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The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity (The Modern Jewish Experience). Daniel Greene. Published by Indiana University Press, 2011. $24.95 pp.278 

Daniel Greene, Director of the Scholl Center for American History and Culture at the Newberry Library in Chicago, has written a well researched monograph that focuses on young, college based, American Jews, children of immigrants from Eastern Europe who, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, were looking for some way in which they could identify both as Americans and as Jews, not in a religious sense but rather as a definable Jewish ethnic group. He has chosen to look at the role of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, its formation, its goals, other Jewish organizations with which it had to compete, and its ultimate decline. Perhaps reflecting its origins as a doctoral dissertation, the book is sometimes repetitive, as if Greene wants to be certain the reader has understood the points he is making, and its six chapters often read like separate articles, only loosely connected to Greene’s overall thesis. But he shows clearly how this group of young men, through the Menorah Association and its journal, The Menorah Journal, paved the way towards creating an American Judaism, different from the Judaism of their European-born parents, a Judaism they referred to as Hebraism. And their debates about how best to express Hebraism would ultimately influence much of the discourse about American Jewish identity throughout the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty First.

In 1906 a group of Harvard University students met to discuss how they might retain some Jewish identity in an environment that strongly encouraged assimilation. They called themselves the Harvard Menorah Society and by their second meeting had already agreed that their goal was “to foster the study of Jewish History and Culture”. Though these Harvard Menorah founders supported Zionism and were not hostile to the concept of religion, they wished to balance these aspects of Judaism by focusing on the humanities, and considered the club’s purpose not merely social but, in line with their identity as American college students, as an intellectual way to express Judaism through lectures and discussions on Jewish culture, including history, science, art, literature and politics of the Jewish people.

Just two years after its founding there were more than one hundred members in the Harvard Menorah Society and chapters began to spread to college campuses all across the United States, a growth that then seemed natural; after all, the Association’s leaders were confident that Jewish cultural literacy would strengthen Jewish loyalty to America and thereby dislodge threats of dual loyalty. By 1913 the nearly thirty Menorah chapters that had been formed in less than a decade formed the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, and in 1915 the Association published the first edition of The Menorah Journal, a magazine that for the next three decades was to become the locus for some of the most perceptive expressions of American pluralism, featuring ongoing debates about the best way to embrace American culture while at the same time preserving a Jewish way of life.

The Journal also published fiction, showcasing the first stories written by such later luminaries as Lionel Trilling, Meyer Levin and Anzia Yezierska. Their stories tended to articulate, often through humorous characters, how Jews could reinvent Jewish culture in an American setting. Greene devotes an entire chapter to deconstructing some of these short stories, particularly a six part series by Irwin Edman, a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. Edman follows someone he calls Reuben Cohen as he goes off to college, a time when initially he does not identify, or want to be identified, as a Jew. By the end of the series, however, Cohen has matured both as a Jew and as an American, confident that he can lead a positive Jewish life in an American context. Greene calls this “heroic pluralism”.

The Menorah Societies dominated Jewish campus life throughout the 1920’s but by the early ’30’s many of its chapters existed in name only. In 1923 B’nai B’rith had founded the Hillel Foundation, whose competing chapters offered students the option of expressing Jewish identity in many forms, including religious, cultural, and social. Menorah’s insistence on intellectualism contradicted its own pluralistic view of what it meant to be an American Jew and by the 1930’s a new generation of students was changing its interests and needs. Menorah’s reluctance to recognize these changes, and to complement study with religious and social activity, sealed its own fate; though the Journal continued to publish until 1962, by the 1930’s Hillel groups, as well as Jewish fraternities, had replaced Menorah on American college campuses.

The concept of the “Menorah Idea”, with its emphasis on ethnic identity and cultural pluralism, has its origins in the personal struggles of American social philosopher, Horace M. Kallen, when he was student at Harvard. Though he had been raised in an Orthodox Jewish home he had left it early, determined to assimilate into his American environment. But while at Harvard Barrett Wendell, a non-Jewish professor, pointed out to him the similarities between American values and those of the Old Testament and challenged him to find a way to integrate the two. Kallen’s answer was what we now know as cultural pluralism, the concept that America could, and should, help its various ethnic minorities retain their cultures, primarily as a way to enrich American culture. His favorite metaphor was that of a symphony orchestra, each instrument playing its own tune in order to provide a richer overall sound.

In 1906 Kallen chaired the first meeting of the Harvard Menorah Society, and his cultural definition of Jewish identity continued to influence its work. Greene frequently refers to Kallen, and claims that the Hebraism he defined, and his stress on ethnicity and cultural pluralism, “remained the linchpin” that would allow not only himself, but also other American Jews, solve the problem of how to remain Jewish while integrating into American life. Though over the course of a long and active lifetime Kallen published books on subjects as varied as consumerism, environmentalism and adult education, it was his work on pluralism that most occupied him, with an emphasis on Jewish pluralism, including encouraging support, as Americans, for activities in the Yishuv and later in the Jewish State. It was only natural that in 1962 he would write the lead essay in the Menorah Journal’s final edition, once again returning to “The Promise of the Menorah Idea”, as he reflected on the origins of pluralism, what it meant to be an American and, more specifically, what it meant to be Jewish in America.

On a personal note: During the last six years of his life I came to know Horace Kallen well. I visited him often in his office at the New School, as well as at his home in Oneonta, New York, where I also met his (non-Jewish) wife and was the first person to whom he gave access to his archival material. While writing my doctoral dissertation, he read each chapter, often suggesting new sources and adding new information. What seemed to intrigue him most was the fact that I, an observant Jew, was engaged in graduate work in American Studies. This, to him, represented the essence of his concept of cultural pluralism, someone who understood and appreciated the significance of America and its values while at the same time preserving a strong Jewish identity.

Yet, in all the time I knew him, Kallen never once mentioned the Menorah Society; apparently it had become a “forgotten” part of his life. He would be pleased at the recent renewed interest in his work—and would have enjoyed reading Greene’s book.

DR. SARAH SCHMIDT teaches courses related to modern Jewish history at the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with an emphasis on both Israeli and American Jewish history.

Review courtesy of the Jewish Political Studies Review.