Boomers, Millennials and the Shape of American Judaism

• In Event: Sklare Award Ceremony and Lecture

Abstract

Last Fall marked the 100th anniversary of Max Weber’s essay, “Science as a Vocation,” which has greatly influenced the way a host of scholars, including me, have approached the study of religion in the modern West. One cannot imagine the work of Peter Berger, Talcott Parsons, or Marshall Sklare, without Weber’s notions of disenchantment, charisma, religious virtuosos, and the retreat of religion to private spaces, where it seeks to flourish “in pianissimo.” It is also impossible, a century after Weber confidently declaimed on these matters, not to notice how wrong he was in key respects. My own work, while indebted to Weber and the sociologists who followed in his path at every turn, has been less interested in the processes of modernization and secularization that have shaped Jews in the modern period than in the ways Jews have responded to those challenges with new modes of thought and observance. The question facing those of us committed to the study and the practice of Judaism in 2018, I believe, is whether those patterns of thought and observance, honed over two centuries of encounter with modernity, will require further adjustment in coming years. Will the “solutions” arrived at my baby boomers like me – who grew up in, and responded to, the sociological situation Sklare described so perceptively – “work” for millennials and the cohorts that follow? I will draw on several examples from the history of Jewish thought in the modern period, as well as on Weber and Sklare, to suggest that both continuity and change are likely to prove decisive.

Author

• Arnold Eisen, The Jewish Theological Seminary