Daniel Greene: American Jews, the Melting Pot, and Cultural Pluralism: Then and Now

Registration Link Below

JRC is pleased to host Daniel Greene in the CityTalk From the Bean to the Brasserie series, sponsored by Theater Wit, Northwestern’s Crown Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, and Northlight Theatre.

For well over a century, American Jews have confronted the tension between assimilation and cultural preservation. When Israel Zangwill’s play The Melting Pot premiered in 1908, it popularized the idea of that ethnic differences would dissolve into a unified American identity. But for many Jewish writers and thinkers, this vision sparked concern: Would “melting” into America mean the loss of Jewish religion and culture?

In this lecture, historian Daniel Greene explores the evolution of the melting pot metaphor and its alternatives, tracing the emergence of cultural pluralism—which envisions the nation as a federation of diverse ethnic groups, each maintaining its heritage while participating in a shared civic culture. Drawing from his book, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity, Greene examines how American Jews helped shape ideas of pluralism and influenced present-day debates about national identity, multiculturalism, and diversity.

CityTalk From the Bean to the Brasserie is a city-wide, free to the public forum exploring ideas and themes related to Prayer for the French Republic, a play in co-production with Theater Wit and Northlight Theatre, opening this spring. More information on the full series can be found at citytalkchicago.org.

This is a free lecture open to the public. Register here: theaterwit.org/tickets/productions/545/performances/7564/orders/new

In addition to being a beloved JRC member, Daniel Greene is a historian at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and Adjunct Professor of History at Northwestern University in Evanston. In 2018, he curated Americans and the Holocaust, an exhibition that opened at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate its twenty-fifth anniversary. The exhibition inspired The U.S. and the Holocaust, an Emmy-winning documentary film directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein that aired on PBS in 2022. Greene’s co-edited (with Edward Phillips) book, Americans and the Holocaust: A Reader, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2022. His first book The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity (Indiana University Press, 2011) won the American Jewish Historical Society’s Saul Viener Prize.