American Jewry

Eli Lederhendler was born in New York City, attended the Bronx High School of Science and graduated from Columbia University, New York (BA) and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (BHL, MA, PhD). He has taught modern Jewish history at University College London, Vassar College, New York, Yale University, Connecticut and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds the Stephen S. Wise Chair in American Jewish History and Institutions. He is the author of several noted books on American Jewish history in the twentieth century, including the Koret Jewish Book Award-winning New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity (2001), and is also co-editor of the prestigious annual journal Studies in Contemporary Jewry.

'This is a significant contribution to the study of American Judaism, delivered intelligently and succinctly. Lederhendler (American Jewish history, Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) emphasizes the sparseness and transience of early Jewish settlement, the relatively accommodating nature of the colonies and the new American nation, civic integration, occupational diversity, intermarriage, and the lack of rabbis. … Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.' R. C. Cottrell, CHOICE

• 1. First encounters, new beginnings: from colonial times to the Civil War; 2. Changing places: migration and Americanization, 1860s–1920s; 3. Finding space in America, 1920s–50s; 4. The European nexus: Spain, Germany, and Russia; 5. Recapitulations and more beginnings, 1950s to the twenty-first century; Epilogue.