Orthodox Union

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"OU" logo.

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA), more popularly known as the Orthodox Union, or OU, is one of the oldest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States. It is best known for its kosher supervision service, with the circled-U symbol found on the labels of many commercial and consumer food products.

The OU supports a network of synagogues, youth programs, Jewish and Religious Zionist advocacy, programs for the disabled, localized religious study programs, and some international units with locations in Israel and Ukraine.

It is one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States. Its synagogues, and the rabbis who lead them, are usually identified among the stream of Judaism referred to as Modern Orthodox.

This organization should not be confused with the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, a distinct Haredi rabbinical group with a similar name that was founded a few years after the OU.

1 History
2 Activities
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The OU was founded in 1898, and serves about 1,000 synagogues and congregations of varying sizes. The need for a national Jewish Orthodox rabbinical organization in the early twentieth century was recognized by a number of groups. The Union of Orthodox Rabbis was the most powerful rabbinical body at that time and many of its members saw the great value in establishing the early Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

Originally, the OU was formed by leaders of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which later became the predominant agency representing the Conservative stream of Judaism, with the charter coming from its headquarters in New York City, where it had been located since 1886. Cracks between the OU and JTS first formed in 1902, with the founding of the stricter Orthodox group, Agudah Harobonim - exactly 100 days after Solomon Schechter arrived from Great Britain to head JTS. The Agudah refused to recognize the rabbinical credentials (Semicha) of those ordained at JTS, thus fragmenting Orthodox Judaism from Conservative Judaism. (See American Judaism by Jonathan Sarna.) However,the OU was still officially connected to JTS until the 1950s. The break between Orthodox Judaism and Conservative Judaism became whole with the "Sabbath decision of 1949". This groundbreaking decision, allowing both congregants and rabbis to drive to synagogue (shul) on the sabbath if they lived too far to walk, severed the otherwise rather homogeneous group into what would become two distinct groups. However, even after the formal organizational division, individually, many Jews in the 1950s continued to identify themselves as orthodox even while driving on the sabbath, and many Jews were members of synagogues of both Conservative and Orthodox persuasions.

Some Orthodox rabbis viewed the nascent OU as insufficiently Orthodox, and thus did not participate in it, instead setting up their own more stringent rabbinical organizations. However, the idea for a national Orthodox congregational body took hold, and soon developed into the OU that exists today. The OU grew slowly until the 1950s, when it then began increasing the number of affiliated congregations including both small and large memberships. Also, in the 1950s, cheese production came under increased kosher scrutiny as a result of the use of using animal rennet enzymes to make the cheese (creating multiple kosher concerns; mixing milk and meat products as well as using rennet from a non-kosher animal) which was the impetus for the OU to establish a kashrut division focusing on this issue. This increased revenue for the OU, but also became a defining line in orthodox Jewish observance that was not something Jews in American previously considered.

Most synagogues affiliated with the Orthodox Union were under the leadership of rabbis trained by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik and alumni from Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. These rabbis were ideologically Modern Orthodox. Since the late 1970s, however, the OU's general philosophy and levels of observance have tended to shift towards stricter interpretations and halachic practices which is evidenced through a general trend towards a more structured influence of Haredi Judaism in the Orthodox world.

[edit] Activities

[edit] Kosher certification

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OU certification symbol

The OU supervises many kosher foods. When the OU supervises kosher food, the OU sends a mashgiach (superviser) to the production facility to ensure that the product complies with halacha (Jewish law). The mashgiach supervises both the ingredients and the production process. Led by current CEO Menachem Genack, the OU is one of the largest and most widely recognized kosher supervision agencies in the world.^{[citation needed]} 275,000 products from over 2,400 manufacturers, produced in nearly 6,000 plants in 77 countries.^{[citation needed]} [1]

In 2005, the Orthodox Union faced controversy because of an undercover video that purportedly documented animals at a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa being shocked in the face with electric prods and slaughtered in an extremely cruel manner. The investigation was the subject of multiple stories in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and all of the Jewish media. In 2006, the OU’s defense of what the President of the Conservative Movement and the USDA called "egregious violations" of Federal law, were the subject of a video narrated by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and Rabbis Irving Greenberg and David Wolpe.

[edit] Synagogue affiliation

The OU requires that all member synagogues follow Orthodox Jewish interpretations of Jewish law and tradition. Men and women are seated separately, and nearly always are separated by a mechitza, a physical divider between the men's and women's section of the synagogue. OU synagogues follow Religious Zionism, meaning that they support the existence of the State of Israel. The laws of Shabbat (the Sabbath) and Kashrut are stressed. Members of OU synagogues have a diverse political background, and are not necessarily members of any one political party. Orthodox Jews are somewhat more politically conservative than non-observant Jews. They daven exclusively in Hebrew, using the same traditional text of the siddur (prayer book) that has been used in Ashkenazi Jewish communities for the last few centuries. Until recently the most common prayerbook used in OU synagogues have been Ha-Siddur Ha-Shalem edited by Philip Birnbaum. In recent years the most common siddur has been the RCA edition of the Artscroll siddur, a prayerbook that is identical to the regular Artscroll siddur, but for the addition of a new preface, and prayers for the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces. Until recently the most common Hebrew-English Humash used has been the Pentateuch and Haftarahs, edited by Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz; in recent years this has been supplanted by The Chumash: The Stone Edition, also known as the Artscroll Chumash.

[edit] National Conference of Synagogue Youth

Main article: National Conference of Synagogue Youth

The official youth program of the OU is the National Conference of Synagogue Youth known as NCSY. It sponsors the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. NCSY, was founded by Rabbi Pinchas Stolper in the 1950s and was originally created to reach out to young non-orthodox Jews, has now expanded its reach to include many already religious mostly Modern Orthodox children from Jewish day schools and who otherwise do not associate with members of the opposite sex to become friends. In New Jersey, over 80% of the youth groups members are Modern Orthodox children. In Florida this resulted in two official regions: one for Jewish public school students and one for Jewish day school students. In recent years, NCSY has faced a challenge recruiting public school youth because of a variety of scandals and because some advisors are perceived as being too Orthodox. Often the adviser population, taken mostly from Yeshiva University students who have spent at least one year studying in Israel, is far more serious than the Modern Orthodox youth they seek to attarct that may cause some attendees to feel disenchanted by the group. However, many marriages have resulted from the social interaction. NCSY boasts that 95% of their members marry Jews.

[edit] Alliance with the Rabbinical Council of America

Main article: Rabbinical Council of America

For many years the OU, along with its related rabbinic arm, the Rabbinical Council of America, worked with the larger Jewish community in the Synagogue Council of America. In this group Orthodox, Conservative and Reform groups worked together on many issues of joint concern. The group became defunct in 1994, mainly over the objections of the Orthodox groups to Reform Judaism's official acceptance of patrilineal descent as an option for defining Jewishness. (See Who is a Jew.)