Annual Gala

Jonathan D. Sarna is University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University. He also chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, and serves as Chief Historian of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. He is past chair of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Author or editor of some forty books on American Jewish history and life, his American Judaism: A History (Yale 2004), recently published in a second edition, won six awards including the 2004 “Everett Jewish Book of the Year Award” from the Jewish Book Council. His most recent books include (edited with Adam Mendelson), Yearning to Breathe Free: Jews in Gilded Age America (Princeton, 2022); the award-winning Lincoln and the Jews: A History, with Benjamin Shapell (St. Martin’s, 2015; 2nd ed, NYU Press, 2025); and When General Grant Expelled the Jews (Schocken/Nextbook, 2012).

Dr. Sarna is the only American Jewish historian ever elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was also elected to the American Academy of Jewish Research.