The Jewish Community of the 1980's

Publication Date: September 1980

Publisher: Jewish Communal Service Association of North America

Author(s): Leonard J. Fein

Research Area: Culture and religion

Keywords: Jewish Continuity; Jewish Content; Religious Denominations

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

Our effort to create an American Judaism that could nestle comfortably and inconspicuously in the embrace of American society, however well-intentioned, was a very serious mistake, a mistake for which we today pay an inglorious price. For that effort, survivalist in temper, produced a uniquely American denomination of Judaism, not Orthodox, not Conservative, not Reform or Reconstructionist, not even secular; it produced something that could only be called Residual Judaism.

In Journal of Jewish Communal Service, v.57 no.1, Fall 1980.