Introduction: Some Reflections on Contemporary American Jewish Culture

Abstract

The escalation of scholarship on Holocaust, expansion of publications in American Jewish history, and proliferation of American Jewish literature in 1980s suggest a renewal of interest, on part of American Jews, in things Jewish. At same time, issue of whether there is to be an enduring American Jewish culture is vexing, for present generation of American Jews must cope with dilemma of identity, problem of parochialism, and threat of fragmentation-all of which, some have warned, imperil existence of Jews as a people. The melancholy conclusion reached by historian David Vital is a case in point: Today, at end of unspeakable twentieth century, it is not too much to say, that survival of Jewry as a discrete people, its various branches bound to each other by common ties of culture, responsibility, and loyalty, is entirely in doubt (Future 146-47). Voices of optimism have not been wanting, however. Calvin Goldscheider, Steven Cohen, and Charles Silberman proclaim transformation of American Jewry into a form of Jewishness appropriate to America, a new kind of survivalism they welcome as the New Judaism. Yet their views, however comforting, evade more thorny issue of how to define an American Jewish culture. And sharp divide between two perspectives suggests tensions within American Jewry, divergence among its central interests, and issues likely to influence future development of American Jewish culture. If indeed contemporary Jewish world faces prospect of a bifurcation that threatens permanently to shatter its old unity, and if it is Jews of