American Jewry Transcending the European Experience [Hardcover]

American Jewryexplores new transnational questions in Jewish history, analyzing the historical, cultural and social experience of American Jewry from 1654 to the present day, and evaluates the relationship between European and American Jewish history. Did the hopes of Jewish immigrants to establish an independent American Judaism in a free and pluralistic country come to fruition? How did Jews in America define their relationship to the 'Old World' of Europe, both before and after the Holocaust? What are the religious, political and cultural challenges for American Jews in the twenty-first century? Internationally renowned scholars come together in this volume to present new research on how immigration from Western and Eastern Europe established a new and distinctively American Jewish identity that went beyond the traditions of Europe, yet remained attached in many ways to its European origins.

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

1 Europe in the Experience and Imagination of American Jewry: An Introduction
Christian Wiese, Goethe University, Germany

2 The Myth of Europe in America's Judaism
Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College, USA

Part I: Colonial Identities: The Early Modern Period

3 Trading Freedoms? Exploring Colonial Jewish Merchanthood bBetween Europe and the Caribbean
Judah M. Cohen, Indiana University Bloomington, USA

4 Early American Mikva'ot: Ritual Baths as the Hope of Israel
Laura Arnold Leibman, Reed College, USA

5 Early American Jewry and the Quest for Civil Equality
Eli Faber, John Jay College, USA

Part II: Finding a ???New Zion??? in America's Civic Culture?

6 German Jews and the German-sSpeaking Civic Culture of Nineteenth-cCentury America
Kathleen Neils Conzen, University of Chicago, USA

7 Unequal Opportunities: The Independent Order B'nai B'rith in Nineteenth-cCentury Germany and in thelƒÔ