American Judaism Workshops

Instructor: Leora Batnitzky
Stipend: $750 (NYC area) and $1500 (non-NYC area)

About the Seminar 

Most courses on modern Jewish philosophy become courses on the tension, in 19^th-century Germany, between the liberal, Protestant understanding of religion as the private faith of the heart and the traditional understanding of Judaism as the practices defining the daily lives of the Jewish community. In America, Jews have found a country in which religious communities flourish and in which Jews are more than merely tolerated. Jewish philosophy in America has therefore been characterized by a focus on other problems: the crisis of meaning caused by modernity and the possibility of assimilation.

With Leora Batnitzky, professor at Princeton and the author of How Judaism Became a Religion, we will explore alternative accounts of the role of Judaism and the Jewish people in the modern world, and the purpose of Jewish existence in 20^th-century America. Special attention will be paid to the ideas of philosophers Leo Strauss, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Mordecai Kaplan.

American Ideas Papers

The American Judaism Workshops are meant to generate practical ideas to strengthen American Jewry, with participants leading the way. Each workshop participant will be asked to prepare and present his or her own concrete plan to address some of the great challenges and opportunities of American Jewish life. What can be done to secure the moral, intellectual, spiritual, political, religious, or demographic vitality of the Jewish people in America? What is your best idea?