David, Thy Brother's Keeper: The Orthodox Jewish Response during the Holocaust (New York: Mesorah, 1987), 99–102 Google Scholar. Efraim Zuroff argues, however, that most of the Orthodox rescue activities were focused on saving the remnants of the yeshivas and hasidic courts. Thus, they follow the pattern of cases in which Grossman, “Mainstream Orthodoxy and the American Public Square,” would suggest, “the rights and welfare of Orthodox Jews were directly at stake” (284). See Zuroff, Efraim, The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: The Activities of the Vaad ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1939–1945 (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2000)Google Scholar. For alternatives to Zuroff's view, see Kranzler, David, “Orthodoxy's Finest Hour,” Jewish Action 63, no. 1 (Fall 2002), http://www.ou.org/publications/ja/5763/5763fall/ORTHODOX.PDF Google Scholar.
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83. Lederhendler, New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 191–92.
84. Ibid., 188, 191.
85. See, for example, Lipstadt, Deborah E., “From Noblesse Oblige to Personal Redemption: The Changing Profile and Agenda of American Jewish Leaders,” Modern Judaism 4, no. 3 (1984): 295–309 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86. See Besser, James D., “With God on Their Side: Is the Growing Orthodox Influence in D.C. Good for All of the Jewish Community?” Jewish Week, October 17, 2003, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=8563 Google Scholar; Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 184–200; Heilman, Samuel C., “Haredim and the Public Square,” in Jewish Polity and American Civil Society, ed. Mittleman, , Sarna, and Licht, 328–33Google Scholar; and Bieler, Jack, Soloveitchik, Meir, Stone, Suzanne Last, Weinreb, Tzvi Hersch, Zackheim, Dov S., and Zwiebel, Chaim Dovid, contributors, “Symposium: Orthodoxy and the Public Square” Tradition 38, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 1–53 Google Scholar.
87. See Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 24; and Ro’i, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 197. For an extensive discussion, albeit from a Lubavitch perspective, of all aspects of this Hasidic movement's activities in regard to Russian-speaking Jewry, see Wolf, Diedushka.
88. Another Orthodox figure who gained notoriety for his willingness to engage the Soviet apparatus was Rabbi Arthur Shneier of Manhattan's Park East Synagogue. On Schneier's activities see Lazin, , The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics, 223, 238 n. 57Google Scholar. For Teitz's life and public activities, see Blau, Rivka Teitz, Learn Torah, Love Torah, Live Torah: Harav Mordechai Pinchas Teitz (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 2001)Google Scholar, a biography published by his daughter. Regarding his involvement with Russian speaking Jewry, see 243–300. See also Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 76; and Shapiro, Leon, “Soviet Jewry since the Death of Stalin: A Twenty-Five Year Perspective,” American Jewish Yearbook 1979 (New York: American Jewish Committee and JPS, 1979), 83, 86, available at http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/17740.pdf Google Scholar. For a clear critique of Teitz without actually mentioning him by name, see Weiss, Avraham, “Public Protest and Soviet Jewry,” Midstream 33, no. 2 (February 1987): 28 Google Scholar: “The policy … to bring prayer books and holy artifacts into the Soviet Union with government approval while insisting that public pressure be suppressed is also ineffective.” Blau (295), however, suggests that, by the late 1970s, her father recognized the need for both quiet diplomacy and public protest. Rabbi Shalom Berger told me that Rabbi Teitz sent items with him when he traveled to the Soviet Union for Passover in 1983. He also offered advice regarding which sacred books to bring for the local Jews and how to make sure they were not confiscated by the border authorities.
89. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Sihos Kodesh 5731 (1971), www.sichoskodesh.com /pdf/5731v1.pdf, pt. 1, 473–74. See the Hebrew translation of the original Yiddish, with slight variations from my English translation, in Wolf, Diedushka, 143. On Schneerson's position, see Wolf, Diedushka, 124–71, 395–97; and Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 190.
90. Birnbaum, “Jewish Redemption Ritual.”
91. Richter, telephone interview; Hoenlein, interview; Riskin, interview.
92. Rabbi Dovid Miller, telephone interview, May 17, 2006. According to an alternative version of this meeting that appears in Wolf, Diedushka, 461 (based on an interview with Rabbi Israel Miller in the Kfar Chabad publication), Schneerson said that, “if you are going to go public, at least make sure that it gets to the front page of the New York Times.”
93. For contemporary records of early traditionalist Orthodox opposition to public protest for Soviet Jewry, see Ben-Meir, , “The Conference on Jews in the Soviet Union,” Jewish Observer 1, no. 7 (April 1964): 23–24 Google Scholar; Kertzer, Morris N., “Religion,” American Jewish Year Book 65 (1964), 77 Google Scholar; and Neuschloss, Simcha A., “Soviet Jewry and Jewish Responsibility: The Historical and Torah Dimensions of the Problem,” Jewish Observer 11, no. 9 (September 1965): 3–5 Google Scholar.
94. Birnbaum, “Jewish Redemption Ritual,” 6; Hoenlein, interview; Weiss, “Public Protest and Soviet Jewry,” 28. On Rabbi Feinstein, see Joseph, Norma Baumel, “Jewish Education for Women: Rabbi Moshe Feinstein's Map of America,” American Jewish History 83, no. 2 (1995): 205–22Google Scholar; Chinitz, Jacob, “Reb Moshe and the Conservatives,” Conservative Judaism 41, no. 3 (1989): 5–26 Google Scholar; Kelman, Wolfe, “Moshe Feinstein and Postwar American Orthodoxy,” Survey of Jewish Affairs 1987 (1988), 173–87Google Scholar; and Robinson, Ira, “Because of Our Many Sins: The Contemporary Jewish World as Reflected in the Responsa of Moses Feinstein,” Judaism 35, no. 1 (1987): 364–73Google Scholar.
95. Rabbi Moshe Sherer, “Emergency Memorandum to Branch Presidents and Zeirei Agudath Israel [Re: Russian Situation],” December 30, 1970.
96. “A Call from the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (Council of Torah Authorities),” Day-Jewish Journal (December 31, 1970).
97. “Orthodox Youth Group Says Russian Jewry Harmed By Provocative, Arrogant Actions,” JTA Daily News Bulletin 38, no. 7 (January 12, 1971), available at http://archive.jta.org/article/1971/01/12/2956031/orthodox-youth-group-says-russian-jewry-harmed-by-provocative-arrogantactions.
98. Sherer, “Emergency Memorandum.”
99. “Orthodox Youth Group.”
100. Rabbi Avi Shafran, Director of Public Affairs, Agudath Israel of America, e-mail communication, May 11, 2006; Richter, telephone interview.
101. See Shimoni, Gideon, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1995), 98 Google Scholar. Regarding shtadlanus and American Orthodox involvement with Soviet Jewry, see Professor Zvi Gitelman, telephone interview, May 16, 2006; Irving Greenberg, “Yeshiva in the 60s,” in My Yeshiva College, ed. Butler and Nagel, 180; Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 34, 76; and Avi Weiss, Principles of Spiritual Activism (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 2002), 9. Neuschloss, “Soviet Jewry and Jewish Responsibility,” offers an explication of the Aguda position that centers on his defense of the traditional value and effectiveness of shtadlanus. On the practice of shtadlanus in Jewish history, see David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken, 1986), 71–72. On the development of traditionalist Orthodox shtadlanus in early modern and modern Europe, see Assaf, David and Bartal, Israel, “Shtadlanut ve-Ortodoksiyah: Zadikei Polin be-Mifgash im ha-Zemanim ha-Hadashim,” in Zadikim ve-Anshei Ma’aseh, ed. Elior, Rachel, Bartal, Israel, and Shmeruk, Chone (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1994), 69–90 Google Scholar; Bacon, Gershon C., The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996), 228–30, 235–37Google Scholar; Katz, Jacob, Tradition and Crisis (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 71–72 Google Scholar; Mittleman, Alan L., The Politics of Torah: The Jewish Political Tradition and the Founding of Agudat Israel (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 79 Google Scholar; and Wodzinski, Marcin, “Hasidism, Shtadlanut, and Jewish Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland: The Case of Isaac of Warka,” Jewish Quarterly Review 95, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 290–320 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
102. For example, all five of those who signed on “A Call from the Moetzes Gedolei,” cited above (in order of signatures), were born and raised in Eastern Europe: rabbis Yaakov Kamenetsky of Yeshiva Torah Voda’ath, Yaakov Yitzchok Halevi Ruderman of Ner Israel Rabbinical College (Baltimore), Yitzchok Hutner of Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, Yisroel Shapira (the Bloshaver Rebbe), Moshe Feinstein, and Nochum Mordechai Perlow (the Novominsker Rebbe).
103. Hoenlein, interview.
104. Richter, telephone interview.
105. Schneerson, Sihos Kodesh 5730, part 2, 107. See the translation in Wolf, Diedushka, 154. See also 479–83.
106. Heilman, “Haredim and the Public Square,” 321. Schneerson, in particular, developed a theology that emphasized the divine inspiration that stood at the foundation of American democracy. See Wolf, Diedushka, 173; and Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 192–93. Clearly, the Eastern European-born and Conservative-affiliated Abraham Heschel digressed from this characterization both regarding Soviet Jewry and Vietnam. See Sarna, American Judaism, 310–17. On Orthodox patriotism and reluctance to become involved in antiwar demonstrations, see Greenberg, “Yeshiva in the 60s,” 181. On internal Jewish conflicts regarding Vietnam protests, see Staub, Michael, “Introduction,” in The Jewish 1960s: An American Sourcebook, ed. Staub, Michael (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 137–64Google Scholar; and Staub, Michael, Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 14 Google Scholar.
107. See Blau, Learn Torah, Love Torah, Live Torah, 302; Dagi, “’Justice, Justice You Will Pursue?’” 23, 79; and Richter, telephone interview.
108. For an analysis of Orthodox ambivalence regarding the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, see Marvin Schick, “The Orthodox Jew and the Negro Revolution: A Hard Look at Religious Jewry's Attitudes,” Jewish Observer 11, no. 9 (December 1964): 15–17.
109. On the role of Rabbi Soloveitchik as the central ideologue and authority figure for 1960s American Modern Orthodoxy, see Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” 50–51, 53, 87–89.
110. Berman, interview; Richter, telephone interview; Zeiger, Malka, “The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry: The Grassroots Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 1963–1968” (B.A. paper, Stern College, 2004), 4 n. 3Google Scholar. According to Shlomo Riskin, Soloveitchik considered the question a “political issue” rather than one demanding a “religious directive” and suggested that they consult with Professor Erich Goldhagen of Columbia University. See also Zeiger, “The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry,” 4.
111. In other public issues of contention within Orthodoxy, however, Soloveitchik was far more forthright. See his major statement in support of Zionism and the State of Israel, Soloveitchik, Joseph B., Kol Dodi Dofek (New York: Yeshiva University, 2006)Google Scholar, delivered originally on Israel Independence Day in 1956. See also Soloveitchik, Joseph B., “Confrontation,” Tradition 6, no. 2 (1964): 5–29 Google Scholar, penned in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, in which he expressed his unequivocally negative appraisal of interreligious dialogue.
112. On da’as Torah in America, see Heilman, Sliding to the Right, 103–4, 109, 137. On the development of the concept in general, see Bacon, The Politics of Tradition, 43–69; Binyamin Brown, “Doktrinat da’at Torah: sheloshah shelabim,” Mekhkarei Yerushalayim be-Makhshavet Yisrael 19, no. 2 (2005): 537–600; Kaplan, Lawrence, “ Daas Torah: A Modern Conception of Rabbinic Authority,” in Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy, ed. Sokol, Moshe (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1992), 1–60 Google Scholar; and Jacob Katz, “Da’at Torah—The Unqualified Authority Claimed for Halachists,” The Gruss Lectures: Jewish Law and Modernity, October 26-November 30, 1994, http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/Gruss/katz.html.
113. For Soloveitchik's views of the evil of Communist Russia, see, for example, Soloveitchik, Joseph B., Festival of Freedom: Essays on Pesah and the Haggadah (Jersey City, N.J.: Toras Horav Foundation, 2006), 10, 49 Google Scholar; Besdin, Abraham R., Reflections of the Rav (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1979), 180–81Google Scholar; and Rakeffet-Rothkoff, Aaron, The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, vol. 2 (Jersey City, N.J.: Ktav, 1999), 24–26, 107–9Google Scholar.
114. Grossman, “Mainstream Orthodoxy and the American Public Square,” 293, 307–8 n. 25; Berman, interview; Dagi, “’Justice, Justice You Will Pursue?’” 26–27, 47; Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” 44.
115. Frey, “Challenging the World's Conscience,” 110; Greenberg, “YU in the 60s,” 180–81; Klein Halevi, “Jacob Birnbaum,” 33; Klein Halevi, Memoirs, 11; Weiss, memoir, chap. 3, 14–16. The foreign-born Jacob Birnbaum, of course, was a notable exception.
116. Dagi, “’Justice, Justice You Will Pursue?’” 49–72. On Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement, see Bauman, Mark K. and Kalin, Berkely, eds., The Quiet Voices: Southern Rabbis and Black Civil Rights, 1880s to 1990s (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Forman, Seth, Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Friedland, Michael B., Lift Up Your Voices Like a Trumpet: White Clergy and the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements, 1954–1973 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sarna, American Judaism, 309–11; Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 364–69; Schultz, Debra L., Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Webb, Clive, Fight against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
117. According to Rabbi Charles Sheer, the former president of YU's SSSJ chapter, the primary concern of Orthodox Jewry in the 1960s was survival. Soviet Jewry was defined as part of this struggle, while civil rights fit less easily into this mindset. See Charles Sheer to Laura Rabin Dagi, e-mail correspondence, August 21, 2005.
118. Richter, telephone interview. Of course, there were also many college-educated Orthodox students who supported the approach of the Agudath Israel authorities. See, for example, David Luchins, “The Urge to Protest,” HaMevaser 9 (February 1967) [cited in Dagi, “’Justice, Justice You Will Pursue?’” 69].
119. Greenberg, interview.
120. Greenberg said that some of the members of the Riverdale Jewish Center were vehemently opposed to his efforts as rabbi during the late 1960s to invite black rights activists to speak in the synagogue (ibid.). These members had fled other sections of the Bronx and moved to Riverdale due to the violence that they had experienced on the part of their black neighbors.
121. See Frey, “Challenging the World's Conscience,” 51–57. Frey points out that, already during the 1950s, the American Jewish establishment organizations saw protest over Soviet anti-Semitism as a way to dispel the image of the American Jew as a communist sympathizer (7–10). This was consistent with their cooperation with Senator Joseph McCarthy's House un-American Affairs Committee and their endorsement of the death penalty for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. See Cohen, Naomi W., Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906–1966 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1972), 499 Google Scholar; Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion, 133–37; and Moore, Deborah Dash, “Reconsidering the Rosenbergs: Symbol and Substance in Second-Generation American Jewish Consciousness,” Journal of American Ethnic History 8 (Fall 1988): 21–22 Google Scholar
122. Wertheimer, Jack, A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 29 Google Scholar; Sarna, American Judaism, 318–23, introduces his description of the rise of the Havurah communal movement immediately after Soviet Jewry. The Havurah, he suggests (318), exemplifies the move of American Jewry, in the words of Wertheimer (ibid.), “from universalistic concerns to a preoccupation with Jewish particularism.”
123. Kelner, “Ritualized Protest and Redemptive Politics,” 22, remarks, “Ritualization constructed the act of protesting as a sacred obligation and resituated the protestors from actors in the domain of secular politics to an assemblage of the faithful responding to a command they were dutybound to answer.”
124. For a general appreciation of the development of this theory, see Swatos, William H. Jr., “Weber and Troeltsch? Methodology, Syndrome, and the Development of Church-Sect Theory,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 15, no. 2 (June 1976): 129–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
125. Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” 42–47.
126. Sherer, “Emergency Memorandum.”
127. See Gurock, Jeffrey S., “Twentieth-Century American Orthodoxy's Era of Non-Observance, 1900–1960,” Torah U-Madda Journal 9 (2000): 87–107 Google Scholar.
128. A number of the articles written by Rabbi Avi Weiss over the years could be considered a first effort in this direction. See Weiss, Principles of Spiritual Activism, 19–21, 31–35, 68–71, 72–75, 99–101.
129. Amy Sara Clark, “Rabbi Israel Miller, Advocate for Restitution, Dies at 83,” Jewish News Weekly of California, May 29, 2002, www.jewishsf.com/content/2–0-/module/displaystory/story_id/17971/edition_id/358/format/html/displaystory.html. On the concept of historical forerunners, see, for example, Katz, Jacob, “Nisuim ve-Hayei Ishut be-Motzaei Yemei ha-Beinayim,” Zion 10 (1945), 49–52 Google Scholar; and Katz, Jacob, “The Forerunners of Zionism,” Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), 104–15Google Scholar.
130. Chernin, “Making Soviet Jews an Issue,” 45, 51, 57, 59, 63; Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews, 105. On Schacter, see Bernstein, Challenge and Mission, 19, 69, 113, 163, 168–79, 216, 222, 244, 246, 253, 262; and Jennifer Maxfield, “A Bronx Icon: Rabbi Herschel Schacter, His Mosholu Jewish Center Closed, Reflects on More than Five Decades Lifting Spirits and Helping the Downtrodden,” Jewish Week, April 7, 2000.
131. Gurock, “The Ramaz Version of Orthodoxy,” 45–46, 76; Lookstein, interview. On Joseph Lookstein, see Ferziger, “The Lookstein Legacy” and sources listed there in note 23.
132. See www.edah.org; and Adam Dicter, “Modern Orthodox Think Tank to Fold,” Jewish Week, June 30, 2006, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=12665.
133. See www.hir.org/aboutus.html.
134. Richter, telephone interview; Weiss, interview; Weiss, memoir, chap. 3, 19.
135. On Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, see, for example, Ferziger, “Between Outreach and ‘Inreach,’” 253–56; Walter Ruby, “Open Orthodoxy: A New Generation of Orthodox Rabbis Finds Inspiration at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah,” Jewish World, September 9–15, 2005, www.yctorah.org/downloads/press/jewish_world.20050909.pdf; and Daniel J. Wakin, “A Challenge to an Orthodox Bastion,” New York Times, April 19, 2004, www.yctorah.org/downloads/press/nyt.pdf.
136. Rabbi Charles Sheer, telephone interview, May 5, 2006; e-mail correspondence between Rabbi Charles Sheer and Laura Rabin Dagi, August 21, 2005.
137. See Zuroff, Efraim, Occupation: Nazi-Hunter: The Continuing Search for the Perpetrators of the Holocaust (Jersey City, N.J.: Ktav, 1994)Google Scholar; Klein Halevi, interview; and Efraim Zuroff, telephone interview, May 25, 2006.
138. Greenberg, “Yeshiva in the 60s,” 181, 184, 186.
139. “Rep. Nadler Introduces Resolution Honoring Founder of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry,” U.S. Fed. News Service, October 2, 2006, https://yulib002.mc.yu.edu:8443/login?url=http://yulib002.mc.yu.edu:2058/pqdweb?did=1138672641&sid=6&Fmt=3&clientId=13170&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
140. Liebman, “Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life,” 92.
141. Eugene Korn, “God, Torah, and Yeshiva in the Sixties,” My Yeshiva College, ed. Butler and Nagel, 213; For an analysis of YU student activism in the 1960s regarding Vietnam in particular, see Gurock, Jeffrey S., The Men and Woman of Yeshiva (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 213–45Google Scholar.
142. See Ferziger, Adam S., “From Demonic Deviant to Drowning Brother: Reform Judaism in the Eyes of Orthodoxy,” Jewish Social Studies 15, no. 3 (2009): 56–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
143. The most comprehensive discussions of emergent communities are Cohen, Steven M., Landres, J. Shawn, Kaunfer, Elie, and Shain, Michelle, Emergent Jewish Communities and Their Participants (New York: S3k Synogague Studies Institute and Mechon Hadar, 2007)Google Scholar; and Kaunfer, Elie, Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us About Building Vibrant Communities (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 2010)Google Scholar.
144. Ferziger, “Church/Sect Theory and American Orthodoxy Reconsidered.” Addressing developments in Conservative and Reform Judaism in particular, Neil Gillman suggests that the “peoplehood agenda” that dominated mid-twentieth-century American Judaism is dead and has been replaced by a “God centered” one that is focused on “Jewish religion.” If Orthodoxy has indeed moved away from the Solidarity ethos, this would parallel the phenomenon described by Gillman. See Gillman's comments in Elliott Abrams and David G. Dalin, eds., Secularism, Spirituality, and the Future of American Jewry (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999), 43–46.
145. Weiss's Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, as noted, is attempting to fortify the solidarity approach. Since 2005, Yeshiva University, under the leadership of President Richard Joel and Rabbi Kenneth Brander, Dean of the Center for the Jewish Future, has, in turn, also sponsored some limited initiatives aimed at encouraging its students to become involved in humanitarian action beyond their parochial interests. They do not, however, entail cooperation with non-Orthodox entities.
146. Ferziger, “Church/Sect Theory and American Orthodoxy Reconsidered.”
147. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone, 2001), 22–24. For a summary of some of the main lines of critique, see Margot Talbot, “Who Wants to Be a Legionnaire,” New York Times Book Review, June 25, 2000, available at http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/06/25/reviews/000625.25talbott.html [downloaded April 14, 2011]. See also Schultz, David A., Steger, Manfred, and Maclean, Scott L., Social Capital: Critical Perspectives on Community and “Bowling Alone” (New York: NYU Press, 2002)Google Scholar.
148. See the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) 2001, available at http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Archive/NJPS2000_Orthodox_Jews.pdf. The results demonstrate, among others, that more than half of Orthodox Jews in America are less than forty-four years old and that 34 percent of American Jews under the age of thirty-four who are synagogue members affiliate with an Orthodox institution.