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Leon Jick's classic swept me off my feet when I first read it some 20 years ago. Here was a boldly written, brave new departure establishing the American landscape as the seedbed for Reform. Although lacking a strong original source base and homogenizing certain aspects of the story, this was and remains a seminal work.1 As series editor Jonathan Sarna remarks in his forward to a later printing, Jick explores areas and themes which had been largely ignored in the literature, and he also poses what were then new questions for inquiry.2 As Leonard Dinnerstein observes, "Jick's major contribution is to expose the myths of unity, solidarity, and orthodoxy, which some earlier historians have described or implied, and to explain how an unwieldy and diverse number of congregations eventu ally came to accept Reform Judaism." Jick's work broke with the filiopietism of prior historiography to explain the drive of Jews for accep tance and their accommodation to the positive American environment.3 This essay will not so much attack Jick's work or challenge its correctness in particular areas as much as it will attempt to place it in relation to varied perspectives. In preparation for rereading The Americanization of the Synagogue, I reread Michael A. Meyer's magisterial Response to Modernity.4 The con trasts in some respects could not be more striking. Following different paths and types of evidence, the two historians re versed the trends of the broader historiography. A half century ago Perry Miller's paradigm of a New England mind dominated Puritan studies. An intellectual construct of the views of the clergy, Miller's ideas were chal |
