The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century

Most recently in the spotlight as one of the many defense lawyers attending O. J. Simpson in his first criminal trial, attorney Alan M. Dershowitz is also a powerful advocate for the liberal Jewish tradition in this country. In an earlier book, Chutzpah, Dershowitz celebrated an end to Jewish isolation and institutional anti-Semitism in America; in his latest book, The Vanishing American Jew, he decries the perhaps inevitable result of this desegregation: assimilation.

Dershowitz writes powerfully about his fear that, with nothing to struggle against and no powerful motivation to maintain traditions, American secular Jews will, within a few generations, lose their Jewishness. The author writes from a privileged position: raised an Orthodox Jew, he embraced secular Judaism in his young adulthood and thus comes equipped with an intimate understanding of what he has chosen to reject and accept. Though Dershowitz has no definitive answers for the problem of The Vanishing American Jew, the questions he raises may be the first step in discovering a solution.