When my family and I came to Israel in 1998, our daughter (who’s now closing in on forty) was just about to have her Bat Mitzvah. It was important to us that she read Torah in a “traditional” synagogue. In other words, what we wanted for her was an “egalitarian Orthodox” setting (for lack of a better term), where the service would be completely traditional, but where she could read Torah.

Yet there were essentially no options. So we rented a space, set up our own minyan and did things exactly as we wanted them to be.

On the morning after the Bat Mitzvah, someone at my work who had attended told me that she’d enjoyed the simcha, but that (this being Israel where it was in vogue to say whatever you think long before Donald Trump came to the scene) we’d been unfair to our daughter. Why? “Because she clearly loved reading Torah, and she’s great at it. And now she can’t do it again. So you’ve set her up for long-term frustration and disappointment ….”

Except that our daughter regularly reads Torah. As will our granddaughter at her Bat Mitzvah in a year or so, not in a hired hall, but at a regular shul.

Religious life in Israel has changed in myriad ways during the almost three decades that we’ve been here—for all sorts of reasons. One of the most important reasons, though, has been the immigration to Israel of thousands of traditional American Jews, who have brought with them uniquely American conceptions of pluralism, the roles of women, access to traditional learning—and much more.

To those who look at Israel from abroad, traditional Israeli religious life might appear to be a monolith, but that is far from the case. And now, at long last, both for those of us who live here as well as those who do not, there’s a book by an important Israeli scholar (himself also an immigrant to Israel) — Professor Adam Ferziger — that lays out for us the profound impact that (especially) American immigration has had on the tapestry of Israeli life.

A quick reminder that with Pesach coming next week, we will be on a reduced schedule — as always during Jewish holidays — during the weeks of March 29 and April 5.

Out of consideration for our readers in the Diaspora who observe two days of Yom Tov at the beginning and end of the holiday, we will not post on those days.

Wishes for a joyous and meaningful Pesach.

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Adam S. Ferziger is professor and holds the Rabbi S.R. Hirsch Chair for Research on the Torah im Derekh Erez Movement in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University. He is a senior associate at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford and co-convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism.

His research focuses on the history of religious responses to modern and contemporary life in Western Europe, North America, and Israel. A past recipient of Bar-Ilan’s “Outstanding Lecturer” prize, Ferziger has served as a visiting professor or fellow in Australia, China, UK, as well as numerous American Universities. He is the author or editor of eight books, including Exclusion and Hierarchy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), Jewish Denominations (Melton Institute – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012), and his monograph, Beyond Sectarianism (Wayne State University Press, 2015), was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award. His new book, Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism (NYU Press) appeared in the summer 2025.

Professor Ferziger is an alumnus/graduate of SAR, Ramaz, Beit Midrash le-Torah (BMT), Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush), YU (YC, RIETS, Revel), and Bar-Ilan. During the spring 2025 semester, he was the Robert Karady Fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies of University of Pennsylvania.

Adam Ferziger and his wife Dr. Naomi Ferziger have lived in Israel since 1987, where they brought up their children and are now have several grandchildren. Ferziger was a congregational rabbi in Kfar-Sava and has dedicated over thirty years to performing weddings and providing religious services to a wide spectrum of Israeli Jews in a meaningful and nonjudgmental manner.

The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.

For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.

Adam Ferziger, my guest today, is a professor and holds the rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair for research on the Torah im Derekh Erez Movement in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University. It's a mouthful, but you will hear very shortly that he is really an expert on some of the most fascinating dimensions of religious expression in Israel and abroad, or in the relationship between them. We're going to put his full bio in the written notes for today, but he's a senior associate at the Oxford Senior for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford, and the co-convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism. His research focuses on the history of religious responses to modern and contemporary life in Western Europe, North America, and Israel. He has received Bar Ilan's outstanding Lecturer Prize. He's been a visiting professor or scholar in a whole array of universities that we're I'm going to put in the written notes for today. A wonderful guy, a friend, and a person who's always fascinating to talk with and listen to. Adam Ferziger has a new book out, which we're going to hear about today.I will just note that he and I are having this conversation on the second day of the most recent Israeli-Iranian war. So hopefully we'll get through this conversation without having to run into a safe room. People listening may hear some jets overhead periodically. We haven't had any in the last few minutes, but we had a lot of this morning, so we shall see. Adam's newest book is Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism. And that already probably has people raising their eyebrows a little bit. What do you mean, American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism? We often think of a couple of things. We think that it's really Mitzion Tetzé Torah. We think of the stuff coming out of Israel and affecting Judaism elsewhere. We don't usually think about it in the opposite direction. Or I think some people would say, actually, Jews have been pretty unsuccessful at transforming Israeli Judaism. We're all aware that, I mean, right now the kotel issue is brewing once again, and the vast majority of American Jews and some Israeli Jews would like there to be some place at the kotel where American Jews could express themselves religiously in a way that felt respected and honored and so forth.It doesn't look like the moment, at least it's going that way. The whole premise of American Jews and the transformation of Israeli Judaism seems counterintuitive. But if When you read Adam's book and you read about all the various personalities who are very well known to some and probably a little bit less known to others of our listeners, you'll see there's been giants. I mean, men and women who are really giants in the world of Jewish communal life and educational of Life, who really have had an enormous impact on Judaism in Israel. It's a fascinating topic. It's actually, I think, a very optimistic topic, and we can all use that these days. Adam, thank you for coming over in the midst of sirens and all of that on the aftermath of a very interesting Shabbat where we all spent holdup in our safe rooms, and Mazel Tov on the appearance of the book, which came out this past summer.Okay, Daniel, thank you so much. I feel safe here. I know where the room is, and I appreciate the invitation. I'm going to give a little bit of a basic view of the book, and hopefully, our discussion will get a little bit deeper into some of the critical moments within it. I'll start just with a personal anecdote. My wife, Naomi and I, Dr. Naomi Ferziger, we arrived in Israel in 1987, and it was an election year, or '88 actually was the election year, and that's not that unusual in Israel. But that year, there was a new political party that was running. It was called Meimad. Meimad was running on a ticket that said, Religious Zionism, which is those who are dedicated to the state of Israel, but did not accept this secular Zionist, Ben Gurion, et cetera, approach. That religious Zionism, they thought had been hijacked since the '67 war by people who were hyper-redemption-oriented people, people who saw Israel primarily through messianic lenses.The Gush Amunim movement.The Gush Amunim movement, the settlement movement. Even though some of these people might have identified with aspects of that part of the religious direction, what they found particularly difficult was the fact that somehow over time, that movement had morphed into a more hyper strict religious movement in terms of the roles of men and women. They had, in a sense, seemed be abandoning their ideological forefather, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Cook's focus on the imperative of a partnership between secular and a religious Israeli in the building of the state. They were rejectionists towards secular learning and in a number o...