I can’t recall a roundtable that surprised me quite as much as the one below. Brought together was what seemed to be a group different in terms of experience, background, even geography (three in the U.S., one in Israel, one in Poland), and yet when asked about the role of Israel in the identity of Jewish young people today, the participants responded with an all but resounding unanimity.

Israel has been for so many of my generation as essential to our Jewish lives as ether, a preoccupation so keen, so inspiring, often so exasperating that it was unavoidable and no less so for those, like myself, who have lived outside its borders. Judging from our roundtable, it seems that the next generation of Jews — including those actively engaged in Jewish life — do not experience Israel as a formative, crucial factor. While young Orthodox Jews, on the whole, continue to embrace Israel fervently and with little equivocation, they stand out as the exceptions. These impressions startled me, and will no doubt surprise some of you, too.

What this will mean remains unclear — perhaps it is a byproduct of the geographical distance, or perhaps less knowledge of foreign affairs that is so much a part of our collective lives as Americans. Perhaps, too, this is a byproduct of an Israel dominated for much of the last quarter century by politics so different from that familiar to most young American Jews. Whatever these findings mean, it seems clear that the discussion below is intriguing, and well worth pondering. —Susan   BerrinNicole Greninger is a fifth-year rabbinic and education student at HUC in New York. Gosia Szymanska is managing director of Beit Warszawa in Warsaw, Poland. Beit Warszawa, a Jewish cultural association and progressive congregation, is part of the revival of Jewish life in Poland. Ari Y. Kelman is assistant professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis. His research revolves around mass media, popular culture, and religion. Along with Steven M. Cohen, he published “Beyond Distancing,” a report charting the increasing rates of alienation of American Jews from Israel. Shaul Magid is the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University and an associate professor in the department of religious studies. His primary areas of study include Jewish mysticism and Diaspora studies. Tova Serkin, executive director of Kol Dor, has been living in Israel for the past few years. As a platform for connecting Jewish leaders and activists ages 25 to 45 from around the world, Kol Dor works to strengthen the Jewish people by addressing issues such as the role of Israel in modern Jewish identity.

Susan Berrin: In today’s Jewish world, what are the assumptions about the relationship of Jews to ideas, issues, and affinities in terms of mapping the place of cultural production and the heart of Jewish life? Is there a center and periphery or peripheries, or is that a retrogressive notion?

Ari Y. Kelman: No, there isn’t a center — because of global travel and the role of digital communication. But if there is a place where most of the Jewish intellectual/cultural production happens, it’s probably in New York.

Nicole Greninger: I think there are many centers, places that host the most active Jewish life: New York, Israel, L.A., maybe London.

Shaul Magid: Though there are still Jews living in many parts of the world, the Diaspora has basically congealed into one general location — the U.S. When there were very vibrant Jewish communities in different parts of the world, the cultural Zionist program purported that Israel would be the spiritual center and refuge for all Jews subject to persecution. But since the Diaspora has really become one large vibrant location where there isn’t much persecution, oppression, or overt antisemitism, the notion that Israel would provide the center is antiquated. In a sense, there are two centers and other smaller communities — there are actually two distinct civilizations: an Israeli Jewish civilization and an American (Diaspora) Jewish civilization. These civilizations have overlaps and shared interests but they’ve really developed into two very different civilizations, culturally anyway.

Tova Serkin: When we look at the majority of next-generation Jews we see that many are less affiliated institutionally, but very affiliated Jewishly. This means that there’s less need for them to live near what we would define as a center.

Greninger: For many young Jews, it’s not so important to be geographically near what might be called a “center” or a flourishing place of Jewish life, because we can connect with other Jews who are doing exciting things through the Internet, conferences, a variety of retreats or events. We don’t need a center today in the same way that one was needed in previous generations.

Berrin: For the past many decades Israel has been iconic in shaping Jewish identity in America. Why has that changed over the past decade?

Serkin: The story of Israel as it was told to the American Jewish community shaped the experience. For the past 60 years it was a story of struggle, heroism, and survival. But people who grew up post-1967 or -73 never grew up with a sense that there was a deep need for Israel. They had no intrinsic connection to the place. And given how liberal most of American Jews are, it’s not surprising that the majority are not typically “pro-Israel.”

Greninger: For a long time Israel was a real source of pride for Jews. But because of the political situation, that pride has given way to more complex emotions toward Israel today. Interestingly, while Israel trips are significant in shaping Jewish identities, many young people do not necessarily associate that experience with Israel per se. This may be because, for some, it’s more about the group experience — and about being in a Jewish environment — than it is about being specifically in Israel.

Magid: The politics describe everything. American Jews under the age of 40 only know Israel as an occupying power. There’s also something about how American Jews have become more integrated culturally, socially, and creatively into the American environment; they don’t need Israel as much as they did before. It is unfortunate, but for many young American Jews, Israel has become an identity theme park. One goes there to have her “Jewishness” re-charged, identity affirmed, and then returns to her diasporic life largely unchanged. This is even more complicated because we live in a post-ethnic world where being a Jew, for many people under the age of 30, is only one part of their identity. And, unlike a generation ago, their identities are divided and more complex than in previous generations.

Kelman: Over the past 30 years or so, an indigenous Jewish culture has taken root in the U.S. Jews are identifying in ways that don’t have anything to do with Israel, creating really vibrant Jewish life — whether it’s music or movies or literature or independent minyanim — where people are exploring American Jewish life on American Jewish terms as opposed to American Jewish life filtered through something that American Jews always talked about, called Israel. One of the most interesting findings from “Beyond Distancing,” my study with Steven M. Cohen, is that it’s not about politics. We couldn’t find a reliable correlation between one’s political attitude and one’s sense of disconnection from Israel. It didn’t matter whether one identified as politically conservative or progressive; one was not more likely to be disconnected from Israel if he or she were identified as more politically progressive. And being critical of Israel is of course different from being disconnected from Israel.

Greninger: As a fourth-generation American, I feel an indigenous American Jewish identity. All of my grandparents were born in the U.S. so even my connection with Ashkenazi or Sephardi Judaism is tenuous — it becomes farther removed with each generation. Today we need to ask, as Isaac Mayer Wise did, “What is ‘Minhag America’ — what are we creating in the 21st century as American Jews?”

Kelman: Is the turn toward klezmer music a turn toward an “authentic” Eastern European cultural tradition for American Ashkenazi Jews, and the turn toward Sephardi music and culture for Sephardi Americans a cause of the waning of Israel as a source of identity — or is it a symptom? As American Jews look for authentic ways to connect Jewishly that don’t involve Israel, maybe they’re digging a bit further back historically — pre-Israel, pre-Holocaust. There, you find very vibrant Jewish communities producing very exciting culture.

Magid: And American Jewish creativity is becoming very popular with non-Jews in America. So American Jews are expressing their Jewishness among non-Jewish Americans, outside the Jewish sphere.

Gosia Szymanska: It’s rather telling that in talking about what has been shaping the Jewish identity in America we hardly ever mention religion. We talk about various expressions of Jewishness, but not really Judaism.

Kelman: Now we’re talking about Judaism in a broader frame. Judaism is a religion and Jewishness is a broader cultural formation that we’re addressing outside of formal structures.

Magid: In America in the 19th century, Judaism was a religion defined by Reform. In the 20th century, I think the default Judaism in America has been Reconstructionism — the notion of Judaism as a civilization, which includes the arts, culture, recreation, summer camps. This has become the template of how American Jews identify with Judaism — even those who categorically reject Reconstructionism or know nothing about it.

Serkin: Increasingly, the stigma of being culturally different in the U.S. has worn off and, if anything, it’s actually cool to be ethnically or culturally different. Particularly among younger Jews, there’s a freedom to be culturally Jewish and remove religion from it.

Greninger: But within the cultural creativity of Jewish life today, there are many religious elements — in independent minyanim or other religious expressions outside of synagogues. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the “cultural” and “religious.”

Magid: Here’s a sound byte for that: Orthodoxy defines religion through practice, Reform defines it through belief, and Reconstructionism defines it through creative expression. The belief and practice serve the greater end, which is an expression of one’s Jewishness and identity. I noticed over the past few years in my university teaching that there doesn’t seem to be much of a vibrant Jewish secularism in America. There was in Europe and also in the early 20th century in America. In Israel, Zionism serves that role. Perhaps we don’t need a Jewish secularism now because religion itself has become secularized; non-Orthodox Jews don’t have a distinct religion in America separate from their secular lives as Jews did when Orthodoxy was the default religion in Europe and Israel.

Kelman: Synagogues are very cultural places. Nor is it a surprise that Matisyahu is the most photogenic Jew in America — so visibly, religiously Jewish; the religious aspect of culture and the cultural aspects of religion bleed into one another.

Magid: At least in America, maybe not in Israel because there the official religion is Orthodox Judaism.

Berrin: Would you each weigh in on whether American Jewry needs Zionism as it did a generation or so ago. How does it impact the way American Jews play out their Judaism? What role does it play for American Jewry?

Greninger: Zionism — whether religious or cultural — was a strong force in Jewish identity for a long time.   But that is not necessarily the case for young Jews today.

Serkin: Does American Jewry need Zionism to maintain American Jewry or does Israel need American Zionism? I don’t think American Judaism needs Zionism today to maintain its community and identity.

Szymanska: If we take birthright as an example of a Zionist program, it is very successful; thousands of young kids go to Israel and have a great experience. But the organizations are struggling to keep them connected to Israel after they return home. They make friends, they may feel more connected to Judaism, or Jewishness, or to their Jewish friends, and they might attend an event or two. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it connects them to Zionism in the long term.

Kelman: I’m not sure what you mean by “need” in that context. I wonder what would happen if all those resources now spent on birthright israel were spent on something here in America. Do I think American Jews need Zionism? No. Do I think that American Jews need Israel? That’s a different question and again, I don’t understand what the word “need” means in that question.

Birthright israel was designed to be a silver bullet to save American Jews from the perceived dangers of intermarriage and assimilation. It didn’t really have anything to do with Israel, per se. If we had asked the question on the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey and found that people who go to Prague have a higher sense of Jewish identity, we would have birthright prague or birthright paris or birthright rio. So what I’m saying is birthright israel has nothing to do with Israel.

Magid: And the Israel they experience is not the Israel that the everyday Israeli experiences — the part of Israeli culture that is problematic and troubling.

Serkin: People know it’s a trip meant to promote Israel from a particular point of view, but the social experience of birthright is important. I’ve staffed birthright trips. If you took the same group of people to a beautiful country somewhere else, it might not have exactly the same impact as birthright, but it would have some similar rates of success. It’s like Jewish camp in many ways.

Kelman: Then my answer to the question “do Americans Jews need Israel?” would be: No.

Greninger: We are, however, reliant on Israel for its role as a Hebrew language training ground. Most American Jews who have any significant fluency in Hebrew spent time living in Israel where they were surrounded by Hebrew. And that does influence — if not the folk culture or religion of Judaism, certainly “the elite” in terms of research and scholarship and Jewish life; our ability to access Jewish texts is so dependent on Hebrew.

Magid: What would it take to acknowledge openly that we’re in a Diaspora and it is not exile? Much of American Jewry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was anti-Zionist, at least until the early 1930s. After the Holocaust and the establishment of the State, everything changed. Then the war in 1967 put Zionism into turbo drive in America. But by 1977, this enthusiasm started to wane slightly and it’s been continuing on that trajectory ever since. On this subject, Ari’s survey with Steven Cohen is quite illustrative. There’s a cycle to American Zionism, which we should confront honestly.

And what would American Jewry look like in the next 25 years if we didn’t look to Israel or Zionism as a center? I think it would be healthy for us and for Israeli society, too, to separate our civilizations. Does Israel really want to be a refuge, or playground, for American Jews? I think not. I think it wants to be a normal country like any other. Maybe American Jews need to liberate Israel from our dependency on it and find other ways to cultivate our Jewish identities. In fact, we are already doing so.

Berrin: What would that look like for you?

Magid: I don’t know. I have two children living in Israel; I lived there for ten years, served in its army, and am a citizen. I had a whole life there, so I connect personally. I don’t know what it would look like for me, frankly. But it seems as if there’s a fear among many American Jews to come out of the closet and say, “I am a proud Jew but I’m actually not a Zionist.”

Serkin: Israel needn’t be the central focus of any Jewish community. Rather, the central focus should be the global Jewish people. I’d rather see American Jews feeling connected to their Jewish peers around the world including those in Israel.

Magid: For that to happen, Israeli Jewry must openly acknowledge that it is on equal ground with American Jews. It has to give up a very deeply embedded negation of the Diaspora mentality.

Greninger: When I lived in Israel, part of me wondered how I could be alive in this era and not be living in Israel, contributing to this exciting and important experiment in Jewish statehood. And then another part of me wondered why we should have a state that’s specifically Jewish. For many people in my generation, the concept of a “nation state” is problematic. What does it mean to have a state that is defined by religion or ethnicity? That’s almost anathema in my generation! And so there’s a cognitive dissonance associated with the idea of a “nation state” that doesn’t allow for the same kind of connection to Israel today that Jews used to have in the 20th century.

Kelman: There’s a new generation of Jewish cultural producers in the United States. Too often they feel frustrated. They can’t say anything about Israel because if they say, “I’m not a Zionist,” they won’t get the financial support they need to do the work that is going great, has a track record of success, and is engaging lots of Jews who otherwise wouldn’t be engaged in Jewish life. If you say — if you breathe the word “not” — “I’m not a Zionist,” not I’m an anti-Zionist but I’m just not a Zionist, then it doesn’t work. So I’m interested in the flipside of Shaul’s question — what would it take to acknowledge openly that we live in Diaspora and not in exile. And the flipside is: What would it take for the older generation to let go of the illusion that this is exile and that Israel is still the center?

The S3K Synagogue Studies Institute and Mechon Hadar recently completed a study of the growing population of American Jews who are connected with what I first described two years ago in this journal as “Jewish Emergent Communities” (Sh’ma, June 2006). Jewish emergent is an appropriate subject for discussion in an issue devoted to center and periphery, not least because the phenomenon is seen by many as originating on the fringes of organized Jewish religious life, but also, more broadly, because it comprises profound expressions of dissent and disaffection about conventional Jewish religious life. Of particular importance is the shift from institution building to social networking and the de-emphasis on movement affiliation. Our study amply documents these changes — but they are only part of the story.

Gender and sexual orientation are at the very core of the Jewish emergent phenomenon. While these issues often are perceived to be at the periphery of the Jewish establishment, they are central to Jewish emergent community building. Consider the following:

Only slightly more than half of all members of established synagogues are women; among affiliates of emergent communities, women outnumber men by nearly two to one.

Of the 21 clergy-led emergent communities identified in the S3K-Mechon Hadar survey, 10 of them are formally led by women (by contrast, women lead only a small proportion of all non-Orthodox congregations). In the dozen or so that have formal lay leadership structures, women are or were the lead lay founders or presidents in at least nine.

Among independent minyan participants, 10.4 percent identify other than as heterosexual, a little more than the national synagogue average of 10 percent. However, that figure rises to 12.9 percent in rabbi-led emergent communities and 17 percent in alternative emergent communities.

A number of the progressive Orthodox minyanim — even those that maintain mechitzot and more or less traditional limits on women’s participation — make a point of noting on their Web sites that they are LGBT-friendly.

In a recently published roundtable on independent minyanim , each of the six representatives of the largest and most influential communities, cited gender, sexual identity, women’s participation, or egalitarianism in response to moderator Shifra Bronznick’s question, “What prompted you to start an independent minyan ?” (Zeek, Spring 2007)

Despite having adopted the values and vocabulary of gender equality and LGBT inclusion over the past generation, many established Jewish institutions are not yet fully living out those commitments. By contrast, many, if not most, Jewish emergent communities are founded on values and cultures that inherently honor gender equality and sexual diversity. Paradoxically, their very centrality often renders these values invisible: gender and sexual identity are not frequent topics of conversation because they are cultural givens. The communities’ frameworks are such that everyone a priori is an insider and knows the terms of connection in advance. (Of course, this is not to say that emergent communities are immune to sexism and heterosexism; indeed, those issues, if and when they arise, may prove harder to diagnose and address properly.)

This is not to suggest that emergent communities are expressing the feminization of religion and religious communities, still less a zero-sum transfer of power from one sex to another. However, it may be that what the chavurah movement was to second-wave feminism — the empowerment of women on the basis of their gender — Jewish emergent is to fourth-wave feminism: the collaborative empowerment of men and women together around shared spiritual and political concerns. The Jewish emergent phenomenon may well reflect an explicit indictment of the slow pace of progress in the traditional congregational and denominational structures, as well as an implicit dissent over the path of that progress. The critique that synagogues are like country clubs may not be solely a statement about membership and privilege; it also may be a comment on the highly gendered (male) nature of the “club” model. The emergent flight from denominational labels and hierarchical leadership may not be merely the outgrowth of a generation of Jewishly educated young adults; it also may be a search for more fluid and collaborative organizational models that foster leadership by people across the spectrum of gender identities.

Jewish emergent communities are focused not only on answering central questions of access and inclusion, but also on building organizational and leadership structures that actively facilitate the full participation of all members of the community. What happens next — when gender and sexual identity issues are in fact constitutive of a structurally inclusive organization — remains to be seen.

At the first meeting of Brookline’s egalitarian Washington Square Minyan, a clear davening pattern emerged. Service leaders, those called to the Torah and those reading Torah, alternated male, female, male, female. When I asked one of the founders whether this would be standard operating procedure, he simply responded “when we’re truly egalitarian, we won’t have to count anymore.”

Have American Jewish institutions reached the point of “no counting necessary”? Or, do we still actively and consciously create gender balance on boards, on panels, and in hiring? Though counting might be considered archaic, true balance seems to remain a mirage.

Many gender-focused organizations and initiatives have blossomed over the past decade in the hopes of bringing gender equity to the center of the communal agenda. The Jewish Women’s Archive, Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project, Hadassah Brandeis Institute, and Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance have each recently entered their second decade. Moving Traditions, the creators of “Rosh Chodesh: It’s a Girl Thing,” and Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community have entered the scene since 2000. Each organization pursues equity in its unique sphere: history, academia, Jewish communal professional life, adolescent development, and religious life. While the work of these groups has helped move Jews closer to “no counting necessary” in each of these arenas, these feminist organizations seem to remain on the periphery of Jewish organizational life.

Their creations were initially either precipitated by or greeted with a flurry of communal activity on gender. Conferences, Jewish media, and meeting agendas addressed gender as the “hot” issue of the day. But today, while the community continues to work on its diversity portfolio, other “hot” marginal groups occupy the spotlight: Jews of color, gay and lesbian Jews, and Jews by choice, all of whom have done their time on the periphery of Jewish life. Does this mean that women’s and girls’ issues have been successfully and systemically addressed by central, mainstream organizations? Or does gender remain an add-on, part of the larger “diversity” pool and the communal periphery?

In analyzing this issue of center and periphery, I am defining the center vis-à-vis funding and leadership. Do feminist and women’s organizations receive substantial federation funding? Are their donor rolls populated by men and women alike? Are they part of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations? For coed organizations, are they staffed and lay led equitably?

The Bronfman Philanthropies’ Slingshot Guide highlights “the 50 most innovative Jewish organizations and projects.” Created as a resource, especially for young philanthropists looking to fund outside the mainstream, the guide ultimately also serves as a list of exciting yet under-recognized initiatives. In 2006, fourteen of the highlighted organizations focused on gender and would fall into the category of feminist organizations. In 2007, twelve are indexed under gender programming. Are organizations focused on gender intrinsically peripheral — underfunded and likely undervalued — in the Jewish communal world?

What about the well-funded, long-standing women’s organizations that do occupy the center? Hadassah’s immediate past president, June Walker, chairs the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. Seven of the Conference’s other 50 “major Jewish organizations,” including ORT and Women of Reform Judaism, are women’s organizations. Notably, each of these groups — while populated, led, and heavily funded by Jewish women — is dedicated to universal Jewish missions. Is their hard-won residence in the center predicated on this universality? Their participation in the center of the Jewish community clearly means that women leaders and donors have begun to enter the boardroom. But it also begs the question of whether they are being asked (or choosing) to leave any gender agendas at the door.

The National Council of Jewish Women and Jewish Women International, both part of the Conference, seem to be exceptions to this rule. Much of their current work, particularly on the national level, focuses on women’s and girls’ advocacy. In terms of the centrality of these large, feminist organizations, the question advances to the next level: Have their issues and activism penetrated the mainstream Jewish agenda? The same issue looms for the growing crop of Jewish women’s foundations, most embedded in and supported by federations. Many hope to leverage their “insider” positions to influence mainstream allocations, but few feel that they have accomplished this lofty goal.

Who and what will create the permanent bridge dedicated to gender-focused traffic, from periphery to center? This bridge must support the transport of women’s organizations into the center, as well as the movement of a fully integrated gender sensibility into currently central organizations. Until such changes are systemic and not simply programmatic or sporadic, true equity will still elude us. Women’s issues must follow women from the periphery into an integrated and automatic position in the center of Jewish life in America. Then we won’t have to count anymore.

Why did you make that statement? How did you arrive at that position? Is it in the best interest of the Jewish community to speak publicly on that issue? Should you have criticized that person? Should you have defended that person? Why not just be silent?

As National Director of the Anti-Defamation League for more than 20 years, I am often asked questions like these. As I look back at some of the issues for which questions like these were raised, I believe we said and did the right thing at the right time.

For me, speaking out against antisemitism, racism, bigotry, and hate whenever, wherever, and from whomever they emanate, as well as speaking up for respect and understanding, is a must — a mandate of the ADL and a result of my personal experience as a hidden child during the Holocaust. With 94 years of credibility backing me up, I do believe we are heard and can make a difference.

When the issue of restitution for Holocaust survivors came to the fore at the end of the 1990s, my position diverged from most other Jewish leaders. Yes, Holocaust survivors and their heirs were due what was rightly theirs. But suddenly the discussion revolved around how much compensation for stolen and lost Jewish gold and art. My fear was that the sound bite of the last century would be “Jews were murdered by Hitler because they had gold and Monets,” when in fact they were murdered because they were Jews. I am certain the 1.5 million Jewish children who died at the hands of the Nazis did not own Monets.

When Black churches were burning in the south and ethnic cleansing was occurring in Bosnia, I spoke out. Some said it was not a Jewish issue because Jews were not targeted. But I realized that if someone had spoken out on Kristallnacht or when Hitler announced his Final Solution, perhaps Jews might have been saved. It was the right thing to do.

The issue of Mel Gibson and his film, “The Passion of the Christ,” was one of the most controversial and misinterpreted issues with which I have been involved. No matter how hard we tried to explain that we had reached out to him, that we wanted to work with him, that we were a coalition of Jews and Catholics, it fell on deaf ears, and I was accused of calling him an antisemite and of being responsible for the runaway success of his film. Beside the point was that he was a celebrity garnering great media attention, that he said he was being accused of being an antisemite, that he set a precedent for marketing his film among Christian Evangelicals. No matter — I would do it again. And, while I didn’t label him an antisemite then, he proved to the world all by himself that he was one when he lashed out at Jews during his arrest for driving under the influence.

Given the history of the Jewish people, I strongly believe we do not have the luxury to be silent when Jews are in jeopardy, when the State of Israel is threatened, when our democratic values and institutions are attacked, and when others are in peril, simply because they are “others.” As Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

We have arrived at a time in history when the powerful impact of feminism on the shape of American Judaism is not only acknowledged but sufficiently accepted (by scholars, at least), making possible critical analysis of this phenomenon. Women Remaking American Judaism, an anthology that expands on a May 2004 conference at Wayne State University, not only ably documents the transformation of Jewish life sparked by the past 30 years of feminist activism in the Jewish community, but also examines the process, meaning — and incompleteness — of these widespread changes in leadership, institutions, theology, and ritual.

The book is organized into three sections that demonstrate the diversity of Jewish feminist approaches: Reenvisioning Judaism, which explores how feminism has questioned and revised Jewish theology, God-language, and modes of biblical interpretation; Redefining Judaism, which analyzes changes in the denominations brought about by feminism; and Reframing Judaism, which considers how feminists, through innovations such as Rosh Chodesh celebrations, Miriam-centered ritual objects, and adult bat mitzvah ceremonies, have created a Judaism that includes women’s voices, perspectives, and experiences.

Riv-Ellen Prell’s introduction to the collection is masterful (if one may use that word in describing a book about changing gender roles and challenging hierarchy). She goes beyond the usual introductory summary and synthesis of the individual essays (which she does gracefully) and creates a larger context for the project by examining the relationship between Jewish feminism and the Enlightenment. Prell sees some early roots of Jewish feminism in Enlightenment claims to equality and to the compatibility of Judaism and modernity. While she compares feminism to the Enlightenment in terms of feminism’s   commitment to equality and the radicalism of its impact on Judaism, she also demonstrates how feminism challenges notions about gender — particularly, the relegation of women to the domestic sphere — that are central to both the Enlightenment and Judaism.

Even as she makes a bold claim for Jewish feminism’s radicalism, she also points out that Jewish feminism is, paradoxically, deeply accommodationist; it has a vested interest in sustaining Jewish community. This argument is further developed in the essays in the last (and to my mind, most interesting) section of the book. The authors of these essays argue that women’s ritual innovation — which may, at first glance, seem to be among the most radical developments of Jewish feminism in that they create new forms of religious practice — are in some ways the most accommodating because they focus on including women’s experiences rather than on changing existing practices or questioning authority. Not surprisingly, some of the most accepted feminist contributions to Judaism are those that reinforce certain traditional concepts of gender roles and/or women’s nature. This dynamic, as Chava Weissler demonstrates in her provocative article on meanings of Shekhinah in Jewish Renewal, is noted with discomfort by some, but goes unnoticed and unchallenged by many.

The generous number of illustrations help to capture the creativity and diversity of Jewish feminism, and the timeline of American and Jewish feminism at the back of the book — which begins in the mid-19th century with the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 and the first use of a family pew in an American synagogue in 1851 — reminds readers of the relationship between secular American feminism and Jewish feminism, the long history of feminist activism, and the inseparability of feminism and the development of American Judaism.

Beyond the scope of the project but something that would be important to address, is a detailed analysis of what might be the biggest feminist challenge today: the persistent institutionalized sexism in communal organizations in regard to leadership and workplace issues. Though mentioned briefly within the discussion on denominations, these problems require greater attention in a consideration of Jewish feminism’s agenda for the 21st century.

In her introduction, Prell writes that “Jewish feminism, then, is very much like Second Wave feminism and no different from other social movements in the United States and elsewhere that bring about transformations whose origins are often forgotten and whose claims are imagined to have been unnecessary.” This collection is an important contribution toward recovering the history, power, and impact of Jewish feminism, and will, I hope, spark continued conversation among scholars and lay people.