American Judaism

Jonathan Woocher’s 2012 essay, “Reinventing Jewish Education for the 21st Century,” o ered
a distillation of concepts and prescriptions he
had been incubating for the better part of a decade (Woocher, 2012a). At its core was a
vision of a learner-centered educational system where Jewish wisdom (i.e., Torah) becomes a resource for personal meaning-making. Those familiar with the trajectory of Woocher’s thinking were surely not surprised by his enthusiasm for prosumerism or his relative sanguinity about
the decline of legacy institutions. But they might have been caught o  guard by the virtual absence of any reference to a role for community and Jewish peoplehood in his proposed educational paradigm. For Woocher, Jewish community had been an animating concern that presaged his interest in communal dynamics, guided his work as the longtime executive director of the Jewish Education Service of North America ( JESNA), and grounded his e orts on behalf of Jewish continuity and renaissance. Was Woocher’s silence on community in “Reinventing Jewish Education” indicative of a radical rethinking of the bases of Jewish life?

Since the 1960’s and 1970’s, ethnographic research on Jewish menstrual rituals known as Niddah, Taharat HaMishpacha, or Family Purity has associated their practices with religious behavior. Much of this research organizes around questions of women’s agency within ostensibly patriarchally constructed religious practices that carry the potential to oppress its women practitioners. This premise is built upon a number of implicit assumptions about the history of today’s Niddah practices: that Niddah is observed exclusively by Orthodox Jews; that increasing rates of Niddah observance correlate exclusively with the trend toward stricter observance levels among the Orthodox since the 1960s; and that this increasingly strict observance itself reflects a reactionary trend among the Orthodox community (a.k.a. tradition versus modernity). All these assumptions currently circulate, in various degrees, among the American Jewish lay community and are shared by a significant number of congregational rabbis. Until the 1990s, no history of Niddah existed to either support or refute these assumptions. I initially intended that this project would provide future ethnographers with a comprehensive history of Niddah in America during the past one and a half centuries. I engaged Victor Turner’s theory of Social Drama as a framework for understanding this history as a socio-cultural process, rather than as a series of less than related events. However, this study has resulted in the identification of many more specific assumptions about the decline and revival of Niddah observance in the twentieth century, which are not supported by the scant evidence available. These challenged assumptions beg new directions for research; a thorough reworking of the history of Niddah in America; and a fresh look at the literature advocating Niddah produced in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. This genealogy as Social Drama presents Niddah in twentieth century America as undergoing periods of crisis, negotiation, and reintegration. This drama was triggered by late nineteenth century concepts of religion, body, and ritual that undermined and ruptured the integrity of Niddah as a bodily religious ritual practice. Niddah’s twentieth century social drama culminated in fresh articulations of a unique Jewish sexuality and Jewish marital ethic.

The Jewish educational agenda of the interwar years was dominated by
two complementary and sometimes-competing values: integration and
survival. Two of the most popular Jewish children’s books of the 1930s
exemplified the balancing act that American Jews sought to perform
between the prevailing assimilationist ethos and their allegiance to
Jewish continuity. Sadie Rose Weilerstein’s The Adventures of K’tonton
(Women’s League of the United Synagogue, 1935) and Mamie Goldsmith Gamoran’s Hillel’s Happy Holidays (Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, 1939) offered their young readers accessible archetypes
of American Jewish acculturation. The first was written by a religiously
observant immigrant from Eastern Europe and intended for a first- and
second-generation audience residing primarily in ethnically homogenous
enclaves. The latter, penned by a thoroughly acculturated Reform Jew of
German extraction, appealed to a more Americanized, suburban readership. Yet despite the differences between the books and their respective
authors, both underscored the growing realization that the unprecedented
freedom that American Jews found on these shores could result in the
dissolution of their religious and ethnic distinctiveness.

Introduction to Messianic Judaism provides a description of what the Messianic Jewish community looks like today at its center and on its margins. The first section of the book traces the ecclesial contours of the community, providing a socio-historical and theological snapshot of the community's origins, where it is presently and where it is heading. Alongside these chapters, the book also includes a number of essays on biblical and theological issues central to the identity of Messianic Judaism. The twelve contributors to the first part of the book are recognized leaders in the Messianic Jewish community. They work with various organizations, including the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, the International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues, the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council, Tikkun International, Chosen People Ministries, Messianic Jewish Theological Institute, Israel College of the Bible and the New School for Jewish Studies. Fourteen scholars from a wide spectrum of Christian backgrounds have written essays for the second part of the book. Their participation signals a growing academic and ecclesial interest in Messianic Judaism. Since the 1970s, a sea change has taken place in New Testament studies that has far-reaching implications for how the church evaluates Messianic Judaism. A broad reassessment of the New Testament writers’ view of Judaism has occurred since the publication of E. P. Sanders’s seminal work Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), and this reevaluation continues unabated. The contributors to the second part of Introduction to Messianic Judaism draw from this recent scholarship and demonstrate how post-supersessionist interpretation of the New Testament results in readings of the biblical text that are consistent with Messianic Judaism. The final section of the book is written by Joel Willitts who provides a summary and synthesis of the essays, explaining how they shed light on the ecclesial context and biblical foundations of Messianic Judaism.

Jewish tradition prescribes rituals and prohibitions for the first week, month, and year after a death, which provide an organized framework for meaning-making, constructing continuing bonds, and establishing the memory of the deceased within the community. After reviewing traditional Jewish customs, this article uses ethnographic examples to explore the diverse ways in which these religious and cultural frames manifest in the lived experiences of American Jews, whose Jewish identities and practices are often fluid, contradictory, and continually evolving as they search for personally-meaningful experiences. I demonstrate how individuals, and communities, synthesize Jewish discourses of death and of mourning with the secular, medicalized discourses prevalent in American society.

This article explores the career of Jacob Behrman (1921–2012) and the growth of Behrman House from a small Jewish bookseller to the leading publisher of Jewish religious school textbooks. Behrman’s success owed in part to his ability to appeal to the vast center, to gauge correctly his consumers’ needs and reflect their outlook and values, to eschew partisan- ship and play down ideological differences, and to swim with the tide. In addition, I make the case that Behrman House elevated the field of Jewish education by raising the quality of Jewish textbooks, and that through its ascendency played a role in redefining the goals of Jewish education and its undergirding ideological thrust. Behrman was not driven by a single model of Jewish education or a monolithic vision for the Jewish community, but rather, by business exigencies and a connection to Jewish peoplehood and culture.

In this article, I make some suggestions about how the legacy of the nineteenth-century Mussar movement might best guide contemporary Jewish practice.  I consider, in particular, the Mussar movement's vision of how a broad range of practices can spur moral development, and how this model might apply to contemporary Conservative Judaism.

This essay is the introduction to the book _Michael Fishbane: Jewish Hermeneutical Theology_ (2015), a volume in Brill's Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers series, edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron Hughes. The "intellectual portrait" is a first attempt to integrate the many facets and phases of Fishbane's life and work.

This article documents the Journal of Jewish Education’s acquisition by the Network for Research in Jewish Education, in 2004,
and evaluates the contribution of the re-launched Journal to the
field of Jewish education. I explore how the Journal contributed
over the past decade in three discrete yet often overlapping areas,
thereby realizing its editors’ vision. First, the Journal of Jewish
Education became the venue for conversations between researchers,
practitioners and funders about the direction of Jewish education
research and policy; second, it became an outlet for the sharing
of research and other Jewish education scholarship; and third, it
became a venue where scholars introduced research and theoretical constructs from the field of general education and sought to
demonstrate their relevance to Jewish education. Finally, I suggest
some reasons why the editors had less success in realizing a fourth
goal for the Journal; that is, making it a forum for new ideas and
the charting of new directions in research and practice.

In this series of articles, I explore the history of Jewish Education magazine with particular emphasis on its intersection with the his- tory of American Jewish education and American Jewish life more generally. I isolate major themes and issues that preoccupied the magazine’s editors and writers, and analyze how their discourse sheds light on their individual aims, values, and philosophical outlooks, as well their collective efforts at educational reform. I am particularly interested in elucidating how Benderly’s disciples sought to reinterpret their mentor’s vision in a changing American Jewish environment and why this vision was at best only partially realized.

The negative stereotype of the weak, passive, Jewish male has been a staple in the United States for well over a century. Even though there has been a larger Jewish presence on US television over the past twenty years, the portrayal of Jewish men is still negative and stereotypical. On the popular comedy, The Big Bang Theory, the character of Howard Wolowitz is the quintessential emasculated, Jewish male stereotype. Not only is he thin, gawky, and passive, this thirtysomething is ruled by his mother. This article addresses the historical depiction of the Jewish male in US society as well as popular television in the United States. The Wolowitz character will also be compared with the weak, Jewish male stereotype, citing examples from The Big Bang Theory. How the consistent use of these negative stereotypes affects both Jews and non-Jews will also be explored. The Stereotypical Portrayal of Jewish Masculinity on The Big Bang Theory

God & Apple Pie: Religious Myths and Visions of America
by Christopher Buck
Kingston, NY: Educator's International Press, 2015

Contents
Introduction, by J. Gordon Melton
Chapter 1: America: Nation and Notion
Chapter 2: Native American Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 3: Protestant Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 4: The Christian Right’s Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 5: Catholic Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 6: Jewish Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 7: Mormon Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 8: Christian Identity Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 9: Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 10: Contemporary Muslim Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 11: Buddhist Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 12: Baha’i Myths and Visions of America
Chapter 13: Conclusion: How Minority Faiths Redefined America’s World Role

Two sample chapters (by publisher's permission):
1.  Native American Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 2)
2.  Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 9)

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Apple-Pie-Religious-Visions/dp/1891928155/

Introduction by J. Gordon Melton,
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University

Far from being an interesting additional topic for the religious dilettante, the discussion around the theological reality that is America, periodically bursts forth as an important item on the nation's agenda, from the place of prayer services in the White House, to the issuance of an annual government report on religious persecution, to the rise of contemporary terrorism. As one traces radical Islam, for example, one arrives at the writings of one Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who spent some of his younger years in America, and came away with his own vision of a country mired in sin and decadence. He would posit America as the image of everything he hoped to escape in promoting the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, in all honesty, I must admit that over the years as I encountered all of the intriguing, even fascinating, ideas about America in the great cosmic scheme of things, I never got around to systematically gathering the different visions and trying to make sense of them in any detailed fashion. Thus, I have been more than happy to receive, and now with this modest introduction, pass along to my scholarly colleagues and the reading public the work of Christopher Buck.

During his years of observation and research, Buck has surveyed the spectrum of visions of America that have energized and motivated the America's religious community, and has selected from among them a sample that both (1) represents the spectrum of opinion about America and its importance, and (2) highlights the more important visions of America that have shaped and are continuing to shape the way we understand this country we call home. His work calls us to become self-conscious about the assumptions we use in our day-to-day movements that massage the ways we approach our neighbors, our colleagues at work, and the politicians for whom we vote.

Buck begins with the visions of America present at the founding of the nation, aspects of which still strongly permeate the culture today, and have found a new home among conservative Protestants in their innovative idea of Christian America. Amid the Protestant context, we often forget the role of the Roman Catholic Church, which became the largest religious body in America in the 1840s and is now three times larger than its nearest competitor. At the end of the nineteenth century, a controversy on Americanism would erupt around Catholic visions of their place in a changing world that would drive it from participation in the nation's public square for a half-century, and molded its reentrance after World War II.

And then there are all the other-than-Christian religions, from Ahmadiyya Muslims to Zoroastrians, all of which possess their its own vision of America that shapes their appropriation of life in the United States and guides their development as their place in the nation was challenged, then accepted, and most recently affirmed and even celebrated by the nation as a whole. We have watched as Buddhists have carved out a place as cultural peacemakers, Muslims have struggled with separation of religion and government, and Baha'is have tried to understand the communication of their founder, Baha'u'llah, with the presidents of the Americas collectively, and with 'Abdu'l-Baha's statements about the destiny of America in particular. All of this occurs in the ebb and flow of religious life. One day we envision the possible unity of America's religions only to be thrown up against the many harsh divisions, which motivates us once more to seek realms of agreement, which again highlights the array of issues that can drive wedges between those who accept the label "American" as part of their self-identity.

In conclusion, I can, as a scholar, reflect on the contribution that this book, Religious Myths and Visions of America: God and Apple Pie, is making to our understanding of the American mosaic and how various segments of the religious community have found their way to being American. As an informed citizen I welcome its information that allows me to empathize with and make informed decisions relative to those with whom I might align (or oppose) as I sally forth in the public square. And on a personal level, I welcome the author's invitation for me to meet anew the residents of my neighborhood, those who shop in the same stores I do, send their children to the same schools my grandchildren attend, and diligently work toward their own appropriation of the American dream.

J. Gordon Melton
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History
Baylor University

January 2015 — This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

For the full issue use this link: https://traditiononline.org/archives/?_sft_category=2022-issue-54-1&_sf_ppp=20

Until the 1940s many members of the populous Orthodox Jewish communities in America worked on Shabbat because of the scarcity of alternative employment; they consumed non-kosher rather than higher-priced kosher meat; they let slide the laws of family purity because the mikvaot were sparse and often charged high admission fees; and they did not provide their children with a Jewish education because it was private and costly.
Most rabbis earned low wages and, reluctant to risk their precarious livelihood, did not dare to challenge the laxity of their congregants’ religious lifestyle. Thus, while in Eastern Europe most Jews who considered themselves Orthodox and regularly attended the synagogue were observant, in America the vast majority of Jews who belonged to the Orthodox congregations did not observe even the most fundamental mitzvot.
A radically different picture emerges at the end of the twentieth century: At this point most members in American Orthodox congregations led a religious lifestyle even more rigorous than that which prevailed in many Orthodox communities in Eastern Europe which included a significant number of observant yet religiously lax members. Several scholars described the Haredization process of American Orthodoxy during the later twentieth century as “the shift” or “the slide” to the right.  In this article, however, I return to the first half of the twentieth century to examine the beginning of the process, relying on primary sources, particularly Orthodox newspapers and journals published in America during that period.

This paper utilizes Elliot R. Wolfson's analysis of Menahem Mendel Schneerson's thought in order to explicate the conceptualization of melody in Habad thought. Specifically its relation to the meontological Infinite, time-consciousness, and postmessianic messianism.
Firstly by clarifying key texts from Habad masters regarding melody showing that it is to be identified with the most transcendental strata of being and even with the Infinite itself. Following this the paper deals at length and in depth with the melody called 'Nigun Shamil' introduced by Schneerson in 1958 on Simhat Torah. Through contextualizing this melody in its surrounding teachings we are able to perceive how the linear-circular nature of melodic time interacts with a melody focused around exile and redemption and the performative function of melody.

This article begins by examining the themes of “hypernomianism,” “popularization,” and “subjectivity” in relation to early Hasidic minhag in order to better examine their reoccurrence—albeit in different forms and in the context of a different historical era—as salient elements in the new theorizations developed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. These themes, I argue, are manifest in his use of minhag as a hypernomian catalyst to enhance, expand and fortify nomian engagement and participation.

Part 1 - The Hypernomian Character of Minhag in Hasidism / Part 2 - Minhag and the Reshaping of Jewish Practice in the Post-War Era / Part 3 - Minhag and the Expansion of Women’s Participation in Nomian Practice / Part 4 - Nomos and Subjectivity in Ramash’s Harmonization of Halakhah and Minhag

In this article, I examine the entry of values perceived to be secular into Ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought. These values are introduced in an unconscious manner, and thus may be traced only in light of the subsequent changes that occur in Ultra-Orthodox thinking itself. I examine this subject through the work of Rabbi Avigdor Miller on the concept of the body.
Rabbi Miller, one of the twentieth century’s most important spiritual
mentors in the United States, was chosen because of the perceptible change in his thinking in the latter half of his teaching career, when we find external (i.e., “secular”) values playing an increasingly central role. This led Rabbi Miller to alternative readings of classical Jewish concepts, and even to a call for significant changes in the manner of living a worthy Jewish life.

Rav Shmuel Rozovsky was born in the Eastern Europe of 1913, but his name remains on the lips of virtually every yeshiva student in 2021. His seforim are essentials, his insights the foundation of so many of today’s popular shiurim. He was one of the prime pillars of the postwar rejuvenation of the yeshiva world, a product of Europe’s finest yeshivos who helped transform a tiny group of undervalued yeshiva bochurim into Bnei Brak’s mighty Torah bastion.

More than four decades after his passing, students, assistants, and the American hosts of “everyone’s rosh yeshiva” share their personal memories of Rav Shmuel Rozovsky

Religion has played a constant role in the United States-Israel relationship. Christian and Jewish interests have shaped U.S. foreign policy, especially after the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The role of religion Israel has historically depended on three interlinking factors: the influence of domestic political considerations in the calculations of American policymakers, the prominence of the Middle East in U.S. diplomatic and strategic thinking, and the beliefs and attitudes of individual policymakers, both their own religious convictions and their assessment of how important religious beliefs are to the American people.

Religion has alternately strengthened and strained the U.S. relationship with the Zionist movement and the state of Israel. At some moments, such as the 1930s, religious attitudes and prejudices worked against closer cooperation. At other times, such as the Israeli-Egyptian peace summit of 1978, religious forces played a prominent role. As a state with special religious significance for many Americans, Israel provides a window into how religion functions in U.S. foreign policy, how its function has changed over time, and how religion has acted as an independent variable in political and policy outcomes.

In this paper, I draw from my personal rabbinical experience as a communal rabbi and a member of a Beit Din to outline one rabbi’s perspective concerning Orthodox rabbinical engagement with the variety of conversion candidates on the contemporary Jewish scene.  Per the instructions of this paper’s commission, rather than presenting a rigorous and exhaustive halakhic analysis of the above-referenced conversion scenarios, this paper will primarily outline the pastoral experience and occupation of creating and overseeing processes and procedures for preparing conversion candidates for the halakhic determination of a Beit Din.

I recently noticed that the original publication of this paper contains a misidentification. RI Barcelona should be identified as the eleventh century Spanish Jewish Talmudist and liturgist Rabbi Yizchak of Barcelona, and not the twelfth century Talmudist Rabbi Yehudah of Barcelona, as I originally indicated. Using a PDF editor, I have corrected this version both on page 359 and in footnote 28. Please note that this corrected version has not been republished, merely corrected in this version. I am leaving the original published article at this site as well (BJS, 1.13.20).

As a living and constantly adapting mode of expression, virtually all music is hybrid to some extent. The history of the Jews is filled with dispersed and migratory sub-groups who incorporated local sounds from the places they settled. Folklorist and singer Ruth Rubin put it this way: “Jewish folk music is as diverse and variegated as the Jews themselves.”  What distinguishes “postmodern” mixtures from older blends we intuitively recognize as klezmer is the degree and overtness with which ingredients are stewed together. In our age of music streaming, mass migrations, cross-cultural collaborations, and boundary blurring, openminded musicians inevitably experiment with more styles.

In this popular fun book, I offer you practical advice based on timeless Judaic Talmudic wisdom that forms the basis for a holy way of life for many Jews. I aspire to be equally respectful and meaningful to all varieties and denominations of Judaism in my discussions and to proffer insights that I trust will be helpful to people of all walks of life.

The questions and answers that I include here appeared in the Jewish Standard in Teaneck, New Jersey on the first Friday of the month in 2013-2017.

At the end of the book I include several other essays that I wrote and published.

Find it at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Talmudic-Advice-Tzvee-Zahavy/dp/1520768362

Modern American Judaism is often characterized by complex negotia- tions about practices, beliefs, affiliations and identities. This article uses ethno- graphic research on one ritual practice—the Mi Sheberach prayer for healing—to explore these processes of meaning-making and identity construction, through the lens of lived experience. While survey data tell us which practices, beliefs and affiliations are most commonly adopted by liberal American Jews, this ethnographic research examines why these choices are made, what they represent, and how they are integrated into the broader lifeworlds of this population. I demonstrate that prayers for healing are an inherently social process, inextricably linked to rela- tionships with other people, the community, God, and tradition. Prayer means something different to each of the participants in this study, yet for all, the Mi Sheberach becomes one site, among many, through which relationships to Judaism and Jewishness are negotiated and constructed. Study participants choose, and maintain, those Jewish practices, like the Mi Sheberach, that resonate emotionally and/or spiritually and that fit within the larger context of their lifeworld—in this case, the search for meaning, comfort, strength and connection during times of illness and healing. Yet at the same time, an essential part of this resonance is the experience of community, connection and tradition. The individual’s search for meaning is synthesized with the collectivist nature of Judaism, in an ongoing and continually evolving process of interpretive interaction between text, tradition and personal experience.

‘‘Negotiating the Interfaith Marriage Bed: Religious Difference and Sexual Intimacies’’ explores depictions of sex lives of interfaith marriage in television, cinema, and advice manuals from the 1970s through the 1990s, as rates of Christian/Jewish marriage dramatically increased. It delineates the narratives that interfaith couples had to navigate in their sexual lives, contrasting the popular discourse that presented sex as the solution to the
tensions of interfaith marriage with the challenges presented in advice manuals on interfaith marriage. In doing so, the article demonstrates the competing constructions of sexuality, as natural, religiously proscribed, and ethnically inflected, and articulates the ways in which those narratives locate
conversations about heterosexual interfaith relationships and marital sexual practice firmly in the realm of the individual subject, even when accounting for more communally oriented understandings of sex.

The 1970 release of His Land, a religious documentary about Israel produced by Billy Graham’s film studio, World Wide Pictures, took the evangelical world by storm. It was shown to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of churchgoers and encapsulated the mix of prophecy beliefs and cultural arguments that cohered a decade later into the Christian Zionist movement—a major component of the religious right. Surprisingly, American evangelicals were not the only fans of His Land. American Jews, led by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), helped make the film an international success. AJC officials organized ecumenical screenings and kept detailed records of the film’s reception, praising it as “an authentic interpretation” that “strengthen[s] the current interreligious discussion on the Middle East question.” By 1971, the AJC was showing this unabashedly evangelical film to Jewish audiences in synagogues and community centers. Through reconstructing His Land’s production and reception, this article provides a new interpretation of the origins of bipartisan, Jewish and evangelical support for Israel in the late-twentieth century. It recasts the rise of a Jewish-evangelical pro-Israel lobby as an important religious episode to understanding the rise of the religious right and the continuing importance of confessional and theological identity even in the era of the “culture wars.”

American Jewish experiences may vary, but the struggle to stay loyal to tradition, homeland, and community in the face of progress, the “New World,” and individuality weaves through them all.  This course nuances the struggle by reading Jews’ contributions to the United States’ literary tradition.  Students will work thematically and chronologically through letters, legal documents, poetry, memoirs, songs, and short stories written by and for American Jews.  In addition, students will investigate how Jews respond to their changing positions in American society.

THE CURRENT WILLINGNESS of major American Jewish organizations and leaders to dismiss the threat from white supremacists in the name of supporting Israel represents a new stage in the shifting relationship of U.S. Jews toward Zionism. In the first stage, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the majority of U.S. Jews did not take to Zionism, as its goals seemed antithetical to their aspirations to join mainstream American society. In a second stage, attitudes toward Zionism grew more positive as conditions for European Jews worsened and Jewish settlement in Palestine grew substantially. Following Israeli statehood in 1948, U.S. Jews began gradually to support Israel. Jewish groups and leaders increasingly characterized criticism of Zionism as inherently anti-Semitic and attacked Israel’s critics. In a third and most recent stage, many major Jewish organizations and leaders have subordinated the traditional U.S. Jewish interest in combatting white supremacy and bigotry when it comes into conflict with support for Israel and Zionism.

GOD & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America

Two sample chapters (by publisher's permission):
1.  Native American Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 2)
2.  Black Muslim Myths and Visions of America (Chapter 9)

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Apple-Pie-Religious-Visions/dp/1891928155/

From the Inside Flap;

GOD & Apple Pie
Religious Myths and Visions of America

Christopher Buck

Introduction by J. Gordon Melton,
Distinguished Professor of American Religious History, Baylor University

This book is about an unusual religious topic: the United States of America ("America").
"America" is, at once, nation and notion, country and creed, republic and rhetoric. This book is about Providence and principle--the relationship of the supernatural world to the world's superpower. "America" is not in the Bible, nor in the Qur'an. Yet "America" today pulsates with religious significance. "America" is a word that has taken on mythic proportions.

Eleven religions have been selected for their distinctive perspectives on America: (1) Native American religion (Iroquois); (2) Protestant Christianity (the Puritans); (3) the Christian Right; (4) Roman Catholicism; (5) Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist); (6) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons); (7) Christian Identity (White nationalists); (8) Nation of Islam (Black nationalists); (9) Islam (especially Radical Islamists and Progressive Muslims); (10) Buddhism (Tibetan and Soka Gakkai); and (11) the Baha'i Faith.

Over the course of American history, religious myths and visions of America tend to reflect an ever-changing American civil society, whether as a function of its social evolution or as a catalyst of it. The result is: Religions re-mythologize America. And: Religions re-envision America.

God & Apple Pie invites serious reflection on what it means to be an American, particularly from a religious perspective.

In this series of articles, I explore the history of Jewish Education magazine with particular emphasis on its intersection with the history of American Jewish education and American Jewish life more generally. I isolate major themes and issues that preoccupied the magazine’s editors and writers, and analyze how their discourse sheds light on their individual aims, values, and philosophical outlooks, as well their collective efforts at educational reform. I am particularly interested in elucidating how Benderly’s disciples sought to reinterpret their mentor’s vision in a changing American Jewish environment and why this vision was at best only partially realized.

In addressing inclusion for trans Jews, clergy and other leaders in mainstream Jewish institutions may consider how trans Jews can fit into existing normative structures of Jewish law, practice, and community. While some trans Jews are interested in this assimilative version of inclusion, others desire Jewish recognition and affirmation of trans identity. Based on ethnographic and interpretive research, this article examines affirming rituals innovated by and for trans Jews. Instead of engaging with inclusion practices that uphold normativity, the trans Jews discussed in this article are invested in reinterpreting and expanding tradition in order to establish a Judaism that goes beyond recognition or assimilation to affirmation of trans identity.