Imagining The American Jewish Community

A lively collection of sixteen essays on the many ways American Jews have imagined and constructed communities

Explores how North American Jews have envisioned Israel From the late 19th century to the present.

During a time of rapid change in the American Jewish community, an outstanding group of Jewish scholars and professionals address the critical problems and future prospects of American Jewry. They discuss the sharp controversies over feminism and religious language, new data on the relationship between Israelis and American Jews, and the interaction between family and synagogue. The wide scope of topics provides an understanding of the dynamics shaping the lives of American Jews and their diverse views of the future.

There is something deeply problematic about the ways that Jews, particularly in America, talk about “Jewish identity” as a desired outcome of Jewish education. For many, the idea that the purpose of Jewish education is to strengthen Jewish identity is so obvious that it hardly seems worth disputing—and the only important question is which kinds of Jewish education do that work more effectively or more efficiently. But what does it mean to “strengthen Jewish identity”? Why do Jewish educators, policy-makers and philanthropists talk that way? What do they assume, about Jewish education or about Jewish identity, when they use formulations like “strengthen Jewish identity”? And what are the costs of doing so? This volume, the first collection to examine critically the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish identity, makes two important interventions. First, it offers a critical assessment of the relationship between education and identity, arguing that the reification of identity has hampered much educational creativity in the pursuit of this goal, and that the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be. Second, this volume offers thoughtful responses that are not merely synonymous replacements for “identity,” suggesting new possibilities for how to think about the purposes and desired outcomes of Jewish education, potentially contributing to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish life.

"The robust Jewish community of Cleveland, Ohio is the largest Midwestern Jewish community with about 80,000 Jewish residents. Historically, it has been one of the largest hubs of American Jewish life outside of the East Coast. Yet there is a critical gap in the literature relating to Jewish Cleveland, its suburbs, and the Midwestern Jewish experience. Cleveland's Jews in the Urban Midwest remedies this gap, and adds to an emerging subfield in American Jewish history that moves away from the East Coast to explore Jewish life across the United States, in cities including Chicago and Detroit, and across regions like the West Coast. Cleveland's Jews in the Urban Midwest features ten diverse studies from prominent international scholars, addressing a wide range of subjects and ultimately enhancing our understanding of regional, urban, and Jewish American history. Focusing on the twentieth century specifically, the historians included in this collection address critical questions about Jewish Cleveland in the history of the United States. Essays investigate Jewish philanthropy, comics, gender, religious identity and education from the perspectives of both Reform and Orthodox Jewish communities, participation in social service organizations, and the Soviet Jewish movement, among other subjects, and reveal the different roles these subjects play in shaping Jewish communities over time. Uniquely, this is a work of regional history that engages fully in parallel conversations in Jewish history and urban history, making the volume a key addition to these three dynamic fields"--Provided by publisher.

The Jewish Metropolis: New York City from the 17th to the 21st Century covers the entire sweep of the history of the largest Jewish community of all time. It provides an introduction to many facets of that history, including the ways in which waves of immigration shaped New York’s Jewish community; Jewish cultural production in English, Yiddish, Ladino, and German; New York’s contribution to the development of American Judaism; Jewish interaction with other ethnic and religious groups; and Jewish participation in the politics and culture of the city as a whole. Each chapter is written by an expert in the field, and includes a bibliography for further reading. The Jewish Metropolis captures the diversity of the Jewish experience in New York.

“Judeo-Christian” is a remarkably easy term to look right through. Judaism and Christianity obviously share tenets, texts, and beliefs that have strongly influenced American democracy. In this ambitious book, however, K. Healan Gaston challenges the myth of a monolithic Judeo-Christian America. She demonstrates that the idea is not only a recent and deliberate construct, but also a potentially dangerous one. From the time of its widespread adoption in the 1930s, the ostensible inclusiveness of Judeo-Christian terminology concealed efforts to promote particular conceptions of religion, secularism, and politics. Gaston also shows that this new language, originally rooted in arguments over the nature of democracy that intensified in the early Cold War years, later became a marker in the culture wars that continue today. She argues that the debate on what constituted Judeo-Christian—and American—identity has shaped the country’s religious and political culture much more extensively than previously recognized.