Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism

The rise of moderate Orthodox Judaism in Israel and the key role of Americans in its emergence

The conservative ultra-Orthodox and redemptive ＂Kook＂ camps hold sway over religious matters in Israel. Yet from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, a small cadre of American immigrants arrived in Israel and established or led a range of educational institutions that trained thousands of advanced students and laid the ideological foundations for an Israeli moderate religious stream. In Agents of Change, Adam S. Ferziger highlights the parts played by these Americans in promoting the rise of a transnational community of moderate Jewish Orthodoxy.

Analyzing the novel outlooks that have found expression in central areas of debates, from women’s engagements in religious and public life and approaches to the gay and lesbian community to interactions with non-Orthodox denominations and attitudes toward academic Jewish studies, Ferziger illuminates both shifting religious dynamics in Israel as a result of this rise in moderate Orthodoxy, as well as the changing relationship between Israeli and American Judaisms, challenging current understandings which see the Jewish co-mmunities of the two nations as drifting apart. Though a minority in Israel, this vocal Orthodox community with a more moderate take on key issues is significant in potentially paving the way for social change. Increasingly, their influence is being felt. Shedding light on the impact of American migration in forming a burgeoning moderate religious direction in Israeli life that has challenged the hegemony of the long dominant direction within Religious Zionism, Agents of Change offers a fresh perspective on the multifaceted collaboration of ideas and practices that exists between Israel and America.

Adam S. Ferziger is Professor and holds the Rabbi S. R. Hirsch Chair in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, and is Co-Convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism, University of Oxford, UK. He is the author of Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism, winner of a National Jewish Book Award.