Download or read book Coming of Age in Jewish America written by Patricia Keer Munro and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jewish practice of bar mitzvah dates back to the twelfth century. Yet, as this new study reveals, the ritual has changed dramatically over time and now serves as a sometimes shaky bridge between the values of contemporary American culture and Judaic tradition. Interviewing over 200 individuals involved in bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies, from family members to religious educators to rabbis, Patricia Keer Munro presents a candid portrait of the conflicts that often emerge and the negotiations that ensue.
Download or read book Coming of Age in Jewish America written by Patricia Keer Munro and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jewish practice of bar mitzvah dates back to the twelfth century, but this ancient cultural ritual has changed radically since then, evolving with the times and adapting to local conditions. For many Jewish-American families, a child’s bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah is both a major social event and a symbolic means of asserting the family’s ongoing connection to the core values of Judaism. Coming of Age in Jewish America takes an inside look at bar and bat mitzvahs in the twenty-first century, examining how the practices have continued to morph and exploring how they serve as a sometimes shaky bridge between the values of contemporary American culture and Judaic tradition. Interviewing over 200 individuals involved in bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies, from family members to religious educators to rabbis, Patricia Keer Munro presents a candid portrait of the conflicts that often emerge and the negotiations that ensue. In the course of her study, she charts how this ritual is rife with contradictions; it is a private family event and a public community activity, and for the child, it is both an educational process and a high-stakes performance. Through detailed observations of Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, and independent congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Munro draws intriguing, broad-reaching conclusions about both the current state and likely future of American Judaism. In the process, she shows not only how American Jews have forged a unique set of bar and bat mitzvah practices, but also how these rituals continue to shape a distinctive Jewish-American identity.
Download or read book Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America 1860 1920 written by Melissa R. Klapper and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860—1920 draws on a wealth of archival material, much of which has never been published—or even read—to illuminate the ways in which Jewish girls’ adolescent experiences reflected larger issues relating to gender, ethnicity, religion, and education. Klapper explores the dual roles girls played as agents of acculturation and guardians of tradition. Their search for an identity as American girls that would not require the abandonment of Jewish tradition and culture mirrored the struggle of their families and communities for integration into American society. While focusing on their lives as girls, not the adults they would later become, Klapper draws on the papers of such figures as Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah; Edna Ferber, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Showboat; and Marie Syrkin, literary critic and Zionist. Klapper also analyzes the diaries, memoirs, and letters of hundreds of other girls whose later lives and experiences have been lost to history. Told in an engaging style and filled with colorful quotes, the book brings to life a neglected group of fascinating historical figures during a pivotal moment in the development of gender roles, adolescence, and the modern American Jewish community.
Download or read book Nice Jewish Girls written by Grace Paley and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1996-04-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “While nearly every Jewish female reader will find herself reflected here, the poignancy of these stories will be felt by readers of all ethnicities.”—Library Journal Chicken soup and Barbra Streisand, lost fathers and first dates, Hebrew school and Queen Esther, seders and seductions. In this insightful, original anthology, forty-five American Jewish writers explore the richness of their shared heritage, from the tragic to the trivial. In memoirs, fiction, and poetry new and favorite writers like Grace Paley, Amy Bloom, Vivian Gornick, and Laura Cunningham brilliantly reveal the challenges of coming of age as a Jewish woman in America today. What have we lost that our mothers and grandmothers had? Do we still feel close ties to family and community? Can we make a decent pot roast? This spirited collection is full of humor and wisdom, memory and affection—and there isn’t a Jewish girl (nice or otherwise) who won’t find herself reflected in these vibrant pages.
Download or read book Coming of Age in Jewish America written by Patricia Keer Munro and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-05 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jewish practice of bar mitzvah dates back to the twelfth century, but this ancient cultural ritual has changed radically since then, evolving with the times and adapting to local conditions. For many Jewish-American families, a child’s bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah is both a major social event and a symbolic means of asserting the family’s ongoing connection to the core values of Judaism. Coming of Age in Jewish America takes an inside look at bar and bat mitzvahs in the twenty-first century, examining how the practices have continued to morph and exploring how they serve as a sometimes shaky bridge between the values of contemporary American culture and Judaic tradition. Interviewing over 200 individuals involved in bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies, from family members to religious educators to rabbis, Patricia Keer Munro presents a candid portrait of the conflicts that often emerge and the negotiations that ensue. In the course of her study, she charts how this ritual is rife with contradictions; it is a private family event and a public community activity, and for the child, it is both an educational process and a high-stakes performance. Through detailed observations of Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, and independent congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Munro draws intriguing, broad-reaching conclusions about both the current state and likely future of American Judaism. In the process, she shows not only how American Jews have forged a unique set of bar and bat mitzvah practices, but also how these rituals continue to shape a distinctive Jewish-American identity.
Download or read book Bar Mitzvah written by Michael Hilton and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jewish coming-of-age ceremony of bar mitzvah was first recorded in thirteenth-century France, where it took the form of a simple statement by the father that he was no longer responsible for his thirteen-year-old son. Today, bar mitzvah for boys and bat mitzvah for girls are more popular than at any time in history and are sometimes accompanied by lavish celebrations. How did bar mitzvah develop over the centuries from an obscure legal ritual into a core component of Judaism? How did it capture the imagination of even non-Jewish youth? Bar Mitzvah, A History is a comprehensive account of the ceremonies and celebrations for both boys and girls. A cultural anthropology informed by rabbinic knowledge, it explores the origins and development of the most important coming-of-age milestone in Judaism. Rabbi Michael Hilton has sought out every reference to bar mitzvah in the Bible, the Talmud, and numerous other Jewish texts spanning several centuries, extracting a fascinating miscellany of information, stories, and commentary.
Download or read book Semitism Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump written by Jonathan Weisman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A short ... contemplation on how Jews are viewed in America since the election of Donald J. Trump, and how we can move forward to fight anti-Semitism"--
Download or read book Knowing Too Much written by Norman G. Finkelstein and published by OR Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally, American Jews have been broadly liberal in their political outlook; indeed African-Americans are the only ethnic group more likely to vote Democratic in US elections. Over the past half century, however, attitudes on one topic have stood in sharp contrast to this group's generally progressive stance: support for Israel. Despite Israel's record of militarism, illegal settlements and human rights violations, American Jews have, stretching back to the 1960s, remained largely steadfast supporters of the Jewish "homeland". But, as Norman Finkelstein explains in an elegantly-argued and richly-textured new book, this is now beginning to change. Reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the United Nations, and books by commentators as prominent as President Jimmy Carter and as well-respected in the scholarly community as Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Peter Beinart, have increasingly pinpointed the fundamental illiberalism of the Israeli state. In the light of these exposes, the support of America Jews for Israel has begun to fray. This erosion has been particularly marked among younger members of the community. A 2010 Brandeis University poll found that only about one quarter of Jews aged under 40 today feel "very much" connected to Israel. In successive chapters that combine Finkelstein's customary meticulous research with polemical brio, Knowing Too Much sets the work of defenders of Israel such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Oren, Dennis Ross and Benny Morris against the historical record, showing their claims to be increasingly tendentious. As growing numbers of American Jews come to see the speciousness of the arguments behind such apologias and recognize Israel's record as simply indefensible, Finkelstein points to the opening of new possibilities for political advancement in a region that for decades has been stuck fast in a gridlock of injustice and suffering.
Download or read book Jews and Booze written by Marni Davis and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, Marni Davis examines American Jews' long and complicated relationship to alcohol during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the years of the national prohibition movement's rise and fall.
Download or read book Farewell Babylon written by Naïm Kattan and published by David R. Godine Publisher. This book was released on 2007 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Farewell, Babylon," Naim Kattan takes readers into the heart of exotic mid-19th-century Baghdad's then-teeming Jewish community. Jews had lived in Iraq for 25 centuries, long before the time of Christ or Muhammad, but anti-Semitism and nationalism were on the rise. In this beautifully written memoir, a young boy comes of age and describes his discoveries -- of work, literature, patriotism, the joys of lazy Sundays swimming in the Tigris. He also talks eloquently of his greatest discovery: women and love. This is a story of roots and exile, of thirst for life and life's experiences. However, more than that it is a tribute to a lost world, an ancient Eastern city in which Iraq's Kurds, Bedouins, Sunnis, Shiites, Chaldeans, Catholics, and Jews all lived together in a rough, rewarding sort of harmony.
Download or read book American Judaism written by Jonathan D. Sarna and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan D. Sarna's award-winning American Judaism is now available in an updated and revised edition that summarizes recent scholarship and takes into account important historical, cultural, and political developments in American Judaism over the past fifteen years. Praise for the first edition: "Sarna . . . has written the first systematic, comprehensive, and coherent history of Judaism in America; one so well executed, it is likely to set the standard for the next fifty years."--Jacob Neusner, Jerusalem Post "A masterful overview."--Jeffrey S. Gurock, American Historical Review "This book is destined to be the new classic of American Jewish history."--Norman H. Finkelstein, Jewish Book World Winner of the 2004 National Jewish Book Award/Jewish Book of the Year
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 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 Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt written by Eve Krakowski and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of what we know about life in the medieval Islamic Middle East comes from texts written to impart religious ideals or to chronicle the movements of great men. How did women participate in the societies these texts describe? What about non-Muslims, whose own religious traditions descended partly from pre-Islamic late antiquity? Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt approaches these questions through Jewish women’s adolescence in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt and Syria (c. 969–1250). Using hundreds of everyday papers preserved in the Cairo Geniza, Eve Krakowski follows the lives of girls from different social classes—rich and poor, secluded and physically mobile—as they prepared to marry and become social adults. She argues that the families on whom these girls depended were more varied, fragmented, and fluid than has been thought. Krakowski also suggests a new approach to religious identity in premodern Islamic societies—and to the history of rabbinic Judaism. Through the lens of women’s coming-of-age, she demonstrates that even Jews who faithfully observed rabbinic law did not always understand the world in rabbinic terms. By tracing the fault lines between rabbinic legal practice and its practitioners’ lives, Krakowski explains how rabbinic Judaism adapted to the Islamic Middle Ages. Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt offers a new way to understand how women took part in premodern Middle Eastern societies, and how families and religious law worked in the medieval Islamic world.
Download or read book Bat Mitzvah written by Barbara Diamond Goldin and published by Putnam Juvenile. This book was released on 1997-10-31 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history and description of the bat mitzvah, the ceremony in which a Jewish girl marks her transition to adulthood.
Download or read book Nostalgia in Jewish American Theatre and Film 1979 2004 written by Ben Furnish and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2005 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nostalgia, a bittersweet yearning for the past, is an important element in Jewish-American performances of the late twentieth century. Numerous plays and films of this time use nostalgia to engage Jewish, including Yiddish, cultural themes and images. Nostalgia offers audiences a window through which to examine past and current social changes. These include American Jews' departure from Europe to America, the city for the suburbs, Yiddish for English, as well as the civil rights, women's, peace, and gay and lesbian movements, and other transformations. These performances illustrate how theatre and film transmit culture from generation to generation and between one ethnic community and the wider American scene.
Download or read book Jewish Lives under Communism written by Katerina Capková and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides new, groundbreaking views of Jewish life in various countries of the pro-Soviet bloc from the end of the Second World War until the collapse of Communism in late 1989. The authors, twelve leading historians and anthropologists from Europe, Israel and the United States, look at the experience of Jews under Communism by digging beyond formal state policy and instead examining the ways in which Jews creatively seized opportunities to develop and express their identities, religious and secular, even under great duress. The volume shifts the focus from Jews being objects of Communist state policy (and from anti-Jewish prejudices in Communist societies) to the agency of Jews and their creativity in Communist Europe after the Holocaust. The examination of Jewish history from a transnational vantage point challenges a dominant strand in history writing today, by showing instead the wide variety of Jewish experiences in law, traditions and institutional frameworks as conceived from one Communist country to another and even within a single country, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. By focusing on networks across east-central Europe and beyond and on the forms of identity open to Jews in this important period, the volume begins a crucial rethinking of social and cultural life under Communist regimes.
