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Cosmopolitans & Parochials:
Modern Orthodox Jews in
America
by Samuel C. Heilman and
Steven M. Cohen
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, December 1989),
[co-authored with Steven M. Cohen] 248 pp.
Far from simply vanishing in the face of modernity, Orthodox
Jews in the United States today are surviving and flourishing.
Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, both distinguished scholars
of Jewish studies, have joined forces in this pathbreaking book
to articulate this vibrancy and to characterize the many faces
of Orthodox Jewry in Contemporary America. Who are these Orthodox
Jews? How have they survived, what do they believe and practice
and how do they accommodate the tension between traditional Jewish
and modern American values? Drawing on a survey of more than
one thousand participants, the authors address these questions
and many more.
Heilman and Cohen reveal that American Jewish Orthodoxy is
not a monolith by distinguishing its three broad varieties: the
"traditionalists," the "centrists," and the
"nominally" orthodox. To illuminate this full spectrum
of orthodoxy the authors focus on the "centrists,"
taking us through the dimensions of their ritual observations,
religious beliefs, community life, and their social, political,
and sexual attitudes. Both parochial and cosmopolitan, orthodox
and library, these Jews are characterized by their dualism, by
their successful involvement in both the modern Western world
and in traditional Jewish culture. In painting this provocative
and fascinating portrait of what Jewish Orthodoxy has become
in America today, Heilman and Cohen's study also sheds light
on the larger picture of the persistence of religion in the modern
world.
The University of Chicago Press
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