Dr. Rachel S.A. Pear

Rachel S. A. Pear is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Haifa’s Center for Jewish Education, where she is researching evolution education in Israeli schools. She wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on American Modern Orthodox engagement with evolution. Rachel can be reached at RachelSAPear@gmail.com. This essay originally appeared at Lehrhaus (www.thelehrhaus.com).

Op-Eds / From the Paper

How Two New York Rabbis Responded To The 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial

By Dr. Rachel S.A. Pear

In the 1920s, a new breed of Orthodox Jewish Americans set a two-fold goal: to “rebuke and repudiate the reformers” and “to deal effectively and happily with the great task” of Americanization by forging a distinctly American form of Orthodox Judaism.