Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity

by Adam S. Ferziger

Following the Jewish Enlightenment, many eighteenth-century Jews chose not to observe the religious laws and customs that had earlier marked them as culturally different from their Christian peers. As the Jewish population became increasingly assimilated, an ultraorthodox movement also emerged, creating a discrete identity for a group within the Jewish community that opted not to move toward the mainstream but instead to embrace the traditional laws.

By tracing the evolution of the approach of the Orthodox to their nonpracticing brethren, Adam S. Ferziger sheds new light on the emergence of Orthodoxy as a specific movement within modern Jewish society. In the course of this process, German Orthodoxy in particular articulated a new hierarchical vision of Jewish identity and the structure of modern Jewish society. Viewing Orthodox Judaism as no less a nineteenth-century phenomenon than Reform Judaism or Zionism, Ferziger looks at the ways it defined itself by its relationship to the nonobservant Jewish population. Ferziger argues that as the Orthodox movement emerged, it rejected the stance that the assimilated and nonobservers were deviant outcasts. Instead, they were accepted as legitimate members of a Jewish community, in which Orthodox Jews occupied the pinnacle, as the guardians of its tradition.

This book's contribution, however, moves beyond a historical study of Orthodox Judaism. The sociological methodology that Ferziger employs enables the reader to appreciate how other religious groups have sought to carve out their places within the mosaic of modern society.

Genres: Judaism

320 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2005

Reviews

[Jackie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ferziger, trained in YU and Bar Ilan and inspired by the works of Jacob Katz, attempts in this book to argue that Orthodoxy with a capital O emerged not in response to ideological movements (ie. Reform Judaism), but rather emerged in response to changing social habits of the masses-- nonboservance. What follows this provocative thesis is a chronological treatment of “non-observant people” as they appear in the responsa literature of the likely suspects--the Haham Zvi, Jacob Emden, Ezekiel Landau, Moses Sofer, Samson Raphael Hirsch, etc. Ferziger finds that in premodern Jewry, entirely nonobservant Jews were included within the collective because there was nowhere else for them to go (unless, of course, they had received herem). In the eighteenth century, Sabbatianism fighters began to create a hierarchy that excluded such heretics, creating a framework for dealing with the nonobservant in the nineteenth century. The Hatam Sofer and others began to entirely exclude the nonobservant from the Jewish ranks. But then, when Orthodox Jews became a real minority of the total population, a ranked hierarchy emerged, in which Orthodox were at the top, but a narrow pluralism sort of accepted everyone else.
Ferziger’s suggestion is an interesting one, but using teshuvot as his primary body of sources removes the discussion from real social history and takes it back into intellectual history. It’s also unclear how useful his convoluted conclusions are. It’s not entirely convincing that the modern response to nonobservance reflects a different sort of “Orthodoxy” than that of the Haham Zvi or of Ezekiel Landau.