The Bible and Judaism in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Sarna
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
American Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
Four Books ◽  
American Jewish

The Jewish Holy Scriptures have long served as a defining symbol of American Jewish communal life and culture. A copy of the Torah first arrived in what is now New York City in 1655, and ever after the presence of the Jewish scriptures has helped identify and coalesce Jewish communities throughout the colonies and then the United States. American Jewish communities have continued to privilege the first five books of the Bible, but there are twenty-four books in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible (and its several American translations) continues to be a mainstay in American Jewish identity, helping give shape and define the character of Jewish adherents and their communities throughout the United States.

A New American Jewish World

1998 ◽  
pp. 294-297
Author(s):  
Sefton D. Temkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reform Judaism ◽  
American Jewish

This chapter shows how the battles over the Pittsburgh Platform were being fought over a terrain which other factors were already transforming. Large-scale migration from Eastern Europe had begun. The number of Jews in the United States, estimated at 250,000 in 1880, reached the million mark in 1900, the year of Wise’s death. The acculturated community, speaking English albeit with a German accent, largely middle class, reformed in religion, was outnumbered by one that spoke Yiddish, belonged to the proletariat, and was untouched by Reform Judaism. The processes which Wise saw at work when he arrived in 1846 had to begin over again; but although many of the factors were similar, the answers were not necessarily the same. Incidentally, the presence of a second and larger Jewish community enhanced the importance of New York in American Jewish life and diminished the significance of Cincinnati and other Midwest communities where Wise had held sway.

Public Health Policies and Social Inequality By Charles F. Andrain. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 292p. $50.00. The Politics of Health in Europe. By Richard Freeman. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000. 164p. $69.95. Governing the Health Care State: A Comparative Study of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany By Michael Moran. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. 196p. $69.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. Accidental Logics: The Dynamics of Change in the Health Care Arena in the United States, Britain, and Canada By Carolyn Hughes Tuohy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 312p. $45.00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 224-227
Author(s):  
Theodore Marmor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
New York University ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Four Books ◽  
Care Systems

International meetings about health-care issues—conferences, symposia, cyber-gatherings—have become something of an epidemic in the past decade. There is a brisk trade in the latest panaceas offered for the various real and imagined ills of modern medical care systems. When policy fixes fail in their country of origin, they are regularly offered to unsuspecting audiences elsewhere. Moreover, what travels as comparative analysis is often simply a collection of parallel descriptions of national health arrangements. So when there is a flurry of systematic comparative studies of health care by political scientists, a development illustrated by the four books under review, one ought to pay attention.

Judaism and Jewishness in Histories of American Jewry

2021 ◽  
pp. 253-260
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Jews ◽  
American Jewish History ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
American Jewish

This chapter reviews five books on American Jewish history, written by Joyce Antler, Jessica Cooperman, Kirsten Fermaglich, Rachel Kranson, and Jack Wertheimer. Reading these books together is challenging because they present substantially different interpretations of American Jews. If no definitive single interpretation of 20th-century American Jewish history emerges from these five books, what can be learned about American Jews by reading them together? Two key points emerge. Judaism proves a highly contested arena of American Jewish life. Yet despite the importance of religion, this fractious domain involves only a small portion of American Jews. Cooperman, Kranson, and Wertheimer all explore limits that confound efforts to promote Judaism in the United States among ordinary Jews. By contrast, “Jewishness” opens a valuable window into the complexity of life among Jews in the United States. Fermaglich focuses on how New York Jews coped with rising discrimination that impeded their ambitions for social and economic mobility. In her exploration of Jewish women's politics, Antler illuminates varied components of Jewish identity only occasionally influenced by religious dimensions.

scholarly journals A Case of Limited Vision: Vladomir Jabotinsky on Canada and the United States

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brown
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Old World ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
The Right

Canadian Jewish communities were quicker than their American counterparts to support the Zionist cause. But during the inter-war period, when changing circumstances in Europe forced Zionist leaders to shift their search for potential immigration and financial support from the Old World to the New, the Canadians' efforts were largely ignored. Apathy, even resistance, characterized much of the American Jewish community's response to the Zionist leadership. Still, the United States remained the preoccupation of leaders such as Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of what would become the right-wing Likud party.

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