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American Judaism: The Perspective of History from Dr. David E. Kaufman
A 9 Session Class with Professor David Kaufman
$54 for Members, $100 for non-members
A survey of an oft-neglected area of American Jewish history (Dr. Kaufman’s primary field)–the history of American Judaism. While a few leading scholars such as Jonathan Sarna and Jeffrey Gurock have focused on the religious dimension of the American Jewish experience, most of the field tends to concentrate on the secular sphere. Why this might be will be discussed in our first class and then subsequent classes will cover the evolution of American Jewish religion from its colonial origins to the current day. Highlighting the dialectic between ‘elite’ and ‘folk’ religion throughout, we will examine four elements of American Judaism in some greater detail: 1) the Synagogue, 2) the Rabbi, 3) Religious ideology, and 4) Denominational differentiation. Other topics may include: Judaism and social justice, organizational life, home practice, women’s roles, education and youth. As always the case in historical study, exploring the ‘foreign country’ of the past may enable us to better comprehend our present reality.
Instructor Bio: Dr. David E.Kaufman was raised in a Conservative home in Brooklyn NY and attended Cultural Zionist Hebrew day school and Modern Orthodox high school. After majoring in Hebrew Language/Literature at Columbia College, he completed a Masters of Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. At Brandeis University he did further graduate work in the Dept. of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and earned his PhD in American Jewish History. His dissertation on the history of the American ‘synagogue-center’ became his first book, Shul with a Pool (University Press of New England, 1999). He subsequently spent a decade on the faculty of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, where he left as a tenured professor to join the Religion Dept. of Hofstra University. Today Dr. Kaufman lives on the Upper West Side and works as an independent scholar, currently working on a biography of the iconic figure of social justice Judaism, SAJ’s own Ruth Messinger.