From Multiculturalism to Antisemitism? Revisiting the Jewish Question in America

Previous scholarship suggests that American Jews have been the beneficiaries of a multicultural mode of incorporation since the 1960s. If so, what explains the recent resurgence of antisemitism in the United States? An answer to this puzzle is proffered that traces renewed antisemitism in part to problems of boundary definition and identity generated by multiculturalism. The talk provides additional support for this thesis by means of a historical comparison to cultural attitudes toward Jews in the the Calvinist or Protestant Reformed tradition, where analogous problems previously appeared.