Lila Corwin Berman

Biography

Lila Corwin Berman is Professor of History at Temple University, where she holds the Murray Friedman Chair of American Jewish History and directs the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History. She received her B.A. from Amherst College and her Ph.D. from Yale. Berman is author of The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multibillion Dollar Institution (Princeton, 2020), as well as Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit (Chicago, 2015) and Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity (California, 2009). Her articles have appeared in several scholarly journals, and she has also written guest columns for the Washington Post, the Forward, and the Jewish Week. She serves as the chair of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Selected Publications

• “Jewish History beyond the Jewish People,” AJS Review 42, no. 2 (Nov 2018): 1-24
• “How Americans Give: The Financialization of American Jewish Philanthropy,” American Historical Review 122, no. 5 (Dec 2017): 1459-1489
• “Donor Advised Funds in Historical Perspective,” Boston College Law Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good 1 (Oct 2015): 5-27
• “Jewish Urban Politics in the City and Beyond,” Journal of American History 99, 2 (Sept 2012): 492-519
• “Sociology, Jews, and Intermarriage in Twentieth-Century America,” Jewish Social Studies 14, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 32-60