Category Books

The Americanization of the Jews »

Authors: Robert Seltzer, Norman S. Cohen
ISBN-13: 9780814780015, ISBN-10: 0814780016
Format: Paperback
Publisher: New York University Press
Date Published: January 1995
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Robert Seltzer

ROBERT M. SELTZER is Professor of History at Hunter College, Chair of the Hunter Jewish Social Studies Program, and the author of Jewish People, Jewish Thought.

NORMAN J. COHEN is Dean of the Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, and Professor of Midrash.

Book Synopsis

Explores the paradoxes that abound in the relationship between America and Judaism.

Bethamie Horowitz

By the end of this very readable book the reader is left with a plausible "model" about American Jews, one which sees America as being at odds with continued Jewishness. -- Jewish Book World

	Foreword
	Contributors
1	Introduction: The Ironies of American Jewish History	1
2	The View from the Old World: German-Jewish Perspectives	19
3	The View from the Old World: East European Jewish Perspectives	41
4	Jewish Writers on the New Diaspora	60
5	Movies in America as Paradigms of Accommodation	79
6	From Equality to Liberty: The Changing Political Culture of American Jews	97
7	Will Herberg's Path from Marxism to Judaism: A Case Study in the Transformation of Jewish Belief	119
8	The Anomalous Liberalism of American Jews	133
9	Liberalism, Judaism, and American Jews: A Response	144
10	Zionism and American Politics	151
11	Spiritual Zionists and Jewish Sovereignty	165
12	Zion in the Mind of the American Rabbinate during the 1940s	193
13	The Evolution of the American Synagogue	215
14	Consensus Building and Conflict over Creating the Young People's Synagogue of the Lower East Side	230
15	Jewish in Dishes: Kashrut in the New World	247
16	Feminism and American Reform Judaism	267
17	Ezrat Nashim and the Emergence of a New Jewish Feminism	284
18	Conservative Judaism: The Ethical Challenge of Feminist Change	296
19	The Ninth Siyum Ha-Shas: A Case Study in Orthodox Contra-Acculturation	311
20	Americanism and Judaism in the Thought of Mordecai M. Kaplan	339
21	The American Mission of Abraham Joshua Heschel	355
22	Modern Times and Jewish Assimilation	377
23	Jewish Continuity over Judaic Content: The Moderately Affiliated American Jew	395
24	From an External to an Internal Agenda	417
25	Jewish Survival, Antisemitism, and Negotiation with the Tradition	436
26	American Jewry in the Twenty-First Century: Strategies of Faith	451
	Index	459