Jewish Renaissance and Revival in America

Contributors

Contributors Arnold Eisen is the seventh chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the author of Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America (1996), Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment , Community (1998), and other studies in American Judaism. Eitan P. Fishbane is assistant professor of Jewish thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He is the author of As Light before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist (2009) and The Sabbath Soul: Mystical Reflections on the Transformative Power of Holy Time (2011). Leah Levitz Fishbane z”l was a PhD candidate in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University,where she studied American JewishhistoryandmodernJudaismundertheguidanceof JonathanSarna. Based on research conducted in New York and Philadelphia archives, her writing explores the creativity and leadership of a group of young men and women who went on to found some of the great institutions of Jewish culture in latenineteenth -century America. She died tragically, from a previously undiagnosed brain tumor, in March 2007. Arthur Green serves as rector of the Rabbinical School and Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts. He was the founding spirit behind Havurat Shalom and has been a leading figure in the H . avurah movement since 1968. A student of the Jewish mystical tradition, he writes both as a historian and theologian. David E. Kaufman teaches at Hofstra University, where he holds the Robert and Florence Kaufman (n.r.) Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies. Previously, he was associate professor of American Jewish History at the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. He is the author of Shul with a Pool: The “Synagogue -Center” in American Jewish History (upne, 1999) and a forthcoming 170 / contributors book that focuses on the intersection of American celebrity and Jewish identity in the early 1960s. Arthur Kiron is the Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator of Judaica Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Library and adjunct assistant professor of history in Penn’s History Department. He is the director of the American Genizah Project, an international initiative based at Penn, which seeks to locate , scan, catalog, and provide dynamic on-line access to American Jewish historical documents. Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem ,is currently on the faculty of the Divinity School,The University of Chicago , where he teaches modern Jewish thought. He is the author, most recently , of Progress and its Discontents: The Struggle of Jewish Intellectuals with Modernity (2010), in Hebrew. Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and author or editor of more than thirty books on American Jewish history and life. His American Judaism: A History won six awards including the 2004 Everett Jewish Book of the Year Award from the Jewish Book Council. Shuly Rubin Schwartz is the Irving Lehrman Research Associate Professor of American Jewish History and Walter and Sarah Schlesinger Dean of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Schwartz’s most recent book, The Rabbi’s Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life (2007), won the National Jewish Book Award in the area of modern Jewish thought. ...