20
Renewal
Tensions between haredim who try to ignore or minimize the influence of
changes in the western world over the past two centuries and the majority
of Jews who have adapted to such changes have increased markedly over
the past fifty years as a result of the accelerating pace of change within
wider society and the growing power of haredim to impose their will on
other Jews. Many of the concerns of contemporary Jewish renewal move-
ments have reflected the radical shifts in social and cultural expectations,
particularly in relation to the role of women and the norms of sexual
relations, in North America since the 1960s, and most of these new trends
within Judaism have also originated in the United States, although some
have sprung from within Israeli society.
In the mid- 1990s, the theologian Arthur Green examined in a public
lecture at Hebrew Union College, the seminary for Reform rabbis, the
significance of an advertisement in New York’s Jewish Week inserted by
a young woman who described herself as ‘DJF, 34, Spiritual, not reli-
gious, seeking like- minded JM’:
This young woman should indeed be of interest to us. Allow me to treat
her, if you will, as an icon of our age. I think she has a pretty clear idea of
what she means by ‘spiritual, not religious’. You could meet her, along with
a great many other Jews, at a Kripalu Yoga Ashram retreat, where she goes
for a weekend of Yoga, massage, a lecture on spiritual teachings, healthy
vegetarian food, and conversations with like- minded people. You will not
meet her at your synagogue, from which she continues to feel alienated.
But she fasts and meditates on Yom Kippur, a day that has some ‘special
meaning’ for her. She reads both Sufi and Hasidic stories. She used to go to
Shlomo Carlebach concerts and occasionally lapses into one of his tunes.
Passover with her family is still an obnoxious and boisterous, ‘totally
unspiritual’, as she would say, affair. But one year her folks were away on