35: American Judaism with Jonathan Sarna

Jewish History Matters

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We’re pleased to welcome Jonathan Sarna to the podcast to discuss American Judaism: A History, which recently was published in a second, revised edition. Listen in for a wide ranging conversation about American Jewish history in big terms, about Jonathan’s work at large and the book American Judaism in particular. As we discuss in the episode, American Judaism is one of a series of books which have been published in recent years that has tried to synthesize American Jewish history, so we will look closely at how the landscape of American Jewish historical studies has developed, how we tell the history of America’s Jews, and why it matters.

Jonathan Sarna is University Professor and the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University’s Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, and he also serves as the Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies there.He is one of the leading scholars of American Jewish history and we are very excited to share this conversation with him.

• Purchase American Judaism: A History (second edition) on Amazon
• Other books of Jonathan’s we discuss or mention in the episode include:
  • Lincoln and the Jews: A History (2015)
  • When General Grant Expelled the Jews (2016)
  • Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of Mordecai Noah (1981)
• Also see the 2003 essay, which we discuss, “Jews in the New Millennium“