The year is 1945: Bess Myerson, daughter of Russian immigrants from the Bronx, becomes the first, and to this day, the only, Jewish woman to be crowned Miss America.
Hank Greenberg, the baseball star who once refused to play on Yom Kippur, hits a ninth-inning grand slam that sent the Detroit Tigers to the World Series.
Two years later the film Gentleman’s Agreement, which exposed lingering antisemitism, wins the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer sit on bookshelves nationwide Senator Abraham Ribicoff brings a Jewish voice to congress.
This was the beginning of the golden age of Jewish life in America.
The era right after World War II was a time when Jews achieved economic security, political acceptance, and communal strength beyond what had been known in centuries. From the 1940s until recent years, this era is described as feeling like a “bear hug”: a sense of security, belonging, and acceptance.The Harvard Gazette describes it as a time when American Jews could truly be our Jewish selves, embraced by both our heritage and the larger society. Can you imagine the pride and excitement families felt seeing Hank Greenberg and Bess Meyerson on the mainstage of US pop culture?
This golden age of Jewish life was not only about pop culture or politics. These moments of pride and visibility were matched by the internal building throughout Jewish communities. Between 1945 and 1965, over a thousand synagogues were built or rebuilt across the country. Graduate programs in Jewish studies and Jewish academia expanded. We invested heavily in education – by 1959, more than 80% of Jewish children were enrolled in some form of Jewish education. Jewish institutions and Jewish life were being built brick by brick. Every synagogue rebuilt, every student taught, every program launched added strength to the framework of our community.
We felt like we belonged. That foundation of acceptance and achievement in Jewish life had been brewing for a long time. From the moment Jews arrived in America, we began weaving our values with the promise of this new society — freedom, democracy, and justice. Reform Jews, especially, mirrored civic life: synagogues with boards, constitutions, and by-laws; education programs that taught both ritual and civic responsibility. We built Jewish institutions shaped by American structures and values, because we were building lives that would be fully American and fully Jewish.
Even amid these achievements, Jews have always been a small minority in the U.S. — about 2% of the population. Our identity and traditions set us apart, and that distinctiveness shaped how we built our community. We weren’t living in a golden age because we blended in seamlessly, rather our golden age was when we brought the fullness of our identity into the wider world while holding fast to our roots.
The golden age of Jewish life wasn’t about numbers or assimilation. It was about taking those bricks — our traditions, institutions, and values — and building a community strong enough to stand proudly, fully Jewish and American.
That sense of a golden age still felt so real. Where did you feel that golden age? Was it in our neighborhoods, our summer camps, our Shabbat tables, was it a shared feeling of possibility, pride, and connection that made being Jewish in America feel vibrant and secure.
Even when I felt it when I was younger.
“One day, you could be the first Jewish president!” My parents would often tell my brothers and me. While my career in politics never quite took off, it felt daring and exciting, yet completely possible for us to imagine – we could be the first.
I remember being twenty-two years old in Washington, D.C., attending Shabbat in a park, there must have been 75, maybe even 100 other young Jews. I thought to myself: how amazing is it, in the nation’s capital, that such a large group of us can gather outside and simply celebrate Shabbat. We sang loudly, prayed together, invited passerbys to join us and stayed for a picnic late into the night. I was grateful and in awe of the joy and the sense of belonging not just in that community, but the sense of belonging of being Jewish in a major city in the U.S.
But times have changed.
In recent years, so many of us have felt scared to be Jewish, and scared for the safety and security of our people. I’ve heard stories of antisemitism again and again from so many of you — stories from your children’s schools, from workplaces, and about relationships with friends and neighbors that have ended. Being Jewish in the U.S. has changed a lot for so many of us in such a short time.
And it is not just our personal experiences. In the past few years newspaper headlines have told the story for all of us, they have read:
“Why the Golden Age for Jews in America is Coming to an End?”
“The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending.”
“Decline of the Golden Age for American Jews.”
It is not just in the headlines. The strong walls built over the past eighty years now show cracks. Synagogues once buzzing with life struggle to keep their doors open. Institutions that flourished now face dwindling enrollments. On campuses where Jewish studies once thrived, Jewish students now encounter harassment and hate. It’s hard not to believe the headlines and wonder: Is this the end of our golden age of Jewish life in America?
Were these last few decades really so Golden after all? Historian Jonathan Sarna reminds us, “American Jewish history has been punctuated by golden ages that shimmer in memory, but always contain shadows in their own time.” From the 1940s onward, antisemitism persisted. Social barriers limited full inclusion in some neighborhoods and institutions. McCarthyism and the Red Scare caused suspicion on Jewish Americans, particularly those involved in politics, labor, and the arts. The rise of intermarriage sparked anxiety about preserving Jewish continuity. While we had achieved some external acceptance, Jews who had fallen in love with non-Jewish partners still found themselves without a Jewish home for decades, facing exclusion during this golden period.
We remember it as “golden” not because antisemitism disappeared, but because we had the resources, confidence and community strength to build despite it.
Even in seemingly ordinary neighborhoods, we were reminded that we were outsiders.
I remember walking through the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis as a teenager with members of the Reform Congregation in Memphis. I listened to stories from congregants about crosses burned on their front lawns in the 1950s and 60s. They recalled seeing Ku Klux Klan members walking through the streets of their neighborhoods. These were reminders that our security and sense of belonging have never been guaranteed.
So, when we think back on this era of a golden age, are we remembering reality, or memory? Think about the stories you’ve inherited, the moments of pride you recall. What was it like for you, your grandparents, parents, or your Jewish community when you grew up? If you did not grow up Jewish — what did you know or think about this community?
Memory is never the full replay of what happened. It condenses, essentializes, and folds experiences into a single powerful impression. Memory is the highlight reel. But isn’t that what we do with history? We paint it bright. We remember Bess Myerson’s crown, Hank Greenberg’s grand slam, the synagogues rising across America. And of course we do. Those moments deserve to be remembered.
We hold onto the moments that inspire us, and the shadows — the antisemitism, the exclusion, the fear, the crosses burned on lawns— fade from view. Golden ages are not times without hate. They are times when Jewish life, creativity, and visibility shone brightly despite the tensions that persisted. To remember a golden age as perfect is to misremember it.
And that brings us to the present. The question is not whether so-called golden ages exist, or whether we are witnessing the end of one. The real question is: what will we do to make this a Golden Age? Do we still tell our children they could be the first Jewish president? Do we act boldly even when fear threatens to hold us back?
Yom Kippur reminds us of that very possibility. This morning, we heard the words of Parashat Nitzavim: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life”. Choosing life does not mean ignoring challenges, nor does it mean that the curses described in the Torah simply disappear. It means choosing to engage fully with Jewish life — to study, pray, create, and invest in our community. Choosing life, for us today, means refusing to let fear or passivity write our story. It means recognizing that we are a minority, but we are also a proud and resilient one.
The rabbis of the talmud discuss – who are the inheritors of the Torah and of our traditions? They explain that while the inheritors are often called בָּנָיִךְ (banayikh), your children, we should actually read it as בּוֹנָיִךְ (bonayikh), your builders. Every generation is not just an inheritor of Jewish life, we are not children of the Jewish people, but rather builders of our future. Moses’ call to choose life sits hand in hand with this teaching: to choose life is not merely to survive, but to shape the Jewish future, to invest in our traditions and in our community.
Here at Sinai, we are trying to build toward that golden age, but not just for ourselves. We’re building for the next generation, and the one after that. When over 70 of us gathered for Tashlich in Lincoln Park, we weren’t just casting away our sins, we were showing our children what it looks like to be visibly, proudly Jewish in public spaces. When we packed the Elul class this summer, we weren’t just studying, we were ensuring that Jewish learning remains vibrant for those who come after us. When we engaged in a summer of social action, we were modeling that Jewish values demand we work towards a more just world. Now the question is upon us: What are we building that will outlast us? What legacy are we leaving? When our grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and great- great grandchildren look back at this moment in history, will they say “In a time of fear and fracture, they chose to build?’
Jewish life in America has grown because generations before us chose to be builders. Our grandparents built synagogues, schools, and movements. Our parents built communities, institutions, and networks. And now, the bricks are in our hands.
So I ask: What bricks will we lay down together? What foundations will we secure? What doors will we open? What will we build together so that our children, and their children, will know that in this time — in our time — we built boldly and we built with vision towards a golden age?
We build the era we need- with Torah, ritual, pride, and peoplehood. Whether history will call it a golden age is beyond our control. Whether hate and antisemitism will persist with the same intensity as today, we cannot know for sure. But whether we live despite the challenges, just as generations of Jewish Americans have done, that is what continues to make us into builders.
May we not only choose life, but may we choose to be builders so that together we can continue to build the next golden age of Jewish life in America.