Jeremy Rosen
The Rise and Fall of American Judaism
Summary
In the 20th century, American Jewry was considered the most dynamic, confident and influential community in the Jewish world. Jeremy Rosen examines why this is no longer the case today.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
Because already after the first World War, antisemitism exploded everywhere. They had hoped that under a new Russia things might be better. But after the communists took over, things got worse, and they banned religion. And so they began to see that antisemitism was getting worse and worse. Most of the rabbis did not see it, but thank God some rabbis, a few, a handful did. And it was that handful, that few, you can name them on the fingers of one hand, who did come, did set up institutions and did help Judaism survive.
They are normally called either Yeshivish or Lithuanian because it was in Lithuania that the great rabbis objected to Hasidism. So either the Lithuanian or now the term is to call them Yeshivish as opposed to Hasidish in the younger generation.