“Christian Science and the Jews”

Appel, John J. “Christian Science and the Jews.” Jewish Social Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, April 1969, Indiana University Press, 100-121.

Appel examines an early twentieth-century movement of Jews attracted to Christian Science (CS), estimating participants anywhere between 6,000 and 200,000, though no firm count exists. He argues that its appeal lay less in assimilation to Christian majorities than in its emphasis on mysticism, positive thinking, and spiritual healing. Some adherents even claimed that studying CS made them better Jews. Critics within the Jewish community, however, insisted that Judaism and CS were incompatible, warning against “embroilment in the quackeries of religiotherapy” (108). In response, Jewish Science emerged in 1916, associated with Rabbi Alfred Geiger Moses, who characterized CS as Judaism veneered as Christianity. The movement gained institutional form in 1922 when Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein founded the Society of Jewish Science in New York and later published Jewish Science and Health (1925). Lichtenstein’s followers framed their efforts as “strengthening Judaism in our generation” and “deepening our awareness of the values in Judaism” (114). Appel devotes more than half the article to this movement, concluding with eight points explaining CS’s appeal. He ultimately suggests that Jewish Science functioned as “an attenuated Chassidism for some ailing, middle-class, assimilated Jews” and particularly Americanized Jewesses”(119).

ISSN: 0021-6704
Print ISSN: 0021-6704

JSTOR Stable Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4466485