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Jewish Continuity in America presents an overview of a life's work by a preeminent scholar and brings new insight to the challenge of American Jewish continuity.

Jews have historically lived within a paradox of faith and fear: faith that they are an eternal people and fear that their generation may be the last. In the United States, the Jewish community has faced to a heightened degree the enduring question of identity and assimilation: How does the Jewish community in this free, open, pluralistic society discover or create factors-both ideological and existential-that make group survival beneficial to the larger society and rewarding to the individual Jew?

Abraham J. Karp's Jewish Continuity in America focuses on the three major sources of American Judaism's continuing vitality: the synagogue, the rabbinate, and Jewish religious pluralism. Particularly illuminating is Karp's examination of the coexistence and unity-in-diversity of American religious Jewry's three divisions-Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative-and of how this Jewish religious pluralism fits into the larger picture of American religious pluralism.

Informing the larger enterprise through sharp and full delineation of discrete endeavors, the essays collected in Jewish Continuity in America-some already acknowledged as classics, some appearing here for the first time-describe creative individual and communal responses to the challenge of Jewish survival. As the title suggests, this book argues that continuity in a free and open society demands a high order of creativity, a creativity that, to be viable, must be anchored in institutions wholly pledged to continuity.





 

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright
  2. pp. i-vi
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Preface
  2. pp. ix-xii
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. xiii-xvi
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  1. Introduction: Quest for a Viable Identity
  2. pp. 1-14
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  1. Part One: The Synagogue In America
  1. 1. The Synagogue in America: A Historical Typology
  2. pp. 17-44
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  1. 2. The Americanization of Congregation Beth Israel, Rochester
  2. pp. 45-106
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  1. Part Two: The American Rabbinate
  1. 3. Expanding the Parameters of the Rabbinate: Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia
  2. pp. 109-121
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  1. 4. From Campus to Pulpit: Simon Tuska of Rochester
  2. pp. 122-131
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  1. 5. American Rabbis for America: Solomon Schechter Comes to the Seminary
  2. pp. 132-144
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  1. 6. New York Chooses a Chief Rabbi: Jacob Joseph of Vilna
  2. pp. 145-190
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  1. Part Three: A Pluralistic Religious Community
  1. 7. The Tripartite Division: How It Came to Be
  2. pp. 193-203
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  1. 8. A Century of Conservative Judaism
  2. pp. 204-258
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  1. Postscript: Between Fear and Faith
  2. pp. 259-266
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  1. Notes
  2. pp. 267-290
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  1. Glossary
  2. pp. 291-292
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 293-301
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