ABOUT THIS BOOK

Can someone be considered Jewish if he or she never goes to synagogue, doesn't keep kosher, and for whom the only connection to his or her ancestral past is attending an annual Passover seder?

In Religion or Ethnicity? fifteen leading scholars trace the evolution of Jewish identity. The book examines Judaism from the Greco-Roman age, through medieval times, modern western and eastern Europe, to today. Jewish identity has been defined as an ethnicity, a nation, a culture, and even a race. Religion or Ethnicity? questions what it means to be Jewish. The contributors show how the Jewish people have evolved over time in different ethnic, religious, and political movements. In his closing essay, Gitelman questions the viability of secular Jewishness outside Israel but suggests that the continued interest in exploring the relationship between Judaism's secular and religious forms will keep the heritage alive for generations to come.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Zvi Gitelman is a professor of comparative politics and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan. He is also a research scientist at the University's Center for Russian and East European Studies. He has written or edited numerous works on the Jews of eastern Europe, including Jewish Life After the USSR and A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union.

REVIEWS

"This extensive array of intensive historical and contemporary analyses of Judaism and Jewishness is a valuable contribution to the understanding of what it means to be Jewish."

— Chaim I. Waxman, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Rutgers University

"We live in an age not only of fluid identities and shifting identities, but of contested identities as well. This extraordinary collection of eminently readable scholarly articles spans centuries of Jewish life, and offers an insightful, stimulating and provocative look at Jews' ongoing struggle with defining their identities. Religion? Ethnicity? Both? Neither? The answers, as we learn, depend not only on whom you ask—but when and where—and who does the asking."

— Steven M. Cohen, author of The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America

"A provocative and important volume. The book elucidate[s] how the definition of the Jewish people has evolved over the centuries and has changed at different times in different places. Highly recommended."

— Choice

"A provocative and important volume. The book elucidate[s] how the definition of the Jewish people has evolved over the centuries and has changed at different times in different places. Highly recommended."

— Choice

"This extensive array of intensive historical and contemporary analyses of Judaism and Jewishness is a valuable contribution to the understanding of what it means to be Jewish."

— Chaim I. Waxman, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Rutgers University

"We live in an age not only of fluid identities and shifting identities, but of contested identities as well. This extraordinary collection of eminently readable scholarly articles spans centuries of Jewish life, and offers an insightful, stimulating and provocative look at Jews' ongoing struggle with defining their identities. Religion? Ethnicity? Both? Neither? The answers, as we learn, depend not only on whom you ask—but when and where—and who does the asking."

— Steven M. Cohen, author of The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Jewish religion, Jewish ethnicity: the evolution of Jewish identities / Zvi Gitelman
Secularism, hellenism, and rabbis in antiquity / Yaron Eliav
What is a Judaism?: perspectives from Second Temple Jewish studies / Gabriele Boccaccini
Crypto-Jewish criticism of tradition and its echoes in Jewish communities / Miriam Bodian
Spinoza and the origins of Jewish secularism / Steven Nadler
Yiddish schools in America and the problem of secular Jewish identity / David Fishman
Beyond assimilation: introducing subjectivity to German-Jewish history / Scott Spector
Jewish self-identification and West European categories of belonging from the Enlightenment to World War II / Todd Endelman
People of the (secular) book: literary anthologies and the making of Jewish identity in postwar America / Julian Levinson
Secular-Jewish identity and the condition of secular Judaism in Israel / Charles Liebman and Yaacov Yadgar
Beyond the religious-secular dichotomy: masortim in Israel / Charles Liebman and Yaacov Yadgar
What kind of Jewish state do Israelis want?: the nature and determinants of Israeli attitudes toward secularism and some comparisons with Arab attitudes toward the relationship between religion and politics / Mark Tessler
The construction of 'secular' and 'religious' in modern Hebrew literature / Shachar Pinsker
Jewish identity and secularism in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine / Zvi Gitelman
Judaism, community, and Jewish culture in American life: continuities and transformations / Calvin Goldscheider
Beyond apikorsut: a Judaism for secular Jews / Adam Chalom
The nature and viability of Jewish religious and secular identities / Zvi Gitelman