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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.

The objective of this research project is to build a sound defense of the hypothesis that Genesis 22, the story of the testing of Abraham, functioned in Persian Period Judah to benefit the systematic socio-religious reforms implemented by Ezra the priestly scribe. It is argued in this dissertation that the “Book of the Law” Ezra read to the Temple community is a version of the Pentateuch, which under Ezra’s care had become the holy writ of Judaism. Based on Ezra’s scribal abilities, priestly status, royal commission to teach God’s Law to the people of the Trans-Euphrates Satrapy, and his impetus to reform the apostate Temple community, it is argued that Ezra is the final redactor of the Book of the Law of Moses. Being deeply immersed in the Pentateuch, it is most likely that Ezra would have used the narrative material in the corpus that would best effect socio-religious reform. It is shown in this dissertation that there could be no better text than Genesis 22 to instill that ideology in the apostate Temple community. It is further postulated that Genesis 22 would have been used at that time to instill in the apostate members of that community a sense of reverence for God, obedience to the tenets of the Book of the Law, which overwhelmingly advocates a lifestyle of socio-religious separateness. It is also argued that embracing that ideology was paramount to the survival of the Temple community as a distinct religious entity in the Persian Empire, as well as to regaining their autonomy over the Land. A redaction critical analysis, an examination of key words and phrases, a consideration of separateness as the ideology of the postexilic period, and a study on cultic reform in Ancient Israel are used to support the argument that Genesis 22 was used to impact the wayward fifth-century Jews. Furthermore, it is shown that divine testing, the fear of God, covenant, and socio-religious separateness expressed in the Abraham cycle (all of which culminate in Genesis 22) are the main concerns of Ezra, making the narrative an indispensable didactic in the reform and indoctrination of the apostate elders, priests and Levites of the Jerusalem Temple community. It is shown that Abraham’s demonstration of utter reverence and radical obedience to God’s directives would have best set the standard of the God fearing Jew at that time. Having apparently lost their identity as the people of Yahweh, whose original vocation it was to bless the nations with the revelation of the one true God of creation and his Law, it has been argued in this dissertation that Genesis 22 would have been used in the effort to restore that identity to the Temple community in the fifth-century reform movement.