A Chosen People in a Pluralist Nation

Horace Kallen and the Jewish-American Experience

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4517472
AutoresDanyella Greene (0000-0002-1294-2973, autor correspondente), Daniel Greene (0000-0003-3088-2385, autor correspondente)
Ano2006
Volume16
Fascículo2
Páginas161-193
Data de publicação2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoReligion and American Culture A Journal of Interpretation (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1052-1151 • E-ISSN: 1533-8568
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1525/rac.2006.16.2.161
OpenAlexW1995170342
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas31

This article examines the ways that ethnic pluralism and Jewish exceptionalism coexisted in philosopher Horace M. Kallen's thought from the time that Jewish identity began to play a significant and positive role in his own self-conception, roughly in 1900, until his coining of "cultural pluralism" in 1924. Kallen conceived of pluralism, in large part, to address concerns about American Jewish identity, but its conception created a vexing problem for Jews. If Jews were the "chosen people," then how could they fit into a model of the nation that emphasized equality, or at least harmony, between many different groups? Kallen would solve the dilemma of pluralism and chosenness by advocating that American Jews maintain their particularity on the basis of culturaldistinctivenessrather than ofsuperiority. Interrogating Kallen's thought on this question illuminates how his enduring theory of cultural pluralism owed its origins, in part, to specific Jewish concerns and how it developed in conjunction with a sustained struggle to articulate a meaningful Jewish identity that would prove continuous across generations. Kallen's solution to the dilemma of pluralism and Jewish exceptionalism also demonstrates one instance of how debates about Jewish particularity profoundly influenced understandings of cultural, racial, and religious difference within American democracy during the early twentieth century

Art · Dilemma · Epistemology · Ethnic group · Harmony (color) · Jewish identity · Judaism · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Pluralism (philosophy) · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Philosophy · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies · Social Psychology

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