ious, and social obligations of Jews. Nor was there a Jewish communal structure with the power to tax and discipline recalcitrant members. In America a Jew could be any kind of Jew he or she wanted, or even cease being a Jew at all. It certainly is not coincidental that the two major terms used to describe the nature of American nationality were coined by Jews struggling over the nature of Jewish identity in this new land--Israel Zangwill's "the melting pot" and Horace Kallen's "cultural pluralism."
             This unprecedented freedom to be different, not only from Gentiles but also from other Jews, resulted in the appearance of a plethora of new expressions of Jewish identity, and this has continued to the present day. No version of Jewish identity has lacked for advocates in America. If American Jews, by and large, no longer see themselves as a Chosen People and bless God for having given the Torah to them, and only to them, they certainly have been a choosing people when it comes to Jewish identity, and this has been true for a century and a half. Isaac Mayer Wise, the most important American Jewish figure of the nineteenth century, talked about the need for a "mi
             ...