Religion or Ethnicity?

Zvi Gitelman is a professor of comparative politics and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan. He is also a research scientist at the University's Center for Russian and East European Studies. He has written or edited numerous works on the Jews of eastern Europe, including Jewish Life After the USSR and A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union.

"This extensive array of intensive historical and contemporary analyses of Judaism and Jewishness is a valuable contribution to the understanding of what it means to be Jewish." - Chaim I. Waxman (Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Rutgers University) "We live in an age not only of fluid identities and shifting identities, but of contested identities as well. This extraordinary collection of eminently readable scholarly articles spans centuries of Jewish life, and offers an insightful, stimulating and provocative look at Jews' ongoing struggle with defining their identities. Religion? Ethnicity? Both? Neither? The answers, as we learn, depend not only on whom you ask-but when and where-and who does the asking." - Steven M. Cohen (author of The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America) "A provocative and important volume. The book elucidate[s] how the definition of the Jewish people has evolved over the centuries and has changed at different times in different places. Highly recommended." (Choice) "This extensive array of intensive historical and contemporary analyses of Judaism and Jewishness is a valuable contribution to the understanding of what it means to be Jewish." - Chaim I. Waxman (Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Rutgers University) "We live in an age not only of fluid identities and shifting identities, but of contested identities as well. This extraordinary collection of eminently readable scholarly articles spans centuries of Jewish life, and offers an insightful, stimulating and provocative look at Jews' ongoing struggle with defining their identities. Religion? Ethnicity? Both? Neither? The answers, as we learn, depend not only on whom you ask-but when and where-and who does the asking." - Steven M. Cohen (author of The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America) "A provocative and important volume. The book elucidate[s] how the definition of the Jewish people has evolved over the centuries and has changed at different times in different places. Highly recommended." (Choice)

• Jewish religion, Jewish ethnicity: the evolution of Jewish identities / Zvi GitelmanSecularism, hellenism, and rabbis in antiquity / Yaron EliavWhat is a Judaism?: perspectives from Second Temple Jewish studies / Gabriele BoccacciniCrypto-Jewish criticism of tradition and its echoes in Jewish communities / Miriam BodianSpinoza and the origins of Jewish secularism / Steven NadlerYiddish schools in America and the problem of secular Jewish identity / David FishmanBeyond assimilation: introducing subjectivity to German-Jewish history / Scott SpectorJewish self-identification and West European categories of belonging from the Enlightenment to World War II / Todd EndelmanPeople of the (secular) book: literary anthologies and the making of Jewish identity in postwar America / Julian LevinsonSecular-Jewish identity and the condition of secular Judaism in Israel / Charles Liebman and Yaacov YadgarBeyond the religious-secular dichotomy: masortim in Israel / Charles Liebman and Yaacov YadgarWhat kind of Jewish state do Israelis want?: the nature and determinants of Israeli attitudes toward secularism and some comparisons with Arab attitudes toward the relationship between religion and politics / Mark TesslerThe construction of 'secular' and 'religious' in modern Hebrew literature / Shachar PinskerJewish identity and secularism in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine / Zvi GitelmanJudaism, community, and Jewish culture in American life: continuities and transformations / Calvin GoldscheiderBeyond apikorsut: a Judaism for secular Jews / Adam ChalomThe nature and viability of Jewish religious and secular identities / Zvi Gitelman