[Avodah] Characterizing our era

[Jonathan Baker]

(reading back issues from August 2011)

RMi:
>the shoa is the dividing line

Is it, though?  It's A dividing line, sure, but do eras really have 
dividing lines?  I think we discussed this some years ago, and it seems
there are transition periods between the major periods, and that major
codes often characterize the transitions: the Mishna, the Gemara, the
Rambam, the SA.  But I think the trasition period started around 1870,
with the unification of Germany, which seems to have triggered the 
mass migrations of Jews that led up through the 1950s.  That's the

- beginning of the Eastern European migration to the US, 
- the beginning of modern Zionism sending people to Eretz Israel, 
- a transition in the European yeshivot
      (Volozhin closed in 1891,
       the Mussar schools opened:
          Slobodka opened in 1881, 
          Novardok in 1895, and 
       Tomchei Temimim, meant to teach the Lubavitch meditative
          practice, opened in 1896)
- a transition in the US to building its own rabbinate, with HUC and JTSA
     and much later, RIETS.

Both the MB and AhS were written during this period, 1881-1907.  WWI
caused huge upheavals in Europe, and led directly to WW2 and the economic
conditions that allowed the rize of Nazism, which led to the founding of
the State of Israel, which led to the Jews being expelled from the Arab
countries and coming to Israel.  So the Shoa (qua Hurban Europe) was not 
actually a dividing line for everybody.

Debbie's comment: we can't characterize our own era, that's for others 
to do a century down the line.

And the eras we're talking about are intellectual, not cultural or
social, which were in constant turmoil.  1492 was a big transformer,
which led to the Sefardi diaspora and greater Sefardi influence on 
Ashkenazic halacha and Mediterranean Jewish practice.  Shabtai Tzvi
was a big transformer, which led to Hasidism.  Enlightenment/Emanci-
pation was a big transformer, which led to Reform.  They're heavily-
 intertwined, inasmuch as Spinoza is part of the Spanish converso
return culture, and was one of the early philosophers whose thought
led to Enlightenment.  Hasidic looseness with halacha legitimized
Reform looseness with halacha.  Etc.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com