Contemporary American Judaism

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Contemporary American Judaism

Dana Evan Kaplan
Contemporary American Judaism Book PDF

Author : Dana Evan Kaplan
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2009-06-29
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780231510417

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Contemporary American Judaism by Dana Evan Kaplan Pdf

No longer controlled by a handful of institutional leaders based in remote headquarters and rabbinical seminaries, American Judaism is being transformed by the spiritual decisions of tens of thousands of Jews living all over the United States. A pulpit rabbi and himself an American Jew, Dana Evan Kaplan follows this religious individualism from its postwar suburban roots to the hippie revolution of the 1960s and the multiple postmodern identities of today. From Hebrew tattooing to Jewish Buddhist meditation, Kaplan describes the remaking of historical tradition in ways that channel multiple ethnic and national identities. While pessimists worry about the vanishing American Jew, Kaplan focuses on creative responses to contemporary spiritual trends that have made a Jewish religious renaissance possible. He believes that the reorientation of American Judaism has been a "bottom up" process, resisted by elites who have reluctantly responded to the demands of the "spiritual marketplace." The American Jewish denominational structure is therefore weakening at the same time that religious experimentation is rising, leading to the innovative approaches supplanting existing institutions. The result is an exciting transformation of what it means to be a religious American Jew in the twenty-first century.

Judaism in America

Marc Lee Raphael
Judaism in America Book PDF

Author : Marc Lee Raphael
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2005-12-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780231512442

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Judaism in America by Marc Lee Raphael Pdf

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.

A People Divided

Jack Wertheimer
A People Divided Book PDF

Author : Jack Wertheimer
Publisher : Brandeis American Jewish Histo
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : History
ISBN : UCSC:32106013933285

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A People Divided by Jack Wertheimer Pdf

This indipensable road map to the volcanic landscape of contemporary American Judaism reveals the profound effects that changes in the wider society--everything from suburbanization to population growth to feminism--have had on Jewish religious and communal life.

American Post-Judaism

Shaul Magid
American Post Judaism Book PDF

Author : Shaul Magid
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 407 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2013-04-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780253008022

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American Post-Judaism by Shaul Magid Pdf

Articulates a new, post-ethnic American Jewishness

Contemporary American Judaism

Dana Evan Kaplan
Contemporary American Judaism Book PDF

Author : Dana Evan Kaplan
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 482 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780231137294

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Contemporary American Judaism by Dana Evan Kaplan Pdf

No longer controlled by a handful of institutional leaders based in remote headquarters and rabbinical seminaries, American Judaism is being transformed by the spiritual decisions of tens of thousands of Jews living all over the United States. A pulpit rabbi and himself an American Jew, Dana Evan Kaplan follows this religious individualism from its postwar suburban roots to the hippie revolution of the 1960s and the multiple postmodern identities of today. From Hebrew tattooing to Jewish Buddhist meditation, Kaplan describes the remaking of historical tradition in ways that channel multiple ethnic and national identities. While pessimists worry about the vanishing American Jew, Kaplan focuses on creative responses to contemporary spiritual trends that have made a Jewish religious renaissance possible. He believes that the reorientation of American Judaism has been a "bottom up" process, resisted by elites who have reluctantly responded to the demands of the "spiritual marketplace." The American Jewish denominational structure is therefore weakening at the same time that religious experimentation is rising, leading to the innovative approaches supplanting existing institutions. The result is an exciting transformation of what it means to be a religious American Jew in the twenty-first century.

Contemporary Debates in American Reform Judaism

Dana Evan Kaplan
Contemporary Debates in American Reform Judaism Book PDF

Author : Dana Evan Kaplan
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2013-01-11
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781136055744

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Contemporary Debates in American Reform Judaism by Dana Evan Kaplan Pdf

This is a ground breaking collection of essays that takes a hard look at the Reform Movement today. Opening essays look at the problem of building a religous community, the competition in the "spiritual marketplace," and why people join or do not join a Reform synagogue. Other contributors look at a host of controversial issues including Patrilineal Descent, Outreach, Intermarriage, gender issues, gay and lesbian participation, and others.

The New American Judaism

Jack Wertheimer
The New American Judaism Book PDF

Author : Jack Wertheimer
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 396 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2020-03-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780691202518

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The New American Judaism by Jack Wertheimer Pdf

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.

Women Remaking American Judaism

Riv-Ellen Prell
Women Remaking American Judaism Book PDF

Author : Riv-Ellen Prell
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2007-08-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780814335680

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Women Remaking American Judaism by Riv-Ellen Prell Pdf

The rise of Jewish feminism, a branch of both second-wave feminism and the American counterculture, in the late 1960s had an extraordinary impact on the leadership, practice, and beliefs of American Jews. Women Remaking American Judaism is the first book to fully examine the changes in American Judaism as women fought to practice their religion fully and to ensure that its rituals, texts, and liturgies reflected their lives. In addition to identifying the changes that took place, this volume aims to understand the process of change in ritual, theology, and clergy across the denominations. The essays in Women Remaking American Judaism offer a paradoxical understanding of Jewish feminism as both radical, in the transformational sense, and accomodationist, in the sense that it was thoroughly compatible with liberal Judaism. Essays in the first section, Reenvisioning Judaism, investigate the feminist challenges to traditional understanding of Jewish law, texts, and theology. In Redefining Judaism, the second section, contributors recognize that the changes in American Judaism were ultimately put into place by each denomination, their law committees, seminaries, rabbinic courts, rabbis, and synagogues, and examine the distinct evolution of women’s issues in the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements. Finally, in the third section, Re-Framing Judaism, essays address feminist innovations that, in some cases, took place outside of the synagogue. An introduction by Riv-Ellen Prell situates the essays in both American and modern Jewish history and offers an analysis of why Jewish feminism was revolutionary. Women Remaking American Judaism raises provocative questions about the changes to Judaism following the feminist movement, at every turn asking what change means in Judaism and other American religions and how the fight for equality between men and women parallels and differs from other changes in Judaism. Women Remaking American Judaism will be of interest to both scholars of Jewish history and women’s studies.

Studies in Contemporary Jewry

Eli Lederhendler
Studies in Contemporary Jewry Book PDF

Author : Eli Lederhendler
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2001-12-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9780195348965

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Studies in Contemporary Jewry by Eli Lederhendler Pdf

Bringing together contributions from established scholars as well as promising younger academics, the seventeenth volume of this established series offers a broad-ranging view of why Judaism, a religion whose observance is more honored in the breach in most western Jewish communities, has garnered attention, authority, and controversy in the late twentieth century. The volume considers the ways in which theological writings, sweeping social change, individual or small-group needs, and intra-communal diversity have re-energized Judaism even amidst secular trends in America and Israel.

Jewish Life and American Culture

Sylvia Barack Fishman
Jewish Life and American Culture Book PDF

Author : Sylvia Barack Fishman
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2012-02-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780791492741

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Jewish Life and American Culture by Sylvia Barack Fishman Pdf

Jews in the United States are uniquely American in their connections to Jewish religion and ethnicity. Sylvia Barack Fishman in her groundbreaking book, Jewish Life and American Culture, shows that contemporary Jews have created a hybrid new form of Judaism, merging American values and behaviors with those from historical Jewish traditions. Fishman introduces a new concept called coalescence, an adaptation technique through which Jews merge American and Jewish elements. Analyzing the increasingly permeable boundaries in the ethnic identity construction of Jewish and non-Jewish Americans, she suggests that during the process of coalescence, Jews combine the texts of American and Jewish cultures, losing track of their dissonance and perceiving them as a unified Jewish whole. The author generates data from diverse sources in the social sciences and humanities, including the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey and other statistical studies, interviews and focus groups, popular and material culture, literature and film, to demonstrate the pervasiveness of coalescence. The book pays special attention to gender issues and the relationship of women to their Jewish and American identities. A blend of lively narrative and scholarly detail, this book includes useful tables, accessible figures and models, and fascinating illustrations which present the educational, occupational, and behavioral patterns of American Jews, organizational profiles, family formation, religious observance, and the impact of Jewish education.

Meet the American Jew

Belden Menkus
Meet the American Jew Book PDF

Author : Belden Menkus
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 1963
Category : Jews
ISBN : UCAL:$B108124

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Meet the American Jew by Belden Menkus Pdf

An interpretation of contemporary American Judaism by eleven of its leaders.

Cosmopolitans and Parochials

Samuel C. Heilman,Steven M. Cohen
Cosmopolitans and Parochials Book PDF

Author : Samuel C. Heilman,Steven M. Cohen
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0226324966

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Cosmopolitans and Parochials by Samuel C. Heilman,Steven M. Cohen Pdf

Far from simply vanishing in the face of modernity, Orthodox Jews in the United States today are surviving and flourishing. Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, both distinguished scholars of Jewish studies, have joined forces in this pathbreaking book to articulate this vibrancy and to characterize the many faces of Orthodox Jewry in contemporary America. Who are these Orthodox Jews? How have they survived, what do they believe and practice and how do they accommodate the tension between traditional Jewish and modern American values? Drawing on a survey of more than one thousand participants, the authors address these questions and many more. Heilman and Cohen reveal that American Jewish Orthodoxy is not a monolith by distinguishing its three broad varieties: the "traditionalists," the "centrists," and the "nominally" orthodox. To illuminate this full spectrum of orthodoxy the authors focus on the "centrists," taking us through the dimensions of their ritual observances, religious beliefs, community life, and their social, political, and sexual attitudes. Both parochial and cosmopolitan, orthodox and liberal, these Jews are characterized by their dualism, by their successful involvement in both the modern Western world and in traditional Jewish culture. In painting this provocative and fascinating portrait of what Jewish Orthodoxy has become in America today, Heilman and Cohen's study also sheds light on the larger picture of the persistence of religion in the modern world.

Eros and the Jews

David Biale
Eros and the Jews Book PDF

Author : David Biale
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2023-09-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780520920064

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Eros and the Jews by David Biale Pdf

Contradictory stereotypes about Jewish sexuality pervade modern culture, from Lenny Bruce's hip eroticism to Woody Allen's little man with the big libido (and even bigger sexual neurosis). Does Judaism in fact liberate or repress sexual desire? David Biale does much more than answer that question as he traces Judaism's evolving position on sexuality, from the Bible and Talmud to Zionism up through American attitudes today. What he finds is a persistent conflict between asceticism and gratification, between procreation and pleasure. From the period of the Talmud onward, Biale says, Jewish culture continually struggled with sexual abstinence, attempting to incorporate the virtues of celibacy, as it absorbed them from Greco-Roman and Christian cultures, within a theology of procreation. He explores both the canonical writings of male authorities and the alternative voices of women, drawing from a fascinating range of sources that includes the Book of Ruth, Yiddish literature, the memoirs of the founders of Zionism, and the films of Woody Allen. Biale's historical reconstruction of Jewish sexuality sees the present through the past and the past through the present. He discovers an erotic tradition that is not dogmatic, but a record of real people struggling with questions that have challenged every human culture, and that have relevance for the dilemmas of both Jews and non-Jews today.

The Vanishing American Jew

Alan M. Dershowitz
The Vanishing American Jew Book PDF

Author : Alan M. Dershowitz
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 420 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 1998-09-08
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780684848983

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The Vanishing American Jew by Alan M. Dershowitz Pdf

Explores the meaning of Jewishness in light of the increasing assimilation of America's Jews and suggests ways to preserve Jewish identity.

Beyond Sectarianism

Adam S. Ferziger
Beyond Sectarianism Book PDF

Author : Adam S. Ferziger
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2015-07-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780814339541

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Beyond Sectarianism by Adam S. Ferziger Pdf

In 1965 social scientist Charles S. Liebman published a study that boldly declared the vitality of American Jewish Orthodoxy and went on to guide scholarly investigations of the group for the next four decades. As American Orthodoxy continues to grow in geographical, institutional, and political strength, author Adam S. Ferziger argues in Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism that one of Liebman’s principal definitions needs to be updated. While Liebman proposed that the “committed Orthodox” —observant rather than nominally affiliated—could be divided into two main streams: “church,” or Modern Orthodoxy, and “sectarian,” or Haredi Orthodoxy, Ferziger traces a narrowing of the gap between them and ultimately a realignment of American Orthodox Judaism. Ferziger shows that significant elements within Haredi Orthodoxy have abandoned certain strict and seemingly uncontested norms. He begins by offering fresh insight into the division between the American sectarian Orthodox and Modern Orthodox streams that developed in the early twentieth century and highlights New York’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun as a pioneering Modern Orthodox synagogue. Ferziger also considers the nuances of American Orthodoxy as reflected in Soviet Jewish activism during the 1960s and early 1970s and educational trips to Poland taken by American Orthodox young adults studying in Israel, and explores the responses of prominent rabbinical authorities to Orthodox feminism and its call for expanded public religious roles for women. Considerable discussion is dedicated to the emergence of outreach to nonobservant Jews as a central priority for Haredi Orthodoxy and how this focus outside its core population reflects fundamental changes. In this context, Ferziger presents evidence for the growing influence of Chabad Hasidism – what he terms the “Chabadization of American Orthodoxy.” Recent studies, including the 2013 Pew Survey of U.S. Jewry, demonstrate that an active and strongly connected American Orthodox Jewish population is poised to grow in the coming decades. Jewish studies scholars and readers interested in history, sociology, and religion will appreciate Ferziger’s reappraisal of this important group.