It’s hard to believe, reading Gerson Cohen’s brilliant, provocative essay “The Blessing of Assimilation in Jewish History,” that fifty years have passed since its delivery as a commencement address at the Hebrew Teachers College in Brookline, Massachusetts.1 Cohen’s challenge to widespread assumptions remains as relevant as ever in 2016; the communal dilemmas that he identified continue to engage and divide Jewish leaders; and the agenda that he implicitly and explicitly set for American...
