Amy Weiss on Realigning Faith: American Jews, Protestants, and Israel 1945–2020

In 1977, the American Jewish Committee awarded Billy Graham its first National Interreligious Award in recognition of the evangelist’s support of Israel and endorsement of interfaith relations. While bestowing the award upon an evangelical—and not a mainline Protestant or Catholic—made sense to the AJC, not all Jewish communal organizations or American Jews understood this decision. This talk examines the shifting alliances the AJC and other communal organizations forged with evangelicals in the late 20th century and how these alliances revealed the role of Israel in Jewish-Protestant relations.

About the Speaker
Amy Weiss holds the Maurice Greenberg Chair of Judaic Studies and is an assistant professor of Judaic studies and history at the University of Hartford. During the 2022-2023 academic year, she is also a faculty fellow in ethnic studies for the University of Hartford’s Center for the Humanities and a Center for Jewish History-Fordham University Research Fellow. She previously held the Thomas and Elissa Ellant Katz Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Her research and publications focus on the intersections of American Jewish history, Israeli culture, and Jewish-Protestant relations. She is currently writing a book manuscript on the evolving relationships American Jewish communal organizations have forged with evangelicals on issues relating to Israel. Most recently, her articles have appeared in the journals American Jewish History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Israel Studies. Her work has also appeared in the edited volumes Armed Jews in the Americas, Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict in the College Classroom, and Minhagim: Custom and Practice in Jewish Life. Weiss received her Ph.D. from the departments of Hebrew and Judaic studies and history at New York University.

This hybrid lecture is part of the joint research fellowship at the Center for Jewish History and Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies.