Jewish Continuity in America presents an overview of a life's work by a preeminent scholar and brings new insight to the challenge of American Jewish continuity.

Jews have historically lived within a paradox of faith and fear: faith that they are an eternal people and fear that their generation may be the last. In the United States, the Jewish community has faced to a heightened degree the enduring question of identity and assimilation: How does the Jewish community in this free, open, pluralistic society discover or create factors-both ideological and existential-that make group survival beneficial to the larger society and rewarding to the individual Jew?

Abraham J. Karp's Jewish Continuity in America focuses on the three major sources of American Judaism's continuing vitality: the synagogue, the rabbinate, and Jewish religious pluralism. Particularly illuminating is Karp's examination of the coexistence and unity-in-diversity of American religious Jewry's three divisions-Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative-and of how this Jewish religious pluralism fits into the larger picture of American religious pluralism.

Informing the larger enterprise through sharp and full delineation of discrete endeavors, the essays collected in Jewish Continuity in America-some already acknowledged as classics, some appearing here for the first time-describe creative individual and communal responses to the challenge of Jewish survival. As the title suggests, this book argues that continuity in a free and open society demands a high order of creativity, a creativity that, to be viable, must be anchored in institutions wholly pledged to continuity.

 

Abraham J. Karp is the Philip S. Bernstein Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at The University of Rochester and The Joseph and Rebecca Mitchell Research Professor of American Jewish History and Bibliography at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

"Abraham J. Karp demonstrates in this volume that the timely theme of Jewish survival and continuity is also a timeless theme, as old as the American Jewish experience itself. American Jewish vitality, he argues, stems from three sources: the synagogue, the rabbinate, and pluralism. This argument, buttressed by essays that are in some cases already classics in the field, merits careful study by anyone interested in American Jewish history and life."

—Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University

"Jewish Continuity in America makes an authoritative and significant contribution to our knowledge of Jewish religious life and institutions in America. The book is written with both mind and heart, and the reader is propelled to read on from page to page, chapter to chapter. There is not a dull page; the book will leave every reader better informed, more reflective, and more concerned."

—Milton R. Konvitz, Cornell Law School

"Abraham J. Karp demonstrates in this volume that the timely theme of Jewish survival and continuity is also a timeless theme, as old as the American Jewish experience itself. American Jewish vitality, he argues, stems from three sources: the synagogue, the rabbinate, and pluralism. This argument, buttressed by essays that are in some cases already classics in the field, merits careful study by anyone interested in American Jewish history and life."

—Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University