Contemporary American Judaism

No longer controlled by a handful of institutional leaders based in remote headquarters and rabbinical seminaries, American Judaism is being transformed by the spiritual decisions of tens of thousands of Jews living all over the United States. A pulpit rabbi and himself an American Jew, Dana Evan Kaplan follows this religious individualism from its postwar suburban roots to the hippie revolution of the 1960s and the multiple postmodern identities of today. From Hebrew tattooing to Jewish Buddhist meditation, Kaplan describes the remaking of historical tradition in ways that channel multiple ethnic and national identities.

While pessimists worry about the vanishing American Jew, Kaplan focuses on creative responses to contemporary spiritual trends that have made a Jewish religious renaissance possible. He believes that the reorientation of American Judaism has been a "bottom up" process, resisted by elites who have reluctantly responded to the demands of the "spiritual marketplace." The American Jewish denominational structure is therefore weakening at the same time that religious experimentation is rising, leading to the innovative approaches supplanting existing institutions. The result is an exciting transformation of what it means to be a religious American Jew in the twenty-first century.

Dana Evan Kaplan is the rabbi of Temple B'nai Israel in Albany, Georgia, and adjunct professor of Jewish Studies at Gratz College. His books include The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism, American Reform Judaism: An Introduction, Platforms and Prayer Books: Theological and Liturgical Perspectives on Reform Judaismand Contemporary Debates on Reform Judaism: Conflicting Visions. Many of his publications can be found at www.DanaKaplan.com.

Kaplan's book is exhaustive in detail and broad in scope, touching on the fundamental challenges to contemporary Judaism in America from intermarriage, conversion, and the end of religious denominations to questions of ethnicity, spirituality, Israel, and the Holocaust.

Kaplan's book is an excellent starting point for anyone seeking to understand the current state of American Judaism.

Kaplan's gallery of American-inflected Jewish innovators is entertaining and... illuminating.

Kaplan is clearly breaking new ground and writing a new narrative for twenty-first-century American Judaism.

David Geffen:
A keen observer of the faith of his people in the U.S., Kaplan does not hesitate to underline the fact that 'the American environment has impacted Judaism.'

[An] insightful description of radical changes in American Judaism.

[Kaplan] skillfully portrays the wide variety of untraditional, often idiosyncratic ways of 'doing Jewish.

Harvey Cox, author of When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today:
Spread around the world, interacting with diverse centers of communications, politics, and culture, the Jewish community is changing quickly and often in bewildering ways. But Judaism also remains a bellwether for what may be expected in other faiths as well. Dana Evan Kaplan has his finger on these changes and writes about them fairly and eloquently. You don't have to be Jewish to savor this book and learn from it.

Yaakov Ariel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
Contemporary American Judaism is a pioneering and exciting study. Dana Evan Kaplan should be highly commended for facing boldly and honestly the new realities of American Jewish life.

Chaim I. Waxman, Rutgers University:
A tour de force that covers every important development in each of the branches of American Judaism, and Kaplan does it with a deep sensitivity to the issues involved.

Nathan Glazer, Harvard University:
There is no better guide to the remarkable changes in American Jewish religion.