The 1960s

The 1960s

Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections

2015

Moshe Kornfield, Scott Meyer, Elias Sacks, Stephanie Yuhas, Andrew Violet, Jane Thaler

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English

The 1960s Countercultural movements that challenged social conventions defined the decade. The civil rights movement sought to end segregation and achieve racial equality. The anti-war movement challenged American military involvement in the Vietnam War. Second-wave feminism sought to achieve gender equality. The gay rights movement pursued legal equality. The 1960s also included traumatic events, such as assassinations of prominent political leaders (John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy), American entrenchment in the Vietnam War, and race riots in many cities. At the same time, the era featured the founding of communes devoted to alternative lifestyles, the rise of psychedelic drug use, and an embrace of Eastern spirituality. In this spirit, many young Jews looked to derive a form of counterculture from an unlikely source: traditional Judaism. Members of their parents’ generation had often rejected The 1960s were a time of turbulence and rapid cultural shift. Jewish practice in an effort to assimilate to American culture, and many young Jews therefore saw an embrace of traditional rituals as a way to resist this dominant trend and forge an alternative way of life.