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Jews on the Frontier is a religious history of the United States that begins in an unexpected place: on the road with mobile Jews. It follows them out of eastern cities and into the American frontier, where they found unprecedented economic opportunity but also anonymity, loneliness, instability, mistrust, scarcity, and diversity, all of which complicated the many legal obligations of traditional Jewish life. Against the backdrop of Manifest Destiny, ordinary Jews created religious life from scratch, expanding and transforming Jewish thought and practice within and outside newly developed networks, markets, and institutions. The inconsistency and eclecticism of these efforts were a central concern of well-known leaders like Isaac Mayer Wise and Isaac Leeser, who worked to establish greater order and standardization. While they failed in their most ambitious projects, however, they succeeded in establishing the institutional and intellectual infrastructure of American Judaism. Jews on the Frontier vividly recounts these stories of a neglected era in American Jewish history, taking the reader far from the well-trodden ground of New York City. In the process, it offers a new interpretation of American religions, rooted not in congregations or denominations, but in the politics and experiences of mobility. Today’s unafilliated Jews—and the much-heralded “nones” of all stripes—are not the first Americans to practice religion through family, social ties, print culture, and unauthorized forms of knowledge. Rather, American religions have long been constituted by diverse individuals and groups assembling resources for stability, certainty, and identity in a nation where there was little to be found.

In the Jewish tradition, reading of the Torah follows a calendar cycle, with a specific portion assigned each week. These weekly portions, read aloud in synagogues around the world, have been subject to interpretation and commentary for centuries. Following on this ancient tradition, the book brings together some of the world's leading rabbis, scholars, and writers to interpret the Torah through a “bent lens.” With commentaries on the fifty-four weekly Torah portions and six major Jewish holidays, the book opens up stimulating new insights and highlights previously neglected perspectives. It unites the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and straight-allied writers, including some of the most central figures in contemporary American Judaism. All bring to the table unique methods of reading and interpreting that allow the Torah to speak to modern concerns of sexuality, identity, gender, and LGBT life. This book offers cultural critique, social commentary, and a vision of community transformation, all done through biblical interpretation. The book examines topics as divergent as the Levitical sexual prohibitions, the experience of the Exodus, the rape of Dinah, the life of Joseph, and the ritual practices of the ancient Israelites. It charts a future of inclusion and social justice deeply rooted in the Jewish textual tradition, and is an important contribution to the project of democratizing Jewish communities, and an essential guide to understanding the intersection of queerness and Jewishness.

Engaging media has been an ongoing issue for American Jews, as it has been for other religious communities in the United States, for several generations. This book is a pioneering examination of the impact of new communications technologies and media practices on the religious life of American Jewry over the past century. The book’s examples range from early recordings of cantorial music to Hasidic outreach on the Internet. In between it explores mid-twentieth-century ecumenical radio and television broadcasting, video documentation of life cycle rituals, museum displays and tourist practices as means for engaging the Holocaust as a moral touchstone, and the role of mass-produced material culture in Jews’ responses to the American celebration of Christmas. The book argues that the impact of these and other media on American Judaism is varied and extensive: they have challenged the role of clergy and transformed the nature of ritual; facilitated innovations in religious practice and scholarship, as well as efforts to maintain traditional observance and teachings; created venues for outreach, both to enhance relationships with non-Jewish neighbors and to promote greater religiosity among Jews; even redefined the notion of what might constitute a Jewish religious community or spiritual experience. As the book demonstrates, American Jews’ experiences are emblematic of how religious communities’ engagements with new media have become central to defining religiosity in the modern age.