American Jewish Political Thought

This lecture series offers some new perspectives on the history of twentieth-century American Jewish political thought in a transnational dimension. It focuses on the diverse ways in which American Jews, through their communal institutions and organizations, articulated a variety of ideas about their responsibilities for Jews and Jewish life abroad. It also asks how those actions, in turn, reflected concerns the Jews of the United States had for themselves and their place in American life. What tasks did they take up for Jews in other places, and what did their actions mean for their various understandings of Jewish life in the United States? The lecture series emphasizes both common concerns among American Jews and widely divergent views of what to do and how.

The lectures explore how American Jews articulated in words and deeds the multiple and often conflicting perspectives about their own situation in America and their relationship to the Jewish people worldwide.

The series is linked to and sets the stage for the Digital Annual Conference of the Dubnow Institute, in cooperation with The Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University (Prof. Dr. Hasia R. Diner), conducted on June 15–16, 2021.

Lectures

15 April 2021
Kenneth D. Wald (Gainesville, FL)
The Political Exceptionalism of American Jewry:
A Contextual Approach

29 April 2021, 6.15 p.m. (CEST), 12.15 p.m. (EST)
Lila Corwin Berman (Philadelphia, PA)
Beyond American-Jewish Exceptionalism:
The State in American Jewish Politics

6 Mai 2021
Zohar Segev (Haifa)
Revolution, Decolonization, Democracy, and Cooperation:
Zionism and the Middle East from an American Jewish Perspective

20 Mai 2021
Ronnie A. Grinberg (Norman, OK)
»Always Right:«
Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, and the Making of an American Jewish Conservative Politics

3 Juni 2021
Eugene R. Sheppard (Waltham, MA)
Political Theology in America:
On the Impact and Legacy of Jewish Refugees and Immigrants

Speakers

Prof. Dr. Lila Corwin Berman, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA | Prof. Dr. Ronnie A. Grinberg, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK | Prof. Dr. Zohar Segev, University of Haifa | Prof. Dr. Eugene R. Sheppard, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA | Prof. Dr. Kenneth D. Wald, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL