IN PITTSBURGH WAS DECLARED A ‘NEW AMERICAN JUDAISM’
Rabbis met here in 1885 to found a variant of Judaism centered on social activism and the equality of people, recounts author/journalist STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Ahistoric conclave in Pittsburgh in 1885 was advertised as a “declaration of independence” for American Jews. It turned out to be a declaration of war, with echoes felt more than 130 years later.
Meeting at Concordia Hall in Allegheny County outside the city, a collection of 18 rabbis seeking to forge a new American Judaism declared that the Bible was not to be taken literally and that hundreds of ancient Jewish laws regulating diet, purity and dress were “entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state.”
Judaism, they asserted was “a progressive religion” based on reason, not revelation, as a path to God — and with a duty “to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.”
It would be hard to underestimate how radical this agenda was. The Pittsburgh parley provoked a fierce counterreaction among traditionalist Jews in the city and elsewhere. For example, the embrace of these revolutionary doctrines at Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh (home to 3,000 Jews and eight congregations) provoked a revolt from Orthodox members.
They bolted and established the rival Tree of Life Synagogue in 1864 — a Conservative synagogue today. Yet, like Reform synagogues, it embraces the doctrine of community service summed up by the phrase tikkun olam, a Hebrew term of mystical origins meaning “repairing the world” and evoking the spirit of what is known as the “Pittsburgh Platform.”
At a time when American Jews are deeply divided over many issues, especially the policies of the current government in Israel, it is worth noting that they largely embrace the social gospel hammered out in Pittsburgh.
A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013 found that most surveyed — including Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Jews of no affiliation — said that “working for justice and equality” was central to their Jewish identity. A separate survey released this summer by the American Jewish Committee showed that 60 percent of American Jews supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016.
The significance of these roots in Pittsburgh cannot be discounted.
Another controversial aspect of the Pittsburgh heritage is the way it described the “covenant” between Jews and God — effectively defining Jews as the custodians, not the sole proprietors, of universally applicable ethical rules. This redefinition marked a radical departure from thousands of years of history in which Jews had
long prayed for God to redeem history. Now they had become activists, a people with a social conscience determined to do God’s work themselves and bring about an era of salvation.
The Pittsburgh Platform also speeded the extraordinary movement to institute educational, cultural and family programs at synagogues, elevate the role of women and refocus attention on some ceremonies that had fallen away, notably Hanukkah and Sukkot.
In my recently published book “The Chosen Wars: How Judaism Became an American Religion,” I make the argument that Judaism in America is different from the Judaism that is practiced in other parts of the world, most notably Israel. Three factors were at play to produce American Judaism in the 19th century.
First came the practical exigencies of living, and earning a living, for Jewish immigrants in America — the fact that they traveled, often alone and isolated, from community to community. Jewish peddlers had to search out and establish roots in places that lacked kosher butchers or effective means to carry out other dietary restrictions, such as separating meat and dairy consumption, using different sets of dishes.
While adapting, they resolved to focus on what they believed to be the central tenets of their faith, the ethical pronouncement of the prophets. At the turn of the past century, more concentrated populations of Jews in large American cities found it easy to hew to tradition, and yet they also broke away, influenced by the legacy of Jews who had come before.
A second factor in the emergence of American Judaism was the determination to conform to American culture — to “Americanize” their faith. Unlike Europe, the United States was a secularly neutral state that did not empower rabbis to set the rules for Jews. In turn, American Jews wanted no “chief rabbis” to dictate those rules. They could, and did, elevate the role of women in Judaism, bringing them out from behind barriers and authorizing them to establish religious schools to educate children.
They also allowed men and women to sit together in family pews, a bold step with echoes to the struggle of women in Israel to pray with men at the wall of the Old Temple in Jerusalem. It was believed that, if democracy was good enough for American citizens, it was good enough for American members of Jewish congregations. (Even the growing popularity of the term “temple” to describe a synagogue was an implicit rebuke to the idea that Jews must pray for restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem.)
A third and perhaps most American factor in how Judaism became an American religion was intellectual. Educated in matters outside their religion, for the first time in history they came to grips with modern thought and the evolving revolutionary concepts of science (geology, astronomy, anthropology), citizenship, history and literary analysis of Scripture.
Along with the widening of physical and life sciences came changes in the science of history — the birth of historical relativism, or what is known as “historicism,” following the philosophy of Hegel that social norms are best understood as a product of a society’s historical context.
In the late 19th century, the study of other religions in the ancient Near East — many of them with legends, rituals and beliefs similar to those of Judaism — led to the view of Judaism as a body of beliefs of a particular tribe in the region with its own God rivaling the gods of other tribes. Jews came to see their legacy in sociological terms, liberating them from ancient rules and practices.
For American Jews, the idea of “chosenness” has always presented problems of how to identify themselves as a people “apart” but also as a people who are “a part” of America, accepted by Americans, like all other people.
The historian Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, recounts a story of an itinerant peddler, Joseph Jonas, one of the first Jews to travel west of the Alleghenies, in 1817. A Quaker woman was excited to meet him. “Art thou a Jew?” she asked with wonder. “Thou art one of God’s chosen people.” But then, upon inspection, she expressed disappointment. “Well, thou art no different to other people.”
The Bible, Mr. Eisen notes, refers at least 175 times to the Jews as chosen by God to fulfill certain roles in their redemption. Jews are identified as a “special treasure” of God at Mount Sinai, for example.
But Mr. Eisen also notes that it is in the chapters of Isaiah — which scholars believe were written much later than the period of the prophet himself — that Jews are described as chosen to be what is often translated as “a light unto the nations.”
The special status of Jews in these and other passages from the prophets were interpreted by American Jews in the 19th century as vouchsafing for Jews an explicit “mission” to serve a divine purpose, as a beacon to humankind, but also to be grateful that they could belong in their new land as equal to others.
As controversial as the message from Pittsburgh was more than 130 years ago, it remains no less powerful today in defining American Judaism.
Steven R. Weisman, vice president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is the author of “The Chosen Wars: How Judaism Became an American Religion,” from which this essay is drawn. Mr. Weisman is a former correspondent, editor and editorial writer at The New York Times.