American Judaism in Historical Perspective Jonathan D. Sarna Thirty years ago, when I ‹rst became interested in American Jewish history, I mentioned my interest to a scholar at a distinguished rabbinical seminary, and he was absolutely appalled. “American Jewish history?” he growled. “I’ll tell you all that you need to know about American Jewish history: The Jews came to America, they abandoned their faith, they began to live like goyim, and after a generation or two they intermarried and disappeared.” “That,” he said, “is American Jewish history; all the rest is commentary. Don’t waste your time. Go and study Talmud.” I did not take this great sage’s advice, but I have long remembered his analysis, for it re›ects, as I now recognize, a long-standing fear that Jews in America are doomed to assimilate, that they simply cannot survive in an environment of religious freedom and church-state separation. In America, where religion is totally voluntary, where religious diversity is the norm, where everyone is free to choose his or her own rabbi and his or her own brand of Judaism—or, indeed, no Judaism at all—many, and not just rab- binical school scholars, have assumed that Judaism is fated sooner or later to disappear. Freedom, the same quality that made America so alluring for persecuted faiths, also brought with it the freedom to make religious choices: to modernize Judaism, to assimilate, to intermarry, to convert. American Jews, as a result, have never been able to assume that their future, as Jews, is guaranteed. Each generation has had to wrestle anew with the question of whether its own children and grandchildren would remain 139 This essay was originally presented on March 8, 2003, at the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.