“Does Jewish peoplehood have a future?”

Although fewer American Jews today describe themselves as religious, they overwhelmingly report a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Indeed, Jewish peoplehood has eclipsed religion—as well as ethnicity and nationality—as the essence of what binds diverse Jewish communities to one another. But in the era of globalization, Jewish peoplehood risks becoming an outdated model. Noam Pianko explores the past of Jewish peoplehood to consider its future possibilities.

Find out about the other fascinating short lectures from JewDub Talks 2015, a program of the UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies.

Noam Pianko is the Samuel N. Stroum Chair of Jewish Studies and Associate Professor in the Jackson School of International Studies. He is the author of Zionism and the Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn (Indiana, 2010) and Jewish Peoplehood: An American Innovation (Rutgers University Press, 2015). He received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies/Judaic Studies from Yale University in 2004.