Defending the Faith: Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Writing on Christianity and Jesus

Deals with nineteenth century American-Jewish perceptions of Christianity and Jesus. While its concern is the centuries-old argument between Christians and Jews, it focuses on the American setting of that argument and shows how American conditions shaped it.

America provided the Jews with a new kind of historical experience. Within a largely welcoming, legally equal society, a new and more positive Jewish perception of Christianity would seem to have been a natural development. However, trad...