This comprehensive look at the American Jewish community at the turn of the 21st century explores the many issues American Jews and their organizations are confronting, and shows how the Jewish community responds so as to remain a distinct entity while also becoming a part of the larger American culture. The contributors investigate the complex issues facing the American Jewish community in 12 areas that are at the heart of the Jewish communal enterprise.
In ancient Jewish culture the ideas of purity and impurity defined the socio-cultural boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. Hayes argues that different views of the possibility of conversion, based on varying ideas about Gentile impurity, were the key factor in the formation of Jewish sects in the second temple period, and in the separation of the early Christian Church from what later became rabbinic Judaism.
In this book scholars and church and synagogue leaders examine religious affiliation in contemporary America. Their essays explore the dynamics of congregational affiliation: the motivations which impel people to join a congregation, drop out or remain unaffiliated; the practices within churches and synagogues which attract or repel membership; and the ways in which contextual religious, social, and cultural factors influence patterns of congregational affiliation. The book is principally concerned with churches and synagogues in the more liberal denominations of Christianity and Judaism, those where the greatest membership losses are occurring.