Our Golden Age: American Judaism, In Transition

Annual Robbins Collection Lecture in Jewish Law, Thought, and Identity

American Judaism is at an inflection point between the successes of the past and the anxieties of the future. The political, economic, and ideological conditions of postwar liberalism in the 20th century enabled many Jews to flourish in America, and produced a coherent American Judaism that intertwined American and Jewish values. Our changing world is testing this vitality and coherence and forcing essential questions: Are liberalism, American Jewish values, and Zionism compatible? How does American Judaism respond to the growing threats of polarization and hyper-partisanship? Can “the Jewish community” survive as a collective enterprise? Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, will consider the calculations that produced the American Judaism that we have inherited, and offer a new framework for how American Judaism might continue to thrive into the future.

Yehuda Kurtzer, President, Shalom Hartman Institute