1Hebrew Theological College7135 N. Carpenter RoadSkokie,.docx

1
Hebrew Theological College
7135 N. Carpenter Road
Skokie, Illinois 60077
(847) 982-2500 ext. 143
Fall 2017
American Jewish History
History 207
T/H 3:45-5:15
Zev Eleff
[email protected]
Office Hours: By appointment
Course Overview:
This course is a survey of the American Jewish experience from
the Colonial Era to contemporary times. The course examines
this topic from religious, cultural and social viewpoints. It also
studies the nature of “American exceptionalism” in modern
Jewish history, as Jews in the United States have reached high
social and economic stations without severe threat of
antisemitism. Accordingly, the course pays close attention to
the relationship between Jews and their American environs and
the native cultural of religious pluralism that has enabled the
Jewish community in the New World.
Course Objectives:
As a survey, this course is intended to provide students with a
breadth of knowledge on the subject of American Jewish
history. Students are encouraged to explore historical episodes
and concepts in further detail, and are welcome to engage the
instructor to identify essential bibliographical material.

Students enrolled in this course are expected to evaluate the
primary and secondary sources made available to them and
analyze them to deduce important themes. Students will be
trained and examined on their analysis, as well as their mastery
of basic historical facts brought to bear in this course.
Attendance and Participation:
1. Students are required to attend, be prepared for, and actively
participate in all classes.
2. Students are required to attend all classes. In the case of
absences, a student must communicate with instructor
immediately via e-mail.
3. Students absent for over 25% of scheduled classes will have
their final grade lowered by one letter grade.
4. Students absent for over 50% of scheduled classes will
receive an F (failure) in the course.
Incomplete Policy-Crisis Management:
This is available only to students with extreme and/or
extenuating circumstances who
1. Have completed 50% or more of the required course work.
2. Have a grade of “C” or better on completed work.
3. Request the “Incomplete” prior to the week of final
examinations of the semester.
4. Complete and submit an “Incomplete Contract” prior to final
examinations.
5. The “Incomplete Contract” must be signed by the course
instructor and the Dean. Non-compliance by agreed date will
result in a permanent grade of FI (Failure/Incomplete).
Academic Integrity
Hebrew Theological College is committed to providing an
academic community and learning environment based on honest
inquiry and pursuit of knowledge that fosters commitment and
adherence to Judaic tenets. The faculty and administration of
Hebrew Theological College have specified the following acts
as serious violations of personal honesty and academic ideals

that jeopardize the quality of education within a Torah
environment:
· Submitting as one’s own, material copied from a published
source.
· Submitting as one’s own, another person’s unpublished work
or examination material.
· Submitting as one’s own, a rewritten or paraphrased version of
another person’s work.
· Purchasing, acquiring, and using for course credit a pre-
written paper.
· Allowing another to write or research a paper for one’s own
benefit.
· Copying electronic or printed media for one’s own use without
permission or licensing from appropriate publishers.
· Submitting the same paper for more than one course without
explicit permission from the instructor(s).
More information about HTC’s Academic Integrity policy can
be found on page 15 of the Student Handbook.
Accommodations:
Any student, who, because of a disability, may require some
special arrangements in order to meet course requirements
should contact me as soon as possible to make necessary
accommodations and share appropriate documentation from the
Office of Special Services, provided by HTC’s Disabilities
Officer, Dr. Richard Aronoff.
Accommodations will be made, but the professor must be aware
of your needs in order to make proper accommodations. It is the
responsibility of the student to make these needs known in a
timely fashion and to provide documentation prior to the
beginning of any semester in which accommodations are
desired.

Technology Policy:
HTC bans the use of cell phones, computers and other devices
for texting, Web browsing or other non-class related activities
during class. This behavior may result in expulsion from the
course after a single warning. Electronic devices may not be
used during exams, and their use in class is subject to faculty
discretion and permission. Only students with documented
disabilities who must use such devices may request exemptions
as documented.
HTC Resources:
Hebrew Theological College is committed to providing all of
our students with various resources and support for academic
success. Tutorial services through the Writing Center and Math
Center provide assistance in a variety of disciplines. Students
should make arrangements to avail themselves of these services.
Librarians in the Saul Silber Memorial Library are available to
assist students with all their research needs. Students can find
information about the library services and resources at
http://htclibrary.weebly.com.
Course Requirements:
All texts for the course are available to students via the course’s
Blackboard website.
Evaluation and Grading Procedures:
1. Brief analysis paper of 2-3 pages (20%)
2. Midterm (30%)
3. Research paper of 7-10 pages and final (50%)
4. Attendance and participation will determine the grade, up or
down, for students who are “on the line” between two grades
Assignments
September 5, 2017:
What of American Jewish History?

The Three Periods of American Jewish History
PRIMARY READING: Jacob Rader Marcus, To Count a People:
American Jewish Population Data, 1585-1984, 237-43; Zevi
Hirsch Masliansky, Sermons, 201-5.
SECONDARY READING: Jacob Rader Marcus, “The
Periodization of American Jewish History,” Publications of the
American Jewish Historical Society 47 (March 1958): 125-33;
Hasia R. Diner, A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration,
1820-1880, 1-5.
The Cult of Synthesis
PRIMARY READING: Henry W. Schneeberger, Sermon
delivered on November 29, 1911, Chizuk Amuno Congregation
Archives, Baltimore, Maryland.
SECONDARY READING: Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Cult of
Synthesis in American Jewish Culture,” Jewish Social Studies 5
(Autumn 1998-Winter 1999): 52-79.
September 12, 2017:
First Settlements
Coming to America
PRIMARY READING: Gary Phillip Zola and Marc Dollinger,
American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader,10-13.
SECONDARY READING: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Between
Amsterdam and New Amsterdam: The Place of Curacao and the
Caribbean in Early Modern Jewish History,” American Jewish
History 72 (December 1982): 172-92; Paul Finkelman, “‘A Land
That Needs People for Its Increase: How the Jews Won the
Right to Remain in New Netherlands,” in New Essays in

American Jewish History, eds. Pamela S. Nadell, Jonathan D.
Sarna and Lance J. Sussman, 19-50; Yosef Kaplan, “The
Sephardim in North-Western Europe and the New World,” in
The Sephardi Legacy vol. II, ed. Haim Beinart, 240-87.
American Judaism, Colonial-Style
PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish
History, 18-19.
SECONDARY READING: Jacob R. Marcus, “The American
Colonial Jew: A Study in Acculturation,” in Tradition and
Change in Jewish Experience, ed. A. Leland Jamison,75-83;
Laura Leibman, “Sephardic Sacred Space in Colonial America,”
Jewish History 25 (2011): 13-41; Jonathan D. Sarna, “The
Mystical World of Colonial American Jews,” in Mediating
Modernity: Challenges and Trends in the Jewish Encounter with
the Modern World, eds. Lauren B. Strauss and Michael Brenner,
185-94.
September 19, 2017:
In the Early Republic
The Impact of the Revolution
PRIMARY READING: Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, The
Jews of the United States, 1790-1840, 8-11, 50-55; Morris U.
Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews in the United
States, 1654-1875, 52-53, 168-71; Blau and Baron, The Jews of
the United States, 546-48; Zola and Dollinger, American Jewish
History, 61-63, 73-74.
SECONDARY READING: Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Impact of
the American Revolution on American Jews,” Modern Judaism
(May 1981): 149-60; Jonathan D. Sarna, “The American Jewish
Response to Nineteenth-Century Christian Missions,” Journal of

American History 68 (June 1981): 35-51; Edward Eitches,
“Maryland’s ‘Jew Bill,’” American Jewish Historical Quarterly
60 (March 1971): 258-79.
American Jews in a Free-Market Religious Community
PRIMARY READING: Isaac Harby, A Discourse, Delivered in
Charleston, (S.C.) on the 21st of Nov. 1825, before the
Reformed Society of Israelites, for Promoting True Principles of
Judaism According to its Purity and Spirit, on Their First
Anniversary; “The Rebuilding of the Temple,” Daily Courier
(March 20, 1841): 2; Rosenfeld “Rev. Mr. Rosenfeld’s
Address,” The Occident 5 (May 1847): 79; Paul Mendes-Flohr
and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World: A
Documentary History, 514; Raphall Morris J. Raphall, The
Constancy of Israel: A Discourse Delivered before the
Congregation Shearit Israel, Charleston S.C.; Zola and
Dollinger, American Jewish History, 79-82; Blau and Baron,
The Jews of the United States, 549-60, 588-90.
SECONDARY READING:
James William Hagy, This Happy Land: The Jews of Colonial
and Antebellum Charleston, 236-73; Sefton D. Temkin, Isaac
Mayer Wise: Shaping American Judaism, 31-103.
October 17, 2017:
The German Jewish Migration
** Brief analysis paper due
The Newcomers
PRIMARY READING: Abram Vossen Goodman. “A Jewish
Peddler’s Diary.” American Jewish Archives Journal 3 (June
1951): 81-111; Sefton D. Temkin, “Rabbi Max Lilienthal Views

American Jewry in 1847,” in A Bicentennial Festschrift for
Jacob Rader Marcus, ed. Bertram Wallace Korn,589-608;
Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews in the United
States,223-35; Blau and Baron, The Jews of the United States,
803-05.
SECONDARY READING: Avraham Barkai, Branching Out:
German-Jewish Immigration to the United States, 1820-1914,
15-64; Hasia R. Diner, Roads Taken: The Great Jewish
Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the
Way, 51-83.
The Establishment
History, 69, 82-84.
SECONDARY READING:
Bertram W. Korn, “American Jewish Life a Century Ago,”
CCAR Yearbook 59 (1949): 273-302; Lance J. Sussman, Isaac
Leeser and the Making of American Judaism, 179-208; Dianne
Ashton,“The Lessons of the Hebrew Sunday School,” American
Jewish Women’s History, Pamela S. Nadell, 24-42; Cornelia
Wilhelm, The Independent Orders of B’nai B’rith and True
Sisters, 57-114.
October 24, 2017:
The Civil War and the Jews
The “Jew”
History, 94-97, 103-08.
SECONDARY READING: Jonathan D. Sarna, When General

Grant Expelled the Jews, 3-49; Bertram W. Korn, American
Jewry and the Civil War, 156-88.
A Changed Community
PRIMARY READING: Raphall Congress Prayer; “Morris Jacob
Raphall, Chief Rabbi of the New York Jews,” Frank Leslie’s
Illustrated Newspaper (March 3, 1860): 219.
SECONDARY READING: Adam Mendelsohn, “Beyond the
Battlefield: Reevaluating the Legacy of the Civil War for
American Jews,” American Jewish Archives Journal 64 (2012):
83-111.; Naomi W. Cohen, Encounter with Emancipation: The
German Jews in the United States, 109-58.
October 31, 2017:
“A Great Awakening”
Out from Religious Depression
PRIMARY READING: Cyrus Adler, “A Jewish Renaissance,”
American Hebrew (November 9, 1894): 25.
SECONDARY READING: Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Late
Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Awakening,” in Religious
Diversity and American Religious History: Studies in Traditions
and Cultures, eds. Walter H. Conser, Jr. and Sumner B. Twiss,
1-25; Zev Eleff, “Power, Pulpits and Pews: Religious Authority
and the Formation of American Judaism, 1816-1885,” 222-76.
Refurbishing Traditional Judaism in America
History, 153-55; “The Orthodox Convention.” American
Hebrew (June 10, 1898): 172-73; H. Pereira Mendes. “What is
Orthodoxy?” American Hebrew (June 17, 1898): 199-200;
Gotthard Deutsch, Modern Orthodoxy in the Light of Orthodox

Authorities.
SECONDARY READING: Robert E. Fierstein, A Different
Spirit: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1886-
1902, 17-61; Zev Eleff, “American Orthodoxy’s Lukewarm
Embrace of the Hirschian Legacy, 1850-1939,” Tradition 45
(Fall 2012): 35-53; Lance J. Sussman, “The Myth of the Trefa
Banquet: American Culinary Culture and the Radicalization of
Food Policy in American Reform Judaism,” American Jewish
Archives Journal 57 (2005): 29-52.
November 7, 2017:
The Great Migration
** Midterm Exam at the beginning of class
The Economics of Migration
PRIMARY READING: People Walk on Their Heads: Moses
Weinberger’s Jews and Judaism in New York, ed. Jonathan D.
Sarna, 57-83.
SECONDARY READING: Eli Lederhendler, Jewish Immigrants
and American Capitalism, 1880-1920, 1-37; Paula E. Hyman,
“Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City
Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” American Jewish History 70
(September 1980): 91-105. Pamela S. Nadell, “The Journey to
America by Steam: The Jews of Eastern Europe in Transition,”
American Jewish History 71 (December 1981): 269-84.
“Germans and Russians”
PRIMARY READING: The Education of Abraham Cahan, ed.
Leon Stein, 395-96; “Will he be an Autocrat?,” New York
Herald (July 21, 1888): 3.
SECONDARY READING: Moses Rischin, The Promised City:
New York’s Jews, 1870-1914, 95-111; Cohen, Encounter with

Emancipation, 299-44; Abraham J. Karp, “The Making of
Americans: German-Russian Jewish Confrontations in the
Process of Americanization,” in Contemporary Jewry: Studies in
Honor of Moshe Davis, ed. Geoffrey Wigoder, 45-64.
November 14, 2017:
The Pangs of Acculturation
Eastern European Culture in America
History, 131-40.
SECONDARY READING: Tony Michels, A Fire in Their
Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York, 69-124; Jeffrey
Shandler, “Sanctification of the Brand Name: The Marketing of
Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt,” in Chosen Capital: The Jewish
Encounter with American Capitalism, ed. Rebecca Kobrin,255-
71; Zev Eleff, “A Far-Flung Fraternity in a Fertile Desert: The
Emergence of Rabbinic Scholarship in America, 1887-1926,”
Modern Judaism 34 (October 2014): 353-369.
The Methods of Americanization
History, 172-73, 177-80.
SECONDARY READING: Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant
Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939,
49-80; Stephan F. Brumberg, Going to America, Going to
School: The Jewish Immigrant Public School Encounter in
Turn-of-the-Century New York City, 52-94.
November 21, 2017:
The Great War and Protestant America
** Proposals for research paper is due at the beginning of class

“Illegal” Jews
PRIMARY READING: “An Interview Between Hon. Lincoln C.
Andrews and Rabbi Simon Glazer,” November 12, 1925, Box 1,
Folder 3, MS-269, AJA; Eliezer Ladzinsky. “She’elah Bi-
Zmanah.” Hedenu 1 (June 25, 1926): 2.
SECONDARY READING: Marni Davis, Jews and Booze:
Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition, 104-64; Libby
Garland, After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal
Immigration to the United States, 1921-1965, 89-117.
At Home in America?
History, 203, 217-20, 229-30.
SECONDARY READING: Zev Eleff, “The Baptism of Four
Little Roxbury Girls and Jewish Angst in America’s Religious
Marketplace during the Interwar Period,” American Jewish
Archives Journal 65 (2013): 70-91; Leonard Dinnerstein, The
Leo Frank Case, 36-76; Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews:
The Mass Production of Hate, 192-240 Beth S. Wenger,
“Budgets, Boycotts, and Babies: Jewish Women in Great
Depression” in American Jewish Women’s History, ed. Pamela
S. Nadell, 185-200.
December 5, 2017:
Jewish “Movements”
American Zionism
PRIMARY READING: Zola and Dollinger, 168-69, 211-16,
322-26.
SECONDARY READING: Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews
and the Zionist Idea, 1-69; Ben Halpern, “The Americanization

of Zionism, 1880-1930,” American Jewish History 69
(September 1979): 15-33.
Conservative Judaism and the “Parting of the Ways”
PRIMARY READING: Louis Bernstein. “The Emergence of the
English Speaking Orthodox Rabbinate” (PhD diss.), 556.
Emanuel Rackman to Jakob Petuchowski, January 12, 1961,
MS-653, Box 2, Folder 17, American Jewish Archives,
Cincinnati, OH.
SECONDARY READING: Michael R. Cohen, The Birth of
Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter’s Disciples and the
Creation of an American Religious Movement, 101-37; Jeffrey
S. Gurock, From Fluidity to Rigidity: The Religious Worlds of
Conservative and Orthodox Jews in Twentieth-Century America.
December 12, 2017:
The Holocaust
America and the Holocaust
History, 234-35.
SECONDARY READING: Henry L. Feingold, Bearing Witness:
How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust, 183-
201; David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America
and the Holocaust, 288-307, 311-340.
American Jews and the Holocaust
PRIMARY READING: Eliezer Silver, Address Delivered at the
Opening of the Special Conference of Agudas Israel
SECONDARY READING: Feingold, Bearing Witness: How
America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust, 205-24;
Laurel Leff, “When the Facts Didn’t Speak for Themselves: The

Holocaust in the New York Times, 1939-1945,” The Harvard
International Journal of Press 5 (2000): 52-72.
December 19, 2017:
American Judaism in Post-War America
Suburban Judaism
History, 251, 277-79.
SECONDARY READING: Deborah Dash Moore, To the Golden
Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A.,
53-92; Jack Wertheimer, “The Postwar Suburban Synagogue in
Historical Context,” in Text and Context: Essays in Modern
Jewish History and Historiography in Honor of Ismar Schorsch,
578-605; Albert I. Gordon, Jews in Suburbia, 85-127.
An Orthodox Renaissance
PRIMARY READING: Solomon Roodman, The Vaccine of
Faith, 54-61.
SECONDARY READING: Lawrence Grossman, “American
Orthodoxy in the 1950s: The Lean Years,” in Rav Chesed:
Essays in Honor of Rabbi Dr. Haskel Lookstein, vol I, ed.
Rafael Medoff, 251-69; Zev Eleff, “‘Viva Yeshiva!’: The Tale
of the Mighty Mites and the College Bowl,” American Jewish
History 96 (December 2010): 287-305; Lawrence Grossman,
“The Kippah Comes to America,” Continuity and Change: A
Festschrift in Honor of Irving (Yitz) Greenberg’s 75th Birthday,
eds. Steven T. Katz and Steven Bayme, 129-49.
December 26, 2017:
Protests and Countercultures

Jews and African Americans
History, 373-74.
SECONDARY READING: Wendell E. Pritchett, Brownsville,
Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto,
221-37; Clive Webb, Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and
Black Civil Rights, 169-216.
Feminism, Vietnam, and the “Age of Aquarius”
History, 341-45; “Rav Aaron Decries Civilian Toll in Vietnam;
Questions Recent Stand of Jewish Leaders.” Hamevaser
(September 30, 1968): 1, Shlomo Carlebach, “The Heart of
Tomorrow,” Midstream 16 (May 1970):66-67; Zola and
Dollinger, American Jewish History, 396-99, 427.
SECONDARY READING: Yaakov Ariel, “Hasidism in the Age
of Aquarius: The House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco,
1967-1977,” Religion and American Culture 13 (Summer 2003):
139-65, Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided: Judaism in
Contemporary America, 95-159; Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe’s
Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, 285-300.
January 2, 2018:
** 7-10 page research paper due at the beginning of class
No class lecture
READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS*
Schedule is subject to change.
Papers and Exams
BRIEF ANALYSIS PAPER
Due October 17, 2017

Write a 2-3 page paper answering this question: How did Jews
in the United States grapple with religion and “Americanism” in
the Colonial Era to the early nineteenth century? Use the
material and readings assigned so far in our course, and any
additional reading you decide to undertake, to understand
various views on this question. Write a brief (2-3 double-spaced
pages) analysis offering your view, making sure to support it
with footnoted references to primary and secondary sources. Do
notsummarize the articles or attempt to be all-inclusive. Instead,
focus on shaping a coherent, well-conceptualized argument
supported by your reading. Be sure to use quotation marks
around any direct quotes and to footnote them appropriately.
MIDTERM
At the beginning of class, November 7, 2017
Students will sit for a one-hour midterm exam that will include
two sections. The first section may be comprised with multiple
choice, matching and identification questions. The second
section will include short-essay questions to be answered in one
to three paragraphs.
RESEARCH PAPER
Proposal for the research paper is due November 21, 2017, at
the beginning of class
Students should submit a one-page paper proposal. Topics will
be approved by the instructor, who will also offer comments and
bibliographical suggestions.
Final draft of the research paper is due on January 11, 2018
This 7-10 page research paper is not meant to be a summary of
scholarly opinions. Rather, you are expected to access primary
sources to craft an argument that engages some area of
American Jewish history, even if the topic was not explicitly
covered in the course material or lectures. The paper should
include footnotes for all sources used. Be sure to use quotation
marks around any direct quotes and to footnote them
appropriately.

1Hebrew Theological College7135 N. Carpenter RoadSkokie,.docx

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