American Jewry

Christian Wiese holds the Martin Buber Chair in Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His recent publications include Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination: Saul Friedlander and the Future of Holocaust Studies (co-editor, 2010).Cornelia Wilhelm is DAAD Professor in the Departments of History and Jewish Studies at Emory University, USA. She also teaches as Professor of Modern History at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany, and has held visiting positions at Rutgers University, US, and Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck, Austria. She is author of several volumes including German Jews in America: Bourgeois Civil Self-Awareness and Jewish Identity in the Orders B'nai B'rith and True Sisters, which was published in English translation in July 2011.

This wide-ranging volume provides a new look at many aspects of the American Jewish experience. By exploring the roots of American Jewry in Europe and by viewing the American and European centers of Jewish life in comparison to one another, the authors of these essays help us to understand American Jewish life in a larger context. With their help, it is now easier to discern what is distinctive about American Jewish history and what that history shares with Jewish experiences elsewhere.

• List of IllustrationsNotes on Contributors1 Europe in the Experience and Imagination of American Jewry: An IntroductionChristian Wiese, Goethe University, Germany2 The Myth of Europe in America’s JudaismSusannah Heschel, Dartmouth College, USAPart I: Colonial Identities: The Early Modern Period3 Trading Freedoms? Exploring Colonial Jewish Merchanthood bBetween Europe and the CaribbeanJudah M. Cohen, Indiana University Bloomington, USA4 Early American Mikva’ot: Ritual Baths as the Hope of IsraelLaura Arnold Leibman, Reed College, USA5 Early American Jewry and the Quest for Civil EqualityEli Faber, John Jay College, USAPart II: Finding a “New Zion” in America’s Civic Culture?6 German Jews and the German-sSpeaking Civic Culture of Nineteenth-cCentury AmericaKathleen Neils Conzen, University of Chicago, USA7 Unequal Opportunities: The Independent Order B’nai B’rith in Nineteenth-cCentury Germany and in the United StatesCornelia Wilhelm, Emory University, USA8 The Philadelphia Conference 1869 and German Reform: A Historical Moment in a Transnational Story of Proximity and AlienationChristian Wiese9 Beyond the Synagogue Gallery? Women’s Changing Roles in Nineteenth-cCentury American and German JudaismKarla Goldman, University of Michigan, USA10 Something Old, Something New … Something Blue: Negotiating for a New Relationship between Judaism and Christianity in America, 1865-–1917Yaakov Ariel, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA11 Translating Wissenschaft: The Emergence and Self-eEmancipation of American Jewish Scholarship, 1860–1920Christian WiesePart III: New Roles and Identities in an Age of Mass Migration12 “Shul with a Pool” ReconsideredDavid E. Kaufman, Hofstra University, USA13 “Resisters and Accommodators” Revisited: Reflections on the Study of Orthodoxy in AmericaJeffrey S. Gurock, Yeshiva University, USA14 Exporting Yiddish Socialism: New York’s Role in the Russian Jewish Workers’ MovementTony Michels, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA15 Zionism in the Promised LandArthur A. Goren, Columbia University, USA16 “You Can’t Recognize America”: American Jewish Perceptions of Anti-Ssemitism as a Transnational Phenomenon after the First World War IGil Ribak, Oberlin College, USAPart IV: Challenges for American Jewry after the Holocaust17 From Periphery to Center: American Jewry, Zion, and Jewish History after the HolocaustJonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University, USA18 Can Less be More? The American Jewish Effort to “Rescue” German and Soviet JewryHenry Feingold, The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA19 American Jews and the Middle East CrisisMichael E. Staub, Baruch College, USA20 The Meaning of the Jewish Experience for American CultureStephen J. Whitfield, Brandeis University, USA21 Looking back on American Jewish HistoryHasia R. Diner, New York University, USAIndex