Jews have been a religious and cultural presence in America since the colonial era, and the community of Jews in the United States today—some six million people—continues to make a significant contribution to the American religious landscape. Emphasizing developments in American Judaism in the last quarter century among active participants in Jewish worship, this book provides both a look back into the 350-year history of Judaic life and a well-crafted portrait of a multifaceted tradition today. Combining extensive research into synagogue archival records and secondary sources as well as interviews and observations of worship services at more than a hundred Jewish congregations across the country, Raphael's study distinguishes itself as both a history of the Judaic tradition and a witness to the vitality and variety of contemporary American Judaic life. Beginning with a chapter on beliefs, festivals, and life-cycle events, both traditional and non-traditional, and an explanation of the enormous variation in practice, Raphael then explores Jewish history in America, from the arrival of the first Jews to the present, highlighting the emergence and development of the four branches: Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform. After documenting the considerable variety among the branches, the book addresses issues of some controversy, notably spirituality, conversion, homosexuality, Jewish education, synagogue architecture, and the relationship to Israel. Raphael turns next to a discussion of eight American Jews whose thoughts and/or activities made a huge impact on American Judaism. The final chapter focuses on the return to tradition in every branch of Judaism and examines prospects for the future.
Chronicles the history of the Jewish synagogue in America over the course of three centuries, discussing its changing role in the American Jewish community.
The last in a series of three volumes edited by Marc Lee Raphael surveying some of the major rabbinic and lay personalities who have shaped Judaism in America for the past two centuries, this work focuses on Orthodox Judaism. Along with a basic description of the achievements of some of the most notable leaders, a bibliography of their writings and sources for further study is included as well as an essay on Orthodox rabbinic organizations and a survey of American Orthodox periodicals. Of interest to scholars, students, and lay persons alike, this volume will inform readers about the earliest communities of Jews who settled in America as they developed the institutions of Orthodox Jewish life and set a public standard of compliance with Jewish law. These early American Jews followed a Spanish-Dutch version of Sephardic customs and rites. Their synagogues used traditional prayer books, promoted the celebration of Jewish holidays, established mikvahs, acquired Passover provisions, and arranged for cemetery land and burial services. While many of these Sephardic immigrants did not maintain halakha in their daily regimen as did their European counterparts, they set a public standard of compliance with Jewish law, thus honoring Jewish tradition. Further immigration of thousands of Jews from Western and Central Europe in the middle of the 19th century brought a world of traditional piety and extensive Jewish learning to America, exemplified by Rabbi Abraham Rice, who served in Baltimore, and Yissachar Dov (Bernard) Illowy, who served communities from Philadelphia to New Orleans. Such men marked the beginning of a learned and scholarly rabbinate in America. This volume provides valuable biographical insights regarding some of the most notable religious leaders in American Orthodoxy.
In volume one of this multi-volume series, Marc Ellis explores the essence of the prophetic by intertwining the context of ordinary life and the explosive reality of Jewish identity, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine. But Ellis's prophetic challenge extends to people of all faiths and backgrounds. For Jews, Christians and Muslims, where does the prophetic come from and how do we define it? Is the heartbeat of the prophetic, God or our own commitment? In our time where belief in God is more difficult does the prophetic suggest only the possibility of God? With or without God is the prophetic worth the suffering that comes the exile's way? Ellis's unfolding narration of the prophetic is unique and probing for those who take life, justice and faith seriously.
Highlights Jewish participation in the civil rights movement Black Power, Jewish Politics charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power-inspired ethnic nationalism. It shows how, in a period best known for the rise of antisemitism in some parts of the Black community and the breakdown of the alliance between white Jews and Black Americans, Black Power activists enabled Jewish activists to devise a new Judeo-centered political agenda—including the emancipation of Soviet Jews, the rise of Jewish Day Schools, the revitalization of worship services with gender-inclusive liturgy, and the birth of a new form of American Zionism. Undermining widely held beliefs about the civil rights movement, Black Power, racism, Soviet Jewry, American Zionism, and the religious revival of the 1970s, Black Power, Jewish Politics describes a new political consensus based on identity politics that drew Black and Jewish Americans together and altered the course of American liberalism. In the midst of national reckoning on race, this revised edition extends the book’s thesis to the contemporary period, investigating the limits of white Jewish liberalism, the ways in which scholars have and have not addressed racial privilege in their work, and the dynamics around these themes in a much more diverse American Jewish community.
Jews have been a religious and cultural presence in America since the colonial era, and the community of Jews in the United States today—some six million people—continues to make a significant contribution to the American religious landscape. Emphasizing developments in American Judaism in the last quarter century among active participants in Jewish worship, this book provides both a look back into the 350-year history of Judaic life and a well-crafted portrait of a multifaceted tradition today. Combining extensive research into synagogue archival records and secondary sources as well as interviews and observations of worship services at more than a hundred Jewish congregations across the country, Raphael's study distinguishes itself as both a history of the Judaic tradition and a witness to the vitality and variety of contemporary American Judaic life. Beginning with a chapter on beliefs, festivals, and life-cycle events, both traditional and non-traditional, and an explanation of the enormous variation in practice, Raphael then explores Jewish history in America, from the arrival of the first Jews to the present, highlighting the emergence and development of the four branches: Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform. After documenting the considerable variety among the branches, the book addresses issues of some controversy, notably spirituality, conversion, homosexuality, Jewish education, synagogue architecture, and the relationship to Israel. Raphael turns next to a discussion of eight American Jews whose thoughts and/or activities made a huge impact on American Judaism. The final chapter focuses on the return to tradition in every branch of Judaism and examines prospects for the future.
Chronicles the history of the Jewish synagogue in America over the course of three centuries, discussing its changing role in the American Jewish community.
The institution of the American synagogue has played a significant role in the history of American Judaism, which remains an incomplete history if it is limited to the lives of individuals and events. This work helps complete the history as it is the first reference book to document the historical development of many individual synagogues in the United States and Canada. It includes over 350 entries of synagogues from among the four main movements, each of which have made an impact on the Jewish community, either locally or beyond. It is an essential tool for researchers, scholars, and students, as well as anyone interested in the historical aspects of American Judaism. An essay on the historical development of the American Synagogue by Frances Weinman Schwartz, introduces the volume. Entries are arranged alphabetically by city within each state. Synagogue descriptions include the date of the congregation's founding, the reason for its founding and its congregational mission, the history of buildings and neighborhood, its local or national historical impact, its significance in the movement to which it belongs, major episodes in the congregation's history, as well as details about the service of its rabbis. A brief bibliography follows each entry, and a general bibliography and index complete the volume.
Wartime sermons offer a window on to how Jews perceive themselves in relation to the majority society and how Jewish and national values are reconciled when the fate of a nation is at stake. They also reveal a great deal about how rabbis guide their communities through the challenges of their times. The sermons reproduced here were delivered by rabbis from across the Jewish spectrum, and each is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction and detailed notes.
For over sixty years, Jews have ranked as the most liberal white ethnic group in American politics, figuring prominently in social reform campaigns ranging from the New Deal to the civil rights movement. Today many continue to defy stereotypes that link voting patterns to wealth. What explains this political behavior? Historians have attributed it mainly to religious beliefs, but Marc Dollinger discovered that this explanation fails to account for the entire American Jewish political experience. In this, the first synthetic treatment of Jewish liberalism and U.S. public policy from the 1930s to the mid-1970s, Dollinger identifies the drive for a more tolerant, pluralistic, and egalitarian nation with Jewish desires for inclusion in the larger non-Jewish society. The politics of acculturation, the process by which Jews championed unpopular social causes to ease their adaptation to American life, established them as the guardians of liberal America. But, according to Dollinger, it also erected barriers to Jewish liberal success. Faced with a conflict between liberal politics and their own acculturation, Jews almost always chose the latter. Few Jewish leaders, for example, condemned the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, and most southern Jews refused to join their northern co-religionists in public civil rights protests. When liberals advocated race-based affirmative action programs and busing to desegregate public schools, most Jews dissented. In chronicling the successes, limits, and failures of Jewish liberalism, Dollinger offers a nuanced yet wide-ranging political history, one intended for liberal activists, conservatives curious about the creation of neo-conservatism, and anyone interested in Jewish communal life.
Bernstein's rich analysis focuses on the nineteenth-century Judeo-Arabic manuscript The Story of Our Master Joseph—a Jewish text taking its form from an Islamic prototype (itself largely based on midrashic, Hellenistic, and Near Eastern material) extending back to the earliest human stories of parental favoritism, sibling rivalry, separtism from loved ones, sexual mores, and the struggles for a continued communal existence outside the homeland.
The last in a series of three volumes edited by Marc Lee Raphael surveying some of the major rabbinic and lay personalities who have shaped Judaism in America for the past two centuries, this work focuses on Orthodox Judaism. Along with a basic description of the achievements of some of the most notable leaders, a bibliography of their writings and sources for further study is included as well as an essay on Orthodox rabbinic organizations and a survey of American Orthodox periodicals. Of interest to scholars, students, and lay persons alike, this volume will inform readers about the earliest communities of Jews who settled in America as they developed the institutions of Orthodox Jewish life and set a public standard of compliance with Jewish law. These early American Jews followed a Spanish-Dutch version of Sephardic customs and rites. Their synagogues used traditional prayer books, promoted the celebration of Jewish holidays, established mikvahs, acquired Passover provisions, and arranged for cemetery land and burial services. While many of these Sephardic immigrants did not maintain halakha in their daily regimen as did their European counterparts, they set a public standard of compliance with Jewish law, thus honoring Jewish tradition. Further immigration of thousands of Jews from Western and Central Europe in the middle of the 19th century brought a world of traditional piety and extensive Jewish learning to America, exemplified by Rabbi Abraham Rice, who served in Baltimore, and Yissachar Dov (Bernard) Illowy, who served communities from Philadelphia to New Orleans. Such men marked the beginning of a learned and scholarly rabbinate in America. This volume provides valuable biographical insights regarding some of the most notable religious leaders in American Orthodoxy.
Pamela Nadell's biographical dictionary and sourcebook is a landmark contribution to American, Jewish, and religious history. For the first time, a great American Jewish religious movement is portrayed with amplitude, authority, and personality. In the most revolutionary era in two millenia of Jewish history, this surely is an important volumn. Moses Rischin, Professor of History, San Francisco State University Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook is the first extensive effort to document the lives and careers of the most important leaders in Conservatism's first century and to provide a brief history of the movement and its central institutions. It includes essays on the history of the movement and on the evolution of its major institutions: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, The Rabbinical Assembly, and The United Synagogue of America. It also contains 135 biographical entries on the leading figures of Conservative Judaism, appendices, and a complete bibliography on sources of study.
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