ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with good news, cataloging the ways in which the quality of Jewish life in America today is far better than it was in 1938. It focuses on three significant substantive changes within American Jewish life that have immeasurably strengthened its collective identity: a renewed sense of Jewish peoplehood, stimulated by the success of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel in 1948; and the revitalization of Orthodox Judaism. By 1938, then, the "Zionization" of the most significant and least traditional branch of American Jewry was well underway, and with it, the recognition of Jewish peoplehood by the broader American Jewish community. Orthodoxy, in 1938, was widely perceived as an immigrant form of Judaism that was fated to die out with the older generation. American Jews who sought to perpetuate the traditional Jewish way of life were attracted to the Conservative movement, which taught the adaptation of Jewish practices to American mores.
