Jacob Rader Marcus (1896-1995), scholar, professor, and rabbi, was called the Dean of American Jewish historians by students and colleagues alike. A seminal force in the evolution of the academic study of American Jewish history, Marcus was the first to apply modern critical methodology to this field. In the course of his long life, he published more than 300 books and articles on the history of American Jews. In 1947 he founded the American Jewish Archives, which he directed for almost fifty years. A beloved teacher and mentor for several generations of Hebrew Union College (HUC) students, Dr. Marcus remains a very significant figure in the history of American Jewry during the twentieth century. Marcus, raised in West Virginia, was the child of East European immigrants. At the age of 15, he moved to Cincinnati to matriculate at HUC, America's oldest rabbinical seminary. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, Marcus became a member of the HUC faculty upon his rabbinical ordination in 1920. He subsequently moved to Europe to pursue doctoral studies and, upon returning to Cincinnati, Marcus taught courses in Jewish history. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Marcus realized that the i American Jewry was fast becoming the most influential Jewish community in the world. In the aftermath of the brutal destruction of European Jewry during World War II, Marcus's keen interest in the history of American Jewry burgeoned. Marcus left the pulpit for a career of scholarship and teaching, he nevertheless maintained a close connection to his students and, through them, to the American rabbinate. A mentor to generations of HUC students and graduates, Marcus was an active participant in the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the organizational arm of the American Reform rabbinate), serving as its president from 1949-1951. In this volume, Gary Philip Zola brings together a unique assortment of Marcus's most important unpublished essays, written for a more popular audience between 1916 and 1989. Read collectively, these essays bring the key themes of Marcus's work into bold relief. In the early "America: The Spiritual Center of Jewry" (1916), as in the much later "Three Hundred Years in America" (1955), Marcus calls upon American Jewry to study its heritage, arguing that this knowledge will kindle a renaissance in American Jewish life. In "Lost: Judaism in the American Expeditionary Forces, the Urgent Need for Welfare Work" (1919), he insists that the Jewish experience in America consists of a symbiotic relationship between individual Jews and the larger Jewish community. A focus on the individual in relation to the whole guided many of Marcus's essays, as did his emphasis on Jews studying their own past, strong echoes of both can be found in "New Literary Responsibilities (1941-1942) as well as works for specific occasions, such as "The Program of the American Jewish Archives" (1947) and Genesis: College Beginnings (1989). Another leitmotif linking these diverse topics is Marcus's view that American Judaism will thrive and distinguish itself as long as Jewish education and Jewish cultural life become a high priority on the Jewish communal agenda. This collection enhances our understanding of how the ideas of one of American Jewry's pioneering historians evolved, while preserving historical documents that trace the development of American Jewish life over the course of the twentieth century.

In a series of nine original essays, the editors and other leading American historians bring dramatically new perspectives to bear on our understanding of the West, its Jews, and other Americans, both old and new. Whether comparing the history of the Jews of the West with the Jewish experience in the older regions of the country or bringing attention to the uniquely local aspects of the western experience, the contributors to this landmark volume perceive the West as an increasingly important and vital presence in the nation's history. The agrarians of Utah's Clarion and the cureseekers of Denver, no less than the boomers of Tucson, have been representative Americans, Jews, and westerners. Essays on the role of intermarriage, the shared encounter of immigrants and migrants, and the response to the founding of the State of Israel by western pioneer families, tell us much about the interaction of the West with our American world nation.

Darwin provoked Jews as well as Christians, and this book examines leading nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American progressive Jewish thinkers who wrestled with evolutionary theories. In particular there was a widespread commitment to the application of biological evolutionary theory to history and cosmology, and a fascination with the evolution of ethical systems within human societies, bearing in mind mankind's bestial origins and new challenges for understanding religious traditions. It is argued that Reform Jewish discussions about the nature of God have been more profoundly shaped by engagement with evolutionary theory than has been recognized before and that, in fact, evolutionary thought provides the key conceptual framework for understanding the distinctive development of Reform Judaism in North America. --

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Much as he considered himself a philosopher, Morris Raphael Cohen was also immersed in the machinery of social life. From his first years of "engagement" as a volunteer teacher in Thomas Davidson's school for working-class people, to his last as professor of philosophy at New York's City College and at the University of Chicago, he constantly sought to understand the underlying assumptions of human behavior. The studies Cohen gathered together for Reflections of a Wondering Jew are an indication of representative achievements of his life. He was deeply involved in the experience of the American Jewish community, and much of his work here consists of an inquiry into and analysis of specifically Jewish affairs. Some of his most valuable contributions to American thought and maturity are those that were never included in standard philosophical efforts. His work and scholarship provide foundations for the field of human problems and the history of ideas. These lectures illuminated the way forward in so many of our crisis years. There is a certain tragedy to the fact that for many decades Morris Raphael Cohen had hoped to organize and put into systematic form his literary reflections on Jewish problems and American liberalism. Towards the end of his life, he faced the realization that many of his intended writings would never reach fruition. Though this volume may not be quite what Cohen intended, it is a product of a mature giant in American intellectual history.

Excerpt from Are the Germans the Chosen People?: Address Delivered at the Business Men's Club, Cincinnati, January 28th, 1918 The statement has been made frequently of late years that the modern Germans in their claim that they are God's chosen people are the latter day counterpart of the ancient Jews, who are thus termed in the Bible. Preachers and writers in Germany make the direct comparison in unmistakable terms as when one of these preachers declares unreservedly: As was Israel among the heathen, so is Germany amongst the nations, the pious heart of Europe, and another asserts no less apodictically: In a moment we, the children of modern humanity, have become the heir of Israel, the people of the Old Testament. We shall be the bearers of God's promises, the living proof that it is not man who creates history, but God through man. The conviction that they are the chosen people -of these latter ages has become a leading article of German belief; it has imbued the German peo ple with a feeling of superiority over all other nations; they have become obsessed with the idea that they are God's favorites; they speak of God as the. German God, implying thereby that other peoples are without the pale of His special concern. It is, however, not only Germans who have instituted the comparison between themselves and ancient Israel in this matter of being God's chosen people, but leading speakers and thinkers in other lands, when discussing the state of the modern German mind, are fond of adducing the same comparison. It was only recently that I heard a distinguished American professor say this emphatically and without modification. As I listened to his words the thought presented itself forcibly to my mind that this frequently reiterated statement could and should be subjected to careful examination. For I felt that this comparison was super ficial and far from the truth inasmuch as the term chosen peo ple received an entirely different interpretation by the leading spirits of ancient Israel, namely the prophets, from that given it by the spokesmen of modern Germany as revealed in the writings and utterances of the foremost framers of opinion in that realm in recent days. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"Internationally recognized scholar David Ellenson shares twenty-three of his most representative essays, drawing on three decades of scholarship and demonstrating the consistency of the intellectual-religious interests that have animated him throughout his lifetime. These essays center on a description and examination of the complex push and pull between Jewish tradition and Western culture. Ellenson addresses gender equality, women's rights, conversion, issues relating to who is a Jew, the future of the rabbinate, Jewish day schools, and other emerging trends in American Jewish life. As an outspoken advocate for a strong Israel that is faithful to the democratic and Jewish values that informed its founders, he also writes about religious tolerance and pluralism in the Jewish state. The former president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the primary seminary of the Reform movement, Ellenson is widely respected for his vision of advancing Jewish unity and of preparing leadership for a contemporary Judaism that balances tradition with the demands of a changing world. Scholars and students of Jewish religious thought, ethics, and modern Jewish history will welcome this erudite collection by one of today's great Jewish leaders"--