Jewish on Their Own Terms: How Intermarried Couples are Changing American Judaism

by Jennifer A. Thompson

Overview

This book provides a complex, insightful portrait of intermarried couples and the new forms of American Judaism that they are constructing. It tells the stories of intermarried couples, the rabbis and other Jewish educators who work with them, and the conflicting public conversations about intermarriage among American Jews. Ethnography is used to describe the compelling concerns of all of these parties and places their anxieties firmly within the context of American religious culture and morality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813562834
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	12/19/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	214
File size:	969 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

JENNIFER A. THOMPSON is the Maurice Amado Assistant Professor of Applied Jewish Ethics and Civic Engagement in the Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Program at California State University, Northridge.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1 Defining Judaism by Debating Intermarriage
2 American Contradictions: Conversations about Self and Community
3 “What You Are” and “What’s in Your Heart”
4 Translating Jewish Experience
5 Sovereign Selves in a Fractured Community
6 Moving Forward, Inconclusively: The Crisis of Jewish Identity
Afterword

Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Jewish on Their Own Terms challenges the prevailing intermarriage paradigm by examining the lived experience of intermarried couples and analyzing the meaning and impact of intermarriage discourse in the Jewish community." 

Hebrew Union College - Bruce Phillips

"Thompson’s book is an original and powerfully suggestive intervention in the scholarship on intermarriage. Her argument is fresh and sound. She is particularly persuasive presenting her compelling ethnographic material." 

Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History, University of Michigan - Deborah Dash Moore

"Thompson explores the ways in which individuals and couples directly involved in and affected by intermarriage define themselves, their perspectives on their own Jewishness, and their attempts at juggling the larger questions of individualism and communal responsibilities. Recommended."

Choice

"To read Thompson's work is to see clearly the imperative facing American Jewish institutions."

H-Judaic

"To read Thompson's work is to see clearly the imperative facing American Jewish institutions."

From the Publisher