Jonathan D. Sarna

AMERICAN JEWISH EDUCATION IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In this paper, I want to offer some preliminary thoughts on the history of American Jewish education and how it might be reconceived and reconceptualized to transform it into a useful history one that sheds light on issues of significance to contemporary Jev.;sh educators, In surveying this literature, I find myself somewhat in the situation that historian Bernard Bailyn did when he reviewed the history of American education for his influential volume entitled Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportuniti es for Study (1960). What he said then seems to me to apply in great measure to American Jewish education today:

Minority Faiths and the American Protestant Mainstream.

Covering the period from roughly the Civil War to World War I, a collection of scholars explores how minority faiths in the United States met the challenges posed to them by the American Protestant mainstream. Contributors focus on Judaism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Protestant immigrant faiths, African American churches, and Native American religions.

American Jewish Political Conservatism In Historical Perspective

Cet article montre que la tradition conservatrice dans la politique juive americaine a reellement des racines historiques, culturelles et religieuses solides. Il cite le prophete Jeremie qui a fourni le premier enonce de philosophie politique juive de la diaspora. Les Juifs se sont le plus souvent mis sous la protection de la Couronne comme garant de leur securite, cela tout au long du Moyen Age mais deja du temps de la reine Esther. La presence de Juifs conservateurs aux Etats-Unis se retrouve depuis avant la Revolution americaine.

The Jews of Boston : essays on the occasion of the centenary (1895-1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston

Published on the 350th anniversary of the first Jews to arrive in America, this comprehensive history of the Jews of Boston is now available in a revised and updated paperback edition. The stunning work combines illuminating essays by distinguished Jewish historians with 110 rare photographs to trace the community from its tentative beginnings in colonial Boston through its emergence in the twentieth century as one of the most influential and successful Jewish communities in America. The volume also presents fascinating information about Bostons synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods as well as the evolution of Jewish culture in Boston and the United States.

The Rise of Reform Judaism: A Sourcebook of its European Origins by W. Gunther Plaut, and: The Growth of Reform Judaism: American and European Sources by W. Gunther Plaut (review)

Fifty years have passed since the prolific Reform rabbi and scholar W. Gunther Plaut (1912–2012), then rabbi of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, completed his magisterial two-volume documentary history of Reform Judaism, published by the World Union for Progressive Judaism. “Every student of modern Judaism will be grateful to Rabbi Plaut’s selection from the written legacy of the first men to grapple courageously with the challenge to transmitted Judaism of modern life and thought,” Lloyd Gartner wrote in his review in this journal of Volume One, covering the rise of Reform Judaism in Germany.1 Volume Two, which brought the story of Reform Judaism to 1948, was of even greater interest to American Jewish historians, for it included new primary source material on Reform Judaism in the United States, including documents translated from the original German. To mark the jubilee of these long out-of-print volumes, the Jewish Publication Society has now republished them as part of a new series entitled “JPS Anthologies of Jewish Thought.” Both books are sponsored by the Society for Classical Reform Judaism and introduced by its executive director, Rabbi Howard A. Berman. The Society for Classical Reform Judaism has sponsored the republication (with revisions) of a number of classical Reform Jewish texts, including the Union Prayer

The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State.

Preface 1: The Jews: Social Marginality and the Fatal Embrace of the State 2: Jews, State Building, and Anti-Semitism in Nineteenth-Century America 3: Jews and the American Liberal State: From New Deal to New Politics 4: Blacks and Jews: Anti-Semitism and Interdependence 5: The Rise and Fall of the Republican-Jewish Alliance 6: Another Fatal Embrace? Notes Index

Marshall sklare: In memory

The work of Marshall Sklare, founding father of American Jewish sociology, teaches us three lessons: to value the importance of studying history; to value the power of creative insights more than mere number crunching; and to value taking intellectual risks.