Jew Vs Jew: The Struggle For The Soul Of American Jewry - Hardcover

Jew vs. Jew is Samuel G. Freedman's passionate story of the "struggle for the soul of American Jewry." Freedman believes that three fundamental questions are rending the American Jewish community today: "What is the definition of Jewish identity? Who decides what is authentic and legitimate Judaism? And what is the Jewish compact with America?" Exploring these questions leads Freedman down a number of wild paths. He listens patiently to the fierce neighborly squabbles in Great Neck, New York; he reconstructs the tension-filled final days of a labor Zionist summer camp in the Catskills; he witnesses orthodox Jews attacking American conservative Jews worshiping at the foot of the Western Wall. Freedman expertly sketches the major conflicts in American Judaism--"secularist against believer, denomination against denomination, gender against gender, liberal against conservative, traditionalist against modernist even within each branch." The book's conclusions (such as "America without Jews is unimaginable, and the brave assimilationists made that possible, even if the price was much of their own distinctiveness as Jews") are not particularly groundbreaking. But Jew vs. Jew is a thoughtful and beautifully written assessment of the precarious situation of Jewish identity in America today. --Michael Joseph Gross

Samuel G. Freedman is the author of The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond, a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize. His previous book, Upon This Rock, won the Helen M. Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, and his first book, Small Victories, was a finalist for the 1990 National Book Award. A professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, he has been honored as the nation's outstanding journalism educator. He lives in New York with his wife and children.