American Jewish Year Book 2018

This comprehensive annual volume offers an essential deep dive into the state of North American Jewish communities, presenting rigorous demographic analysis and expert commentary on contemporary issues. The 2018 edition opens with a particularly compelling special forum featuring assessments from more than twenty scholars debating whether there are grounds for optimism or pessimism about American Jewry's future. It further examines the troubling resurgence of antisemitism in contemporary America and provides thorough analyses of both domestic and international developments affecting Jewish life. This reference work transforms current events into meaningful context through systematic data collection and scholarly interpretation.

What distinguishes this volume is its unique combination of empirical data and diverse expert perspectives, creating a multidimensional portrait of Jewish communal life that balances statistical trends with intellectual debate. The special forum's structure—presenting conflicting viewpoints on American Jewry's trajectory—offers readers the rare opportunity to engage with scholarly disagreement rather than receiving a single narrative. Researchers, community leaders, and anyone seeking to understand the complex dynamics shaping contemporary Jewish identity will find this an indispensable resource that both documents and helps interpret a community in transition.