The New Jewish Canon

H-Judaic EDITED VOLUME TOC: The New Jewish Canon

Discussion published by Matthew Charlton on Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Academic Studies Press is pleased to announce the publication of The New Jewish Canon, edited by Yehuda Kurtzer & Claire E. Sufrin.

July 2020 | 492 pp. 9781644693612 | $39.95 | Paperback

Summary: The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been a period of mass production and proliferation of Jewish ideas, and have witnessed major changes in Jewish life and stimulated major debates. The New Jewish Canon offers a conceptual roadmap to make sense of such rapid change. With over eighty excerpts from key primary source texts and insightful corresponding essays by leading scholars, on topics of history and memory, Jewish politics and the public square, religion and religiosity, and identities and communities,The New Jewish Canon promises to start conversations from the seminar room to the dinner table.The New Jewish Canon is both text and textbook of the Jewish intellectual and communal zeitgeist for the contemporary period and the recent past, canonizing our most important ideas and debates of the past two generations; and just as importantly, stimulating debate and scholarship about what is yet to come.

About the Editors:

Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and a leading thinker and author on the meaning of Israel to American Jews, on Jewish history and Jewish memory, and on questions of leadership and change in American Jewish life. He is also the author of Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past (Brandeis, 2012).

Dr. Claire E. Sufrin is a scholar of religion specializing in modern Jewish thought and theology. She is Associate Professor of Instruction and Assistant Director of Jewish Studies in the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies at Northwestern University.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments Introduction: “The State of Jewish Ideas: Towards a New Jewish Canon”

I. Jewish Politics and the Public Square

1. Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, 1985 Essay: William Galston

2. George Steiner, “Our Homeland, the Text,” 1985; Judith Butler, “Judith Butler’s Remarks to Brooklyn College on BDS,” 2013 Essay: Julie Cooper

3. Jonathan Woocher, Sacred Survival: The Civil Religion of American Jews, 1986

Citation: Matthew Charlton. EDITED VOLUME TOC: The New Jewish Canon. H-Judaic. 09-29-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/6498345/edited-volume-toc-new-jewish-canon Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Judaic

Essay: Sylvia Fishman

4. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949, 1987; and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2004;Ari Shavit, “Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris,” 2004 and “Lydda, 1948,” 2013 Essay: Daniel Kurtzer

5. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg vs. Meir Kahane, Public Debate at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, 1988 Essay: Shaul Magid

6. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Eliezer Goldman (ed.), Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 1992 Essay: Joshua Shanes

7. Israeli Supreme Court Part 1: Israeli Knesset Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, 1992; Aharon Barak, “A Judge on Judging: The Role of a Supreme Court in a Democracy,” January 2002 Essay: Yigal Mersel

8. Aharon Lichtenstein, “On the Murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin z”l,” 1995 Essay: David Wolkenfeld

9. Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, 1996 Essay: Yehuda Magid

10. Israeli Supreme Court Part 2: The Israeli Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice, Horev v. Minister of Transportation, 1997; The Israeli Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice: Baruch Marzel v. Jerusalem District Police Commander, Mr. Aharon Franco, 2002 Essay: Donniel Hartman

11. Samuel G. Freedman, Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry, 2000 Essay: Noam Pianko

12. Breaking the Silence Testimonies, Founded in 2004 Essay: Sarah Anne Minkin

13. Steven M. Cohen and Jack Wertheimer, “Whatever Happened to the Jewish People?,” 2006 Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer

14. Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, Torat HaMelekh, 2009 Essay: Hillel Ben-Sasson

15. Moshe Halbertal, “The Goldstone Illusion,” 2009 Essay: Elana Stein Hain

16. Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” 2010 Essay: Sara Yael Hirschhorn

17. Daniel Gordis, “When Balance Becomes Betrayal” and Sharon Brous, “Lowering the Bar,” 2012

Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer

18. Matti Friedman, “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth,” 2014 Essay: Rachel Fish

II. History, Memory and Narrative

1. David Hartman, “Auschwitz or Sinai?,” 1982 Essay: Rachel Sabath Beit Halachmi

2. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, 1982 Essay: Alexander Kaye

3. Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 1982 Essay: Benjamin Pollock

4. Robert M. Cover, “The Supreme Court, 1982 Term—Foreword: Nomosand Narrative,” 1983 Essay: Christine Hayes

5. Kahan Commission (Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut), 1983 Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer

6. Amos Oz, In the Land of Israel, 1983 Essay: Wendy Zierler

7. David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History, 1986 Essay: Judah Bernstein

8. Elie Wiesel, Acceptance Speech, on the Occasion of the Award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, 1986 Essay: Claire E. Sufrin

9. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 1986 Essay: Sarah Cushman

10. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, “The Third Great Cycle of Jewish History,” 1987 Essay: Joshua Feigelson

11. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, 1993; Yaffa Eliach, There Once Was a World: A 900- Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok, 1998 Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer

12. Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction,” 1994 Essay: Yehuda Kurtzer

13. Naomi Seidman, “Elie Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage,” 1996 Essay: Erin Leib Smokler

14. Dabru Emet, New York Times, 2000 Essay: Marcie Lenk

15. Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History, 2004 Essay: Marc Dollinger

16. David Weiss Halivni, Breaking the Tablets: Jewish Theology After the Shoah,2007 Essay: Daniel H. Weiss

17. Ruth Wisse, “How Not to Remember and How Not to Forget,” 2008 Essay: Dara Horn

18. Yossi Klein Halevi, Like Dreamers, 2013 Essay: Hannah Kober

III. Religion and Religiosity

1. Joseph Soloveitchik,Halakhic Man, 1983 Essay: Shlomo Zuckier

2. Yehoshua Yeshaya Neuwirth, Shemirath Shabbath Kehilchathah, 1984 Essay: David Bashevkin

3. David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism, 1985 Essay: David Ellenson

4. The Complete Artscroll Siddur, 1984 Essay: David Zvi Kalman

5. Neil Gillman, Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew, 1990; Eugene Borowitz, Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew, 1991 Essay: Michael Marmur

6. Rachel Adler “In Your Blood, Live: Re-visions of a Theological Purity,” 1993 Essay: Gail Labovitz

7. Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet’s Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India, 1994 Essay: Or Rose

8. Avivah Gottleib Zornberg, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire, 1995 Essay: Shira Hecht-Koller

9. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Susannah Heschel (ed.), Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, 1996 Essay: William Plevan

10. Noam Zion and David Dishon, A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah, 1997 Essay: Emily Filler

11. Mendel Shapiro, “Qeri’at HaTorah by Women: A Halakhic Analysis,” 2001 Essay: Tova Hartman

12. Jonathan Sacks, Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, London: Continuum,2002 Essay: Michal Raucher

13. Rav Shagar, Broken Vessels, 2004 Essay: Tomer Persico

14. Arthur Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition, 2010; Daniel Landes, “Hidden Master,” 2010; Arthur Green and Daniel Landes, “God, Torah, and Israel: An Exchange,” 2011 Essay: Samuel Hayim Brody

15. Elie Kaunfer, Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us About Building Vibrant Jewish Communities, 2010 Essay: Shawn Landres and Joshua Avedon

IV. Identities and Communities

1. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Letter to the Jewish Community of Teaneck, 1981 Essay: Jonathan Sarna

2. Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition, 1981 Essay: Rachel Gordan

3. Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, 1981; Alan Lew, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, 2003 Essay: Joshua Ladon

4. Evelyn Torton Beck (ed.),Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, 1982; Susannah Heschel (ed.), On Being a Jewish Feminist, 1983 Essay: Claire E. Sufrin

5. Paul Cowan with Rachel Cowan,Mixed Blessings: Overcoming the Stumbling Blocks in an Interfaith Marriage, 1988 Essay: Samira Mehta

6. Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective, 1990 Essay: Judith Rosenbaum

7. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America, 1991 Essay: Arielle Levites

8. Barry Kosmin, “Highlights of the CJF 1990 National Jewish Population Survey,” 1991; “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” 2013 Essay: Mijal Bitton

9. Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy, 1991; Paula Hyman, “Who is an Educated Jew?” 2002; Vanessa Ochs, “Ten Jewish Sensibilities,” 2003 Essay: Hannah Pressman

10. Yaakov Levado, “Gayness and God: Wrestlings of an Orthodox Rabbi,” 1993 Essay: Zev Farber

11. Leonard Fein, “Smashing Idols and Other Prescriptions for Jewish Continuity,” 1994 Essay: Aryeh Cohen

12. Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America, 2000 Essay: Alan Brill

13. A. B. Yehoshua, “The Meaning of Homeland,” 2006 Essay: James Loeffler

14. Elliot N. Dorff, Daniel S. Nevins, and Avram I. Reisner, “Homosexuality, Human Dignity, and Halakhah: A Combined Responsum for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards,” 2006 Essay: Jane Kanarek

15. Noah Feldman “Orthodox Paradox,” 2007; Jay Lefkowitz, “The Rise of Social Orthodoxy: A Personal Account,” 2014 Essay: Elli Fischer

16. Tamar Biala and Nechama Weingarten-Mintz (eds.), Dirshuni: Midrashei Nashim, 2009 Essay: Sarah Mulhern

17. Leon Wieseltier, “Language, Identity, and the Scandal of American Jewry,” 2011 Essay: Jon Levisohn

18. Ruth Calderon, Inaugural Knesset Speech, “The Heritage of All Israel,” 2013 Essay: Yossi Klein Halevi

19. Rick Jacobs, “The Genesis of Our Future,” 2013 Essay: Dan Friedman

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