Why Is America Different? American Jewry on

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. Book jacket.

Steven T. Katz is director of Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University, Boston, MA, and holds the Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1972.

Preface	p. v
In Place of an Introduction: Some Thoughts on American Jewish Exceptionalism	p. 1
Enlightenment, Statesmen and the Jews in Europe and the United States, 1776-1820	p. 18
American Exceptionalism: The Case of the Jews, 1750-1850	p. 28
Why and How Are Americans Different?	p. 54
Immigrant Jews and the Challenge of American Athleticism	p. 69
America's Most Memorable Zionist Leaders	p. 80
Encountering Jewish Feminism	p. 91
Judaism and the Pluralist Dynamic	p. 105
From Treifene Medina to Goldene Medina: Changing Perspectives on the United States among American Haredim	p. 114
From Many, One? Reflections on the Notion of American Jews	p. 128
Superbowl Parties, Women Rabbis and Freedom Seders: Twenty-first Century Jewish American Synergy	p. 146
American Anti-Semitism: The Myth and Reality of American Exceptionalism	p. 154
To Make ôa Jewö: Projecting Anti-Semitism in Post-War America	p. 169
Jews in the United States: How Good It Has Been	p. 198
Anti-Semitism Today	p. 210
The NYT: The Newspaper American Jews Love to Hate	p. 213
Confessions of a Jewish Journalist	p. 217
Portraits of America in Jewish Culture	p. 221
Yiddishkeit and the American Jewish Writer: The Breakthrough Reconsidered	p. 241
Cinema as a Lens on America's Jews	p. 254
What Makes America Different: Jewish Artists and Their Concerns in the Twentieth Century	p. 263
Studies in Hysteria, or Jewish Comedy from Shtetlakh to Shticklakh	p. 309
The Transformation of Traditional Jewish Music in Jewish America	p. 327
America: Memories of Doubts and Hope	p. 340
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Why Is America Different? American Jewry on its 350th Anniversary

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