Editor's Introduction

In today's academy, American Jewish historians, like all scholars, are increasingly questioning the borders that have defined their area of study. They are asking what they might gain by expanding their vistas across lines of geography, discipline, and field of specialization, and also what insights they might offer to scholars on the other side of those lines. The articles in this issue of American Jewish History exemplify this trend.

The bulk of the issue consists of a scholars' forum titled "American Jewish History and American Historical Writing," which grew out of the June 2008 keynote lecture presented by Prof. David A. Hollinger at the Bienniel Scholars' Conference on American Jewish History. The conference was sponsored by the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) and held on the campuses of the University of Southern California and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Los Angeles. Hollinger, an eminent American intellectual historian and—as the incoming president of the Organization of American Historians—one of the most important voices shaping the study of U.S. history today, is one of the few scholars in the American field who does not specialize in Jewish history and yet has taken Jews seriously as historical subjects. Invited by the conference organizers to discuss the relationship between American Jewish history and the writing of U.S. history more broadly, Hollinger presented a challenging analysis of historical work on American Jews, describing what he sees as two distinct trends: a "communalist" approach that emphasizes developments within the Jewish community and how they were influenced and transformed by the American environment, and a "dispersionist" trend that seeks to situate individual Jews within a larger American framework and to understand the ways in which, influenced by their particular historical background, they helped shape important aspects of American culture.

Hollinger's lecture made an extraordinary impact on the conference attendees. For some in the audience, particularly those who have championed the greater engagement of American Jewish historians with the broader field of U.S. history, Hollinger's talk was received warmly. It confirmed their belief that in order to uncover the most complex and interesting aspects of the American Jewish experience, American Jewish historians need to venture beyond the familiar settings of Jewish life—synagogues, Jewish organizations, and Jewish residential enclaves—in defining the parameters of their research. Those most enthusiastic about Hollinger's lecture also saw it as an encouraging sign that there are important scholars in the U.S. field who are willing to pay attention to their work when they do cast their nets broadly.

On the other hand, even as almost everyone present applauded Hollinger's call for greater attention to Jews and Jewish history within the American field, some expressed concern—despite his careful qualifications to the contrary—that behind his distinction between communalist and dispersionist schools of American Jewish history was a lack of regard for the legitimacy of studying Jews qua Jews—in other words, as a group that continues to present its own distinct set of historical questions and concerns. Prof. Jonathan D. Sarna of Brandeis University was among those in the audience who pushed Hollinger on the question of whether he considered Jews important as historical actors only insofar as they played a role in some broader set of "American" historical issues. Are questions regarding Jewish group identity and the changes that accompanied Jewish religious and ethnic life in America of secondary importance, Sarna asked, simply because they tend not to interest scholars focusing on other aspects of the American past? For Sarna, as for other listeners in the audience, Hollinger focused too sharply on American Jewish historians and not sharply enough on American historians as the group in need of broader horizons.

Though some responded positively and some negatively to Hollinger's lecture, it undoubtedly touched a nerve with many in attendance, laying bare some of the most central and yet ill-defined questions of where the field stands and what its future trajectory is to be. This was obvious from the way in which Hollinger's description of communalist and dispersionist approaches...