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• W2060249786 abstract "Jonathan D. Sarna. American Judaism: A History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. xx + 490. American Judaism: A History is a masterpiece. Published so as to coincide with the 350th anniversary of American Jewry, this engaging tour-de-force narrates the history of Jews in America, commencing with their arrival in New Amsterdam in 1654. The work displays not only the historian's craft at its finest but demonstrates and draws upon Jonathan D. Sarna's extraordinary erudition, and the stunning scope of sources, evidence, and contemporary commentary under his command. Moving from period to period, and issue to issue, Sarna deftly threads together the saga of American Jews' encounter with America. He writes a history appropriate to the current moment in American Jewry, one where the leaders and likely readers of his work are asking, in one version or another, what may be termed the continuity question: Will the openness of American society bring about a significant dissolution of American Jewry, leaving Jews much reduced in number, vitality, and community? Through its six historically focused chapters, ranging from Colonial Beginnings to Renewal—an aptly entitled chapter that runs from the end of World War II to the present day—Sarna presents an upbeat portrait of ongoing Jewish adjustment to America and repeatedly successful attempts to contend with new challenges. Notwithstanding their ongoing fears for their very survival (and in part because of them), American Jews, in this rendition, innovate compelling developments in culture, community, and identity, even as they evolve a civilization in the United States that is distinctively American. Throughout the (nearly) 350 years covered in this work, several key themes emerge. First, Jews repeatedly renegotiate and reshape the social, religious, and cultural boundaries that separate them from the larger society, while they continually invent and establish intragroup boundaries that reflect [End Page 433] Jewish diversity and internal multipartisanship, features reflecting a vital and creative religio-ethnic community. Second, their ongoing innovation in culture, politics, and religious life both generates and reflects the emergence of vigorous and effective leadership. Despite rather diminutive numbers, American Jews have managed to amass an impressive record of achievement in such diverse areas as economic advancement, political influence, cultural contribution, religious organization, ethnic community, and in such specific realms, as Sarna notes, as scholarship, feminism, and spirituality. Third, their success in boundary maintenance and leadership generation comes because of, if not in spite of, their assimilation of American cultural traits, most notably the radical individualism of American society. From their first encounter with emerging American culture and society, Jews find that they cannot replicate the taken-for-granted communitarian assumptions of their European past, nor do they wish to. Individual freedom, autonomy, diversity, and a modicum of fragmentation characterize the history of American Jews, Jewishness, and Judaism from its very beginnings, an appropriate response to a society that values freedom of conscience and enshrines as sacred the notion that, in the very first words of the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Fourth, it comes as no surprise that, in light of these factors, Jews in America produced a Judaism characterized by fragmentation, conflict, and disunity, never to the point of complete schism, but one marked by sharp divisions along several dimensions. Among these are social class, gender, and generation, all of which, in turn underlay resulting divisions in politics, traditionalism, and religiosity. With a culture renowned for its centuries of fractiousness, how could it be otherwise? In his final reflections, an epilogue-like chapter entitled Conclusion: American Judaism at a Crossroads, Sarna takes a turn in tone and substance. In the transition from historical scholar to contemporary analyst, his mood shifts from upbeat and almost buoyant to cautious and almost worried. Sarna's concern begins with Jews' reported decline in their absolute numbers in America (a debatable inference, in my view, at least as of the present moment) and the rise in their rate of..." @default.
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• W2060249786 title "The Ambivalent American Jewish Historian" @default.
• W2060249786 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2006.0026" @default.
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