The Jewish 1960s

An American Sourcebook
Edited by Michael E. Staub
(371 Pages)Publisher: Brandeis University Press , 2004

No American decade during the twentieth century has been so strongly defined by Jewish-led and Jewish-sponsored political activism or so deeply informed and influenced by Jewish culture as the 1960s. Nor has any decade in the last century had more lasting consequences on the contemporary state of America Jewry. The 1960s marked the rise of Jewish pride, witnessed a revitalization of religious communal commitments, and saw the revival of Jewish particularism as a crucial counterpoint to a liberal-left Jewish universalism. In these and other respects, Jews remade themselves as they transformed the nation in this critical period.

The Jewish 1960s introduces a new generation of interested readers to some of the finest essays, speeches, and journalistic accounts by Jewish commentators, spokespersons, prominent rabbis, civil rights and antiwar activists, radical Zionists, feminists, counter-cultural leaders, and their critics from 1960 to the early 1970s. This volume brings together materials from Jews on the right as well as the left and chronicles, among other things, Jewish religious and ethnic renewal, the Jewish stand on civil rights, Jewish liberalism and the origins of Jewish neo-conservatism, American Jews commitments to Israel, Jewish contributions to feminism and the gay and lesbian rights movements, and the evolution of Holocaust consciousness.

Designed for course adoption, this volume contains a general introduction to the period as well as short section introductions to each of the book s thirteen chapters.