Jack Wertheimer is professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary. His book Jewish Giving: Philanthropy and the Shaping of American Jewish Life is due to appear in mid-2025.
Monthly Essay ·
In response to crises in Israel and at home, American Jews mobilized to raise vast sums. But why was the community so unprepared? And did it rise to the occasion?
Editor's Pick ·
The great Jewish sort.
Editor's Pick ·
We are witnessing the mass abandonment of the twin pillars that supported Jewish communal life.
Editor's Pick ·
Castigating Jews as privileged and, under the doctrine of “equity,” striving to subject them to quotas.
Observation ·
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Response ·
My thanks to Andrew T. Walker, Eli Steinberg, and Josh Beraha for joining the conversation about synagogue life during and after the pandemic. Each in his own way has broadened and enriched the disc...
Monthly Essay ·
It's been a year since most American synagogues closed their doors. Will the practices they adopted to survive undermine their prospects when the pandemic ends?
Editor's Pick ·
Enrollment in non-Orthodox schools has increased.
Observation ·
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Observation ·
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Observation ·
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Observation ·
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Response ·
My thanks to Lawrence A. Hoffman, Elliot Cosgrove, and Christine Rosen for their thoughtful responses to my essay, “ The New High Holy Days .” My comments here proceed in reverse order of the response...
Monthly Essay ·
What happens when, once a year, the urge to accommodate every consumer fashion meets massive Jewish cultural illiteracy?
Response ·
“The problems begin at home, and so do the solutions,” concludes Elliott Abrams in his trenchant analysis of why growing numbers of American Jews are drifting apart from Israel. He most certainly is c...
Observation ·
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Response ·
We thank Daniel Smokler, Jonathan Sarna, Riv-Ellen Prell, and Chip Edelsberg and Jason Edelstein for their responses to our essay, “The Pew Survey Reanalyzed,” and for the opportunity they have given...
Monthly Essay ·
Last year’s survey of American Jews brought dire news—rising intermarriage, falling birthrates, dwindling congregations. Our reanalysis confirms the message, and complicates it.
Response ·
My thanks to Professors Samuel Heilman , Sylvia Barack Fishman , and Adam Ferziger , and to Rabbis Asher Lopatin and Barry Freundel , for contributing richly to this conversation about the curr...
Monthly Essay ·
The culture wars have come to the Modern Orthodox movement. Is a schism on the horizon?
Editor's Pick ·
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Response ·
In their clear-eyed acknowledgment of the dangers posed by intermarriage to Jewish collective life in the United States, all five of my respondents have courageously identified themselves with a poin...
Monthly Essay ·
The battle is over; or so we’re told. A half-century after the rate of intermarriage in the US began to skyrocket, the Jewish community appears to have resigned itself to the inevitable. But to declar...
