Modernizing American Jewish thought: Cultural pluralism and the Zionist ideology of Louis Brandeis, Horace Kallen, and Mordecai Kaplan between World War I and World War II

The image of American society that emerges from a careful study of the racial, religious, and nationality groups in the United States reveals a complex social organization, described under such terms as "assimilation", "acculturation", "melting pot", "pluralism." While Anglo-conformity has been the most prevalent ideology of assimilation in the American experience, a competing viewpoint of "Melting Pot" was formulated in 1908 by Israel Zangwill. The classic statement of the cultural pluralist position was made in 1915 by Horace Kallen who elaborated on the theme of American multiple group life, and strongly rejected the assimilationist theories. For Kallen, an American Jew, the most useful movement for revitalizing Jewish consciousness was Zionism, and the most important Zionists - Louis Brandeis and Mordechai Kaplan. Under the influence of the contemporary American debates of multiculturalism, and pragmatism, Brandeis, Kallen, and Kaplan "legitimized" Jews in America, and defined Zionism as the key element in harmonizing the process of Americanization with reviving Jewish consciousness.