The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism

$18 | $10 for Spertus members | $8 for students. Buy Tickets Now. Or call 312.322.1773 Hear historian Dr. Daniel Greene speak about his new book, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism, due out April 15. In it, he traces the emergence of cultural pluralism to a group of Jewish college students and intellectuals who faced challenges as they sought to integrate themselves into the early 20th-century American academic and literary circles.

In 1906, they founded the Menorah Association at Harvard. Their publication, the Menorah Journal, became a leading voice of Jewish public opinion in the 1920s. In response to the idea that the American melting pot would erase cultural differences, they instead advocated a pluralist America that would accommodate a thriving Jewish culture and bring Jewishness into mainstream American life.

Dr. Daniel Greene is Vice President for Research and Academic Programs at Chicago’s Newberry Library. He has served as a historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Chicago.