The 1920s and 1930s

The 1920s and 1930s

Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections at the University of Colorado Boulder

2013

Stephanie Yuhas, Netanel Miles-Yepez, Deborah Fink, Sue Salinger, David Shneer, Andrew Violet, and Jacob Flaws.

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“In the 1920s and 1930s, the total Jewish community polarized into Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform congregations. [. . .] jumbo-jet congregations in which you had one rabbi-pilot and one cantor co-pilot and everybody else strapped into their seat belts and told, ‘If you don’t move very much, and if you don’t walk around, and if you let your stewards and stewardesses serve you very quickly, we’ll have you at your landing spot, which is out of here and down to the social hour in a very short time.’ But that system is not very conducive to the kinds of experience human beings need in order to be fully awakened, fully alive. More and more, the real experience, the genuine content, was pushed out of the synagogue. Rites of passage got streamlined and standard-packed. [. . .] Such congregational practices could not fulfill spiritual needs.”

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, First Steps to a New Jewish Spirit