Modern Day Orthodox Jews

Professor Oster had pointed out something very important to my attention. While I earlier stated that immigrants will eventually assimilate into American culture, that isn’t always the case. There are orthodox Jewish communities throughout the U.S., particularly in L.A. and New York. She points out that they still dress like “greenie” in and still speak Yiddish and their prayer is spoken in Hebrew. So the question is how they kept their culture and way of life all these years while others felt the need to assimilate? I would say that they kept to themselves. Like Tzuref did with his following, modern Orthodox Jews avoided integrating into American society. They were able to find a system of support within their own community and therefore didn’t have to go outside of their small community of people that shared their same beliefs.

“And, with a few exceptions, they are still often living in relative ease with their surrounding communities.”

This comment was taken from a comment on this post. I would completely agree that modern Orthodox Jews are able to live with the surrounding communities. Today’s modern day Orthodox Jews are accepted with ease in society because society has change a lot in the last 50 years. We live in a society that is more accepting of people different and diversity isn’t only welcome, but encouraged. As discussed in Eli, the Fanatic, Woodenton was considered a “modern community,” but was not even close to as accepting as we are today of people of different religion, race, or beliefs. While I might have generalized about immigrants always assimilating, society today is more accepting of their way of life and beliefs.