Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy

by Samuel C. Heilman

Written by one of this country’s leading experts on American Judaism, this book offers a snapshot of Orthodoxy Jewry in the United States, asking how the community has evolved in the years since World War II and where it is headed in the future. Incorporating rich details of everyday life, fine-grained observations of cultural practices, descriptions of educational institutions, and more, Samuel Heilman delineates the varieties of Jewish Orthodox groups, focusing in particular on the contest between the proudly parochial, contra-acculturative haredi Orthodoxy and the accomodationist modern Orthodoxy over the future of this religious community. What emerges overall is a picture of an Orthodox Jewry that has gained both in numbers and intensity and that has moved farther to the religious right as it struggles to define itself and to maintain age-old traditions in the midst of modernity, secularization, technological advances, and the pervasiveness of contemporary American culture.

Genres: Jewish, Judaism, Nonfiction

374 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 2006

Reviews

[Oriyah N · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading this book for a long while. After having trouble tracking down a copy, I finally payed what felt like an exorbitant amount for it online, assuming it would be well worth the price of admission. Although it was a terribly interesting read, sadly it didn't live up to my expectations.

Before even commenting on the content of the book, I would be remiss if I did not mention one crucial factor. From the very initial stages of reading, one of my first and strongest impressions was, "Where on earth was this man's editor?!" Heilman overuses the word "moreover" to the point where it is actually distracting from the content and message that he is trying to impart. He often repeats this word several times per page. My husband, who has been reading the book alongside me (snatching my copy every time I put it down) commented, "It almost seems as if he isn't aware of any other transitional words. That's basic 6th grade English. And this man considers himself an academic...." The use of the word "moreover" stood out so much that we've started referring to it at home as "The Moreover Book" and inserting "moreover" into our casual conversations. Just as an actor's cellphone ringing would disrupt a play and remove the audience from the theatrical moment, so too the author's word choice removed the reader from the critical analysis he was trying to guide us through.

I was really primed to enjoy this book. First of all, I am a member of the population under discussion, and have witnessed throughout my life the phenomenon Heilman is describing. I was rather excited to see his take on the situation, as well as the historical contexts and any analysis he would provide on the topic. I also tend to be strongly drawn to academic works in the social sciences, particularly ethnographies, and books about people on the edge of multiple cultures, so reading "Sliding to the Right" was a bit of a no-brainer, and likely to be right up my alley.

In addition, upon picking up the book to read, I noticed that the author is the father of one of my former classmates from middle school. The name "Heilman" is not particularly common, and I wondered if there was any relation. Indeed, after seeing the dedication page, my suspicious were confirmed. The author's son was in my class for several years, and he and I were part of the same social group and quite friendly. He stands out in my memory as an exceptionally kindhearted boy, and I remember him only with fondness, so that personal factor added to my eager anticipation to read and enjoy.

Within the very first chapter, it becomes apparent that Heilman has rather strong anti-Haredi biases. Rather than merely reporting on and analyzing a phenomenon, he uses loaded terms that color the readers' viewpoint, using words such as "archaic" and "radical traditionalists," among others, referring to the phenomenon of Haredization as "insidious". He clearly places himself among the "contrapuntalist" modern orthodox camp, and this book is his forum for warning the masses about a shift that he considers to be a "usurping" (Heilman's term) of a culture that he holds dear. Heilman also seems to make assumptions about certain community operatives. For example, one of the premises he builds his ideas upon is that Orthodoxy in America was, and continues to build itself on the concept of Jewish survival in response to the Holocaust. That is, he assumes that the attitude of the Orthodox Jewish community in America is fearfully responding to an imagined or real threat of community wide annihilation. As someone who grew up very much a part of the community in question, I would say that this assessment is not only false, but exactly contrary to a very clear message that was always imparted, that of the idea that the Jewish people, and the Torah, will always be fine, and are assured existence forever, but that individuals are not included in this promise and therefore must cleave to the source of infinity if they want to get a chance at this infinite existence.

This was by far not the only example. Another case: Heilman spoke of a lack of "contrapuntalist" (read: ideologically Modern Orthodox) rabbis and teachers, and claims that the Modern Orthodox schools therefore had to hire many "Haredi" teachers for their schools, who then tried to indoctrinate their students to follow "Haredi" ways. I had many (though definitely not a majority) Haredi teachers during my Modern Orthodox schooling experience, but they never pushed us to move in a more right-wing direction - with one exception, that, in my mind, stood out as a very big flaw in Heilman's book. These Haredi teachers encouraged us to keep halacha (Jewish law). As did the vast majority of the "contrapuntalist" teachers. However, Heilman seems to imply over and over (and states explicitly at least once or twice towards the end of the book) that concern with halacha as a guiding force for one's behavior is an exclusively Haredi phenomenon, and that contrapuntalist Orthodox do not feel the need to be restricted by the rules that come from books and tradition, but rather live their lives through autonomy and personal choice, while still maintaining their unwavering commitment to Judaism. As if the two (concern with halacha and personal autonomy) are mutually exclusive. His statement to this effect left me wondering what "Judaism" the people he has in mind are unwaveringly committed to. If an individual is able to constantly redefine a concept to match his own values, then his unwavering support to that value is no commitment to anything other than his own whims. Indeed, this is the approach that Heilman seems to take, claiming that "frum" (religiously observant) was historically always determined by the status quo of the community and not based on adherence to any (textually guided) unchanging ideals of behavior. I would argue that no one person is able to keep every single dictate of halacha perfectly (after all, humanity carries with it the stigma and reality of imperfection by definition) but that if as a whole one concerns him/herself with striving to follow as much halacha as possible for them, and reaches the community's lowest common denominator in this area, then they will be considered "frum."

Of course, that is what this book is about - the shifting demographic that has seen the majority now keeping a higher "lowest common denominator" and thereby raising the bar for those who wish to qualify for the "frum" label. And those in that shrinking minority who take halacha less seriously in their actions and want to maintain this less halacha-based approach in their lives (and therefore, by way of attempting to eliminate any possible cognitive dissonance, these individuals also take halacha less seriously in their ideology as well) are resentful about having been pushed to the fringe, and perhaps out of the "frum" in-group by way of this demographic shift.

While this was a fascinating read, the author clearly has a strong bias (and a huge chip on his shoulder). I almost got the impression that he is bitter about being disincluded in the "frum" group and therefore has gone to his other camp, the "American" academic group, to point fingers at and discredit, the club he is now being excluded from.

Some of the phenomenon he describes are genuinely interesting, and, "moreover"s aside, this was a well-written academic work. However, some of the author's premises and theories run so contrary to my own personal experiences as part of this demographic that I have to take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

But then, he wouldn't care about my opinion anyway. I slid to the right.

[Jengordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I graded this down from a 5-star book because while interesting and well-written it bears the feeling of a bunch of long articles jammed together as chapters of a book, rather than of a book conceived as a whole. Heilman, as a decades-long observer of American Orthodoxy and in particular culture among the Hareidim and Hasidim, discusses many of the factors that have contributed to the sense (and, he documents, objective fact) that Modern Orthodoxy has moved rightward. One element of his analysis suggests inevitability -- that once MO culture opened the possibility of Jews, qua observant Jews, working within the professional economy (and achieving much, both professionally and economically) and in fact rewarded it in the sense that those who achieved in secular fields while remaining observant were pointed to in MO cultural institutions as "that's what MO is all about," that drove human capital into those remunerative fields rather than into Jewish education and the rabbinate. At the same time parent professionals left the Jewish education of their children to professionals, and the only place those professionals to staff day schools could come from was Hareidi groups-- where working in the secular world was not considered fully appropriate.
Some of Heilman's analysis touches on, but doesn't fully examine, the sense that MO hasn't accomplished a full and coherent philosophy. Why allow this, but disallow that? How can we acknowledge academic analyses of text as reflective of the culture and mores that produce it, but then deny that all-male cultures would inevitably claim exclusion of women from certain activities as the Will of G-d? Heilman notes that the development, and evolution of a truly coherent MO philosophy is difficult because while the best and brightest of the postwar era were available within Jewish education and the pulpit rabbinate to create Modern Orthodoxy, the siphoning off of the brilliant to more remunerative professions limits further development of a MO philosophy that continues to meet the challenges of American social change. He looks at the influence of Hareidi publishers' control of the English-language sefarim market and the Hareidi/Hasidic monopoly on kiruv. But he doesn't analyze the effect that incoherence has on children as they move between schooling at the hands of right-wing teachers and those who chose Jewish education by default (this by no means indicates that ALL day school teachers are like this: Heilman looks at TRENDS).
Heilman's chapters on Jewish humor and on posters would be interesting in an academic journal but felt like off-topic add-ons in the book, as if he didn't have enough there for a full standalone book with any analysis and had to fill pages.
What remains is how to take Heilman's analysis and how to use his data and identification of trends to stop the slide to the right and to recover a truly Modern Orthodox philosophy that's responsive to 21st century America.

[Leib Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 out of 5 stars Things fall apart; The center cannot hold
Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2019
Verified Purchase
Books like this are very difficult to read for a couple of reasons:
1. I find it difficult to consider Sociology as a science or to take anything seriously the sociologists say.

2. Anecdotal descriptions of social trends in the past may or may not have any basis in reality. (How many movies have we seen that portrayed American race relations from past generations as a constant turmoil, when in point of fact it was probably an uncomfortable modus vivendi. It's almost as if the fact that there was a black middle class even several years after the Civil War outside of the South is something that has been imagined out of existence in favor of Klan ridings every single night of the year for the last 140 years. )

Disclosure: this book is of importance to me because I am an Orthodox convert, and I have many questions about the way in which I can fit myself and my kids into these Orthodox circles. And, whether or not the particular subset of Jews with which I choose to associate are stable, or in terminal decline.

This book is essentially a discussion of competition between Modern Orthodoxy (which was once the ascendant faction) and Haredism for the soul of Orthodoxy. Heilman is clear even in the introduction that Orthodox constitute 12% of American Judaism-- at most.

Heilman is also very clear that this book is only for the context of American Judaism, and even though they may *look* like their cousins in Israel, they are two very different things. Accordingly, he leaves out Sephardim/ Shas.

My biggest problem is that the book is way too long. It is 305 pages of prose, and it could have said what it had to say in about 190 pages, tops. (I had to go back and re-read the first 100 pages because of information density.)

My second biggest problem is that this may have the title of the single book in the English with the most uses of the term "contrapuntalism." (I suspect that the number of times that that word is printed in this book would probably fill up 10 full pages.) For the record...... "Contrapuntal" is the adjectival form of "counterpoint." The counter point is where there are two (or more) melodic lines playing simultaneously. And so, this means that Modern Orthodox people can simultaneously balance two melodies together. Secular and religious life.

It has been aptly stated before that "it is something in the Agudist / haredi DNA to mark one's territory by pissing on other people."

It has also been stated before by Eric Hoffer that a lot of people will become revolutionaries because they imagine that they have an audience of ancestors, contemporaries, and posterity.

It feels like Samuel Heilman has taken those two concepts and run with them to create an entire book.

An abundantly worded book.

The author has beautiful and elegant thoughts about the way that Ultra-orthodox manage to justify the fact that they actually suffered disproportionately more in the Holocaust than other, more accultured Jews. (If you speak Polish, it's a small matter to pass yourself off as a Pole. If you only speak Yiddish, maybe not.)

There's also some discussion here about how:

1. The currents in Germany ONLY a couple of centuries ago as responsible for a great deal of what is Orthodoxy today, as well as Non-orthodox denominations.

2. He gives us a mechanistic understanding of how Hasidim came to be from the East and Western Europe was more yeshivish. (There was nothing attractive about the Heathen culture of Eastern Europeans, and so naturally there was no internal conflict as to how much of the surrounding culture to accept. Not so in Western Europe.)

3. Heilman thinks that Modern Orthodoxy had its greatest scholars in the years right after the Holocaust. Most notably Soloveichik. So, that was enough for them to be a majority of all Jews. But, the counterculture of the sixties made Jews turn away from the broader American culture and retreat into a Haredi shell.

4. A year abroad in Israel to yeshiva is an excellent way to fortify a young person's Judaism, and tip them to the right.

Maybe this book is also an explanation for those of us who attend Modern Orthodox shuls, and have noticed that they are having problems with membership issues. Meanwhile, new Black Hat places are opening up all the time. But, then, on the other hand I see Ultra-Orthodox Jews in this neighborhood every once in a while playing pickup games of basketball with local black people.

In a nutshell:

I think that the entire book can be reduced to two principles.

***The first is that the existence of something automatically generates its opposite.

Events described here are a replay of what happened a couple of centuries ago during the Haskalah. At the very moment that first reformer was born, then so too came the first Ultra Orthodox Jew.

Is it hard to imagine: if you have people that are around you who are very much part of the Cult of Tolerance/Permissiveness (that would be America these days), then that will automatically generate people who are just the opposite.

***The second is that Hoffer's Men of Words are a part of this struggle.

They can sustain religious institutions for a very long time. The Roman Catholic Church is all that is left of the Roman Empire, and it has actually existed for longer than the Roman Empire. It's not so hard to imagine/nor surprising that the Rabbinate has existed much longer than the state of Israel.

A lot of trends in society are really people fighting out the battles of Men of Words. ( How long has the fight going on between the Keynesian and the Monetarist? How long has the fight going on between the Marxists and everybody else that lives in the real world?)

Again: the Jewish case is not unique. I believe that it is a fight between academics (who support popular culture of their creation) at universities, and the Rabbinate that wants to keep its market share.

It's not surprising that Modern Orthodoxy is so much of a leaking point because they encourage people to go to university. Right into the Belly of the Beast.

It's also not surprising that so many young men sitting around in yeshiva go to Modern Orthodox schools as teachers, where they perpetuate the rightward shift.

Part of me questions whether or not a sociologist is the right person to analyze these trends, in favor of somebody who is a perceptive Observer of events and can draw analogies without excessive jargon. (Think Ernest Van Den Haag or Eric Hoffer.)

Another part of me wonders about the sustainability of all of this.

It has only been very recently that there are a huge number of men sitting around in kollel or yeshiva polishing seats for hours on end every day and for years on end. That is just not practical for large numbers of people. Somebody has to get a job in order to pay the light bill and bring food into the refrigerator. And, the state cannot be expected to do all of it.

During the time that Modern Orthodoxy was the ascendant faction, could anybody have predicted that it would ever have become a minority faction?

Leftward and rightward shifts over time are not unheard-of. Nor are they are irreversible. Could it be the same with this case?

I think that the number one value of this book was that it forced me to consider the general unpredictability of all of this.

The conclusion that I reach is that...... Modern Orthodoxy is an acceptable alternative for my mixed-race children at the present time. And, we will just have to sort out the problems as they present themselves over time.

Verdict: Recommended

[Eliezer Sneiderman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was long for the information contained. But, it was well presented. My only complaint, was that as an insider, some of his material did not capture the full expression of the community.

[Shari (Shira) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting and informative account on the current state of Orthodox Judaism in America. It read like a dissertation which calls upon the reader to be disciplined because the author is not necessarily trying to engage. It generated lots of conversation and I found myself reading aloud passages to my husband and my friends. I would have given it more stars if I didn't have to work so hard.

[Craig Bolton]

Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy (S. Mark Taper Foundation Book in Jewish Studies) by Samuel C. Heilman (2006)

[Eli Mandel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The three stars is are for the work the author and his associates did. I was very interested in this topic but I couldn't read more than 100 pages. It made for very clunky reading.