In the United States, Jews have bridged minority and majority cultures - their history illustrates the diversity of the American experience.

Eli Lederhendler was born in New York City, attended the Bronx High School of Science and graduated from Columbia University, New York (BA) and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (BHL, MA, PhD). He has taught modern Jewish history at University College London, Vassar College, New York, Yale University, Connecticut and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds the Stephen S. Wise Chair in American Jewish History and Institutions. He is the author of several noted books on American Jewish history in the twentieth century, including the Koret Jewish Book Award-winning New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity (2001), and is also co-editor of the prestigious annual journal Studies in Contemporary Jewry.

1. First encounters, new beginnings: from colonial times to the Civil War; 2. Changing places: migration and Americanization, 1860s-1920s; 3. Finding space in America, 1920s-50s; 4. The European nexus: Spain, Germany, and Russia; 5. Recapitulations and more beginnings, 1950s to the twenty-first century; Epilogue.