Throughout their history, the affliction of the Jewish people has been central to Jewish self-understanding. In the modern world, however, this paradigm of adversity is challenged by the success of the Jewish state of Israel and by the auspicious circumstances of Jews in the United States. Will this very success prove fatal to the survival of Judaism? Can the trends of assimilation and secularization be resisted? Why do certain Jewish groups, especially the Orthodox, continue to thrive in the face of these challenges? These are the questions that Bernard Susser and Charles Liebman ponder in this thoughtfuly and provocative work. They identify aspects of Orthodoxy - such as its reverence for study and its ability to set and maintain boundaries-that can be emulated by non-Orthodox jews, and suggest that these aspects may hold out the best hope for meaninful Jewish survival.

First Published in 1997. The essays in this volume are revisions, in some cases substantial, to the 1995 Sherman Lectures which the author delivered at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London.

Deceptive Images is a profoundly thoughtful effort by a social scientist-who is a participant observer in American Jewish life-to come to terms with his concerns about how American Jews and Judaism have been studied, and his sensitivity to the policy implications of such studies. Liebman writes about what he cares deeply about; as a social scientist he is able to use concepts and theories in which he has been trained, although not without a sense of their limitations. In the passionately argued book that results, Liebman contends that those concerned with American Jews, both social scientists and communal leaders, have placed too much emphasis on what Jews do and too little emphasis on Judaism itself. Because they have depended too much on quantitative studies to help them understand contemporary American Jews, they have given too little encouragement to efforts to probe the meaning of Judaism in the lives of American Jews. This stimulating volume takes exception to the notion that American Jewish life is flourishing. It calls for reassessment both of the study of American Judaism and the priorities of American Jewish organizations.

It outlines the major issues involved in the study of religion and politics and then deals with the impact of political culture on religion and religion on political culture; the problems which religion raises for a democratic society and the need for religion to unify society; the problems involved in attempting to operationalize the vision of a religious state; and the consequences of religious fundamentalism for the political system.
"Religion, Democracy and Israeli Society" illuminates critical aspects in the study of religion and politics in one society; the state of Israel.

The emergence of the metropolitan complex as the characteristic urban form in the United States has raised the question of the adequacy of traditional local governments to cope with changed local conditions. Most studies on this subject have focused on the attempts by suburbs to achieve metropolitan forms of government, stressing the interdependence of local units of government and the resulting need for integrative governments to formulate and execute area-wide policies. This book takes note of the failures of the metropolitan governmental proposals and turns attention to the forces for decentralization in the government of metropolitan areas. In other words, this is a study of the forces for independence-the values that impel local units to cherish and protect their separate identities. It seeks to describe these values not as sentiments, but as actual public policies realized through the actions of local governments. Specifically, it analyzes the way in which local municipal and school fiscal policies and the patterns of inter-local cooperative arrangements reflect the discrete circumstances of the individual suburbs. The locus of the study is the Philadelphia area, but its findings will be of interest to a national as well as a local audience. Approximately 300 municipalities are covered in the analysis. The findings of the study are discussed for their implications for future changes in the governing of metropolitan areas. Although scholarly in its approach to urban problems, this empirical study has been written in a way that will make it understandable and valuable to the lay reader. It is illustrated with maps and charts, and includes a lengthy statistical appendix.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.

Collected essays by a preeminent authority on American Jewish history.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.