The Future of American Jewish Pasts

Leading scholars of American Jewish experience offer bold historical interpretations that reimagine American Jewish studies

The Future of American Jewish Pasts boldly imagines the next chapters in the study of American Jewish life. Conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic and completed just before the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and ensuing war, this innovative volume gathers leading scholars of American Jewish experience to ask what the future of the study of the American Jewish past holds.

The contributors reconceive traditional approaches to American Jewish life and delve into underexplored topics to present a vision of a rich future for the field of American Jewish studies. Essays on antisemitism, Zionism, liberalism, immigration, feminism, family histories, and more stake out new sources, methods, and interpretations of histories and historiographies. To understand American Jewish life in its complexity and richness, these essays engage multiple disciplines, including history, ethnography, and literary studies. Many showcase comparative or theoretical approaches that illuminate new dimensions of American Jewish studies, and others offer personal reflections to reveal how scholars’ own life stories intersect with the questions that animate their scholarship. For students, scholars, and the general public, this interdisciplinary volume provides a tantalizing selection of the freshest approaches to understanding American Jewish life.

Contributors: Lila Corwin Berman, Tobias Brinkmann, Ayelet Brinn, Alanna E. Cooper, Jessica Cooperman, Deborah Dash Moore, Hasia R. Diner, Kathryn Hellerstein, Markus Krah, Heather S. Nathans, Noam Pianko, Lana Dee Povitz, Riv-Ellen Prell, Kate Rosenblatt, Laurence Roth, Britt Tevis, JT Waldman, Amy Weiss, Beth S. Wenger.

Deborah Dash Moore is the Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of History at the University
of Michigan

Beth Wenger is the Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of History and Associate Dean for
Graduate Studies, School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania

Lila Corwin Berman is Professor of History at Temple University