A Time for Healing

Sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society in its centennial year, this book is part of a five-volume set which chronicles Jewish life in the United States from colonial times to the present. The respective authors explore the roots of Jewish immigration, the experience of settling in America, economic and social adjustment, religious developments and educational aspirations, political involvements, and the experience from generation to generation of what it means to be at once both Jewish and American. The last volume of this five-volume set, this book describes a time of rapid economic and social progress. But this success came at a cost; for many Jews, assimilation meant repressing or even losing their ethnic and religious identity. The author takes seriously the potential threat to Jewish culture posed by assimilation and intermarriage - asking if the Jewish people, having already endured so much, will survive America's freedom and affluence.