The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This study was prompted by three sets of questions. First, several years' work on secularization had piqued my curiosity as to whether we could actually see a religious belief changing "before our very eyes" under the impact of social and intellectual forces. Second, my life as an American Jew had caused me to wonder how American Judaism came to assume the character-all too often vacuouspresented to view in its synagogues and publications. Third, Martin Meyerson one day asked what I thought of the chosen people idea and whether anyone had recently written about the subject. A year or two later I decided on this response to his query, because it promised to help with answers to my own two questions as well. I am grateful to Martin Meyerson for ten years of provocative questioning ; to Professors Moshe Davis, Ben Halpern, Paul Mendes-Flohr, and Uriel Tal for directing my research into chosenness and criticizing the resultant dissertation; and, most of all, to my supervisor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Professor R. J. Zwi Werblowsky. His erudition in the history of religions helped to make my research intellectually exciting, and his insights sustained me more than once as I worked through a seemingly endless succession of sermons. The research was supported by the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust and the Danforth Foundation, to whom I stand indebted, as I do to the librarians of The Hebrew University Judaica Reading Room; Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and Jerusalem; the Jewish Theological Seminary; and Columbia and Yeshiva universities . Rabbis Bernard Bamberger, Solomon Freehof, and Mordecai M. Kaplan received me graciously and helped me to understand the events in which they figured. Drafts of the book were read by many friends and colleagues, including Janet Aviad, Hannah Cotton, Michael Heyd, Paula Hyman, Gillian Lindt, Paula Newberg, Ari Paltiel, Wayne Proudfoot, Michael Rosenak, Michael and Ilana Silver, Robert Somerville, Michael Stanislawski, and the members of the Joshua Lipschitz Society. I thank them all. I am also grateful to Deborah Dash Moore for editing the final manuscript with care and sensitivity, to John O'Keefe for proofreading it diligently, and to Vivian Shaw for typing it valiantly. The "chosen of my x • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS heart," Adriane Leveen, bore with the final overhaul of the book without complaint. For this and much else besides, my gratitude. Finally, the whole bears the imprint of three teachers who taught me-or tried-to read religious thought attentively and consider it with a sociologist's eye: Van Harvey, Philip Rieff, and Bryan Wilson. I hope I have applied their lessons well. The work is dedicated to my parents, who enabled me to understand more than any theology, sociology, or ideology could what it means to live with the blessing and obligation of chosenness. AE New York City Thanksgiving 1982 THE CHOSEN PEOPLE IN AMERICA ...