Coming to Terms with America

Jonathan D. Sarna is University Professor and the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, as well as the director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. He is also the chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History. Sarna has written, edited, or coedited more than thirty books, including JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture 1888–1988 and American Judaism: A History, and is the winner of six awards, including the National Jewish Book Award’s Jewish Book of the Year.

Contents

Notes about the Cover

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1. Straddling Two Civilizations

1. The Cult of Synthesis in American Jewish Culture

2. The Democratization of American Judaism

3. Jewish Prayers for the United States Government

4. The Lofty Vision of Cincinnati Jews

5. Reconciling Athens and Jerusalem: The Jews of Boston in Historical Perspective

6. Subversive Jews and Early American Culture

Part 2. The Shaping of American Jewish Culture

7. The Late Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Awakening

8. Jewish Publishing in the United States

9. Timeless Texts or Timely Issues? Competing Visions of Seminary Scholarship

Part 3. When Faiths Collide

10. The American Jewish Response to Nineteenth-Century Christian Missions

11. The “Mythical Jew” and the “Jew Next Door” in Nineteenth-Century America

12. Cultural Borrowing and Cultural Resistance in Two Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Sunday School Texts

13. Jewish-Christian Hostility in the United States

14. Christians and Non-Christians in the Marketplace of American Religion

15. Church-State Dilemmas of American Jews

Source Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index