David Kaufman

Dr. David E. Kaufman is a noted scholar and teacher of Jewish history specializing in the American Jewish experience.  Born in Brooklyn, NY, he attended the Bialik Hebrew Day School and Yeshiva of Flatbush High School, and earned his B.A. from Columbia College with majors in Architecture and Hebrew Literature, an M.A. in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and a Ph.D. in American Jewish History from Brandeis University. He has served as tenured professor at the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College and in the Religion Department of Hofstra University, and has taught as well at the University of Southern California, Brown University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and several campuses of CUNY. Dr. Kaufman has published numerous articles on the social, religious, and architectural history of the American synagogue; a history of the seminal school of Jewish education in America, the Teachers Institute; and a major study of early 20th century Jewish communal institutions, Shul with a Pool: The Synagogue-Center in American Jewish History (UPNE 1999). His second book, Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity (UPNE 2012) explores the nature of Jewish celebrity in the early 1960s and includes chapters on Sandy Koufax, Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, and Barbra Streisand. In addition to a number of new book projects, Dr. Kaufman is currently engaged in the creation of a non-profit public history resource center called NEW YORK JEW: Center for New York Jewish History, Culture, and Community.