Shulkhn Arukh. Venice, 1565. Credit: Kestenbaum & Company Auctioneers, New York. Link.
I sometimes wonder what the codifier of the Shulkhn Arukh (The Set Table), that 16th century compendium of traditional Jewish ritual practice, might make of American Jewry.
This, after all, is a community whose members have perfected ‘kosher-style cuisine,’ while ignoring the strictures of kashruth, and who’ve reduced the 25 hour Sabbath to a nocturnal experience: the Friday night “oneg” at synagogue.
And that’s just the half of it. Earlier in the 20th century, contemporary critics were so alarmed by the idiosyncratic nature of Jewish ritual behavior that they worried lest shared norms and practices disappear entirely. In the United States, it was said, every Jew carried his own Shulkhn Arukh.
Then again, this is also a community whose members have come up with a wide range of ritual innovations that enhance rather than minimize tradition. Having just attended the simchat bat of my grand niece, I would certainly add that ritual practice, which has become de rigueur in Orthodox as well as in Reform circles, to the list. Topping it would be the bat mitzvah, a ritual innovation of postwar America and now one so firmly rooted it’s hard to imagine Jewish life without it.
This ongoing tug of war (or maybe it’s just a tussle) between tradition and innovation keeps sociologists and sermonizers scratching their heads. It keeps the rest of us wondering, too.
