Brandeis scholars to lead deep-dive on 250 years of American Jewish history

Brandeis Stories

Brandeis scholars to lead deep-dive on 250 years of American Jewish history

By Steve Foskett
July 6, 2026

As the 250th anniversary celebrations reach a fever pitch this summer across the country, an innovative new course at Brandeis invites the community along to consider the often-overlooked influence and impact of the Jewish experience in American history.

"America and its Jews at 250: A Public Course" taps Brandeis' unique and authoritative expertise to offer a scholarly, nuanced look at the American Jewish experience. Examining evolving questions of belonging and antisemitism, culture and religion, and Israel and migration, the course confronts key questions central to American Jewish life during the semiquincentennial.

The course will be open to the public; for a small fee, participants in the hybrid format can attend individual, self-contained sessions from August through December. Online class video recordings will be free to view. That was by design, according to Flora Cassen, the inaugural Lavine Family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and a co-organizer of the course.

"What we wanted to do is invite the public into our classroom with our professors and students, and be part of that semester-long experience," Cassen said.

Dalia Wassner, director of Jews of the Americas - an initiative of Brandeis at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies - will co-direct America and its Jews at 250 with Cassen. She said the national focus this summer is on the last 250 years of the United States, but the Jewish presence in the Americas goes back at least 375, beginning with Sephardic communities in the Caribbean that were foundational to early settlements in Philadelphia and New Amsterdam, now New York.

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The American Jewish community is more of a mosaic than most historical accounts give it credit for; it's a much richer and more deeply-rooted story that goes far beyond well-known waves of eastern European immigration, Wassner said.

The course's explorations will include:

• Jewish contributions to Hollywood, music, and the legal profession, including figures like Barbara Streisand and Louis Brandeis, the university's namesake.
• Foundational documents, such as George Washington's letter to the Jews regarding religious liberty.
• New Russian immigration.
• Latin American and Cuban Jewish immigrants.

Moving chronologically and taught by 24 different experts, including faculty from across the university and invited distinguished speakers, America and its Jews at 250 asks how Jews have understood America as a refuge, republic, covenant, marketplace, battleground, and moral project - and how, in return, Jews have shaped American law, religion, education, politics, gender norms, and global Jewish life.

Each class session will be professionally recorded and edited, and materials will be available online. Cassen and Wassner said making it as accessible as possible will give the public a window into the continued importance of higher education and pluralistic inquiry at a time of unprecedented scrutiny.

"University classrooms are often not open to the public," Cassen said. "We're inviting the community to join our class, see what we do, and engage with the ideas presented and topics discussed"

Brandeis itself mirrors the ideals on which the country was founded, Cassen said.

"The idea that a religious community can found a college that provides a universal education is a very American phenomenon," Cassen said. "Many of the country's leading universities were created this way. And at the same time, what is interesting is that with Brandeis, the Jewish community embraced that model. And so, in a way, the existence of Brandeis - created by the Jewish community but open to all - exemplifies the broader Jewish story: not just participating in American society but also helping to build institutions that serve the common good.

The course will feature faculty from across Brandeis, including experts in history, education and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, as well as various campus research centers.

Registration for the public is open; classes begin Aug. 26.