Tiny Jewish Science Movement Manages to Hang On for 70 Years : Religion: Some of its few adherents meet in Sherman Oaks. They believe the keys to health and happiness are prayer and a positive outlook.
You’ve heard of Christian Science, maybe of Religious Science. But what about Jewish Science?
The term calls to mind Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and other scientists who happen to be Jewish. In reality, it is a religious movement that has hung on for 70 years, barely eluding extinction a few years back.
Formed in response to the popularity of Christian Science, Jewish Science endorses modern medicine for serious ailments but otherwise agrees with Christian Science that the keys to health and happiness are prayer and, above all, a positive outlook.
Yet, in Sherman Oaks, one of five places in the world where Jewish Science services are still held, leader Jack Botwin was being more honest than negative when he observed: “Jewish Science never really took off.”
Only 19 people showed up on a recent Sunday morning for the monthly service held in the community room of a Ventura Boulevard bank. “We usually have about 25,” one woman said.
Other branches meet in a mid-Manhattan hotel; Piscataway, N. J.; Albuquerque, N. M., and an apartment in Netanya, Israel. The dues-paying membership stands at 150 families and individuals worldwide.
True to the movement’s metaphysical spirit, however, optimism reigns.
Overall membership was down to 35 families about five years ago when David Goldstein took over as executive director of the New York-based Society of Jewish Science. Only 235 subscribed to the Jewish Science Interpreter newsletter then, but that number has since climbed to 900, Goldstein said.
“Jewish Science speaks to the individual at a personal level,” said Goldstein, who added that many see Jewish Science as a supplement to synagogue membership. “Some people who have been out of Judaism for years but are looking for something spiritual are surprised to find this has been here all along.”
Jewish Science came West in 1978 when Botwin, a retired New York civil servant, moved to the San Fernando Valley and began talking about the philosophy with anyone who was interested.
Now 71 and living in Sylmar, Botwin declined to say how many people have showed more than passing interest. But he declared that his small newspaper ads and bulletin board announcements about Jewish Science stir increased curiosity these days. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t get a telephone inquiry,” he said.
The group at this month’s service, after sampling the lox, bagels and orange juice on a side table, was quiet but enthusiastic.
“Jewish Science gives you direct access to God with no need for intermediaries,” said Ralph Kane of West Los Angeles, who was associated with a Conservative synagogue.
Several who were present had been active in Religious Science, a denomination that began in Los Angeles with the publication in 1927 of “The Science of Mind” by the movement’s founder, Ernest Holmes. Churches formed later, preaching self-esteem and openness to unconventional religious ideas, including some New Age views.
“I went for 20 years to hear Religious Science preachers, but I always kept my membership in Wilshire Boulevard Temple until recent years,” said Arthur Bornstein, 65, president of a memory training school in West Los Angeles.
Because Jewish Science literature draws primarily on the Hebrew Bible and Judaic traditions for its positive-thinking approach, Bornstein said, “this group has all the things I’ve been looking for.”
Irene Selnik of Saugus, like Bornstein, was attending the service for the second time. “Whatever is happening that is positive, I want to be involved,” said Selnik, 65, who has been active in a Religious Science church for 13 years.
Botwin, who wore a yarmulke, read some prayers in Hebrew, then asked the small congregation to join him in reciting them in English.
After a few moments of “meditative silence,” Botwin asked people to “visualize the thing you need the most and pray for it. You don’t need words for it. . . . We believe it will come to you.”
And during later remarks, Botwin touched upon tenets of Jewish Science healing.
“God made us, therefore he has the power to heal us. . . . People run to the doctor right away. I try to give God a chance first--God within us,” Botwin said.
“This is an important yet unwritten chapter in the history of Judaism in America,” said Ellen Umansky of Scarsdale, N. Y. Umansky, currently teaching at Hebrew Union College in New York City, is completing a book on the movement.
Early this century, American Jews were attracted to Christian Science claims of physical healing and to the church’s focus on individual spirituality, she said.
“The number of Jews who actually joined Christian Science between 1906 and 1926 lies somewhere between 4,000 and 40,000,” Umansky estimated. Overall, Christian Science membership soared to about 200,000 during that time, she said.
In that period, U. S. Jewry sought to emphasize its American character and to downplay its distinctively Jewish, foreign-sounding traditions, Umansky said. Although the liberal Reform temples were winning over many Orthodox Jews as a result, she said, Reform rabbis feared in turn that they were losing members either to agnosticism or Christian Science.
Just as Christian Science relies heavily on the commentaries of founder Mary Baker Eddy, Jewish Science follows the essays of its founder--in this case, Lithuanian-born Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein. The Reform rabbi published “Jewish Science and Health” three years after founding the society in 1922 in New York City. He wrote five more books before his death in 1938, and his wife, Tehilla, occupied his pulpit until her death in 1973.
The term Jewish Science had been coined in 1916 when Rabbi Alfred Geiger Moses published a book by that name, but the Alabama rabbi declined to lead a movement. Yet another rabbi, Clifton Levy, organized a movement in the 1920s that studied Christian Science teachings from a Jewish perspective, but it drifted out of existence in the 1950s.
The three rabbis who tried to define an acceptable Jewish Science differed on details. But each “primarily spoke of God as the Divine Mind, a vitalizing force which, as an internal power of goodness and the source of health, exerted great influence over both mind and body,” Umansky said.
Nevertheless, the one Jewish Science movement that has survived--that founded by Lichtenstein--probably never exceeded 500 members at its peak in the 1930s, she said.
“Then as now, most American Jews have not been particularly interested in spirituality and personal prayer,” Umansky said. “For most Jews, cultural and ethnic identity is more important.”
Sociological studies and surveys have shown that a minority of American Jews have explored religious movements outside of Judaism in recent decades, especially yoga, Transcendental Meditation, New Age healing movements and sects such as Hare Krishna and the Unification Church.
“Many do not see this exploration undermining their Judaism,” said Steven Huberman, who published a study of “Jews on the Fringe” last year for the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.
In fact, some Jewish groups emphasizing mystical roots within Judaism, including the Hasidic movements, have attracted some of the “spiritual seeker” minority among Jews.
Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man said his School of Traditional Jewish Meditation, sponsored by the Los Angeles Hillel Council, has graduated 270 people in the last year.
“No one Jewish group has everything they want, but I would regard Jewish Science as rather peripheral,” Omer-Man said.
Indeed, Umansky said, considering that Jewish Science has not had a rabbinical leader since 1938, and no synagogue since 1956, it is a wonder that it has survived at all. “I know of no other Jewish movement that is completely lay-led,” she said.
Botwin conceded to his Sherman Oaks gathering that when it comes to religious education for children, bar mitzvahs, marriages and deaths, Jewish people will turn to the synagogue.
As for Jewish Science’s fate, Botwin was unfailingly sanguine. “These books by Lichtenstein are such classics, like Shakespeare. In hard times, it is something to turn to when things go wrong,” he said. “After I’m gone, the books will be there.”
‘Affirmations’ of Jewish Science Followers of Jewish Science, founded by Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein in 1922, recite two “affirmations” that reflect the meditative and metaphysical nature of the tiny movement:
“The God consciousness in me expresses itself in Health, in Calmness, in Peace, in Power and in Happiness.
“I am calm and cheerful; I hate no one; I envy no one; there is no worry or fear in me; I trust in God all the time.”
