Grants Awarded for Dissertations on Jewish Studies Topics, 2007-08

Rachel Gordan, Harvard University
The Emergence of a Postwar American-Jewish Religious Identity

In much the way that Americans expressed sudden interest in Islam after 9/11, the post-Holocaust years witnessed newfound curiosity about Judaism among Americans. Rachel Gordan’s project explores how American Jews responded to this curiosity by creating portraits of themselves in a variety of media and, in so doing, fashioned a new American-Jewish religious identity. In conducting this research, Gordan will consult yearbooks, scrapbooks, sermons, journals, and other writings found in major American Jewish institutions.

The self-presentations created by Jewish leaders and organizations simultaneously sought to preserve a “Jewish heritage” and to teach Americans that Judaism was very much in harmony with American values. The transformation of Judaism into an “American religion” involved applying the grammar of religion, as defined by American Protestants, to Judaism; Jewish leaders, for instance, sometimes described their religion by using terms such as church, catechism, sin, salvation, taken from the vocabulary of Christianity. But the fit was never perfect. Jews had always understood Judaism as embracing nationalist and cultural, in addition to religious, dimensions, and most Jewish leaders did not attempt to mask these aspects of Judaism, even though they were ill-suited to the American mold of religion.