Does the American Jewish experience represent a singular communal circumstance, or does it repeat, with obvious and unavoidable variation, the older European pattern of Jewish existence? In 2004, on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the establishment of the American Jewish community, this question seemed well worth revisiting. To explore it more fully, the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University brought together a distinguished group of expert scholars on the main areas of American Jewish life, stretching from the colonial Jewish experience to the image of Jews in contemporary films. The present volume represents the fruit of this collective reflection and interrogation.

This study seeks to explain three models of network governance embedded in digital practices that the mainstream monotheistic religions—Judaism, Catholic Christianity, and Islam—have used to lead and manage the worldwide distribution of their local nodes, exploring the connection between network governance and its digital embeddedness and showing how the latter enhances the performance of the former.

This book traces the evolution of Orthodox Judaism's approach to its nonpracticing brethren, shedding new light on the emergence of Orthodoxy as a specific movement within modern Jewish society.

The Jewish community has changed over the past four decades for many reasons, prominent among them the phenomenon of large numbers of students spending a year after high school studying Torah full time in Israel. The Results of this "Year in Israel" can be felt in many synagogues and homes, with a good deal of increased ritual observance and dedication to Torah study û the much discussed "Shift to the Right" Many questions arise from these changes. Have these students been brainwashed'? Has their primary education so failed them that a single year in Israel is more influential than over a decade of American schooling? Do only students with psychological problems change? And how long do these religious shifts last? These questions and many more, including the broader communal implications of this phenomenon, are addressed by three experts in Flipping Out? Myth or Fact: The Impact of the "Year in Israel". Book jacket.