Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as literally revealed by God on Mount Sinai and faithfully transmitted ever since.
Orthodox Judaism therefore advocates a strict observance of Jewish law, or halakha, which is to be interpreted and determined only according to traditional methods and in adherence to the continuum of received precedent through the ages. It regards the entire halakhic system as ultimately grounded in immutable revelation, essentially beyond external and historical influence. More than any theoretical issue, obeying the dietary, purity, ethical and other laws of halakha is the hallmark of Orthodoxy. Practicing members are easily distinguishable by their lifestyle, refraining from doing numerous routine actions on the Sabbath and holidays, consuming only kosher food, praying thrice a day, studying the Torah often, donning head covering and tassels for men and modest clothing for women, and so forth. Other key doctrines include belief in a future bodily resurrection of the dead, divine reward and punishment for the righteous and the sinners, the Election of Israel as a people bound by a covenant with God, and an eventual reign of a salvific Messiah who will restore the Temple in Jerusalem and gather the people to Zion.
Orthodox Judaism is not a centralized denomination. Relations between its different subgroups are often strained, and the exact limits of Orthodoxy are subject to intense debate. Very roughly, it may be divided between the Haredi branch, which is more conservative and reclusive, and the Modern Orthodox, which is relatively open to outer society and partakes in secular life and culture. Each of those is itself formed of independent communities. These are almost uniformly exclusionist, regarding Orthodoxy as the only legitimate form of Judaism.
While adhering to traditional beliefs, the movement is a modern phenomenon. It arose as a result of the breakdown of the autonomous Jewish community since the late 18th century, and was much shaped by a conscious struggle against the pressures of secularization, acculturation and rival alternatives. The strictly observant Orthodox are a definite minority among all Jews, but there are also numerous semi- and non-practicing persons who are affiliated or personally identify with Orthodox communities and organizations. In total, Orthodox Judaism is the largest Jewish religious group, estimated to have over 2 million practicing adherents, and at least an equal number of nominal members or self-identifying supporters.
Definitions
The earliest known mention of the term Orthodox Jews was made in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in 1795. The word Orthodox was borrowed from the general German Enlightenment discourse, and used to denote those Jews who opposed Enlightenment. During the early and mid-19th century, with the advent of the progressive movements among German Jews, and especially early Reform Judaism, the title Orthodox became the epithet of traditionalists who espoused conservative positions on the issues raised by modernization. They themselves often disliked the Christian term, preferring titles such as "Torah-true". They often declared that they used it only as a convenience. German Orthodox leader Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch referred to "the conviction commonly designated as Orthodox Judaism"; in 1882, when Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer became convinced that the public understood that his philosophy and Liberal Judaism were radically different, he removed the word Orthodox from the name of his Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary. By the 1920s, the term had become common and accepted even in Eastern Europe.Orthodoxy perceives itself as the only authentic continuation of Judaism as it was until the crisis of modernity. Its progressive opponents often shared this view, regarding it as a remnant of the past and lending credit to their own rivals' ideology. Thus, the term Orthodox is often used generically to refer to traditional synagogues, rites, and observances.
Academic research noted that the formation of Orthodox ideology and organizations was itself influenced by modernity. This was brought about by the need to defend the very concept of tradition in a world where that was no longer self-evident. When secularization and the dismantlement of communal structures uprooted the old order of Jewish life, traditionalist elements united to form groups that had a specific self-understanding. This, and all that it entailed, constituted a notable change, for the Orthodox had to adapt to modern society no less than anyone else; they developed novel, sometimes radically so, means of action and modes of thought. "Orthodoxization" was a contingent process, drawing from local circumstances and dependent on the threat sensed by its proponents: a sharply delineated Orthodox identity appeared in Central Europe, in Germany and Hungary, by the 1860s; a less stark one emerged in Eastern Europe during the Interwar period. Among the Jews of the Muslim lands, similar processes on a large scale began only around the 1970s, after they immigrated to Israel. Orthodoxy is often described as extremely conservative, ossifying a once-dynamic tradition due to the fear of legitimizing change. While this was sometimes true, its defining feature was not forbidding change and "freezing" Jewish heritage, but rather the need to adapt to being but a segment of Judaism in a modern world inhospitable to traditional practice, often employing much accommodation and leniency. In the mid-1980s, research on Orthodox Judaism became a scholarly discipline, examining how the need to confront modernity shaped and changed its beliefs, ideologies, social structure, and halakhic rulings, separating it from traditional Jewish society.
History
Modernity crisis
Until the latter half of the 18th century, Jewish communities in Central and Western Europe were autonomous entities, with distinct privileges and obligations. They were led by the affluent wardens' class judicially subject to rabbinical courts, which governed most civil matters. Jewish Law was considered normative and enforced upon transgressors invoking all communal sanctions: imprisonment, taxation, flogging, pillorying, and, especially, excommunication. Cultural, economic, and social exchange with non-Jewish society was limited and regulated.This state of affairs came to an end with the rise of the modern, centralized state, which appropriated all authority. The nobility, clergy, urban guilds, and all other corporate estates were gradually stripped of privileges, inadvertently creating a more equal and secularized society. The Jews were one of the groups affected: excommunication was banned, and rabbinic courts lost almost all their jurisdiction. The state, especially following the French Revolution, was more and more inclined to tolerate Jews as a religious sect, but not as an autonomous entity, and sought to reform and integrate them as "useful subjects". Jewish emancipation and equal rights were discussed. The Christian separation of "religious" and "secular" was applied to Jewish affairs, to which these concepts were alien. The rabbis were bemused when the state expected them to assume pastoral care, foregoing their principal judicial role. Of secondary importance, much less than the civil and legal transformations, were the ideas of Enlightenment that chafed at the authority of tradition and faith.
By the end of the 18th century, the weakened rabbinic establishment was facing a new kind of transgressor: they could not be classified as tolerable sinners overcome by their urges, or as schismatics like the Sabbateans or Frankists, against whom sanctions were levied. Their attitudes did not fit the criteria set when faith was a normative and self-evident part of worldly life, but rested on the realities of the new, secularized age. The wardens' class, which wielded most power within the communities, was rapidly acculturating and often sought to oblige the state's agenda.
Rabbi Elazar Fleckeles, who returned to Prague from the countryside in 1783, recalled that he first faced there "new vices" of principled irreverence towards tradition, rather than "old vices" such as gossip or fornication. In Hamburg, Rabbi Raphael Cohen attempted to reinforce traditional norms. Cohen ordered the men in his community to grow a beard, forbade holding hands with one's wife in public, and decried women who wore wigs, instead of visible headgear, to cover their hair; Cohen taxed and otherwise persecuted members of the priestly caste who left the city to marry divorcees, men who appealed to state courts, those who ate food cooked by Gentiles, and other transgressors. Hamburg's Jews repeatedly appealed to the civil authorities, which eventually justified Cohen. However, the unprecedented meddling in his jurisdiction profoundly shocked him and dealt a blow to the prestige of the rabbinate.
An ideological challenge to rabbinic authority, in contrast to prosaic secularization, appeared in the form of the Haskalah movement which came to the fore in 1782. Hartwig Wessely, Moses Mendelssohn, and other maskilim called for a reform of Jewish education, abolition of coercion in matters of conscience, and other modernizing measures. They bypassed rabbinic approval and set themselves, at least implicitly, as a rival intellectual elite. A bitter struggle ensued. Reacting to Mendelssohn's assertion that freedom of conscience must replace communal censure, Rabbi Cohen of Hamburg commented:
However, maskilic-rabbinic rivalry ended in most of Central Europe, as governments imposed modernization upon their Jewish subjects. Schools replaced traditional cheders, and standard German began to supplant Yiddish. Differences between the establishment and the Enlightened became irrelevant, and the former often embraced the views of the latter. In 1810, when philanthropist Israel Jacobson opened what was later identified as the first Reform synagogue in Seesen, with modernized rituals, he encountered little protest.