The American Jewish Historical Society was founded in 1892 in the wake of the 400th anniversary celebration of Christopher Columbus' voyage to America. Its founding marked the beginning of the serious study of American Jewish history, although not the academic study of the American Jewish experience.
The academic study of American Jewish History can be dated to the career of Jacob Rader Marcus, who founded the American Jewish Archives in 1947 to provide a central location for the documentary evidence of North American Jewry. Marcus also served as President of the American Jewish Historical Society from 1955 to 1958. As part of the American Jewish Tercentenary, Marcus sought to define the parameters of American Jewish history, and as part of an address to the American Jewish Historical Society in 1958, Marcus defined, from an academic standpoint, the four major periods of American Jewish history:
- The Age of the Rise and Decline of Sephardic Jewry, 1654
- 1840
- The Age of the Rise and Dominance of the German Jew and the Challenge
to his Leadership, 1841 - 1920
- The Age of the Advent and Rise of the Eastern European Jew and His Bid
for Hegemony, 1852-1920
- The American period, 1920-
Learn more...Read
the full text of Dr. Marcus' address "The
Periodization of American Jewish History" delivered
to the American Jewish Historical Society on February 15,
1958.
Most recently, Jonathan Sarna, the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of
American Jewish History at Brandeis University, has moved away from the tradition
of specifying periods of American Jewish history towards defining overarching
themes that characterize the American Jewish experience. Sarna views the American
Jewish experience as ripe with potential and fraught with difficulties. He outlines
four broad characteristics and five ongoing challenges that he considers “critical
to any serious effort at understanding what American Jewish life in America,
especially since the Revolution, has been all about.”
Learn more.....Read
the full text of Dr. Sarna’s Introduction to The
American Jewish Experience. |
