THE CULT OF SYNTHESIS IN AMERICAN JEWISH CULTURE by: Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University The 1955 Hebrew School graduation, at the Hebrew Educational Alliance of West Colfax (Denver, Colorado), featured a cantata chronicling three hundred years of American Jewish history. Prepared by the congregation's American-born Orthodox rabbi, Manual Laderman, it coincided with the celebration of the American Jewish tercentenary. Its words conveyed a message that generations of American Jews - Orthodox, Conservative and Reform- took as their central article of faith: We pass to them - to all our sons and daughters - a Judaism and an Americanism which reinforce each other. .. of all the avenues that lead toward a new and better time, none is so promising as the road we have travelled for the last three centuries - the American Jewish road of Faith and Freedom! This understanding of the American Jewish experience- the belief that Judaism and Americanism reinforce one another, the two traditions converging in a common path- encapsulates a central theme in American Jewish culture that may be termed "the cult of synthesis ... Dating back well over a century, it reflects an ongoing effort on the part of American Jews to interweave their "Judaism" with their "Americanism" in an attempt to fashion for themselves some unified "synthetic" whole. Anyone even remotely connected with American Jewish life is familiar with this theme, which has elsewhere been described as a central tenet of