The American Jew

the long version

The American Jewish community is more influential than ever before. Who are these Jews? Do they speak with one voice? How have they become so rich and powerful? What do their non-Jewish neighbors think about them? American rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok and his wife, Lavinia, spent four months in a typical midwestern city finding the answers to these questions. Through more than one hundred engaging interviews, individuals from a broad spectrum of Jewish life -- an Orthodox rabbi, a self-made millionaire, a doting grandmother, an Auschwitz survivor, an eighteen-year-old debutante, and many more -- speak for themselves about their lives as American Jews. As gripping as the best fiction, their stories provide a unique and strikingly accurate snapshot of American Jewry in the 1990s. - Back cover.