Why Is America Different?: American Jewry on its 350th Anniversary [Hardcover]

This book brings together a distinguished group of expert scholars from the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University on the main areas of American Jewish life, from colonial Jewish experience to images of Jews in contemporary films. This volume represents the fruit of this collective reflection and interrogation.Does the American Jewish experience represent a singular communal circumstance, or does it repeat, with obvious and unavoidable variation, the older European pattern of Jewish existence? In 2004, on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the establishment of the American Jewish community, this question seemed well worth revisiting. To explore it more fully, the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University brought together a distinguished group of expert scholars on the main areas of American Jewish life, stretching from the colonial Jewish experience to the image of Jews in contemporary films. The present volume represents the fruit of this collective reflection and interrogation.Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 In Place of an Introduction: Some Thoughts on American Jewish Exceptionalism Chapter 3 1. Enlightenment, Statesmen, and the Jews in Europe and the United States, 1776-1820 Chapter 4 2. American Exceptionalism: The Case of the Jews, 1750-1850 Chapter 5 3. Why and How Are Americans Different? Chapter 6 4. Immigrant Jews and the Challenge of American Athleticism Chapter 7 5. American's Most Memorable Zionist Leaders Chapter 8 6. Encountering Jewish Feminism Chapter 9 7. Judaism and the Pluralist Dynamic Chapter 10 8. From Treifene Medina to Goldene Medina: Changing Perspectives on the United States Among American Haredim Chapter 11 9. From Many, One? Reflections on the Notion of American Jews Chapter 12 10. Superbowl Parties, Women Rabbis, and Freedom Seders: Twenty-first Century Jewish American Synergy Chapter 13 11. American Anti-Semitism: The Myth and Reality of American Exceptionalism Chapter 14 12. To Make a Jew : ProjlS?