The New Jewish Canon

Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and a leading thinker and author on the meaning of Israel to American Jews, on Jewish history and Jewish memory, and on questions of leadership and change in American Jewish life. He is also the author of Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past (Brandeis, 2012). Dr. Claire E. Sufrin is a scholar of religion specializing in modern Jewish thought and theology. She is Associate Professor of Instruction and Assistant Director of Jewish Studies in the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies at Northwestern University.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: "The State of Jewish Ideas: Towards a New Jewish Canon"
I. Jewish Politics and the Public Square
1. Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 1985
Essay: William Galston
2. George Steiner, "Our Homeland, the Text," 1985; Judith Butler, "Judith Butler's Remarks to Brooklyn College on BDS," 2013
Essay: Julie Cooper
3. Jonathan Woocher, Sacred Survival: The Civil Religion of American Jews, 1986
Essay: Sylvia Fishman
4. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949, 1987; and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2004;Ari Shavit, "Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris," 2004 and "Lydda, 1948," 2013
Essay: Daniel Kurtzer
5. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg vs. Meir Kahane, Public Debate at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, 1988
Essay: Shaul Magid
6. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Eliezer Goldman (ed.), Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 1992
Essay: Joshua Shanes
7. Israeli Supreme Court Part 1: Israeli Knesset Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, 1992; Aharon Barak, "A Judge on Judging: The Role of a Supreme Court in a Democracy," January 2002
Essay: Yigal Mersel
8. Aharon Lichtenstein, "On the Murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin z"l," 1995
Essay: David Wolkenfeld
9. Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, 1996
Essay: Yehuda Magid
10. Israeli Supreme Court Part 2: The Israeli Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice, Horev v. Minister of Transportation, 1997; The Israeli Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice: Baruch Marzel v. Jerusalem District Police Commander, Mr. Aharon Franco, 2002
Essay: Donniel Hartman
11. Samuel G. Freedman, Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry, 2000
Essay: Noam Pianko
12. Breaking the Silence Testimonies, Founded in 2004
Essay: Sarah Anne Minkin
13. Steven M. Cohen and Jack Wertheimer, "Whatever Happened to the Jewish People?," 2006
Essay: Erica Brown
14. Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, Torat HaMelekh, 2009
Essay: Hillel Ben-Sasson
15. Moshe Halbertal, "The Goldstone Illusion," 2009
Essay: Elana Stein Hain
16. Peter Beinart, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment," 2010
Essay: Sara Yael Hirschhorn
17. Daniel Gordis, "When Balance Becomes Betrayal"  and Sharon Brous, "Lowering the Bar," 2012
Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer
18. Matti Friedman, "An Insider's Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth," 2014
Essay: Rachel Fish
II. History, Memory and Narrative
1. David Hartman, "Auschwitz or Sinai?," 1982
Essay: Rachel Sabath Beit Halachmi
2. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, 1982
Essay: Alexander Kaye
3. Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 1982
Essay: Benjamin Pollock
4. Robert M. Cover, "The Supreme Court, 1982 Term—Foreword: Nomosand Narrative," 1983
Essay: Christine Hayes
5. Kahan Commission (Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut), 1983
Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer
6. Amos Oz, In the Land of Israel, 1983
Essay: Wendy Zierler
7. David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History, 1986
Essay: Judah Bernstein
8. Elie Wiesel, Acceptance Speech, on the Occasion of the Award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, 1986
Essay: Claire E. Sufrin
9. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 1986
Essay: Sarah Cushman
10. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, "The Third Great Cycle of Jewish History," 1987
Essay: Joshua Feigelson
11. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, 1993; Yaffa Eliach, There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok, 1998
Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer
12. Haym Soloveitchik, "Rupture and Reconstruction," 1994
Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer
13. Naomi Seidman, "Elie Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage," 1996
Essay: Erin Leib Smokler
14. Dabru Emet, New York Times, 2000
Essay: Marcie Lenk
15. Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History, 2004
Essay: Marc Dollinger
16. David Weiss Halivni, Breaking the Tablets: Jewish Theology After the Shoah,2007
Essay: Daniel Weiss
17. Ruth Wisse, "How Not to Remember and How Not to Forget," 2008
Essay: Dara Horn
18. Yossi Klein Halevi, Like Dreamers, 2013
Essay: Hannah Kober
III. Religion and Religiosity
1. Joseph Soloveitchik,Halakhic Man, 1983
Essay: Shlomo Zuckier
2. Yehoshua Yeshaya Neuwirth, Shemirath Shabbath Kehilchathah, 1984
Essay: David Bashevkin
3. David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism, 1985
Essay: David Ellenson
4. The Complete Artscroll Siddur, 1984
Essay: David Zvi Kalman
5. Neil Gillman, Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew, 1990; Eugene Borowitz, Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew, 1991
Essay: Michael Marmur
6. Rachel Adler "In Your Blood, Live: Re-visions of a Theological Purity," 1993
Essay: Gail Labovitz
7. Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India, 1994
Essay: Or Rose
8. Avivah Gottleib Zornberg, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire, 1995
Essay: Shira Hecht-Koller
9. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Susannah Heschel (ed.), Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, 1996
Essay: William Plevan
10. Noam Zion and David Dishon, A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah, 1997
Essay: Emily Filler
11. Mendel Shapiro, "Qeri'at HaTorah by Women: A Halakhic Analysis," 2001
Essay: Tova Hartman
12. Jonathan Sacks, Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, London: Continuum,2002
Essay: Michal Raucher
13. Rav Shagar, Broken Vessels, 2004
Essay: Tomer Persico
14. Arthur Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition, 2010; Daniel Landes, "Hidden Master," 2010; Arthur Green and Daniel Landes, "God, Torah, and Israel: An Exchange," 2011
Essay: Samuel Hayim Brody
15. Elie Kaunfer, Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us About Building Vibrant Jewish Communities, 2010
Essay: Shawn Landres and Josh Avedon
IV. Identities and Communities
1. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Letter to the Jewish Community of Teaneck, 1981
Essay: Jonathan Sarna
2. Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition, 1981
Essay: Rachel Gordan
3. Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, 1981; Alan Lew, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, 2003
Essay: Joshua Ladon
4. Evelyn Torton Beck (ed.), Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, 1982; Susannah Heschel (ed.), On Being a Jewish Feminist, 1983
Essay: Claire E. Sufrin
5. Paul Cowan with Rachel Cowan, Mixed Blessings: Overcoming the Stumbling Blocks in an Interfaith Marriage, 1988
Essay: Samira Mehta
6. Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective, 1990
Essay: Judith Rosenbaum
7. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America, 1991
Essay: Arielle Levites
8. Barry Kosmin, "Highlights of the CJF 1990 National Jewish Population Survey," 1991; "A Portrait of Jewish Americans," 2013
Essay: Mijal Bitton
9. Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy, 1991; Paula Hyman, "Who is an Educated Jew?" 2002; Vanessa Ochs, "Ten Jewish Sensibilities," 2003
Essay: Hannah Pressman
10. Yaakov Levado, "Gayness and God: Wrestlings of an Orthodox Rabbi," 1993
Essay: Zev Farber
11. Leonard Fein, "Smashing Idols and Other Prescriptions for Jewish Continuity," 1994
Essay: Aryeh Cohen
12. Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America, 2000
Essay: Alan Brill
13. A. B. Yehoshua, "The Meaning of Homeland," 2006
Essay: James Loeffler
14. Elliot N. Dorff, Daniel S. Nevins, and Avram I. Reisner, "Homosexuality, Human Dignity, and Halakhah: A Combined Responsum for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards," 2006
Essay: Jane Kanarek
15. Noah Feldman "Orthodox Paradox," 2007; Jay Lefkowitz, "The Rise of Social Orthodoxy: A Personal Account," 2014
Essay: Elli Fischer
16. Tamar Biala and Nechama Weingarten-Mintz (eds.), Dirshuni: Midrashei Nashim, 2009
Essay: Sarah Mulhern
17. Leon Wieseltier, "Language, Identity, and the Scandal of American Jewry," 2011
Essay: Jon Levisohn
18. Ruth Calderon, Inaugural Knesset Speech, "The Heritage of All Israel," 2013
Essay: Yossi Klein Halevi
19. Rick Jacobs, "The Genesis of Our Future," 2013
Essay: Dan Friedman