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This project explores how and why an Americanized form of Zionism became an effective movement in American Jewish life. In the quest for a just and lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, most scholarly attention has been focused on the state (and people) of Israel and the people of Palestine, and their efforts to resolve the conflict that has held them in its grip over the past century. As a result, we have focused too little attention on the role of support for U.S. nationalism in the American Jewish community in sustaining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I argue likewise that a critical juncture in this process occurred in the early twentieth century, as the United States emerged as an international power. American Jewish support for Zionism overlaps in many ways with Progressivism. Many of the early leaders of Americanized Zionism, such as Horace M. Kallen and Justice Louis Brandeis, began their careers as Progressive reformers and brought their ideas about social and political action with them into the Zionist movement. Brandeis in particular played a critical role in making Zionism acceptable to American Jews, in no small part by asserting that the Zionism he advocated was required no commitment to emigration. As this Americanized version of Zionism has become normalized in American Jewish life, the principle of Jewish sovereignty has become widely understood among American Jews to be an essential guarantor of Jewish safety. To understand the roots and implications of this stance, I explore the genealogy of the idea of sovereignty, as well as the binary opposition of “Arabs” and “Jews” in Euro-American thought. Americanized Zionism, I conclude, is less a product of Jewish ethnicity or religion than enactment of a commitment to U.S. nationalism as a fundamental aspect of American Jewish identity. / Religion

This study examines the problem of ethnic suffering and moral evil in Black Judaism. Black Judaism has been traditionally studied along anthropological and sociological lines, as a result, the core beliefs and theological issues which animate the faith tradition have not been the subject of critical study. This dissertation uses an African-American centered theoretical perspective and a black theology methodological approach to produce an autoethnography of my experiences living as a member of the Hebrew Israelite community. This study suggests that Black Judaism is best understood through an examination of the problem of black theodicy meaning the belief in an omnipotent and benevolent deity while acknowledging the historical oppression of African Americans. Black Judaism articulates a belief in black theodicy which asserts that African Americans are victims of divine punishment and must "repent" in order to experience liberation from ethnic suffering and moral evil in the form of anti-Black racism and white supremacy. This belief in deserved punishment has led Black Judaism into a state of mis-religion. By engaging in the process of gnosiological conversion I will identify the oppressive features of Black Judaism and offer corrective measures. Finally, this dissertation will discuss ways in which Black Judaism can conceive of liberation without the need for appeals to redemptive suffering. Concomitantly I will discuss the articulation of a Hebrew Israelite ethno-religious identity which is not predicated on the belief of redemptive suffering. Instead, I propose the basis for a restructuring of the core beliefs of Black Judaism based on humanocentric theism. / African American Studies

This dissertation explores the idea of the 1970s as a critical turning point for the representation of young Jewish women in American popular culture, specifically considering examples from popular literature, popular film, television, and comedy that undermine the validity of midcentury conceptions of the Jewish-American Princess (JAP) or Jewish Ugly Duckling. The introduction and first chapter establish the historical context of how stereotypes of Jewish women—including the JAP—came to be used as a means of mitigating assimilation-related anxieties, especially in light of the post-WWII Jewish ascent into the white suburban middle class. The dissertation then transitions into a deeper investigation of female-driven responses to these archetypes. With the rise of the contemporary Feminism movement, the sexual revolution, the Jewish New Wave of filmmaking, and the shift in emphasis from assimilation to multiculturalism within the American social consciousness, the 1970s provided a platform for Jewish female authors, entertainers, and filmmakers to directly respond to and reconceive the stereotypes of Jewish women honed during the midcentury period. The second, third, and fourth chapters each tackle a different facet of popular culture, looking specifically at how popular literature, film, television, and comedy produced by Jewish women confirmed, complicated, and challenged stereotypes of Jewish women, effectively shifting the cultural paradigm away from the JAP and towards a new understanding of Jewish female identity that undermined existing archetypes. In this way, the dissertation argues that Jewish female-driven popular literature, film, television, and comedy during this time period acted as a bridge between the more one-dimensional, often male-driven midcentury conceptions of the JAP and the more complex, nuanced images of young Jewish women in contemporary popular culture. Simply put, while the novels, films, and series that are explored here all draw from the hegemonic stereotypes of young Jewish women established in the 1950s and 1960s, they also articulate something new about Jewish women in their privileging of the Jewish woman’s voice, their re-conception of Jewish beauty, and their questioning of gender norms, and thus can be seen as the natural predecessors of modern popular cultural depictions of Jewish women.

2024 / This dissertation explores how American Jews who are both deeply engaged with rabbinic tradition and committed to liberal ideals relate to different forms of cultural and religious authority. It is based on participant observation, interviews, and an ethnographic survey that I conducted in a socially liberal, traditionally observant Jewish congregation called Minyan Kol Rinah. Members of this congregation took for granted many of the assumptions of contemporary cultural liberalism, expressed especially in progressive social values and a humanistic ethos. Against this background, they engaged self-consciously with the rabbinic discursive tradition. Most chose to obligate themselves to Jewish law (halakha), which they encountered not as fixed custom but as a dynamic, contested jurisprudential system. I argue that despite its traditionalism, Minyan Kol Rinah's religious culture is part of a broader phenomenon of religious liberalism in the United States. Minyan Kol Rinah was a partnership minyan, a 21st century innovation which allows more participation in public worship by women than conventional Orthodox synagogues. Minyan Kol Rinah bridged the Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities, and should be considered part of a “liberal observant” Jewish religious network that crosses denominational boundaries. This study uncovers the complex ways Jewish law functions in lived observant practice. It explores congregants’ pragmatic negotiations with a complex variety of sources of authority, including texts, public rabbinic conversations, rabbinic advisors, social models, and internalized moral commitments. I argue that liberal observant Jews typically experience Jewish law as a reified “external authority” which is partly independent of the rulings of contemporary rabbis. Kol Rinah participants were both social and theological liberals. Humanism, that is, the ethos that prioritizes worldly human welfare and autonomy, was a common thread of their social and theological liberalism. In religious cosmology, humanism appeared in the way participants insisted on respect for individual choices, conceived of ethics and social justice as the essence of religion, and approached Jewish scripture and symbols from a historicist, relatively disenchanted perspective. Congregants engaged deeply with rabbinic tradition through liberal frameworks, showing that “liberal” and “traditional” are not opposites. This study contributes an analysis of how different forms of authority, including religious law, work in practice in the lives of laypeople. It also shows the analytic importance of considering different modes of cultural authority, such as the difference between codified teachings and taken for granted “common sense.” Doing so helps us understand the complex ways people draw on and combine multiple sources of authority as they construct their religious lives.