The New Jewish Leaders

A riveting study of a generational transition with major implications for American Jewish life

The first full-scale biography of a major Jewish leader and financier.

“Extraordinarily rich, lively and illuminating. ... [The editors] have succeeded magnificently in achieving their goal.” —Jewish Journal The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been a period of mass production and proliferation of Jewish ideas, and have witnessed major changes in Jewish life and stimulated major debates. The New Jewish Canon offers a conceptual roadmap to make sense of such rapid change. With over eighty excerpts from key primary source texts and insightful corresponding essays by leading scholars, on topics of history and memory, Jewish politics and the public square, religion and religiosity, and identities and communities, The New Jewish Canon promises to start conversations from the seminar room to the dinner table. The New Jewish Canon is both text and textbook of the Jewish intellectual and communal zeitgeist for the contemporary period and the recent past, canonizing our most important ideas and debates of the past two generations; and just as importantly, stimulating debate and scholarship about what is yet to come.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies—an engaging firsthand portrait of American Judaism today American Judaism has been buffeted by massive social upheavals in recent decades. Like other religions in the United States, it has witnessed a decline in the number of participants over the past forty years, and many who remain active struggle to reconcile their hallowed traditions with new perspectives—from feminism and the LGBTQ movement to "do-it-yourself religion" and personally defined spirituality. Taking a fresh look at American Judaism today, Jack Wertheimer, a leading authority on the subject, sets out to discover how Jews of various orientations practice their religion in this radically altered landscape. Which observances still resonate, and which ones have been given new meaning? What options are available for seekers or those dissatisfied with conventional forms of Judaism? And how are synagogues responding? Offering new and often-surprising answers to these questions, Wertheimer reveals an American Jewish landscape that combines rash disruption and creative reinvention, religious illiteracy and dynamic experimentation.

Jewish organizational life is inundated with publications on organizational change and effective leadership, but from mutually exclusive sources: business and organizational studies, on the one hand; and Jewish studies, on the other. One addresses leadership but not the religious soul. The other speaks from its Jewish soul but is only secondarily engaged in the study of leadership. More Than Managing thoughtfully combines both to be immediately applicable to Jewish organizational life.Inspired by thirty years of pioneering work by retail giant Leslie Wexner’s philanthropic focus on Jewish leadership, More Than Managing brings together diverse and remarkable thinkers to address challenges facing communal life and the skills and strategies demanded by them. Contributors include professors at Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership and The Harvard Business School who have worked over the past three decades with Israel’s rising leadership in the public sector. These internationally known voices are matched by alumni and faculty of The Wexner Foundation’s professional and volunteer programs, who lead and advise Jewish communities throughout North America and Israel. The book features diverse strategies for twenty-first-century leadership, critical lessons for organizational and communal success, and the questions vital to our changing and challenging times. Questions include how leaders may overcome the mediocrity of bureaucratic organizations; how organizations can harness volunteer leadership for transformative change; and how professionals can sustain core values in the midst of daily routine. Its diverse array of writers with international reputations in their fields makes it the only book of its kind. Potential readers include leaders of any religious not-for-profits—not just Jewish. The almost 50 contributors, including Leslie Wexner, combine secular insights on leadership with innovative insights drawn from Judaism’s spiritual heritage.

Like countless others of their generation, many contemporary American Jews have abandoned the religion of their birth to search for a spiritual home in other traditions.

Set in the first decade of modern Israel's existence, this volume offers an insightful look at the changing relationship of American Jews and the reborn Jewish nation/state. It is the first in-depth analysis of the subject during this key period. As the Cold War rages, leaders in all camps are shown attempting to shape and control the tangled circumstances that engulf themespecially American Jewish Committee president Jacob Blaustein, Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion, and American presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tapping into private correspondence, diaries, oral history interviews, scholarly literature and other archival materials, Zvi Ganin provides a richly detailed look at motivations, passions, and attitudes of Jewish and Israeli leaders on numerous issuesnone more affecting than in the stormy debate over dual loyalty.