This book explores the state of the American Jewish world in the early 21st century, after decades of accelerating change that has transformed it and all other religious groups in the United States. It reveals a community in an unparalleled state of flux grappling with a society in which religious identity is more and more considered an individual choice, rather than an inheritance, and where fewer adults feel impelled to identify with any religious tradition at all.
In chapters written by leading experts, the book examines the community's evolving demographics, the direction of the principal denominational movements, contemporary religious trends, interactions with other American religious communities and engagements in the country's secular politics. This text uniquely covers all these aspects of Judaism in America making it appealing to students and researchers in such fields as the sociology of religion, Judaism, and American history.
About the Author: Jerome A. Chanes is an adjunct professor at Baruch College of the City University of New York. He was national affairs director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (now the Jewish Council for Public Affairs) and was associate executive director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. He has taught at Barnard College, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Tel Aviv University School of Law, Yeshiva University, and the Academy of Jewish Religion. His books include Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook, Antisemitism in America Today: Exploding the Myths, and A Primer on the American Jewish Community, and he is author of more than 100 articles, book chapters, reviews, and encyclopedia entries on Jewish issues and arts and letters.
Mark Silk (Ph.D. Harvard University), co-editor of the Future of American Religion series, is director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His books include Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II, Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America, and, co-authored with Andrew Walsh, One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. He is a columnist and contributing editor at the Religion News Service.
