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  • Introduction to the Theme: Jews and Cities, between Utopia and Dystopia
  • Eli Lederhendler
  • Journal: AJS Review / Volume 41 / Issue 1 / April 2017
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2017, pp. 1-7
  • Print publication: April 2017
  • View extract

    The collective discussion embodied in the following group of essays is the outgrowth of a three-year-long symposium on Jewish and urban studies conducted at the Hebrew University's Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies from 2009 to 2012. The synergy that animated our weekly discussions owed something to the fact that, rather than chiming in on similar notes, we partook of a wide sampling of reading and analysis. We came from different disciplines, with different agendas: scholars of literary criticism, adepts of social theory, historians, cultural analysts, an expert in religious philosophy, and a landscape architect with a critical interest in the culture and politics of spatial construction. The broad sweep of our discussions was greater than will be evident from this selection of papers, since our circle of discussants continually swelled and altered during those three years, reshuffling the range of participants and topics. However, most of those whose work is represented in this sampling were present throughout the entire three-year project.

American Jewry
  • American Jewry
  • A New History
  • Eli Lederhendler
  • Published online: 27 January 2017
  • Print publication: 14 November 2016
  • View description
    Understanding the history of Jews in America requires a synthesis of over 350 years of documents, social data, literature and journalism, architecture, oratory, and debate, and each time that history is observed, new questions are raised and new perspectives found. This book presents a readable account of that history, with an emphasis on migration patterns, social and religious life, and political and economic affairs. It explains the long-range development of American Jewry as the product of 'many new beginnings' more than a direct evolution leading from early colonial experiments to latter-day social patterns. This book also shows that not all of American Jewish history has occurred on American soil, arguing that Jews, more than most other Americans, persist in assigning crucial importance to international issues. This approach provides a fresh perspective that can open up the practice of minority-history writing, so that the very concepts of minority and majority should not be taken for granted.
  • 13 - The State of Israel
  • from SECTION II - CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES IN TRANSITIONAL TIMES
    • By
  • General editor Stephen J. Stein, Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Religions in America
  • Published online: 28 July 2012
  • Print publication: 01 January 2009, pp 262-282
  • View extract

    Summary

    Religious issues, properly speaking, are related to two human concerns: ethics (works) and salvation (faith). In this essay I explore the space occupied by Israel in American religious life – a topic that has intermittently engaged the attention of quite a few Americans and been of acute significance to some of them, at both levels of religious thought. This would seem to require some explanation in view of Israel’s considerable distance from the United States and its minuscule size: a population of less than eight million (in the same range as Honduras or Bulgaria), in a land area of some 8,500 square miles (similar to Belize or El Salvador). Most Israelis are Jews (about 75 percent); about 20 percent are Muslims. Israel would appear to have very little in common with the mental habits, culture, personal background, and direct concerns of most Americans, yet its place in postwar American affairs has far outweighed that of other small nations. That has little to do with objective considerations and a great deal to do with the symbolic and moral realm, which is the proper sphere of religion.

    Several historical trajectories have converged to confer upon Israel this kind of role. Centuries of theological development in Anglo-American Protestantism in which the place of scripture has been prominent have caused Americans’ ideas of sacred history to be intertwined with the geography of the Bible. Biblical place-names such as Zion, Salem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Sharon, and Canaan dot almost every state in the Union.

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