Zev Eleff | Gratz College (original) (raw)

Books by Zev Eleff

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, *Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life* (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020)

Research paper thumbnail of *Ennoble and Enable: Essays in Honor of Richard M. Joel*, eds. Zev Eleff and Jacob J. Schacter (New Milford: Maggid Books, 2018)

Research paper thumbnail of *A Century at the Center: Orthodox Judaism and the Jewish Center*, ed. Zev Eleff (Jerusalem: Toby Press, 2017)

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, *Who Rules the Synagogue? Religious Authority and the Formation of American Judaism, 1816-1885* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)

Research paper thumbnail of *Modern Orthodox Judaism in America: A Documentary History*, ed. Zev Eleff (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2016)

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, *Iggerot Ha-Levi: Essays on the Service of the Levites According to Rambam and Other Essays* (Boston, 2012; Hebrew)

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, *Living from Convention to Convention: A History of the NCSY, 1954-1980* (Jersey City: Ktav, 2009)

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, *Shirat Miriam: Essays on Rambam and Talmudic Discourses* (Baltimore, 2009; Hebrew)

Research paper thumbnail of *Mentor of Generations: Reflections on Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik*, ed. Zev Eleff (Jersey City: Ktav, 2008)

Scholarly Articles by Zev Eleff

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, "Dianne Ashton (1949-2022): American Jewish History and Lived Religion," American Jewish History," 106, no. 1 (January 2022): 107-109

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, “Piety and the Pill: Orthodox Judaism and Contraception in the Postwar Era,” American Jewish History, vol. 104, no. 4 (December 2020): 533-552

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, “The Yom Haatzmaut Debate and the Yeshiva World’s Declaration for Independence,” Israel Studies, vol. 26, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 57-81

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, “Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin, Rabbi Aharon Kotler, and the Remaking of an American Jewish Prophecy,” American Jewish Archives Journal, vol. 72, no. 1-2 (2020): 87-114

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff and Seth Farber, “Antimodernism and Orthodox Judaism’s Heretical Imperative: An American Religious Counterpoint,” Religion and American Culture, vol. 30, no. 2 (Summer 2020): 237-272

This article argues that the case of religious authority within Orthodox Judaism is an important ... more This article argues that the case of religious authority within Orthodox Judaism is an important counterexample to the broader and understudied developments in American religion during the final decades of the twentieth century. Using an array of untapped primary sources and drawing on themes addressed by scholars of American religious history and modern Jewish history, this article demonstrates how Orthodox Jewish elites used “approximational heresies” to police their faith community. In so doing, Orthodox leaders furnished “indicators” of apostasy that were unknown in previous epochs and served to stand in for traditional types that proved otherwise insufficient to counteract new trends in modern life and culture. Orthodox Jewish “antimodernism” was animated by a need to demonstrate what was “in” and what was “out” of bounds as well as by the emergence of a triumphalism that was unique among American faiths. Likewise, the rank-and-file abided because they either agreed with these measures or feared becoming “outsiders.” This outlook contrasts with the attitudes of other religious groups—on the “left” and the “right”—that absorbed a spirit of “inclusiveness” and, therefore, eschewed heresy hunting and the boldness evinced by Orthodox elites during this period. The article concludes that the pervasiveness of this counterculture among the Orthodox Jewish community was so powerful that it, counterintuitively, introduced the strategies of the antimodernists to the American-acculturated, so-called Modern Orthodox community.

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, “Afterword: The Content and Context of Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits’s Faith,” in Eliezer Berkovits, Faith After the Holocaust. New Milford: Maggid Books, 2019), 175-190

Research paper thumbnail of “For Insiders or Outsiders? The Book of Ruth’s American Jewish Reception”

Gleanings: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Ruth. Edited by Stuart W. Halpern. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of "Patrilineal Descent and the Shaping of Intermarriage Discourse in American Judaism"

Research paper thumbnail of “As Long as There is a Yeshiva College There will Always be a Commentator”

Ennoble and Enable: Essays in Honor of Richard M. Joel. Edited by Zev Eleff and Jacob J. Schacter. New Milford: Maggid Books, 2018

Research paper thumbnail of "The Origins of the Young Israel of Brookline and the Contest for 'Modern Orthodoxy'"

Research paper thumbnail of "The Jewish Center, Herman Wouk, and the Origins of Orthodox Triumphalism"

A Century at the Center: Orthodox Judaism and The Jewish Center. Edited by Zev Eleff. New Milford: Toby Press, 2018

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, "Dianne Ashton (1949-2022): American Jewish History and Lived Religion," American Jewish History," 106, no. 1 (January 2022): 107-109

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, “Piety and the Pill: Orthodox Judaism and Contraception in the Postwar Era,” American Jewish History, vol. 104, no. 4 (December 2020): 533-552

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, “The Yom Haatzmaut Debate and the Yeshiva World’s Declaration for Independence,” Israel Studies, vol. 26, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 57-81

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, “Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin, Rabbi Aharon Kotler, and the Remaking of an American Jewish Prophecy,” American Jewish Archives Journal, vol. 72, no. 1-2 (2020): 87-114

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff and Seth Farber, “Antimodernism and Orthodox Judaism’s Heretical Imperative: An American Religious Counterpoint,” Religion and American Culture, vol. 30, no. 2 (Summer 2020): 237-272

This article argues that the case of religious authority within Orthodox Judaism is an important ... more This article argues that the case of religious authority within Orthodox Judaism is an important counterexample to the broader and understudied developments in American religion during the final decades of the twentieth century. Using an array of untapped primary sources and drawing on themes addressed by scholars of American religious history and modern Jewish history, this article demonstrates how Orthodox Jewish elites used “approximational heresies” to police their faith community. In so doing, Orthodox leaders furnished “indicators” of apostasy that were unknown in previous epochs and served to stand in for traditional types that proved otherwise insufficient to counteract new trends in modern life and culture. Orthodox Jewish “antimodernism” was animated by a need to demonstrate what was “in” and what was “out” of bounds as well as by the emergence of a triumphalism that was unique among American faiths. Likewise, the rank-and-file abided because they either agreed with these measures or feared becoming “outsiders.” This outlook contrasts with the attitudes of other religious groups—on the “left” and the “right”—that absorbed a spirit of “inclusiveness” and, therefore, eschewed heresy hunting and the boldness evinced by Orthodox elites during this period. The article concludes that the pervasiveness of this counterculture among the Orthodox Jewish community was so powerful that it, counterintuitively, introduced the strategies of the antimodernists to the American-acculturated, so-called Modern Orthodox community.

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, “Afterword: The Content and Context of Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits’s Faith,” in Eliezer Berkovits, Faith After the Holocaust. New Milford: Maggid Books, 2019), 175-190

Research paper thumbnail of “For Insiders or Outsiders? The Book of Ruth’s American Jewish Reception”

Gleanings: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Ruth. Edited by Stuart W. Halpern. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of "Patrilineal Descent and the Shaping of Intermarriage Discourse in American Judaism"

Research paper thumbnail of “As Long as There is a Yeshiva College There will Always be a Commentator”

Ennoble and Enable: Essays in Honor of Richard M. Joel. Edited by Zev Eleff and Jacob J. Schacter. New Milford: Maggid Books, 2018

Research paper thumbnail of "The Origins of the Young Israel of Brookline and the Contest for 'Modern Orthodoxy'"

Research paper thumbnail of "The Jewish Center, Herman Wouk, and the Origins of Orthodox Triumphalism"

A Century at the Center: Orthodox Judaism and The Jewish Center. Edited by Zev Eleff. New Milford: Toby Press, 2018

Research paper thumbnail of Jonathan D. Sarna and Zev Eleff, “The Immigration Clause that Transformed Orthodox Judaism in the United States,” American Jewish History, vol. 101, no. 3 (July 2017): 357-376

Research paper thumbnail of "The Immigration Clause that Transformed Orthodox Judaism in the United States"

American Jewish History, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of “They Who Control the Time: The Orthodox Alliance of Abraham De Sola and Jacques Judah Lyons and the Nineteenth Century Jewish Calendar”

The Borderlands of Jewish Identity. Edited by Barry Stiefel and Herman Tesler-Mabe. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of "'We Must Unite on Principles!' The Letters of Kaufmann Kohler to David Philipson and Renewed Light on The Pittsburgh Platform of 1885"

American Jewish Archives Journal, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of “The Jewish Encounter with Discrimination, Tolerance and Pluralism in the United States”

Interpreting American Jewish History at Museums and Historic Sites. Edited by Avi Decter. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of "How Bat Mitzvah Became Orthodox"

Research paper thumbnail of “A Far-Flung Fraternity in a Fertile Desert: The Emergence of Rabbinic Scholarship in America, 1887-1926"

Research paper thumbnail of “From Teacher to Scholar to Pastor: The Evolving Postwar Modern Orthodox Rabbinate”

American Jewish History, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of “The Orthodox Rabbinate and its Chabad Revolution”

Looking Forward: The Aspen Center for Social Values Journal, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Kenneth D. Wald, The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 270 pp

Journal of Church and State, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of Review of David Fraser. Anti Shechita Prosecutions in the Anglo American World, 1855-1913: “A Major Attack on Jewish Freedoms”(Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018), 258 pp

Canadian Jewish Studies , 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Adam D. Mendelsohn, ed., By Dawn’s Early Light: Jewish Contributions to American Culture from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Library, 2016), 330 pp

American Jewish Archives Journal, 2016

Leff opens and closes the book, and which endows it with such potential and energy, casts a shado... more Leff opens and closes the book, and which endows it with such potential and energy, casts a shadow over its remainder, where so much by definition remains in the shadows. Ultimately, The Archive Thief is a profoundly interesting character study that presents an open invitation to continue exploring the " backstage " of the development of archives and their impact and meaning for the emergence of Jewish studies as an academic discipline. Jason Lustig is a doctoral candidate at the UCLA department of history specializing in modern Jewish history and the history of historiography. His

Research paper thumbnail of "Beyond Schools and Shuls: Toward a Fuller Appreciation of American Orthodox History"

Research paper thumbnail of “An American Tale: A Review Essay”

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Adam S. Ferziger, Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015), ix + 352 pp

American Jewish History , 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Janice Rothschild Blumberg, Prophet in a Time of Priests: Rabbi “Alphabet” Browne, 1845–1929 (Baltimore: Apprentice House, 2012), 415 pp

American Jewish Archives Journal , 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Zev Eleff, "The Current State of the Modern Orthodox Community," Conversations 42 (Fall 2023): 21-28

Research paper thumbnail of Jonathan D. Sarna and Zev Eleff, “When Etrogim Grew on Trees,” Segula, no. 58 (August 2021): 30-39

Research paper thumbnail of "Rabbi Leo Jung, Herman Wouk and their Little-Known Orthodox Society"

Research paper thumbnail of "The Jewish Observer: Champion of the Orthodox Right"

Research paper thumbnail of "Debating Orthodox Judaism: A Tale of Two Rabbinical Seminaries"

Research paper thumbnail of "Arnold Horween, a Chicago Jew on King Harvard's Gridiron"

Chicago Jewish Historical Society, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of "How the Rambam's Avraham Saved Rosh Hashanah"

Chicago Jewish Home, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of "The Rav and the Ark: A Case Study in Torah Perseverance"

Chicago Jewish Home, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of "Behind the Laughter: The Purim Shpiel Comes to America (and Chicago)"

Chicago Jewish Historical Society, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of "The Many Origins of Hebrew Theological College"

Chicago Jewish Historical Society, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of "Zionism, Mussar, and the Cultural Foundations of the Hebrew Theological College"

Chicago Jewish Historical Society, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of “Brown v. Board: An Orthodox Cause?"

Research paper thumbnail of “The Decline of the Rabbinic Sermon”

Jewish Action 74, 2013

Winner of 2014 Rockower Award for Excellence in a Single Commentary, American Jewish Press Associ... more Winner of 2014 Rockower Award for Excellence in a Single Commentary, American Jewish Press Association

Research paper thumbnail of “The Wages of Criticism"

Jewish Review of Books, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of “In Search of American Orthodox Jewish History”

Research paper thumbnail of “Mythology and History in Their Times and Places"

Research paper thumbnail of “On Being a Maggid: A Look at the Storytelling of Rabbi Hershel Schachter”

Research paper thumbnail of Viva Yeshiva!" The Tale of the Mighty Mites and the College Bowl

American Jewish History, 2010