The following remarks by Deborah Dash Moore, Chair of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society, were made on June 5, 2006, at the Biennial Scholars' Conference on American Jewish History in Charleston, South Carolina: It is a pleasure to present the Lee Max Friedman medal to Gerald Sorin for distinguished service in the field of American Jewish history. Gerald Sorin's long and distinguished career predates the first time we met, but his prominence as an historian of American Jews in some ways starts with our initial encounter, so I hope you will forgive me for beginning on a personal note. I met Gerry at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research's Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies in 1978. I was teaching a course on Jewish immigration to the United States. He was a professor at SUNY New Paltz and the author of two books on abolitionism, including one, Abolitionism: A New Perspective (1972), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Despite these accolades so early in his career, Gerry had decided to retrain as an historian of American Jews.
