A People Divided

by Wertheimer, Jack

• ISBN13: 9780874518481
• ISBN10: 0874518482
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-09-01
• Publisher: Brandeis Univ

Summary

This brilliant analysis of American Judaism in the last half of the 20th century won the 1993-94 National Jewish Book Award for the best book on contemporary Jewry and also was named an Outstanding Book of 1993 by Choice. Jack Wertheimer examines how fundamental changes in American society have affected Jewish religious and communal life, paying special attention to contradictions and schisms that threaten the integrity of American Jewish practices and beliefs. A People Divided remains an essential primer for anyone interested in the ongoing debate about what constitutes Jewishness and who is a Jew.

Author Biography

JACK WERTHEIMER is Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, author of Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (1987), and editor of The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed (UPNE/Brandeis, 1995).

Table of Contents

PREFACE	vii	(4)
INTRODUCTION	xi
PART I POSTWAR JUDAISM: AN ERA OF STABILITY, A DECADE OF CONFLICT	3	(40)
1 Expansion and Respectability at Midcentury	3	(15)
2 The Turbulent Sixties	18	(25)
PART II POPULAR RELIGION: APATHY AND RENEWAL	43	(52)
3 The Drift toward Religious Minimalism	43	(23)
4 Expressions of Popular Religious Revival	66	(29)
PART III THE FRAGMENTING WORLD OF ORGANIZED JUDAISM	95	(90)
5 Reform: Change in Both Directions	95	(19)
6 Orthodoxy: Triumphalism on the Right	114	(23)
7 Conservative Judaism and the Challenge of Centrism	137	(23)
8 The Reconstruction of Kaplanian Reconstructionism	160	(10)
9 Religious Movements in Collision: A Jewish Culture War?	170	(15)
Conclusion: Judaism within the Landscape of American Religion	185	(12)
NOTES	197	(49)
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED SECONDARY WORKS	246	(8)
GLOSSARY	254	(4)
INDEX	258