What comes first: the “American” or the “Jewish”? How have the dual — and sometimes dueling—identities morphed in Jewish thought over the past two generations?

Secular spirituality. Ultra-Orthodoxy. Post-Holocaust theology. Neo-Hasidism. Queer theory. (Anti)Zionist militancy. What is American Jewish thought and how has it evolved?

Dr. Michael Marmur and Rabbi David Ellenson, editors of American Jewish Thought Since 1934: Writings on Identity, Engagement, & Belief, published one year ago, will delve into the shifting soundscape around questions of loyalty and belonging, religious practice, secular discontents and the creative American recasting of Jewish peoplehood.

Rabbi David Ellenson is chancellor emeritus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), professor emeritus of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and author of After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity.

Dr. Michael Marmur is Associate Professor of Jewish Theology at HUC-JIR’s Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem and previously served as the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost at HUC-JIR, and Dean of the Jerusalem campus. He chairs the Board of Rabbis for Human Rights.