American Judaism

By Glazer, Nathan
University of Chicago Press, 1988, Paperback, 244 pp., ISBN: 0226298434, $26.00

First published in 1957, Nathan Glazer's classic book is a historical study of Judaism in America.

It has been described by the New York Times Book Review as "a remarkable story . . . told briefly and clearly by an objective historical mind, yet with a fine combination of sociological insight and religious sensitivity."

Glazer's new introduction describes the drift away from the popular equation of American Judaism with liberalism during the last two decades and considers the threat of divisiveness within American Judaism. Glazer also discusses tensions between American Judaism and Israel as a result of a revivified Orthodoxy and the disillusionment with liberalism.

"American Judaism has been arguably the best known and most used introduction to the study of the Jewish religion in the United States. . . . It is an inordinately clear-sighted work that can be read with much profit to this day." American Jewish History (1987)