Jack Wertheimer: A New American Judaism? The Sociology of Jewish Practice

David Bashevkin:
Hi, friends and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast where each month we explore different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host, David Bashevkin, and this month we’re exploring Jewish denominations. Thank you so much to my dearest friends, Joel and Lynn Mael, who have generously sponsored this series in memory of Joel’s parents, Esther bas Zvi and Nissan ben Yaakov Zvi. I so appreciate your friendship and support over all these years.

This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big juicy Jewish ideas, so be sure to check out 18forty.org, that’s 1-8 F-O-R-T-Y.org where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. This is not the first episode in this series, but I do feel after getting some feedback and hearing how people were hearing these discussions, I do feel I want to state a little bit more explicitly about what I hope the goals of these conversations and this exploration will be.

I know we’ve lived for 200 years with a paradigm of very different denominations, sects, movements, whatever you want to call them, that have divided up in the most serious ideological ways. Ideological might not even be a strong enough term. The differences that the movements have had in their very approach to Jewish commitment, in their very approach to the interpretation of Torah, in their very definition of who is a Jew could not be deeper. These are cosmic questions that many generations have sacrificed a great deal to preserve their approach and their interpretation.

There’s been a great deal of animosity, frustration, alienation across these divides, and I think it is important when you are talking about a topic that is so sensitive, particularly at a time where the Jewish people are so vulnerable, so sensitive, so raw in the holiest way, in the deepest way. We all feel, I think instinctively in this moment being pulled back into history where so many of these cosmic questions about identity and what identity entails. We know what the stakes of these questions are, and in some ways it makes these conversations even more urgent and in other ways it makes them even more sensitive and more delicate to discuss.

So I want to be even more explicit. A lot of times my strategy on 18Forty is to say less so that allows more room for each listener and each person to take away their own understanding from our conversations. And I think sometimes that suits these conversations very, very well. But I think for these conversations which get to the very heart of Jewish affiliation, Jewish community, Jewish identity, authenticity, interpretation, all of these things, I think we actually need to say more and be more explicit about what the goals are in these conversations. That’s exactly what I would like to do now, and I believe that I have two different goals because we have a very different and varied population.

I have goals in mind of what I am trying to elicit, what I’m trying to evoke from our listeners who affiliate and practice according to Orthodox tradition, and I have goals and very specific ideas that I hope to present for our non-Orthodox or maybe Orthodox adjacent listeners.

One of the things that I am most proud of about 18Forty and the community that we have built is that I really do believe that we are one of, if not the most diverse community of Jewish listeners that existed. We know we have Hasidic listeners, we have Orthodox listeners, Yeshivish listeners, we have non-Orthodox listeners, Conservative, more traditional, Reform. It goes across the spectrum, Reconstructionist, Halachic Egalitarian, whatever way that you describe your mode of affiliation. And broadly speaking, I have two different, the word goals feel so agenda-driven and the word agenda feels so agenda-driven, but I don’t think it’s bad to have an agenda so long as you are forthcoming about it, so long as you state it, everybody has a point of view that they are trying to transmit and allow that idea and that point of view.
The scary word is agenda to, I wouldn’t say convince, but to then percolate in the listener’s mind, in the community’s mind. I don’t know what you’ll do with the ideas. It may cause a instinctive reaction and say, that’s hogwash, that’s garbage, how dare you? For other people, it may initially elicit that reaction and then slowly kind of seep in and think, okay, we could think about this differently. We can think about this in other ways. So I want to be explicit about the goals, about these conversations, about denominations, and I first want to begin with what the goal is not.

The goal is not to minimize the seriousness of the divides between any of these movements. The goal is not to create some post-denominational world where this method of organizing communally is no longer important or no longer relevant or should not play a role. That could not be farther from the truth. I am Orthodox, I believe in the way that our community, broadly speaking through the generations, has preserved and cultivated Torah commitment. I believe it is the true interpretation of Torah’s commitment. Yet my goal is not to convince people to become Orthodox. That is also not the goal.

So if the goal is not to convince people that I have the truth, if the goal is not to convince people that we should have some post denominational world where none of this really matters because it matters deeply and greatly, so what on Earth is this goal? Why have these conversations? And I want to be explicit. I have one goal for the Orthodox community or people who affiliate with the Orthodox community, and that goal is that we have all grown up in a world where the polemics around these communities are still anchored in language that is hoping to almost defeat the existence of these movements.

When reform first began, the polemics around the reforms that they introduced to the synagogue introduced some very important pushback from within the traditional Torah community. They weren’t even known as Orthodox back then. People like Rav Akiva Eiger, the Chasam Sofer, giants of Torah pushed back extraordinarily strongly from these communities saying they are not leading down a path that is going to sustain the vision of Torah and the promise of God to the Jewish people. This is not the right way to practice and they were very clear about that. And I belong to a community that still believes that to be true, and in many ways I believe that to be true. Yet I do believe that we are no longer living in actual 1840 and we are no longer even living in 1940 when people are actively making choices to figure out how they should affiliate what should Torah observance look like? What should Jewish observance look like in the future?

And growing up in the Orthodox community, it is very easy to convince yourself when you talk about the Jewish people, when you talk about Klal Yisrael that that only really includes the people who affiliate as Orthodox. This is not a great innovation. I am not the first person to say this. Rev Lopiansky who has been a guest on this podcast, and I have quoted this before, wrote this exp]licitly in Mishpacha Magazine. He said, “While we Torah observant Jews rightfully take pride in our achievements, the vast, vast majority of Klal Yisrael is evaporating.” The people who have married out, dropped their connection to Yiddishkeit and or gone off the derech are all bona fide members of Klal Yisrael. If we are missing 90 or even just with air quotes, 80% or even one soul, then we are not Klal Yisrael.

We tend to think of ourselves again with air quote, the Torah observant community as Klal Yisrael and the others as a reservoir of potential additions. It’s the other way around. Klal Yisrael, the collective body of the Jewish people is the sum total of all of us, and we are missing 90% of our self.

In so many ways, I agree with this, and I believe this is the goal where if we look at the entirety of the Jewish people as just reservoirs who are eventually going to join our community, then I think we’re going to be waiting a really, really long time because we may be underestimating the vastness of the divide and how static and permanent people grow up thinking of affiliation in the year 2024, when we are recording this. It is not 1940 or even 1950, where it was nearly impossible to predict the direction that American Jewry would take.

There were many people at that time who actually joined the conservative movement because they felt this is the movement that is going to survive in America, then nothing else will survive. Marshall Sklare, who is a sociologist, wrote that explicitly. He of course was wrong, and that led to a great deal of soul-searching within the conservative movement. If we are not here to guarantee survival in America, what is our independent ideology, instead of just being a more sustainable alternative to reform and a more Americanized alternative to Orthodoxy.

If you took a snapshot at that era, there were people who were really choosing and trying to figure out what is the community that is really going to sustain Jewish life and practice in America? And I think in 2024, we need a little bit of a different lens in which we approach the entirety of the Jewish people, and there is no way to approach the entirety of the Jewish people unless we better understand and take a closer look about the universe in which the vast, vast majority of the Jewish people actually affiliate and how they practice to better understand how the vast majority of Klal Yisrael could even potentially infuse and elevate their lives with more shmiras Torah and mitzvos. And I say more because I would never characterize any community as being completely devoid of Torah and mitzvos.

I have never been a fan of making fun of the way a Reform Jew may practice Shabbos or some of the holidays. They grew up with that reality in the same way that many people in the Orthodox world grew up with a reality that may not be the actual objective truth in its interpretation of Torah. We believe in an objective truth, but that does not mean that we should dismiss out of hand the means of affiliation, the means of practice. Even if it is not the expression of halacha and interpretation that we have nurtured within our community, I think it is very dangerous to out of hand dismiss. I think we need to take a closer look, and the reason why we’re taking a closer look is not a transactional come join our community. How could we market to you better? But I think the goal is to better understand how could Torah, and I’m deliberately using the word Torah, which includes mitzvos and includes Jewish practice, it includes Jewish life and Jewish thought, how could we create a world and a Torah that can reach even farther, that can reach even deeper?

We have spent the last 50 to 75 years with incredible successes in our community. Again, this is the goal for people who affiliate Orthodox, incredible successes. I wouldn’t even call them successes. I would call them miracles. My own family is a product of that miracle. My family, for all intents and purposes, should not exist as a from-affiliated family in the Jewish world. Most people who grew up Jewish in my father’s community, in my mother’s community, whether North Adams or Portland, Maine are not affiliated, are not connected in the way that my family is. It is a miracle that we are here.

And much of that miracle is a product of the institutions, the Yeshivas, the shuls, the Jewish life and practice that we have developed and cultivated in the Orthodox world. But I believe to truly meet this moment, we need to not only think more broadly, but we have to take a second look at what Klal Yisrael actually looks like. The word Klal Yisrael is very holy, and when people close their eyes, they could see a vast sea of Jewish people at the Kotel who are davening. But when you close your eyes and think about what you are thinking about when you say the word Klal Yisrael, I think for most people, and in fact what Klal Yisrael actually looks like usually has nothing to do with the images that come across our minds. Klal Yisrael is incredibly vast and most of the Jewish people have very little education and very little Jewish practice in their lives.

And the only way to really introduce those ideas is to first understand the world that they inhabit and not to come at it in a transactional way, but to come at it with sincerity and understanding the starting point of the individuals, to understand how this individual with their family lives, with their commitments, with their children, their spouses, their parents, the universe that we each inhabit. You can’t just hand over a manual as if Torah is some sort of checklist and say, okay, here’s the checklist and go. We know this intuitively in our own lives. And it is also true for non-Orthodox Jews. It is true for Orthodox Jews as well. Torah can address and can reach the interiority of our lives wherever we may be. And if we truly believe that, then we need to better understand where the lives of the vast majority of the Jewish people actually are to understand the way Torah can actually reach them in this moment and our understanding of Torah.

And that’s not to sell them something. I don’t like that transactional. It has always irked me. I have spoken about this. But instead, it’s the very reason why the Lubavitcher Rebbe always bristled at the term kiruv, which has this transactional notion, it means to bring someone close, it makes them, I am close, and you are far, I have always preferred the term chinuch, which comes from fashioning or creating a receptacle for holiness. It is not about the person. It is not about the outreach professional. It is about the vessel. And each of us are a vessel for holiness, no matter your affiliation, no matter your starting point, no matter the connections and decisions and commitments that you may already have that could prevent somebody from ever being able to live a fully quote unquote Orthodox life. And I am fully aware of the fact, and I hope more people begin to embrace this, that not everyone, no one is a blank slate that allows their lives to so seamlessly transform into one specific vision of community.

But that does not mean that the Torah and our mitzvahs do not have a message for each and every Jew exactly where they are and in the moment and with all the commitments that they have. I almost think it is heretical not to believe that. And that is my goal and message for those who are Orthodox affiliated, to think more broadly and more deeply about what Klal Yisrael actually is and represents. Because if we really believe in this, if we really believe in Judaism and Torah and God and these things, if we really do believe and we’re taking this seriously and we take the words of prophets and the Nevi’im seriously, how could you not take a closer look at the vastness of what the Jewish people look like in this moment?

I fully reject any sentiment or any sort of glee at the failure of other movements, that we can now say, Kaddish, as I have heard for other streams of Judaism. That does not mean that I don’t believe in the inherent ideological divide. That does not mean that I have to agree with the Jewish life that other denominations have provided, but I don’t want to say Kaddish for any sort of Jewish affiliation until I am fully confident that there is one stream that actually has the capacity to address the vast, vast majority of the Jewish people. And I’m not sure that we are there yet, but I know that these kinds of conversations can bring us closer, can bring all of us closer to connecting to Am Yisrael, the vastness of the Jewish people, and creating and formulating a vision of Jewish practice, of Jewish affiliation of Torah and mitzvos that can reach that vast, vast majority of Klal Yisrael. That is goal number one. Allow me to state goal number two. I know this is a long intro. You could fast-forward, you can send in letters, but we got to talk about this.

My second goal is for a second population, and that population is what I would call non-Orthodox Jews, who I know that is a very vast, vast, and I don’t want to paint with very broad brush for non-Orthodox Jews. There are non-Orthodox Jews who are extraordinarily educated. There are non-Orthodox Jews who, dare I say, know more Torah than myself. I have no doubt about that in the world. But I do believe that over the past 75 years, particularly American Judaism has been an incredible laboratory about Jewish survival, Jewish continuity. We have been experimenting on this soil about what are the ideas and means and modes of affiliation that really sustain the Jewish people, that allow the Jewish people to have the spiritual nourishment and access to the biblical promises of what our survival is all about. And very often, for a host of reasons, some sociological, feeling judgmental, bad interactions, some that are more real about the barriers that the Orthodox community rightfully has created around ourselves, the what sometimes seems an insurmountable cultural barrier to entry for so many to actually interact deeply with the Orthodox Jewish community.

There’s somebody who wrote about this in Tablet Magazine, wrote an article called “Politics and the Yeshivish Language” by Cole Aronson, who I actually wanted to have on, perhaps will at some point. And he basically says, for the sake of Jewry, the Orthodox should give up their private dialect. Essentially, what he points out is that if a non-Orthodox Jew goes on to so many of our Torah-centric websites, whether it’s YUTorah or the All Daf app, which teaches Daf Yomi or the All Parsha app, of which I have featured Shiurim reading Jewish History in the Parsha every single week, quick plug over there exclusively on the All Daf app or on my Substack reading Jewish history and the parsha.substack.com. I can’t believe I just plugged that in the middle of this serious conversation, but here we are. But what Cole Aronson essentially says, and I don’t fully agree with him, is that there are a lot of cultural barriers to entries.

And if you listen to a lot of these most non-Orthodox Jews who did not grow up going to Yeshiva Day schools are going to have no idea what this person is talking about. Not because they can’t understand the content or it’s too complex, but so much of the terminology that we use is foreign for those who grow up outside the community. The very term, a shiur rather than a class, the very term Talmud rather than Gemara. Each of these can be a minor barrier for entry. That is without getting into the deeper, more Yeshivish terms … what’s the nafka minnah? I could give you a litany of terms stam, mamash.

All of these terms that I probably inadvertently drop, but I try as best as I can on 18Forty to address, create barriers for entries and sometimes those barriers to entry metastasize into something much darker that can be a sense of alienation from what Orthodox Jews are and represent, that Orthodox Jews can become the other within the Jewish community.

And I am aware of that. I have heard it with my own ears. I have family members who have expressed that to me who are non-Orthodox and orthodoxy and even the part of becoming orthodox can be the ultimate representation of otherhood, of becoming that alternative Jew that is unreachable, inscrutable, not understandable.

And part of my goal for our non-Orthodox listeners or Orthodox adjacent listeners who that’s not the way that they live their life. And part of the goal of this series, and honestly if I’m being real for one second, the goal of 18Forty in general is actually to formulate and present the lessons that have been nurtured by the Orthodox community so that it can reach a wider audience, not with the goal that you are all going to become Orthodox. I mean that from the bottom of my heart, it would overjoy me if somebody decided to become Orthodox. It would be wonderful. I think it is an incredible way of sustaining Jewish life and Jewish practice, but I understand that for the vast majority of Jews, that seems insurmountable, but that should not preclude the vast, vast majority of American Jews being able to interact or non-American Jews, I’m sorry, this is quite American-centric, and it’s kind of Ashkenazi-centric. We’ll get to that in a little bit.

There’s so much to talk about in the way the Sephardic community organizes, which is much less, if not entirely, not denominationally driven. That’s a really important point to make, and one that we are going to speak about more.
My dearest friend, Nativ Winiarsky pointed this out. I hope it’s okay I’m mentioning his name explicitly. He’s wonderful. But what I’m trying to do, what is the goal for non-Orthodox listeners? I want to present many of the lessons of the experiment of Judaism of the last 75 years, particularly lessons that have been learned within the Orthodox community and present it to a wider audience, that even those who are hesitant or somewhat judgmental or feel alienated from the Orthodox community, a feeling that I fully understand.

And many people, it’s easy to feel alienated from a community because it’s just a blob, it’s a mass. But to create a space where we can speak without those cultural barriers, to be able to have a language that can be more inclusive and to be able to provoke thought and reflection, no matter your affiliation, and that each of us should be able to learn from the successes and the failures of what has worked and what has not worked, what has been incredibly successful and less successful in this grand experiment of Yiddishkeit over the last century.

And I think 18Forty is a perfect place given our diversity, given the of this community, given my own approach to Yiddishkeit that we can formulate something, we can formulate tradition and Torah and mitzvos and what has worked and has not worked sociologically in the way that we preserve and nurture and cultivate our Jewish identity to kind of pass notes in the back of the classroom, as I sometimes have described, online communities, communities that are not anchored in an actual shul or synagogue or school where you have very real barriers for entry and observance and commitment and standards. That is all about our institutional affiliation.

But I think that we have this unique opportunity where we’re able to pass notes back and forth across the classroom. And I hope in many ways this series is a note from our experiences over the last century that will allow those who did not grow up within the Orthodox world to reflect on what has worked and what has not worked. That’s not exclusive to non-Orthodox Jews. I want Orthodox Jews to reflect also on what has worked and has not worked. But that’s not my primary goal in the Orthodox community because I know most Orthodox Jews do not really turn to me for that kind of guidance that I have. I don’t really have the credibility to really roll that out. I don’t know if I have a credibility in any community, but it’s a little bit different in ours. But those are my two goals.

I want us to see the vastness of the Jewish people, and I want us to once again have the ability, the information, to reflect on wherever we may find our Jewish lives, wherever our starting point in our own individuality, our own family lives may be to learn from one another, to understand what are the methods and methodologies that have worked and have not worked over the last century. And every movement has made mistakes some far more cataclysmic than others. I’m not singling out any denomination, and I am not drawing an equivalence for the mistakes that each denomination on that level have made. But each of us in each denomination, in each wave affiliation have had great successes and have had great failures. And I think by sharing them, by talking about them, I think each of our sense of purpose and Yiddishkeit and affiliation and identity can be magnified, nourished, and enhanced. I hope that is clear. I hope that doesn’t alienate anyone, and I hope that people feel.

I hope that doesn’t alienate anyone, and I hope that people feel comfortable reaching out with their stories and their grappling with their own identity, particularly in this historic moment when the Jewish people have occupied the world’s attention for a sustained six months. This is the time for each of us in our own way, wherever your starting point is, to have a moment of reflection, what does Judaism actually mean to me? What does Yiddishkeit actually mean to me? And we have to start somewhere, and we’re not at a blank slate. We’re not in 1940 and we’re not in 1840, we are in 2024. And there’s a lot of baggage and there’s a lot of divisiveness and division for good reasons, and some for not so good reasons, that already exist. But that doesn’t need to preclude our ability to say that in this moment, we can expect more from ourselves and we can learn more about our Judaism.

As I’ve been saying over and over and over again, the purpose of Judaism is not to fight Antisemitism, as important as that fight may be, but we fight Antisemitism so we can actually focus on the purpose of Judaism. And that is why I am so excited about our guest today, because Professor Jack Wertheimer has spent his entire life doing exactly what we have just discussed, and that is looking at the vastness of the Jewish people themselves. He is an accomplished professor of American-Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and I know him from so many of his incredible works, in particular, his work, The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice Their Religion Today, which actually got on my radar from one of our listeners in Lakewood, who, probably, two years ago emailed me with a recommendation to read this book and said, “This is one of the most beautiful presentations of the accomplishments and the successes of our community.”

When she said “ours,” she’s talking about the Lakewood community, which I do not belong to, but they’ve had an incredible amount of successes. And she recommended this person that I not only read the book, but somebody who really can understand the vastness of Jewish people-hood and the way Jews practice today. And I am so grateful for Professor Wertheimer for joining us. So without further ado, here is our conversation with Professor Jack Wertheimer.
First and foremost, I want to welcome you for joining today. It really is a privilege to have you here. You’ve been writing about American Judaism for many, many decades. And I wanted to begin by asking, why did you write the book, The New American Judaism? It’s very descriptive. Some of your earlier work kind of borders right on the line between sociology and history, like right on that line. Tell me if I’m mischaracterizing it. And I’m curious, why did you feel it was necessary to write a book called The New American Judaism?

Jack Wertheimer:
Well, you captured the book well, I think. I am actually trained as an historian, but I’ve been working on post-World War Two, American-Jewish communal life, religious life, education, I’m now writing a book on philanthropy. So those are the areas that interest me going back, roughly, to 1945 to the present day. But apropos of the book, The New American Judaism, I had actually written a book that appeared just 30 years ago, in 1993, and the title of that book was A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America. So that was my first stab, in 1993, at a book-length rendition of what’s happening in American-Jewish religious life. And at the time, as the title indicates, my focus was very much on the divisive nature of a religion and the ways in which polarization had intensified in American life around religious issues. That was particularly a time in which “Who is a Jew” debates-

David Bashevkin:
Sure.

Jack Wertheimer:
… were very much in the news in Israel, and that transferred over to the United States as well. The reason that I decided many years later to take on the same topic, but to approach it differently, was because of my realization that that 1993 book was completely outdated and that the American Jewish religious scene looked very different. And I wanted to understand that scene better. And what I tried to do in the New American Judaism is to acknowledge that religious life, for many American Jews, has become quite peripheral, quite marginal in their lives for a whole variety of reasons that I go into. But there are important sectors of the Jewish community that are intensifying their involvement in Jewish religious life, albeit in very different ways. And I wanted to try to acknowledge and credit what is happening in those different quarters. And yes, I have written, I believe, sympathetically about different Orthodox sectors of the Jewish community, but I tried to do the same thing with the reform movement, the conservative movement, and reconstructionists and other such groups as well.

David Bashevkin:
I would almost take issue with your description of sympathetically. That’s not at all the word that I would use, at least my experience reading it. I didn’t find it sympathetic. It was very descriptive. It was really my next question, meaning, you do something very unusual in this book, which is, if you read the book, I don’t think somebody would know what your personal practice was. I don’t think somebody would know whose team you are on necessarily. I don’t know if you have a team? You work, obviously, at the Jewish Theological Seminary. But there’s something very descriptive about the book, and giving credit where it’s due. Sometimes you could sense a lament where certain directions are taken. But the entire structure of the book, and again, correct me if I’m wrong, is very descriptive. Did you have a deliberate effort that you were not going to be more prescriptive in your book and kind of telling people, “this is what works and this is what doesn’t work,” when looking at the landscape of American Jewry?

Jack Wertheimer:
Right. Partially, I’m amused by what you’re saying because there have been some reviews by academics who have dismissed my book because I’m so obviously biased in their view.

David Bashevkin:
Who do they accuse you of being biased towards? I’m just curious.

Jack Wertheimer:
Oh, more traditional religion.

David Bashevkin:
Oh, okay.

Jack Wertheimer:
But the other piece is that I did try to hold off on the prescriptive part, but in the conclusion I do talk a bit about what I think needs to be taken into account. I don’t take sides in the sense of saying, “Oh, all Jews should become Orthodox,” or “All Jews should become conservative or reform.” No, I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s realistic to make that kind of argument.

Ain’t going to happen, if you’ll pardon my language. But rather to try to think about, “Well, within your own religious mindset and within your own community, what might you reconsider? What would be valuable and what seems to be working better?” So I did try to articulate that in the conclusion of the book. But by sympathetic, I don’t mean that I was sympathizing with any one group. I was both critical of every single—

David Bashevkin:
Yes.

Jack Wertheimer:
… and at the same time, I tried to highlight what some of the achievements of these different movements are. But the other point I want to make is that the book is not entirely about movements, it’s also about things happening outside of the denominational sphere, what Jews are doing in other types of settings and unusual settings for a religious expression. Outside of shuls, in other words, or synagogues or temples. So sympathetic in the sense of, I personally would not be attracted by some of these things, but let’s understand what’s going on. And even the cover of the book is a photograph-

David Bashevkin:
It’s a beautiful cover. I have it right in front of me.

Jack Wertheimer:
Thank you. I like it a lot in the way it was done, and which I say improved by the creator of the cover, but it’s a photograph taken at Burning Man. I would never show up at Burning Man.

David Bashevkin:
Did you mention that? I didn’t… Oh, it’s listed in the back of the book, “participates at the annual Burning Man Arts Festival.”

Jack Wertheimer:
Absolutely.

David Bashevkin:
“Gather in the Black Rock Desert at Camp Sukkot Shalom to celebrate Shabbat.” Wow-

Jack Wertheimer:
Right. Exactly.

David Bashevkin:
… I’d never put that together, because they’re kind of gathered. People could Google the image because neither of us, I think, will do it justice. But it’s one of those gymnasiums. I actually have one in my backyard, one of these semicircle climbing toys.

Jack Wertheimer:
Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
But obviously for adults. And you see that they’ve made this neon Star of David, and you really see this tapestry of finding Yiddishkeit in very unexpected places.

Jack Wertheimer:
Right. That’s exactly the point. Exactly the point. Yes.

David Bashevkin:
Let me ask you a little bit about the methodology. People love talking about the Jewish landscape. Everyone loves being an armchair sociologist, “Who’s doing it right? Who’s doing it wrong?” And I’m talking about conversations, not that are grounded in ideology, because your book is not about the ideology or the theology, I think, primarily of the different movements, but it’s really about the practice and the lives and how people respond to that communally, which I think makes it easy and almost able to traverse all denominations, all movements, whatever you want to call them, because it has this very descriptive quality. But I’m curious about the methodology, the tools?

Jack Wertheimer:
Yes.

David Bashevkin:
What do you do, if I was writing a book, The New American Judaism, I could interview some of my relatives. I have Haredi relatives, I have some reconstructionist relatives, I have conservative relatives, and you go to a Simcha, I could interview them. What is the methodology at your disposal, at your command, when you are trying to evaluate and describe the landscape of American Jewry? And maybe, if you could, the things that almost everyday people should be taking into account when they’re thinking of the landscape of American Jewry?

Jack Wertheimer:
Right. Just to take a step back for a minute, for about 20 years, I participated in a study group that was called the Congregational Studies Team. I was the only Jewish person on that team. These were mainly sociologists. There were one or two theologians, I’m talking about Christian theologians now, on that team as well. Protestants, to lesser extent, Catholics, and as I said, I was the only Jew on it. And one of the things that interested people in this group was the focus was on congregations, but on, what is called, lived religion. So it’s very nice that the… whatever it is… the movement officially declares that Jews ought to do X, Y, and Z, or that the Catholic Church says that contraceptives may not be used, but then we know that the vast majority of American Catholics, in fact do use contraceptives. So what’s the lived religion?

David Bashevkin:
I love the term “lived religion,” and there’s always a little bit of a gap. But I think depending on the movement, the gap widens or narrows between the central authorities, maybe the leaders and the people.

Jack Wertheimer:
Yes.

David Bashevkin:
How wide that gap is, I think, definitely varies. We can come back to it. But please continue. Tell me about this group?

Jack Wertheimer:
Right. So there were a couple of sociologists in that group who then tried to, and did, produce books on lived religion. And they got, in one case, very large grants to do that. They had a team of people, they interviewed lots of individuals, but sakh hakl, they ended up interviewing 60, 70, 80 people. And from that… and listen to their stories about what religion means to them. And out of that, 300, 400 page books were written. I felt… First of all, I didn’t have that kind of grant money, but I also felt, coming back now to your point, that for me to interview whatever it is, even a hundred Jews, how is that going to represent the wider American-Jewish population? So I made a very different decision, and that was that I would interview, not amcha, if you will, but rather rabbis of all flavors, in all parts of the country, in all sized synagogues. And I interviewed about, I believe the number was like, something, 160 of rabbis of all flavors.

David Bashevkin:
And you list their names in the acknowledgments?

Jack Wertheimer:
Yes, I do list their names as well. Although, what I promised them was anonymity, and they do all have anonymity. So I’d refer to “a conservative rabbi in the Midwest” as an example. And I asked them about their perceptions, what are they seeing out there? Now, to begin with, I’m well aware that there’s a limit to what they see about the Jewish religious lives of people who never come to their synagogues. And that’s a whole in what I was doing, and I tried to, kind of, fill that hole by making use of newspaper reports and other kinds of source material. And then, of course, there’s the criticism, which I heard, and that is you’re going to the elite and you are asking them. What I found interesting was that because they were speaking anonymously, I found, what I considered to be, a very high level of honesty. Rabbis talking about what they know is really going on amongst their congregants and being forthright and not trying to prettify the picture. But at the same time, these rabbis valued the people they come into contact with.

So when you ask me about methodology, I use that particular methodology. It can be criticized. It can be said that I want to write about lived religion, I should actually talk to the amcha, the average Jews, and ask them about their lived religion. And then I’ll make one other comment which will sound off-putting to some, and that is… Now, a return to some of these books that I mentioned, it’s very difficult for people who are not trained to necessarily reflect in an articulate fashion about their religious beliefs. And I didn’t want to take the chance that I’d be talking to people and basically, I wouldn’t be able to gather the kind of information that I was looking for.

David Bashevkin:
Meaning you could ask a very devout Jew or very committed Jew, but if you’re not really trained in the specific language, I’ve seen this very often, and you ask people to reflect on their religious lives, sometimes that numinous quality comes out where it’s just like, it’s a feeling. It’s hard to put to words. But definitely, I understand why you spoke specifically to rabbis. And it really is a nice cross section. The one section that I noticed, was not entirely missing, it just wasn’t so robust, was the American Hasidic community. I did see that you spoke to Rabbi Niederman, who I believe is affiliated with Satmar.

Jack Wertheimer:
Yes, he is.

David Bashevkin:
Was it difficult to find people within the Hasidic community? Because you have-

Jack Wertheimer:
Yes, it always is. It always is. These are communities that are not so keen on speaking to outsiders, so I just decided not to pursue that because I didn’t know whether I’d be able to get honest answers. And certainly, for us to learn more about the Hasidic community, there are these two fascinating books that appeared about a year or two ago on Satmar, one on Kiryas Joel and another one on Hasidim and Williamsburg, and those are great contributions. The first book on Kiryas Joel has been in the making for 20 years before it appeared.

David Bashevkin:
I’m curious, when you approached the rabbis, did you have a set survey of the questions you asked every single rabbi, or it was more free flowing conversation?

Jack Wertheimer:
It was a combination of the two. Yes, I had roughly six, eight questions and I asked routinely, but then I wanted to go down byways. Rabbis would say something… Because one of my questions was also, “So what are you doing in your congregation, in spirit prayer as an example, to attract people to tefillah? What goes on? What goes on in non-Orthodox settings where the vast majority of people definitely show up for the high holidays? So what goes on? What are you doing?” Then we go down by ways and I wanted to hear what they had to say, but as a result of that, I heard some remarkable things that I didn’t really expect. So it was a combination of set questions, but also then going with the flow just to see where these individuals would take me. And I came away from these conversations with a great deal of respect, first of all, for the challenge that these rabbis face and the seriousness with which they approached it, and with their candor and honesty, as well as their creativity.

David Bashevkin:
When you were studied… or even in the book, I have the parts that I marked off and I found the most eye-opening. What were some of the biggest discoveries for you in kind of profiling the contemporary landscape of American orthodoxy? What was something that kind of surprised you?

Jack Wertheimer:
Well, it’s hard for me to answer that about surprises because I had-

David Bashevkin:
You weren’t coming in as a novice.

Jack Wertheimer:
No, I wasn’t. Yeah-

David Bashevkin:
Exactly.

Jack Wertheimer:
I also had written a couple of pieces about Orthodoxy before I even began the book. It was in part based on that research that I did that I was inspired to then just continue with the book. But certainly, this whole question of sliding to the right, sliding to the left, to what extent is that happening, the struggles that exist within modern Orthodoxy where there basically is a division that is occurring between those who want to be modern as they understand it, and those who want to be kind of neo-Haredi because of some of their concerns. So those are some of the key themes that jumped out at me.

David Bashevkin:
One thing that I found really remarkable, and it’s something that, again, within the Orthodox world, we almost, I think, in many ways struggle with the inverse, and I’ve spoken about it explicitly, is that you write in a passage about the sociological costs of egalitarianism, where you write the initiatives to include once marginalized populations show equally ambiguous and no doubt unanticipated results, meaning we’re trying to include more, and there is… than an exit where you write… again, I’m quoting directly from your book, “Reform institutions are open as never before to women welcoming them into positions of authority and leadership. Yet even as women have been moved from the periphery to the center Reform, men have been moving rapidly in the opposite direction.” And I’m curious, because this really tells you something about even the notion of inclusivity that I’ve spoken about a few times on this podcast. All inclusivity leads to some exclusivity. All exclusivity can actually produce a richer type of inclusivity.

And I’m curious, did you get any backlash or misgivings for that criticism almost connecting the two? See, when I read that passage, I was like, “Oh, that’s so interesting,” because in a lot of Orthodox spaces where it’s very gender segregated, as you obviously know, there are efforts now in conversations, “How do we bring more women to shul?” And it seems like there’s this Goldilocks phenomenon where everybody wants to be inclusive but also preserve the core. I’m curious how people reacted to this, and if within the Reform movement and any movement that is more egalitarian, are they explicit about the cost? Because I know in the Orthodox world they are explicit about, “Have we become too,” almost like, “bro-centric? Too guy-centric? Are we losing the hearts and minds of women?” I’m curious how explicit those conversations were?

Jack Wertheimer:
Right. I actually did get a fair amount of feedback, because what you quoted is a variation of what I published earlier in Commentary Magazine. And in response to that article, which made the same point… First of all, Reform rabbis, especially, tend to be extremely respectful in the way in which they speak, number one. And number two, what I heard from a lot of people was, “Yes, you are really onto something. That’s correct.” On the specific point that you’re mentioning about women’s roles, there are a number of reform rabbis who’ve written articles and books about, what do we do to bring men back?

Because some of the things I cite in the book are research articles that demonstrate the extent to which men are less involved. Certainly in prayer services, they may still be involved in leadership roles in synagogues. And it’s not only men, but it also trickles down to teenagers, teenage boys.

I had a conversation with a prominent leader of the Reform movement, and I asked him point-blank, “Is this correct that women predominate?” And he said, “It is.” We see it at the biennial conventions of the Reform movement, which attract five, 6,000 people, but the vast majority are females. We see it in camps where by the age of 13 or 14, there’s a sharp drop-off in the number of boys who attend the reform camps, but the girls continue to come. So it’s in many different quarters. I have to say that a response to this, which I’ve heard is, “Well, once upon a time women were excluded, but nobody complained about that.” Excluded isn’t the right word. “Women were the minority, and certainly didn’t have key roles to play. Nobody complained about that. Why are you complaining now that women are dominant in the reform movement?” So yeah, as you said before, inclusion often is something that also can lead to… whether it’s exclusion or certain… Men are not excluded from the reform synagogues, but they choose to distance themselves.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah, I’ve said it many times, meaning if you try to include everybody, you sometimes wind up with a community that’s for nobody. I don’t mean literally excluded, but sometimes that can happen, and it’s really hard when you’re trying to figure out the calculus of, “Who is this for?” There’s no one community that can rightfully say, “Oh, everyone’s going to feel comfortable here.” That’s very hard when you’re thinking communally. One thing that you were very emphatic about, and this is probably one of the most moving passages, where you talk about the secret and the importance of education. I think you talk about it within the universe of Orthodox Jews. You write explicitly, where you say that the Jewish Day School movement is overwhelmingly an Orthodox phenomenon, and its educational mission is reinforced by summer camps, youth groups, and other informal educational vehicles, and eventually by gap year study in Israel.

And you speak really glowingly about the impact and effect of this movement on American Jewry. I think, definitely, more than sympathetic. You say this is really kind of the secret sauce of a lot of Orthodoxy’s success. I’m curious, what do you think the impediments… now that, kind of, other movements have seen the success and the importance of Jewish education? And obviously, like all efforts, comes at a cost, and this time a very real financial cost. But what do you think is the reason why this effort has not been more widely embraced in other movements? Particularly, one of the things you lament is people’s familiarity with Hebrew, where you write, “The absence of such an education makes it far more difficult for those not schooled in the vocabulary and concepts of Judaism to relate to the religion.” And then you say, “Case in point, let’s talk about Hebrew.”

It’s not so in vogue to talk about the language. And I think sometimes when we talk about denominational or movement differences… I know the term “denomination” is not really so accurate, but the movement differences. So there’s always a push for pluralism. And I, personally, am an Orthodox Jew. I went through the Jewish Day School movement. And there is a part of me that feels that the base knowledge of many… or let’s say your average Orthodox Jews, about Judaism could sometimes be light years ahead of the non-Orthodox world, and you’re not even operating on equal footing. That doesn’t make somebody less of a Jew, but your discourse, your language is different. I’m curious how you would respond or what’s your analysis for, if we’ve seen how successful this is, why has this effort not been at least imitated on more wider scale? Why hasn’t it been more successful outside of Orthodoxy?

Jack Wertheimer:
I’ll have to put this pretty bluntly. Because the vast majority of non-Orthodox parents are not prepared to enroll their kids in these programs for intensive Jewish education. As a case in point, in a conversation I had with a conservative rabbi, this is more recently that I had this conversation, and I raised a variation of your question, and what he said to me is, “I can’t tell you how often I try, and it’s a non-starter. They just won’t contemplate it.” Now, in some cases, it’s because they have a commitment to public school education. In some cases, it’s because they have a commitment to what they regard as the importance of their kids being exposed to diversity. They’re going to have to function in American society, and we know that Orthodox Jews can’t possibly function in American society or get into major universities because they live in an insulated world and they just attend Jewish Day Schools. I’m saying this with a degree of sarcasm.

David Bashevkin:
Correct. I picked that up.

Jack Wertheimer:
Right. But that’s what the mindset is, “I want my kids to be able to function in American society and get into the best colleges and universities” … that’s what governs them. And then you have to add the other variable here, which is, “I don’t want my kid to become too Jewish. I don’t want my kid to come home and tell me that they’re not going to eat in my house.” So there are a whole variety of circumstances here so that… it’s a very tough sell. And fewer rabbis are trying to make that sell also.
Once upon a time, conservative rabbis, for example, used to try to sell, “Okay, you’re not going to go to a Solomon Schechter school. Send your kids to Camp Ramah.” I think fewer conservative rabbis are trying to make that case now. Maybe it’s because it’s a much more difficult case to make because the population that they’re dealing with is not receptive to it. So we tend to attribute a great deal of power to rabbis. Rabbis have less and less power, I think, in all the movements, with the exception of the Haredi world, then was the case in the past. It’s not a battle that is easily engaged. And again, there are individuals, on a retail basis, you can sometimes make the case, “If you really want your kids to be able to participate in Jewish life, this is what they need.” Some parents will be responsive to that.

David Bashevkin:
It’s the part that saddens me. I come from a very personal place when I think of the denominations because my father was raised originally in an Orthodox synagogue, and then eventually it became conservative, and then I think a reform and… It went through the entire spectrum until they eventually sold the building of his childhood shul to a church. My bubbe’s funeral was inside of that shul. I remember being there. And to me, I grew up in a home where I have seen Judaism lost, meaning, I have relatives who are close to me, who I love, who I love, and I am not criticizing, and they know, my uncle knows how much I love him, but one generation apart, it can be fully lost. Your vocabulary, your knowledge, just any connection whatsoever. It doesn’t take a hundred years.

David Bashevkin:
Knowledge, just any connection whatsoever. It doesn’t take 100 years. It could take very, very short. And there are two things I really want to get to. First and foremost, you touched upon misconceptions, non-Orthodox misconceptions of orthodoxy. And I also want to talk about orthodox misconceptions about the non-Orthodox world. What do you think are the primary misconceptions? And I’m sure I harbor many of them. I think a lot of them, and you kind of give some permission because our level of education by the time, for sure, our most diligent are 17 years old, they have almost a rabbinic level of knowledge what would be compared to in the non-Orthodox movements, which erode some of the respect and almost common grounding that people have. But what do you think are the primary misconceptions that Orthodox Jews, I’m talking very broadly here, of course, have of the non-Orthodox world.

Jack Wertheimer:
So actually I’m not going to duck your question, but I’m going to come to it in a roundabout fashion because what you’ve just raised now about the consequences of this vast educational gap, I think we ought to try to unpack a little bit more. Well, the reason why I’m so concerned about this lack of education is because first of all, I don’t believe that one can function today as an engaged Jew and be Judaically illiterate. It was far easier for that to happen in the past. And a very large sector of the Jewish population 100 years ago had a very low level of Jewish literacy, and yet they were very much involved in Jewish life because they lived in Jewish neighborhoods and they shared some knowledge of Yiddish. Even the children, I’m talking about the second generation, there were commonalities and set ways of connecting to Jewish life that are far more difficult today. It has to be much more intentional. And that’s one of the things I actually write about in the book. Also, we have to be intentional about a Jewish education. That’s one step if we want to ensure that Jews will participate in Jewish life.

And then the other piece of this is the gap that exists. Look, the Pew study that appeared in 2021 based on a survey done the previous year, asked specific questions about how Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Jews regard each other. And what was evident was that only a very small percentage, either I’ll call them, “Extreme” Orthodox, and Reform felt that they had anything in common with each other. Conservative Jews in the middle indicated they had more in common with both Reform and Orthodox Jews. And what’s happening is that I think is very unhealthy, is the extent to which that is causing, as you pointed out, a social gap as well. How many Orthodox Jews today have family members as you’ve described, who are not frum, some do, many do not.

David Bashevkin:
This has changed dramatically. This is such an important point, and I want to make sure that I’m correct on this. I grew up as being a minority, but not a tiny minority in my class of people who had close relatives, I’m saying up to first who were not Orthodox. And when I ask my current students, “How many relatives do you have who are non-Orthodox,” it is a tiny, tiny fraction, maybe two, three hands in a class of sometimes 50 students. It’s tiny. Has that changed?

Jack Wertheimer:
Yes, it has. That’s the point I was making and that you were just illustrating it as well. There was a time in which Orthodox Jews had far more family connections and social connections with non-Orthodox Jews. That’s becoming less and less the case. And as a result of that, I think that there is a fair amount of ignorance about non-Orthodox versions. Look, this may sound like an extreme version, but we see similar parallel to this about Israelis who come to the United States and they’re blown away because their understanding of what Jewish life is, is so very different. And then they’re exposed to the range of possibilities in American Jewish life, which many of them find very interesting, but they’ve been shielded from that because there’s only one kind of legitimate way of doing things in terms of Judaism in Israel. So the point is that religion is, yet again becoming a divisive factor in Jewish life, both here and obviously in Israel too.

David Bashevkin:
But come back to that original question about Orthodox misconceptions of non-Orthodox Jews. I understand why that phenomenon has grown. I think a generation ago, certainly my generation, more relatives had… You had an uncle or a cousin or somebody close to you, an in-law, whatever it is, who is not Orthodox, and it’s much, much less common now as the Orthodox community has grown and gotten stronger. I’m curious what you think those underlying misconceptions are.

Jack Wertheimer:
Well, look, to be honest, this is not a topic that I’ve researched, so I’m just kind of answering by the seat of my pants on this, but to use the Israeli equivalent of this, everyone who’s not Orthodox, they’re reformi. “Reformi” right? That’s the Hebrew word for non-Orthodox Jews. And these distinctions between different types of non-Orthodox Jews and their levels of observance are lost. And I think that the same kind of thing is happening here. Again, I can’t back this up with research, I haven’t done research—

David Bashevkin:
This resonates completely with me. But yeah, explain more meaning we group them all together, and assume they probably know nothing and do nothing and-

Jack Wertheimer:
Right. And what they do is so alien that, “Oh, men and women sitting together, okay, very alien.” Going to shul on Shabbos morning and then going out and playing golf is very alien. How do these things compute? Again, I don’t know whether without those family connections and other social connections, whether an understanding of what Judaism and certainly of being Jewish means to non-Orthodox Jews can be understood.

David Bashevkin:
There’s so much positive. I’m not the kind of person who bashes, nor do I want to solicit any bashing, and you’re not that kind of person either. But I do want to talk a little bit about the things I’m going to use the word, that saddened you. I know there was one passage that I found, it was sad to me. It was a passage about a lament from a Reform rabbi who wrote, “When I give a class on how to lift the Torah and dress it, how to light a Hanukkah menorah or make a Seder, people do not come. It’s not because they know. They’re embarrassed that they don’t know and maybe don’t care.” And to me, that was very sad that were at that state, and there were parts throughout that saddened me and made me smile where one rabbi was again identified with a Reform rabbi who told you, another lament, “The god of soccer is a jealous god,” basically explaining why the congregants don’t want to show up on Shabbos morning.

But I’m curious if in the course of this interacting with other Jews, if you as a person, as a Jew, somebody who obviously cares deeply about the Jewish people, and Yiddishkeit and the continuation of Yiddishkeit, were there any trends that you found saddening or almost like you know how this story ends, why can’t you just, like, I’m like screaming, “This is not a good path. We’ve seen how this ends.” I’m curious if you ever had that emotion. Again, you’re very sober in the book, but what saddened you when looking at the American landscape?

Jack Wertheimer:
I’ll invoke a word that’s not very commonly used anymore, and that’s assimilation. What saddens me is that a very large number of American Jews are assimilating by which I mean that they are checking out, that they’re just not interested in being Jewish. That’s not true of all obviously, but it’s a growing population. We have, again, in these surveys, like the Pew survey, one of the categories that they use is the category of nones, N-O-N-E-S, Jews, who don’t identify with the Jewish religion.

David Bashevkin:
I’m happy you spelled it out, or our listeners would’ve thought that we have a sizable portion of Christian nuns in our ranks. But you mean nones, zero religion.

Jack Wertheimer:
Yes. And those percentages are growing and particularly amongst younger populations of Jews in their 20s and 30s and even 40s. And the other thing that saddens me, which is a very controversial issue in the Jewish community, is that rates of intermarriage have skyrocketed. And I have made many non-friends by writing about the implications of intermarriage, which the official line in much of the Jewish community is, still don’t talk about it, and the more hospitable we are, the greater the chances are that the children of intermarriage families will be raised as Jews. And the data that we have indicate that, yes, that’s the case, but what does that really mean, that they’re being raised as Jews? Is it as Jews, as Jews and something else? And even those who are being raised as Jews, to what extent are they relating to religion to begin with? So all of those factors are sad to me. I anticipate that we’re going to be looking at a smaller population of Jews in the coming number of decades.

David Bashevkin:
We happen to have done an episode on intermarriage. It’s definitely a hot-button issue that nobody wants to talk about, though it is a very important, but why would somebody stop being friends with you over that? Why is that controversial for you to assert that intermarriage is hurting the Jewish community? That opinion would seem to me, almost totally non-controversial, even 50 years ago. Why is that a controversial opinion?

Jack Wertheimer:
Because I’m talking about their kids. I’m talking about their children and their grandchildren. I’m raising the question of whether their grandchildren will identify as Jews, what could be more painful? And we see the consequence of that. Also. There was one question on this 2022 Pew study that to me was just devastating, and that was a significant percentage of Jews when they were asked about whether it’s important to them that their grandchildren will be Jewish, not that they’re going to be Frum, that they’re going to be Jewish. Okay, A significant percentage of the moment, I don’t recall what it was said, “No,” that doesn’t bother them. Now is that because they really don’t care or because they feel a sense of futility of despair and-

David Bashevkin:
Resignation.

Jack Wertheimer:
Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, it’s a very painful issue, and I understand why it’s a painful issue, but the challenge is, are we able to differentiate between our personal family situation and the other question of what is good for American Jewish life or for the Jewish people in the United States? I have met individuals who have said to me, “My children have intermarried, but I’m able to also understand that this is not good for American Jewish life,” but a lot of people are just reluctant because it’s so painful to tread in that territory.

David Bashevkin:
I’m curious about the efforts that inspire you most about the American landscape right now, and maybe some of those closing words that you write in the conclusion of your book about what do we need to do? You and I are both in the 1% of educated Jews in America, and what could we do, and I’m not trying to enlist anybody in outreach or anything, but what could we do to help address so many of the saddening trends within American Judaism?

Jack Wertheimer:
In terms of uplifting things, things that genuinely inspired me, and move me, there are initiatives that younger American Jews, again, I’m talking now about people in their teens even, but certainly their 20s and 30s are doing to create these, so-called startups that appeal to different Jewish subpopulations. Earlier we spoke about the whole question of inclusion, exclusion, but we have many different subpopulations amongst Jews, and I think that the creation of this diverse field of institutions, organizations, programs, many of which are very creative in trying to draw people in, teach them a bit, get Jews to interact with each other, which is very important, the social interactions and contacts with each other, those to me are very inspiring.

And even the example that we spoke about Burning Man, right? Who would’ve thought that there would be thousands of Jews at Burning Man and that various Jewish, not only official organizations in Bethel Chabad was there, but also lots of startups, or people doing things on their own initiative to reach out to make sure that these Jews will have a Kabbalat Shabbat, that they will have a Friday night meal Shabbat meal together. I find those to be inspiring, and I find rabbis who develop programs to draw in people who in the past would never have considered coming. Those to me are uplifting.

And then to come to the second part of your question, there is something that we can do. I don’t know whether you want to put it under this banner of, “Outreach,” but we know that human beings are influenced by their social networks. We know that when our friends start smoking, we’re more likely to start smoking. We know that when our friends put on weight, that we are more likely to put on weight. We certainly know that when our friends support of one particular political position, we are more inclined to go in that direction. We need, “We,” by which I mean all of us, not just the rabbis, the officiants, the high priests of Judaism need to find ways of reaching out to other Jews and invite them for a Shabbos meal, invite them for a conversation, invite them, we’re about to celebrate this holiday of Sukkot, why don’t you come to our Sukkot and join us if we’re going to address this? I think it’s got to be a retail operation one-on-one. And as you know from the book, I have a lot of respect for Orthodox outreach organizations and what they’re doing. I have a lot of respect for Chabad specifically, but it shouldn’t only be in the hands of rabbis to do this, and in the case of Chabad of rebbetzin to do this, but of every single Jew. And I think that’s one way of reaching people in our network.

David Bashevkin:
That’s absolutely beautiful. I have one question that I want to ask and I think you might be, I don’t know, either uniquely suited to answer or you may not want to answer it at all and talk about it. A lot of the discourse within the Orthodox world has deteriorated in the way we talk about non-Orthodox movements, particularly non-Orthodox rabbis. I said, “We,” I would never speak that way, but I believe that it comes from a great place of betrayal where in the last 100 years or so, 100 years might be too much, but starting in the 1950s as Orthodoxy got its footing and started building schools, and shuls, and institutions, they looked at their non-Orthodox counterparts, and rabbinic counterparts and felt that they were not doing enough or just doing it in a very backwards way that contributed to the assimilation of American Jewry.

And I would say there’s a deep sense of betrayal among a lot of Orthodox Jews, particularly when they talk about non-Orthodox rabbis that, “You are the ones who cause this assimilation. This is your fault. So why would we ever be graceful, or kind or this and that?” There’s a real sense of animosity might be too strong of a word, but, “Betrayal,” I think is the right word. I’m curious if you think that feeling is at all justified. And secondly, how would you respond? Because I know with social media when we air this publicly, it’s so ugly, it’s so divisive. What would you say is the right approach for how those who have been gifted with the upbringing that afforded them a Jewish education, afforded them the richness of Jewish language to be thinking about the broader landscape of American Jewry?

Jack Wertheimer:
A very large question. To begin with put my historians kippah on for a moment, let’s understand that the battle between orthodoxy and various other movements is a long-standing one. This is a battle that we can trace back 200 years now at this point, the response in the 1810s and the 1820s by orthodox rabbis to reformers, and often very vicious responses on both sides of this issue. And it has continued to the present day.

“Betrayal,” yeah, I think that there are some rabbis who, in order not to make waves in their congregations, I’m talking about non-Orthodox ones now, just held their piece. They didn’t fight these battles, but understand that most rabbis are employees. One of the things that makes Chabad work is that the rabbi, and certainly Chabad, owns the shul. So you get rid of a Chabad rabbi, you’re going to get another one. That’s not the case in most synagogues, including in modern Orthodox synagogues.

David Bashevkin:
100%.

Jack Wertheimer:
For a modern Orthodox rabbi who alienates members of the congregation by speaking out about issues. That rabbi can be fired. And that’s the case in spades in the non-Orthodox movements. But I remind you also what I said earlier regarding your question about Jewish education, and the conversation I had with a conservative rabbi who sends his own kids to day schools, who tries to open up that conversation and his response, his reaction is, “This is a non-starter. These people are not going to consider it.”

What I’m trying to say here is that there is this sense of power or the attribution of power to these rabbis, which they don’t have. They can’t make their congregants do X, Y, and Z. And one of the strengths in the Orthodox community, for better and worse, is that there’s a degree of peer pressure that exists in the Orthodox community that does not exist outside of it. That has accomplished many good things, but it also can be highly disruptive.

David Bashevkin:
Sure.

Jack Wertheimer:
So when you say, “Betrayal,” yeah, I’m sure that there are some non-Orthodox rabbis who could be accused of that, but I don’t think that’s generally the case. It’s an uphill struggle with congregants who may not be receptive to the message, and that’s putting it nicely, or maybe hostile to the message.

David Bashevkin:
And I think in the interim, and I like the way that you phrased it, instead of casting blame, and I’m not even an advocate, I’m not an advocate of pluralism as it’s commonly understood; I think these are very real ideological differences. But I think if we spent less time finger pointing, and casting the blame, and I think the model of the outreach movement, the model of Chabad is very admirable, and just looking at how we can uplift fellow Jews, regardless of what movement they belong to, I think everybody would be better off. And it irks me, really to my core, when I see the way people, particularly Orthodox Jews, I’ll be quite blunt with you, talk about non-Orthodox Judaism, non-Orthodox Jews. I do find it quite painful, and I think your book does a very beautiful job of showing the entire landscape, both the warts, and even more so, and more importantly, the beauty that can be found across the entire spectrum. So I am so grateful for you joining and speaking with me today.
I always end my interviews with more rapid-fire questions, if you’ll indulge me. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about your book. If you could recommend another book that could help give some focus and give some substance to some of the divides and issues that kind of animate Contemporary American Judaism, what would you recommend?

Jack Wertheimer:
I’m trying to think about a book that covers kind of the range. There are all kinds of books on the individual movements. So Samuel Heilman has written on orthodoxy and book Sliding to the Right, as an example, but that’s internal to the orthodoxy. In terms of the overview, there is a book by a reform rabbi by the name of Dana Evan Kaplan, which offers his take from his perspective of the American Jewish scene. Yes. And he’s also written specific books about the reform movement, but in part, I wrote my book because I thought there was a vacuum there.

David Bashevkin:
Absolutely, absolutely. My next question, it’s always interesting to ask somebody who is so well published and already has a PhD, but if somebody gave you a great deal of money and allowed you to take a sabbatical with no responsibilities whatsoever to go back to school and in your case, earn a second PhD, what do you think the subject and title of your studies would be?

Jack Wertheimer:
Of the dissertation, you mean?

David Bashevkin:
Yeah, what would you study?

Jack Wertheimer:
To be honest with you? Music.

David Bashevkin:
Oh, I love that answer.

Jack Wertheimer:
Yes. When I was a kid for a number of years, I took violin lessons and it was not a good fit for me. But since then, I have forgotten how to read sheet music, but I just would like to learn more about music. I happen to love classical music and I listen to it, but I’d like to understand it more from the inside.

David Bashevkin:
I very much appreciate that. My last question, I’m always curious about people’s sleep schedules. What time do you go to sleep at night and what time do you wake up in the morning?

Jack Wertheimer:
I’m a night person. I may not go to sleep until about 12:30, some cases, even 1:00. Accordingly, I get up a little later, but what you didn’t ask me is what would I really wish I had done my career, and the answer is: play shortstop for the New York Yankees.

David Bashevkin:
I very much appreciate that. I think all movements in all Jews could get behind that dream. Professor Jack Wertheimer, thank you so much for your time speaking today. It really means so much to me.

Jack Wertheimer:
Thanks for having me on, David. I appreciated this conversation and I hope that your listeners will too.

David Bashevkin:
As we reflect on kind of the vastness, and the differences in the way people affiliate, I want to discuss an article that I had written for 18Forty. I try to do this for every topic that we cover. I try to write an essay on what that topic means to me. And of course, in our discussion of Jewish denominations, I wrote an essay called What Jewish Denominations Mean to Me, and essentially I did two things. I explained why I think the stakes of affiliation can sometimes be so important because I have seen that in my own family life, and the own trajectory of where I come from, that Yiddishkeit can be lost in one generation.

That the means of affiliation that preserve the Jewish people have very high stakes in the way that we affiliate, because particularly in America in this diaspora, it is so easy to assimilate, it is so easy for Jews to be completely lost from their Jewish identity. It does not take 100 years. It probably takes a quarter of that. It could take 10 years, 25 years. But in one generation, and I know this from my own life and from my own family, the distance, and the sense of alienation and assimilation that can happen over such a short period of time is frightening, is haunting. So the stakes are incredibly high.
And the question that I posed in this essay is, why do you affiliate the way that you do? I sometimes ask this guest like, “Why are you Orthodox? Why are you Conservative? Why are you Reform?” This is kind of getting back to that difference. I said that it’s no longer 18Forty and it’s no longer 1940. Most people when I ask them this question instinctively say, “That’s the way I was brought up. I don’t really know any other way.” And that doesn’t mean the answer is wrong. That’s a sociological answer. And I wanted to clarify a few things about this article because I see many people misunderstood it. I’m not blaming them for misunderstanding, I’m blaming myself for writing in a way that can be so easily misunderstood. Maybe these topics can.

So the first thing I want to say is this essay that I wrote, and again, I urge you, if you have a moment, if you hate the things I write, if you love the things I write, this will be perfect for you. Whichever community you are a part of, the lovers or the haters, this will give you a lot to chew on. But the first thing that I want to say is that the entire crux of the article was much more sociological driven, rather than presenting some objective measure of truth to explain, or to argue, or a polemic for why people should observe in a particular way.

My starting point was that for most people, the reasons why we affiliate, it’s always a mixture of truth and sociological reasons, but the vast majority of this essay focuses on the sociology of people’s affiliation. Not too many people wake up and dramatically change their ways of affiliation midway through life. There are people who slowly drift away, some people get a little bit more committed, or a little bit more involved or engaged. The drastic changes are very difficult to make, particularly when we’re already adults. We already have commitments, and families, a certain geographic commitments, and boundaries that tie us down to something, and most people do not have the luxury of just picking up and joining, I don’t know, a different community, a different synagogue, a different place. Most people aren’t able to do that. And that is regardless of what we believe the truth is. That doesn’t mean that I was talking sociologically, that I don’t believe in an objective truth.
I believe in an objective truth, but I believe that objective truth transcends any community, to be honest. I think maybe different communities get closer or different. I’m not sure how close I am. The truth to me, is God revelation and shmiras hamitzvos, Jewish practice that preserves that moment and experience of revelation and brings it into our lives. That is the objective truth, the existence of God, that God who exists revealed a Torah to the Jewish people, and that Torah asks of us for a commitment to mitzvos, and that is our way of preserving revelation, transcendence, and Divinity in the very crevices, in the very ordinariness of our lives. That’s an objective truth.

Now, there’s a lot of, so what’s the right way to practice? What’s the right way to observe? Should you become a chassid? Should you become Modern Orthodox? Should you become Reform? Should you become Conservative? There are definitely objective ways that, in my own life, I could cross. I say it’s probably not the way that it’s going to work, but generally, I have found that making arguments based on what you think God wants from others are not all that successful. The outreach movement would look a lot different if all I had to do was go to people and say, “Hey, by the way, I’ve got word from God. He wants you to start keeping Shabbos, right now, tomorrow.” Arguments like that, or presentations like that rarely resonate and rarely move the needle. I think we need to figure out other ways to address people in the individuality of their lives and figure out ways where that objective truth of God, Revelation and Shmira’s Torah-

David Bashevkin:
” … The truth of God, revelation and shmiras Torah and mitzvos, Jewish practice”, which is my rough translation of shmiras Torah and mitzvos, “Can address people in the day to day of their lives.”

So that is why, in this article, I had one line that was a little troubling for people. And I actually liked the conversation that it spurred, but I have a line in this article where I wrote, “That doesn’t mean that I think everyone should be or even can be Orthodox,” which a lot of people took as like, “Not everyone should be Orthodox?”

So to paraphrase a line from Bill Clinton, “It depends what your meaning of should is.” It depends what that should be. I mean, I do believe, and I think Torah believes, that it is possible to imagine somebody that because of … Whether it’s trauma or family commitments, maybe it’s their sexual orientation, maybe it is their own capacity, their emotional capacity, I do believe that the ideals for which we strive are not necessarily going to be able to be embodied by every single individual.
I think that is almost a simple truth. Not everyone is going to be able to live a fully observant life. Not everybody’s going to be able to live a fully Orthodox life, especially if Orthodoxy in the context that I meant it includes the culture created around the Orthodox community. I don’t think that that is innovative.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in the truth that we are preserving. It just means that I recognize that in the complexity of our individual lives, there are very real barriers and obstacles that may make the ideals unreachable.
That doesn’t mean we stop reaching. That doesn’t mean we don’t believe that the ideals exist. But that does mean that as much as we believe in the objective ideals, we should also believe that our ideals can and should have a way of reaching everybody exactly where they are, and to begin their Jewish journey exactly where they are, whether you grew up going to the finest yeshivas in the world and the best seminaries, or whether you grew up in a remote town having no Jewish education and you can’t read a lick of Hebrew.

Wherever you are, the belief, my objective belief, a part of my subjective belief in truth is that that objective truth can reach you in your subjectivity, in the subjective complexity of our individual lives.

And that doesn’t mean that the outcome is going to be for everybody, that they’re going to be fully integrated with Torah and Yiddishkeit in the fullness that it has been preserved throughout the generations. I don’t think that is true. I’ve met people in the Orthodox community and in the non-Orthodox community who I know that is not true. And I know you, wherever you are and whatever your background is, have met such people.

Whether you grew up in a Satmar community, in a Yeshivish community, in a modern Orthodox community, in a Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Chabad … whatever community you grew up in, there is a truth to that reality. And that is what I meant that I don’t think everyone should be or even can be Orthodox.

Because not everybody can be Orthodox, I believe that means not everybody should be Orthodox. Once it becomes an impossibility for any reason, things that can be beyond our control; and I would urge people to take a look who want to understand the theology of what it means to have a diminished free will …

And that is something that I think Yiddishkeit believes in. We believe in free will, but we believe that free will can be diminished. We believe that free will doesn’t mean, “I can do or become anything.” We each have free will within the spectrum of our lives.

And the people who wrote about that most eloquently, of course, is Rav Dessler in his Michtav Me’Eliyahu, where he talks about the nekudas habechirah, what you are grappling with in that moment. And secondly, Rav Yitzchak Hutner has a letter where he writes this explicitly and adds even more to it very beautifully. You could look at his letter. It’s the ninth letter in Iggros: Pachad Yitzchok. That’s the collection of his correspondence, the ninth letter where he talks about the limitations of our free will; among a myriad of other sources, but it’s a great starting point.

I want to talk about the last thing that I wrote about in this article because I think it is also important, and I deliberately wrote it in a provocative way because I wanted to get people’s attention. That’s why you write and share things. But I just wanted to describe it orally because I think in some way that’s transmits. And I wrote something that is fairly radical.
I wrote, “On an individual level, we are all Reform. On the familial level, we are all Conservative. And on the institutional, communal level, we are all Orthodox.”

What on earth did I mean by that? Do I mean that when I am in private by myself, I suddenly transform into a Reform Jew and only use Reform liturgy and practice? Absolutely not. That is not what I meant.

What I am describing are three modes of religious affiliation, and that is, what is the methodology that we use to arrive at truth, to bring that objective truth of Torah and mitzvos into our lives on an individual level, on a familial level and on an institutional level?

And each of us are trying to do this. I believe that. But I believe that the mistake that so many people make is that they use the same methodology … I’m not talking about outcomes, I’m not talking about what they practice, but what is the methodology that they use to arrive at that truth to really build that relationship? And I believe on the individual level and on the familial level and on the institutional level, we should be using different methodologies.

“On the individual level, we are all reform.” What do I mean by that?

I don’t mean that we turn into Reform Jews; you’re Orthodox suddenly when you’re by yourself. What I mean is that the reform movement was originally founded on the premise that in the modern world, a Jew should only follow what resonates in their personal conscious, in their moral world. And because of that, the Reform movement discarded a lot of practices and connections; one of which, which we spoke about last week, was their connection to peoplehood and the state of Israel, which they later on brought back into the Reform movement.

But the underlying methodology of beginning with what resonates with you in your private heart, in what you actually believe to be true is actually important methodology that is very often lost, to be honest, when you grow up in the Orthodox world, which is so deeply communal and institutional. I think it is important for people to reflect in the privacy of their lives and say, “What do I actually believe? What do I actually want?”

I am not asking people to do that in the privacy of their lives so they question and doubt what they actually believe. I think people should do that so they can actually confront and figure out what they actually believe. So for a moment we can step out of the communal, sociological tide that we think is true and actually take the boiling hot water off of the stove and figure out, “How much water is actually in this container? What am I actually grappling with?”

These are questions that are often not encouraged because we are frightened, for a host of very good reasons, that when somebody asks these questions of themselves, they’re going to come down and get lost in the nihilistic abyss of modernity.
I don’t think that is true. I don’t think people need to be asking this question every day and every moment, but I think the starting point of anyone’s religious life needs to begin on the individual level on what they actually believe.

And that, in many ways, is the Reform methodology. It is the methodology they use. Not “We don’t believe in this anymore” and they kind of started throwing out stuff. I am not advocating for that outcome. I’m only advocating for that methodology.
And that is what I meant when I said, “On the individual level, we are all reform.” We all have to ask ourselves, “Is this for real? Are we taking Judaism for real? Do we believe that there is a God? Do we believe that there is revelation? Do we believe that there is a means through the Torah and mitzvos to preserve that revelation?”

And different people have different ways in which they grapple with that in their own individual lives. There are some things that we think are only sociological.

I think a good example of this is some people may dress differently on vacation. I am not condoning or advocating, but we’ve all seen people who they dress a certain way, in a very serious way, in their day-to-day lives, and you bump into them on vacation, and all of a sudden, they’re not dressed that way.

I would assume that that person, in probably many healthy ways, is using a methodology where their relationship to the way that they dress in their day-to-day lives, they feel there’s a lot of culture around that, and that is not a part of their internal, private moral universe. I know others who, when they go on vacation or when they’re by themselves, they are exactly the same.

And Kol Hakavod, congratulations that you have an expansive, rich moral universe when you are by yourself, you do not need any of the sociological encouragement that others require.

That is what I meant that we are all Reform Jews on the individual level.

What did I mean, “On the familial level, we are all Conservative?”

I did not mean that on the family level, every family should just start keeping halakha as it’s been interpreted by the Conservative movement. Absolutely not. I am not advocating that at all.

But what is the methodology of Conservative? The methodology of the movement in many ways is founded on this principle, which is sometimes called Catholic Israel; it’s terrible marketing. Catholic doesn’t mean Christian, it means universal; or the Talmudic phrase: What do people normally do?”

The terminology that Professor Haym Soloveitchik, a former guest of 18Forty; who has written about this extensively. You should check out his works that have been published by Littman. He’s really brilliant; he calls this a mimetic tradition in how organically Jews practiced. It didn’t always cohere perfectly with the letter of the law. They would sometimes come up with customs that were more stringent or sometimes customs that were more lenient that did not necessarily cohere with the letter of the law.

I believe on a family level, there is something very important about prioritizing this organic normalcy. People should not run their homes like they are running a synagogue or running a school. They should not enforce Jewish observance in a way that a synagogue or a school would do it. Rather, I think on the familial level, because in one home you have parents, you have children, you have siblings, you want it transmitted mimetically. You don’t want to grow up in a home where you feel like your parent or a child are breathing down each other’s necks with a Shulchan Aruch or a book of Jewish law and say, “Hey, you’re doing it wrong.”

I think a lot of people make this mistake, and they start raising their kids or the kids start talking to their parents like they’re running a school or a shul. And that is not the way to do it. We need a mimetic tradition in our homes of what is normal and what is done; what is normal vis-a-vis the larger community that we live in, and what is a normal organic way in which Jewish life and Jewish practice is embodied and continued in our homes.

Obviously, this methodology can lead to tremendous mistakes. Mistakes that the Conservative movement themselves have admitted to. When all of the Jewish people in America were driving on Shabbos, that is not the time to look and say, “Ah, this is what’s done.” That would be discarding any notion of objective truth, and taking what is transcendent and insisting that it always reflect on common practice.

And that was the mistake that the Conservative movement at that time … Most Jews, particularly in America, were driving to synagogue on Shabbos, and they said, “We got to figure out a way to justify their actions in Halakhic terminology to kind of take the ideals and bring it down and say, ‘Don’t worry, this can cohere.’”

And what I have been saying all along is that is a mistake. I think part of the resilience of the Orthodox community is the fact that we have not insisted that our ideals and our familial identity and that our individual identity all perfectly cohere. I actually find it moving when I see those who still drive to an Orthodox synagogue on Shabbos.

Now, obviously they shouldn’t be doing that according to Orthodox tradition, but I look back nostalgically and lament the fact that in our community, particularly in the Tri-state area, we see that less and less.

That’s not because everybody stopped driving on Shabbos. That’s because the Orthodox community is no longer reaching those who still drive to Shul on Shabbos. That is a fact. And they found other places to go.

That’s a mixed bag that has allowed us to become a little bit more insular, a little bit more ambitious and idealistic when we’re just speaking to the already committed who have gone through our system. But it also has closed us off, as we spoke about in the intro, from the vast, vast majority of Klal Yisrael.

And then finally, “On the institutional, communal level, we are all Orthodox.”

What do I mean? Do I mean that every reform temple is secretly an undercover Orthodox outreach movement?

Of course not.

What I am meaning is that the only way to create affiliation on the communal level is using the methodology of Orthodoxy, which is actually embracing that an ideal exists.

If you walk into a non-Orthodox synagogue, even if their outcomes, which we are not discussing, are different than the Orthodox movement, everyone’s methodology is Orthodox on the institutional level in terms of methodology.
Meaning that on the institutional level, you need a standard. It can’t just be, “Everyone do what you want.” There’s going to be no organizing principle that gathers everyone together. There’s going to be no set standard of what works and what doesn’t. Every institution needs a standard.

But the way that we draw those standards on the institutional and communal level need not be the same methodology that we cultivate affiliation and engagement on the familial level and need not be the exact methodology that we use to discover what we feel on an individual level in our hearts.

And I believe that the starting point for everyone begins on that individual level. What do we actually believe? What is a part of your actual universe and why do you believe it? That’s a healthy question to ask from time to time. It is a healthy reflection. Don’t keep your hand on your pulse indefinitely, but it is a healthy question to ask.

And then on the familial level, how do you create that organic Yiddishkeit on the family level, that mimetic tradition that your kids instinctively feel in this household, Jewish life and Jewish practice?

And on the communal level, we are all Orthodox. And again, that is the methodology that we each need a standard.
And I think that for many, if we are able to separate sociologically the methodologies that we use to cultivate identity and not insist that they all cohere, we’re actually going to have an easier time developing communal affiliations. We’re going to have an easier time cultivating Jewish life within our families. And most importantly, we’re going to finally discover and understand what we believe in our hearts, where divinity actually resides in the interiority of our lives.

They don’t all have to cohere, but I believe at the end of the day with the right methodology, as I concluded this article, there is a nourishing Yiddishkeit, a nourishing Judaism for each of us wherever your starting point may be.

So thank you so much for listening, especially to this episode where our intros and outros have been especially long. And a huge thank you to our friend Denah Emerson, who edited this. And I sent it way too late because it’s been a really difficult week. I’m so grateful for your help.

And once again, I am so grateful to our series sponsors, Joel and Lynn Mael, who sponsored this series in memory of Joel’s Parents, Estelle and Nysen Mael, Esther bas Zvi and Nissan ben Yaakov Zvi. I am so grateful for your friendship and support over all these years.

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