Since the 1960s, the Holocaust and the State of Israel have been dominant themes in American Jewish life. The destruction of 6 million Jews followed by the ‘miraculous’ creation of the State of Israel constituted a modern-day reenactment for Jews of an ancient tale of death and rebirth. The motif of “Holocaust and redemption” became, in the words of the well-known Judaic scholar, Jacob Neusner, “the generative myth by which the generality of American Jews make sense of themselves.”

Now, as “The Jewish Americans” indicates, this is changing. The generation that witnessed the Holocaust, the birth of the State of Israel, and the Six Day War of 1967 is passing from the scene, and among younger Jews both support for Israel and interest in the Holocaust are waning.

The generation coming of age in American Jewish life is searching for a fresh understanding of what it means to be an American Jew. Popular culture -- a dominant theme in “The Jewish Americans”-- plays a large part in this quest, and in contemporary American Jewish identity as a whole. Much of this identity is avowedly secular.

Secularism characterized a large segment of the American Jewish community in the early decades of the twentieth century. But the Cold War, which saw secularists equated with subversives, as well as Soviet antisemitism, the decline of the Yiddish language, and the movement of Jews out to suburbia led to secularism’s rapid decline in the 1950s and 60s.

The writer Irving Howe, who chronicled secular Jewish culture and translated it into English, was by the end of his life disconsolate. He spoke of a “profound discomfort, perhaps desperation.” “Those of us committed to the secular Jewish outlook,” he declared in 1994, “must admit that we are reaching a dead-end.”

Now, like the proverbial phoenix, Jewish secularism is making a comeback. The National Yiddish Book Center—a creation of young Jews in their 20s—seeks to preserve and in some respects recreate the great Yiddish secularist culture of yesteryear. Reboot, an organization that reaches out to Jews in their 20s and 30s, has produced a wide range of cultural materials including books, a magazine, a record label, and a film—almost all of it overtly secular. Heeb Magazine, the smart, sassy, progressive magazine for young Jews is likewise secular. So are recent Jewish books like Shalom Auslander’s Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir. So is the Center for Cultural Judaism, which sponsors grants, publications, programs, and university courses, all directed toward “non-religious, cultural and secular Jews.” And now we have “The Jewish Americans” which celebrates this same cultural phenomenon.

The unexpected rebirth of Jewish secularism reflects, in part, a generational turn: a reminder of the adage that what one generation seeks to forget another seeks to remember.

But as I have suggested in an article in the current issue of Contemplate: The International Journal of Cultural Jewish Thought, the resurgence of Jewish secularism also reflects more than that. For one thing, Communism has collapsed, so the stigma of subversion no longer attaches to secularists; they can safely come out into the sunlight and once again breathe freely. In addition, secularism has become widespread throughout much of formerly Christian Western Europe as well as in Israel; so it is perhaps not surprising that we are now seeing some of these same trends among young liberal Jews and Christians, particularly on the West Coast and the East Coast (the blue states).

Finally, the growth of Jewish secularism may well represent a cultural response to the explosion of fundamentalism among Jews, among Christians, and especially among Muslims. Having witnessed the violence, the intolerance, and the self-righteousness to which far too much of contemporary religion worldwide has fallen prey, is it any wonder that some in the younger generation are steering clear of religion altogether?

It remains to be seen whether Jewish secularism, with its universalistic ethic, can succeed in keeping Jews Jewish. Culture, historically, has been a far weaker bond among Jews than religion. Many secular Jews in the past watched their children intermarry and their descendants disappear into the American mainstream. Will contemporary Jewish secularists fare any better?

Whatever the future portends, it seems clear that two of the grand themes that defined American Jewish identity in the late twentieth century -- the Holocaust and the State of Israel – will play a smaller role in shaping that identity in the twenty-first century. As American Jews cast about for new themes and new missions, an older era of American Jewish identity is passing. “The Jewish Americans” chronicles that older era, even as it points to a new era struggling to take form.