American Jewry’s Challenge: Conversations Confronting the Twenty-first Century

Watershed events-including the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, September 11, 2001 and the Iraq war-have created important new challenges for American Jewry. The introductory essay and interviews with 17 prominent American Jews explore these. Major elements of American Jewry’s changing mind-set relate to Israel. Others concern attitudes toward Evangelical Christians and Muslims as well as increased anxiety about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. These, mainly political, challenges are superimposed on the structural problems of American Jewry.