Download or read book Half Jew written by Susan Jacoby and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since childhood, Susan Jacoby, the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of American Unreason, was sure that her father was keeping a secret. At age twenty, just before beginning her writing career as a reporter for the Washington Post, she learned the truth: Robert Jacoby, a Catholic convert with a Catholic wife, was also a Jew. In Half-Jew, Jacoby grapples with the hidden identity cloaked by the persona of a successful accountant and member of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in East Lansing, Michigan—and with the secrets and lies that had marked her family’s history for three generations on two continents. Beginning in 1849 when her great-grandfather arrived in America as a political refugee, Jacoby traces her lineage through the lives of her great-uncle Harold, the distinguished astronomer whose map of the constellations is etched on the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal; her uncle, the bridge champion Oswald Jacoby, her aunt Edith, also a Catholic convert and eventually a reformer within the church; and, of course her father himself. At the core of story is the psychic damage that accrues across generations when people conceal their true ethnic and religious origins. Featuring a new afterword, Half-Jew is a meticulously researched, emotionally poignant examination of the dark legacy of European and American anti-Semitism as well as a tender-hearted account of a daughter coming to understand her father, herself, and her family’s true legacy.
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 Boundaries of Jewish Identity Samuel and Althea Stroum Book written by Susan A. Glenn and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of Jewish identity is one of the most vexed and contested issues of modern religious and ethnic group history. This interdisciplinary collection draws on work in law, anthropology, history, sociology, literature, and popular culture to consider contemporary and historical responses to the question: "Who and what is Jewish?"
Download or read book Jewhooing the Sixties written by David Kaufman and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively look at four major Jewish celebrities of early 1960s America, who together made their mark on both American culture and Jewish identity
Download or read book The Wicked Son written by David Mamet and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Mamet's interest in anti-Semitism is not limited to the modern face of an ancient hatred but encompasses as well the ways in which many Jews have internalized that hatred. Using the metaphor of the Wicked Son at the Passover seder (the child who asks, "What does this story mean to you?") Mamet confronts what he sees as an insidious predilection among some Jews to exclude themselves from the equation and to seek truth and meaning anywhere--in other religions, political movements, mindless entertainment--but in Judaism itself. He also explores the ways in which the Jewish tradition has long been and still remains the Wicked Son in the eyes of the world. Written with the searing honesty and verbal brilliance that is the hallmark of Mamet's work, The Wicked Son is a powerfully thought-provoking look at one of the most destructive and tenacious forces in contemporary life.
Download or read book The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism written by Erich S. Gruen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book collects twenty two previously published essays and one new one by Erich S. Gruen who has written extensively on the literature and history of early Judaism and the experience of the Jews in the Greco-Roman world. His many articles on this subject have, however, appeared mostly in conference volumes and Festschriften, and have therefore not had wide circulation. By putting them together in a single work, this will bring the essays to the attention of a much broader scholarly readership and make them more readily available to students in the fields of ancient history and early Judaism. The pieces are quite varied, but develop a number of connected and related themes: Jewish identity in the pagan world, the literary representations by Jews and pagans of one another, the interconnections of Hellenism and Judaism, and the Jewish experience under Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman empire.
Download or read book Who Is A Jew written by Leonard J. Greenspoon and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish identity is a perennial concern, as Jews seek to define the major features and status of those who “belong,” while at the same time draw distinctions between individuals and groups on the “inside” and those on the “outside.” From a variety of perspectives, scholarly as well as confessional, there is intense interest among non-Jewish and Jewish commentators alike in the basic question, “Who is a Jew?” This collection of articles draws diverse historical, cultural, and religious insights from scholars who represent a wide range of academic and theological disciplines. Some of the authors directly address the issue of Jewish identity as it is being played out today in Israel and Diaspora communities. Others look to earlier time periods or societies as invaluable resources for enhanced and deepened analysis of contemporary matters. All authors in this collection make a concerted effort to present their evidence and their conclusions in a way that is accessible to the general public and valid for other scholars. The result is a richly textured approach to a topic that seems always relevant. If, as is the case, no single answer appeals to all of the authors, this is as it should be. We all gain from the application of a number of approaches and perspectives, which enrich our appreciation of the people whose lives are affected, for better or worse, by real-life discussions of this issue and the resultant actions toward exclusivity or inclusivity.
Download or read book How I Stopped Being a Jew written by Shlomo Sand and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shlomo Sand was born in 1946, in a displaced person’s camp in Austria, to Jewish parents; the family later migrated to Palestine. As a young man, Sand came to question his Jewish identity, even that of a “secular Jew.” With this meditative and thoughtful mixture of essay and personal recollection, he articulates the problems at the center of modern Jewish identity. How I Stopped Being a Jew discusses the negative effects of the Israeli exploitation of the “chosen people” myth and its “holocaust industry.” Sand criticizes the fact that, in the current context, what “Jewish” means is, above all, not being Arab and reflects on the possibility of a secular, non-exclusive Israeli identity, beyond the legends of Zionism.
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 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 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores 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. The book showcases the lives of Black Jews, demonstrating that racial ascription has been shaping Jewish selfhood for centuries. It reassesses the boundaries between race and ethnicity, offering insight into how ethnicity can be understood only in relation to racialization and the one-drop rule. Within this context, Black Jewish individuals strive to assert their dual identities and find acceptance within their communities. Putting to rest the notion that Jews are white and the Black Jews are therefore a contradiction, the volume argues that we cannot pigeonhole Black Hebrews and Israelites as exotic, militant, and nationalistic sects outside the boundaries of mainstream Jewish thought and community life. it 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 Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco Roman World written by Judith Lieu and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-02-16 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I am a Christian' is the confession of the martyrs of early Christian texts and, no doubt, of many others; but what did this confession mean, and how was early Christian identity constructed? This book is a highly original exploration of how a sense of being 'a Christian', or of 'Christian identity', was shaped within the setting of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world. Contemporary discussions of identity provide the background to a careful study of early Christian texts from the first two centuries. Judith Lieu shows that there were similarities and differences in the ways Jews and others were thinking about themselves, and asks what made early Christianity distinctive.
Download or read book The Price of Whiteness written by Eric L. Goldstein and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What has it meant to be Jewish in a nation preoccupied with the categories of black and white? The Price of Whiteness documents the uneasy place Jews have held in America's racial culture since the late nineteenth century. The book traces Jews' often tumultuous encounter with race from the 1870s through World War II, when they became vested as part of America's white mainstream and abandoned the practice of describing themselves in racial terms. American Jewish history is often told as a story of quick and successful adaptation, but Goldstein demonstrates how the process of identifying as white Americans was an ambivalent one, filled with hard choices and conflicting emotions for Jewish immigrants and their children. Jews enjoyed a much greater level of social inclusion than African Americans, but their membership in white America was frequently made contingent on their conformity to prevailing racial mores and on the eradication of their perceived racial distinctiveness. While Jews consistently sought acceptance as whites, their tendency to express their own group bonds through the language of "race" led to deep misgivings about what was required of them. Today, despite the great success Jews enjoy in the United States, they still struggle with the constraints of America's black-white dichotomy. The Price of Whiteness concludes that while Jews' status as white has opened many doors for them, it has also placed limits on their ability to assert themselves as a group apart.
Download or read book The Invention of the Jewish People written by Shlomo Sand and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2010-06-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel's future.
Download or read book The Wandering Who written by Gilad Atzmon and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of Jewish identity politics and Jewish contemporary ideology using both popular culture and scholarly texts. Jewish identity is tied up with some of the most difficult and contentious issues of today. The purpose in this book is to open many of these issues up for discussion. Since Israel defines itself openly as the ‘Jewish State’, we should ask what the notions of ’Judaism’, ‘Jewishness’, ‘Jewish culture’ and ‘Jewish ideology’ stand for. Gilad examines the tribal aspects embedded in Jewish secular discourse, both Zionist and anti Zionist; the ‘holocaust religion’; the meaning of ‘history’ and ‘time’ within the Jewish political discourse; the anti-Gentile ideologies entangled within different forms of secular Jewish political discourse and even within the Jewish left. He questions what it is that leads Diaspora Jews to identify themselves with Israel and affiliate with its politics. The devastating state of our world affairs raises an immediate demand for a conceptual shift in our intellectual and philosophical attitude towards politics, identity politics and history.
Download or read book Ten Days of Birthright Israel written by Leonard Saxe and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable story of Birthright Israel, an intensive ten-day educational program designed to connect Jewish young adults to their heritage
Download or read book Monkey Boy written by Francisco Goldman and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-05-10 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Guatemalan-American writer returns to the Boston suburb of his youth in this American Book Award–winning novel “full of rebellious comedy and vitality” (New Yorker). A 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist In Monkey Boy, Francisco Goldman’s “brilliantly constructed auto-fiction” (NPR), we meet Francisco Goldberg, a middle-aged writer grappling with the challenges of family and love, legacies of violence and war, and growing up as the son of immigrants. Having fled Mexico after his journalism provokes the wrong people, Goldberg’s attempt to start fresh in New York. But even as he finds himself falling in love, he is drawn away yet again—back to his childhood home in the white, working-class suburbs of Boston. Frankie is beckoned there by a high school girlfriend who witnessed his youthful humiliations, and by his ailing mother, Yolanda, whose intermittent lucidity unearths forgotten pockets of the past. His brief trip is haunted by memories of his recently deceased father, the Guatemalan woman who helped raise him, and the high school bullies who called him “monkey boy.”
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.
