In American Talmud, Ezra Cappell redefines the genre of Jewish American fiction and places it squarely within the larger context of American literature. Cappell departs from the conventional approach of defining Jewish American authors solely in terms of their ethnic origins and sociological constructs, and instead contextualizes their fiction within the theological heritage of Jewish culture. By deliberately emphasizing historical and ethnographic links to religions, religious texts, and traditions, Cappell demonstrates that twentieth-century and contemporary Jewish American fiction writers have been codifying a new Talmud, an American Talmud, and argues that the literary production of Jews in America might be seen as one more stage of rabbinic commentary on the scriptural inheritance of the Jewish people.

Containing the proceedings of the convention...

Issues for 1900/1901- include report of the 12th- year of the Jewish Publication Society of America, 1890-1900- (issued also separately in some years); issues for 1908/1909- include Report of the American Jewish Committee for 1906/1908- (issued also separately in some years); issues for include American Jewish Committee. Proceedings of the annual meeting.

Identity Papers argues that contemporary Jewish American literature revises our understanding of Jewishness and Jewish difference. Moving beyond the reductive labeling of texts and authors as "too Jewish" or "not Jewish enough," and focusing instead on narratives that portray Jewish regeneration through feminist Orthodoxy, queerness, off-whiteness, and intermarriage, Helene Meyers resists a lachrymose view of contemporary Jewish American life. She argues that such gendered, sexed, and raced debates about Jewish identity become opportunities rather than crises, signs of creative potential rather than symptoms of assimilation and deracination. Thus, feminist debates within Orthodoxy are allied to Jewish continuity by Rebecca Goldstein, Allegra Goodman, and Tova Mirvis; the geography of Jewish identity is racialized by Alfred Uhry, Tony Kushner, and Philip Roth; and the works of Jyl Lynn Felman, Judith Katz, Lev Raphael, and Michael Lowenthal queer the Jewish family as they reveal homophobia to be an abomination. Even as Identity Papers expands Jewish literary horizons and offers much-needed alternatives to the culture wars between liberal and traditional Jews, it argues that Jewish difference productively troubles dominant narratives of feminist, queer, and whiteness studies. Meyers demonstrates that the evolving Jewish American literary renaissance is anything but provincial; rather, it is engaged with categories of difference central to contemporary academic discourses and our national life.

The first full-scale history of the creation, growth, and ultimate decline of the dominant twentieth-century model for American Jewish education

This book brings together six articles the author has published in recent years on the development of the Orthodox Jewish community in Cleveland, Ohio. While a number of scholars have ably presented important parts of the history of Jewish Orthodoxy in Cleveland, Ohio, this book is a first attempt to deal comprehensively with the story of Cleveland Orthodox Judaism. Chapters one and two, taken together, present a connected narrative history of the evolution of the Jewish Orthodox community in Cleveland, Ohio from its beginnings to the early twenty-first century. The succeeding chapters present in greater detail persons and institutions of great importance to the historical development of the Orthodox community.