American Judaism

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Judaism is the oldest monotheistic religion and a religious culture covering diverse ethnicities and all races. It looks at how, socially, Jews can be distinguished among various levels of religiosity from the Segregationists or Hassidic Jews to the Integrationist (Orthodox, Reform, Conservative) Jewish Americans. It evaluates the different ideologies of each group from a gentile point of view and looks at how each group integrate with each other.

From the Paper:

"The Orthodox Jewish Americans, as the term implies, claim to see the ancient biblical Judaism along a straight line, without deviations to the right or to the left. Contrary to the Hassidism, they do not observe all of the "Mitzvoth" (commandments) of the Torah, nor would they want to be uniformly dressed for identification. A conservative business suit on Shabbat, with a kipah on their heads (males only), is a sufficient distinction of an Orthodox Jew from all the others. Women and men sit apart in a Orthodox synagogue. Kashruth is observed, but not always to the tiniest detail (contrary to the Hassidim). All prayers are in Hebrew, but the rabbi's sermon could be in English or in Hebrew. Most of the Orthodox Jewish people belong to the integrationist portion of the society."

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