Download or read book History Lessons written by Beth S. Wenger and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most American Jews today will probably tell you that Judaism is inherently democratic and that Jewish and American cultures share the same core beliefs and values. But in fact, Jewish tradition and American culture did not converge seamlessly. Rather, it was American Jews themselves who consciously created this idea of an American Jewish heritage and cemented it in the popular imagination during the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. History Lessons is the first book to examine how Jews in the United States collectively wove themselves into the narratives of the nation, and came to view the American Jewish experience as a unique chapter in Jewish history. Beth Wenger shows how American Jews celebrated civic holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July in synagogues and Jewish community organizations, and how they sought to commemorate Jewish cultural contributions and patriotism, often tracing their roots to the nation's founding. She looks at Jewish children's literature used to teach lessons about American Jewish heritage and values, which portrayed--and sometimes embellished--the accomplishments of heroic figures in American Jewish history. Wenger also traces how Jews often disagreed about how properly to represent these figures, focusing on the struggle over the legacy of the Jewish Revolutionary hero Haym Salomon. History Lessons demonstrates how American Jews fashioned a collective heritage that fused their Jewish past with their American present and future.
Download or read book Down Home written by Leonard Rogoff and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping chronicle of Jewish life in the Tar Heel State from colonial times to the present, this beautifully illustrated volume incorporates oral histories, original historical documents, and profiles of fascinating individuals. The first comprehensive social history of its kind, Down Home demonstrates that the story of North Carolina Jews is attuned to the national story of immigrant acculturation but has a southern twist. Keeping in mind the larger southern, American, and Jewish contexts, Leonard Rogoff considers how the North Carolina Jewish experience differs from that of Jews in other southern states. He explores how Jews very often settled in North Carolina's small towns, rather than in its large cities, and he documents the reach and vitality of Jewish North Carolinians' participation in building the New South and the Sunbelt. Many North Carolina Jews were among those at the forefront of a changing South, Rogoff argues, and their experiences challenge stereotypes of a society that was agrarian and Protestant. More than 125 historic and contemporary photographs complement Rogoff's engaging epic, providing a visual panorama of Jewish social, cultural, economic, and religious life in North Carolina. This volume is a treasure to share and to keep. Published in association with the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina, Down Home is part of a larger documentary project of the same name that will include a film and a traveling museum exhibition, to be launched in June 2010.
Download or read book JewAsian written by Helen Kiyong Kim and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An examination of intersecting racial, ethnic, and religious identities among couples where one partner is Jewish American and the other is Asian American"--
Download or read book Portrait of American Jews written by Samuel C. Heilman and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has America been a place that has preserved and protected Jewish life? Is it a place in which a Jewish future is ensured? Samuel Heilman, long-time observer of American Jewish life, grapples with these questions from a sociologist’s perspective. He argues that the same conditions that have allowed Jews to live in relative security since the 1950s have also presented them with a greater challenge than did the adversity and upheaval of earlier years. The second half of the twentieth century has been a time when American Jews have experienced a minimum of prejudice and almost all domains of life have been accessible to them, but it has also been a time of assimilation, of swelling rates of intermarriage, and of large numbers ignoring their Jewishness completely. Jews have no trouble building synagogues, but they have all sorts of trouble filling them. The quality of Jewish education is perhaps higher than ever before, and the output of Jewish scholarship is overwhelming in its scope and quality, but most American Jews receive a minimum of religious education and can neither read nor comprehend the great corpus of Jewish literature in its Hebrew (or Aramaic) original. This is a time in America when there is no shame in being a Jew, and yet fewer American Jews seem to know what being a Jew means. How did this come to be? What does it portend for the Jewish future? This book endeavors to answer these questions by examining data gleaned from numerous sociological surveys. Heilman first discusses the decade of the fifties and the American Jewish quest for normalcy and mobility. He then details the polarization of American Jewry into active and passive elements in the sixties and seventies. Finally he looks at the eighties and nineties and the issues of Jewish survival and identity and the question of a Jewish future in America. He also considers generational variation, residential and marital patterns, institutional development (especially with regard to Jewish education), and Jewish political power and influence. This book is part of a stocktaking that has been occurring among Jews as the century in which their residence in America was firmly established comes to an end. Grounded in empirical detail, it provides a concise yet analytic evaluation of the meaning of the many studies and surveys of the last four and a half decades. Taking a long view of American Jewry, it is one of very few books that build on specific sociological data but get beyond its detail. All those who want to know what it means and has meant to be an American Jew will find this volume of interest.
Download or read book The Soul of Judaism written by Bruce D Haynes and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A glimpse into the diverse stories of Black Jews in the United States What makes a Jew? This book traces the history of Jews of African descent in America and the counter-narratives they have put forward as they stake their claims to Jewishness. The Soul of Judaism offers the first exploration of the full diversity of Black Jews, including bi-racial Jews of both matrilineal and patrilineal descent; adoptees; black converts to Judaism; and Black Hebrews and Israelites, who trace their Jewish roots to Africa and challenge the dominant western paradigm of Jews as white and of European descent. Blending historical analysis and oral history, Haynes showcases the lives of Black Jews within the Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstruction and Reform movements, as well as the religious approaches that push the boundaries of the common forms of Judaism we know today. He illuminates how in the quest to claim whiteness, American Jews of European descent gained the freedom to express their identity fluidly while African Americans have continued to be seen as a fixed racial group. This book demonstrates that racial ascription has been shaping Jewish selfhood for centuries. Pushing us to reassess the boundaries between race and ethnicity, it offers insight into how Black Jewish individuals strive to assert their dual identities and find acceptance within their respective communities. Putting to rest the simplistic notion that Jews are white and that Black Jews are therefore a contradiction, the volume argues that we can no longer pigeonhole Black Hebrews and Israelites as exotic, militant, and nationalistic sects outside the boundaries of mainstream Jewish thought and community life. The volume spurs us to consider the significance of the growing population of self-identified Black Jews and its implications for the future of American Jewry.
Download or read book This Land of Liberty written by Helene Schwartz Kenvin and published by Behrman House, Inc. This book was released on 1986 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A junior high school textbook covering the history of Jews in America.
Download or read book In Search of American Jewish Culture written by Stephen J. Whitfield and published by UPNE. This book was released on 1999 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading cultural historian explores the complex interactions of Jewish and American cultures.
Download or read book Jewish Roots in Southern Soil written by Marcie Cohen Ferris and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2006 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively look at southern Jewish history and culture.
Download or read book The Seventh Heaven written by Ilan Stavans and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul’s explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to “Indian Jews,” and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of “secret Jews,” and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial “seventh heaven,” which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer. The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans’s ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.
Download or read book The Vanishing American Jew written by Alan M. Dershowitz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-09-08 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the meaning of Jewishness in light of the increasing assimilation of America's Jews and suggests ways to preserve Jewish identity.
Download or read book American Jewish Desk Reference written by American Jewish Historical Society and published by Random House Reference. This book was released on 1999 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This all-encompassing reference book covers virtually every subject pertaining to Jews in the United States. The sheer volume of information on the subjects and people relative to the Jewish experience in the United States is what makes this book so impressive. Arranged by subject -- from Feminism, Intermarriage and Conversion, Rituals and Celebrations, Business, Education, and Sports to Art and Entertainment -- chapters include A-Z and chronological listings of events, people, and more.Included in this book are descriptions of the many noteworthy Jewish Americans who had a profound effect on our country, including Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Harvey Milk, Calvin Klein, Peggy Guggenheim, Mark Rothko, Woody Allen and Gloria Steinem, just to name a few. This book brings together the issues and figures of contemporary Judaism in the United States in an adult manner unlike any other reference book of its kind.
Download or read book Ambivalent Embrace written by Rachel Kranson and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new cultural history of Jewish life and identity in the United States after World War II focuses on the process of upward mobility. Rachel Kranson challenges the common notion that most American Jews unambivalently celebrated their generally strong growth in economic status and social acceptance during the booming postwar era. In fact, a significant number of Jewish religious, artistic, and intellectual leaders worried about the ascent of large numbers of Jews into the American middle class. Kranson reveals that many Jews were deeply concerned that their lives—affected by rapidly changing political pressures, gender roles, and religious practices—were becoming dangerously disconnected from authentic Jewish values. She uncovers how Jewish leaders delivered jeremiads that warned affluent Jews of hypocrisy and associated "good" Jews with poverty, even at times romanticizing life in America's immigrant slums and Europe's impoverished shtetls. Jewish leaders, while not trying to hinder economic development, thus cemented an ongoing identification with the Jewish heritage of poverty and marginality as a crucial element in an American Jewish ethos.
Download or read book Jewish Heritage Travel written by Ruth Ellen Gruber and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This expanded and updated edition includes new coverage of Austria, Ukraine, and Lithuania in addition to Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and all of the ancestral homes to the great majority of North American Jews.
Download or read book Suddenly Jewish written by Barbara Kessel and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2007 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dramatic personal stories of the unexpected discovery of a Jewish heritage
Download or read book Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity written by Abraham Joshua Heschel and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1997-05-16 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gathers essays by the Jewish scholar, activist, and theologian about Judaism, Jewish heritage, social justice, ecumenism, faith, and prayer.
Download or read book Reflections on Jewish American Heritage written by Tema Milstein and published by . This book was released on 1994* with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Haven To Home written by Michael Grunberger and published by George Braziller Publishers. This book was released on 2004-11-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This year marks the 350th anniversary of the first Jewish settlement in America. From Haven to Home celebrates this important occasion by bringing together an eminent group of Judaic scholars who take stock of American Jewish life, from the arrival of the first small group in Manhattan in 1654 to the present. The contributors examine a wide range of topics, including the early history of the American Jewish community and the various significant phases of Jewish immigration, which saw the initial group of twenty-three burgeon into a thriving community of several million by the early twentieth century. Also addressed is the role of Jews in the Civil War and in World War II, anti-Semitism in America, the daily life and struggles of American Jewish women, and American Jews and politics. The essays are amply illustrated with items from the collection of the Library of Congress's Hebraic Section, among them the first Hebrew bible printed in America and the first Yiddish American cookbook, as well as selections of photographs, prints, diaries, maps, and sheet music. Central to the Jewish experience in America is that country's commitment to ideals of freedom, opportunity, religious liberty, equality, and pluralism. The continuity of the faith, in fact, depends on it. From Haven to Homethe story of Jews in Americais therefore also the story of America and American ideals. 100 color illustrations.
