Download or read book From Suburb to Shtetl written by Egon Mayer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From Suburb to Shtetl" is an outstanding ethnography that moves beyond simple demographics. Mayer weaves an intricate tapestry of how family, school, and community leaders influence each other. Whether discussing the role of the rebbe or the matchmaker, those who know these communities will find what he says as relevant today as it was when first penned. This is hardly surprising, for the ultra-Orthodox community takes great pride in not changing, in maintaining itself as it was in Europe despite the allure of modern American society. His discussion of synagogue life is particularly informative and evocative. Those in charge of helping immigrants adopted the path of least resistance, allowing and even encouraging them to retain their identities except for those few aspects that might threaten the country's national interests. The American Orthodox community was tremendously augmented by the arrival from Europe, after World War Two, of thousands of Orthodox Jews who remained devoted to that way of life. Egon Mayer was himself part of a smaller, but significant group of Jews who came to the U.S. and settled mostly in Boro Park in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The interaction between the Hasidim and their less fervent Orthodox counterparts described and analyzed in this volume tells us a great deal about how people negotiate their beliefs, values, and norms when forced into close contact with each other in an urban setting within the larger American culture. By exploring these and many other related issues Mayer has given us the chance to assess and forecast the future of American Jewish life as a whole.
Download or read book The Jews of Chicago written by Irving Cutler and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vividly told and richly illustrated with more than 160 photos, this fascinating history of the cultural, religious, fraternal, economic, and everyday life of Chicago's Jews brings to life the people, events, neighborhoods, and institutions that helped shape today's Jewish communities. 15 maps. Graphs & tables.
Download or read book My Suburban Shtetl written by Robert Rand and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel about growing up in Skokie, Illinois, home to one of America's largest communities of Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Download or read book Shtetl written by Jeffrey Shandler and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Yiddish, shtetl simply means “town.” How does such an unassuming word come to loom so large in modern Jewish culture, with a proliferation of uses and connotations? By examining the meaning of shtetl, Jeffrey Shandler asks how Jewish life in provincial towns in Eastern Europe has become the subject of extensive creativity, memory, and scholarship from the early modern era in European history to the present. In the post-Holocaust era, the shtetl looms large in public culture as the epitome of a bygone traditional Jewish communal life. People now encounter the Jewish history of these towns through an array of cultural practices, including fiction, documentary photography, film, memoirs, art, heritage tourism, and political activism. At the same time, the shtetl attracts growing scholarly interest, as historians, social scientists, literary critics, and others seek to understand both the complex reality of life in provincial towns and the nature of its wide-ranging remembrance. Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History traces the trajectory of writing about these towns—by Jews and non-Jews, residents and visitors, researchers, novelists, memoirists, journalists and others—to demonstrate how the Yiddish word for “town” emerged as a key word in Jewish culture and studies. Shandler proposes that the intellectual history of the shtetl is best approached as an exemplar of engaging Jewish vernacularity, and that the variable nature of this engagement, far from being a drawback, is central to the subject’s enduring interest.
Download or read book American Jewry written by Eli Lederhendler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-14 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the history of Jews in America requires a synthesis of over 350 years of documents, social data, literature and journalism, architecture, oratory, and debate, and each time that history is observed, new questions are raised and new perspectives found. This book presents a readable account of that history, with an emphasis on migration patterns, social and religious life, and political and economic affairs. It explains the long-range development of American Jewry as the product of 'many new beginnings' more than a direct evolution leading from early colonial experiments to latter-day social patterns. This book also shows that not all of American Jewish history has occurred on American soil, arguing that Jews, more than most other Americans, persist in assigning crucial importance to international issues. This approach provides a fresh perspective that can open up the practice of minority-history writing, so that the very concepts of minority and majority should not be taken for granted.
Download or read book The Brooklyn Nobody Knows written by William B. Helmreich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mill Basin -- Sunset Park -- Borough Park -- Bay Ridge -- Dyker Heights -- Bensonhurst -- Bath Beach -- Gravesend -- Sheepshead Bay -- Gerritsen Beach -- Manhattan Beach -- Brighton Beach -- Coney Island -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Download or read book Hasidic Williamsburg written by George Kranzler and published by Jason Aronson, Incorporated. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hasidic Williamsburg recounts the dramatic emergence of this unique community in the face of major crises. It is the story of the loyalty of its members to their rebbes and their teachings and to the milieu they created in an old Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Based on his previous book Williamsburg: A Jewish Community in Transition, which reported the transformation of this moderately Orthodox Jewish community and its rise to prominence after the influx of numbers of refugees from Nazi persecution and the Holocaust, George Kranzler presents the findings of a decade of research into the survival and life-style of Hasidic Williamsburg as a functioning community. Hasidic Williamsburg portrays the desperate struggle and relentless efforts of its leaders, foremost among them the Rebbe of Satmar and other prominent hasidic rebbes, to stem the progressive disintegration of the Jewish neighborhood. It presents their valiant attempts to provide the vital resources for its survival in the face of persistent poverty and other grave problems and to develop programs that would secure the future of this unique hasidic community. Kranzler concludes with the assertion that at the beginning of the '90s its inhabitants are hopeful of being able to weather the present crisis and to continue to function as one of pluralist America's viable religious communities.
Download or read book Jews in Gotham written by Jeffrey S. Gurock and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part 3 of a 3 part series.
Download or read book Unchosen written by Hella Winston and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2006-11-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “complex and heart-wrenchingly compelling” exploration of Hasidic Jews struggling to live within, or outside, their restrictive communities—for viewers of Unorthodox and One of Us (Boston Globe) When Hella Winston began talking with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn for her doctoral dissertation in sociology, she was surprised to be covertly introduced to Hasidim unhappy with their highly restrictive way of life and sometimes desperately struggling to escape it. Unchosen tells the stories of these “rebel” Hasidim, serious questioners who long for greater personal and intellectual freedom than their communities allow. She meets is Malky Schwartz, who grew up in a Lubavith sect in Brooklyn, and started Footsteps, Inc., an organization that helps ultra-Orthodox Jews who are considering or have already left their community. There is Yossi, a young man who, though deeply attached to the Hasidic culture in which he was raised, longed for a life with fewer restrictions and more tolerance. Yossi's efforts at making such a life, however, were being severely hampered by his fourth grade English and math skills, his profound ignorance of the ways of the outside world, and the looming threat that pursuing his desires would almost certainly lead to rejection by his family and friends. Then she met Dini, a young wife and mother whose decision to deviate even slightly from Hasidic standards of modesty led to threatening phone calls from anonymous men, warning her that she needed to watch the way she was dressing if she wanted to remain a part of the community. Someone else introduced Winston to Steinmetz, a closet bibliophile worked in a small Judaica store in his community and spent his days off anxiously evading discovery in the library of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, whose shelves contain non-Hasidic books he is forbidden to read but nonetheless devours, often several at a sitting. There were others still who had actually made the wrenching decision to leave their communities altogether. In her new Preface, Winston discusses the passionate reactions the book has elicited among Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike.
Download or read book A Time for Healing written by Edward S. Shapiro and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1995-05 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume V: A Time for Healing. A Time for Healing chronicles a time of rapid economic and social progress. Yet this phenomenal success, explains Edward S. Shapiro, came at a cost. Shapiro takes seriously the potential threat to Jewish culture posed by assimilation and intermarriage—asking if the Jewish people, having already endured so much, will survive America's freedom and affluence as well.
Download or read book New World Hasidim written by Janet S. Belcove-Shalin and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hasidim has long been the subject of historical, philosophical, and literary accounts, but it is only in recent years that it has begun to attract the close attention of social scientists. This book highlights contemporary ethnographic perspectives that convey the richness and complexity of Hasidic life. Political engagement, gender roles, ritual life, proselytizing activities, and community revitalization are just some of the topics covered in this study that casts light on one of the more enigmatic religious communities of contemporary America.
Download or read book Orthodox Jews in America written by Jeffrey S. Gurock and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although there are many good books on the history of Jews in America and a smaller subset that focuses on aspects of Orthodox Judaism in contemporary times, no one, until now, has written an overview of how Orthodoxy in America has evolved over the centuries from the first arrivals in the 17th century to the present. This broad overview by Gurock (Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva Univ.; Judaism's Encounter with American Sports) is distinctive in examining how Orthodox Jews have coped with the personal, familial, and communal challenges of religious freedom, economic opportunity, and social integration, as well as uncovering historical reactionary tensions to alternative Jewish movements in multicultural and pluralistic America. Gurock raises penetrating questions about the compatibility of modern culture with pious practices and sensitively explores the relationship of feminism to traditional Orthodox Judaism. There are several excellent reference sources on Orthodox Jews in America, e.g., Rabbi Moshe D. Sherman's outstanding Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook, to which this is an accessible and illuminating companion; recommended not only for serious readers on the topic but for general readers as well.David B. Levy, Touro Coll. Women's Seminary Lib., Brooklyn, NY Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Download or read book The Jewish Traveler written by Alan M. Tigay and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1994 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is there of Jewish interest to see in Bombay? In Casablanca? Where are the kosher restaurants in Seattle? How did the Jewish community in Hong Kong originate? The Jewish Traveler: Hadassah Magazine's Guide to the World's Jewish Communities and Sights provides this information and much more.
Download or read book All the Nations Under Heaven written by Frederick M. Binder and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In All the Nations Under Heaven, Frederick Binder and David Reimers trace the shifting tides of New York's ethnic past, from its beginnings as a Dutch trading outpost to the present age where Third World immigration has given the population a truly global character. All the Nations Under Heaven explores the processes of cultural adaptation to life in New York, giving a lively account of immigrants new and old, and of the streets and neighborhoods they claimed and transformed. All the Nations Under Heaven provides a comprehensive look at the unique cultural identities that have wrought changes on the city over nearly four centuries since Europeans first landed on the Atlantic shore. While detailing the various efforts to retain a cultural heritage, the book also looks at how ethnic and racial groups have interacted - and clashed - over the years. From the influx of Irish and Germans in the nineteenth century to the recent arrival of Caribbean and Asian ethnic groups in large numbers, All the Nations Under Heaven explores the social, cultural, political, and economic lives of immigrants as they sought to form their own communities and struggled to define their identities within the growing heterogeneity of New York.
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 Cambridge Companion to American Judaism written by Dana Evan Kaplan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-08 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the most important and interesting historical and contemporary facets of Judaism in America. Written by twenty-four leading scholars from the fields of religious studies, American history and literature, philosophy, art history, sociology, and musicology, the book adopts an inclusive perspective on Jewish religious experience. Three initial chapters cover the development of Judaism in America from 1654, when Sephardic Jews first landed in New Amsterdam, until today. Subsequent chapters include cutting-edge scholarship and original ideas while remaining accessible at an introductory level. A secondary goal of this volume is to help its readers better understand the more abstract term of 'religion' in a Jewish context. The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism will be of interest not only to scholars but also to all readers interested in social and intellectual trends in the modern world.
Download or read book Historical Atlas of Hasidism written by Marcin Wodziński and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-24 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first cartographic reference book on one of today’s most important religious movements Historical Atlas of Hasidism is the very first cartographic reference book on one of the modern era's most vibrant and important mystical movements. Featuring seventy-four large-format maps and a wealth of illustrations, charts, and tables, this one-of-a-kind atlas charts Hasidism's emergence and expansion; its dynasties, courts, and prayer houses; its spread to the New World; the crisis of the two world wars and the Holocaust; and Hasidism's remarkable postwar rebirth. Historical Atlas of Hasidism demonstrates how geography has influenced not only the social organization of Hasidism but also its spiritual life, types of religious leadership, and cultural articulation. It focuses not only on Hasidic leaders but also on their thousands of followers living far from Hasidic centers. It examines Hasidism in its historical entirety, from its beginnings in the eighteenth century until today, and draws on extensive GIS-processed databases of historical and contemporary records to present the most complete picture yet of this thriving and diverse religious movement. Historical Atlas of Hasidism is visually stunning and easy to use, a magnificent resource for anyone seeking to understand Hasidism's spatial and spiritual dimensions, or indeed anybody interested in geographies of religious movements past and present. Provides the first cartographic interpretation of Hasidism Features seventy-four maps and numerous illustrations Covers Hasidism in its historical entirety, from its eighteenth-century origins to today Charts Hasidism's emergence and expansion, courts and prayer houses, modern resurgence, and much more Offers the first in-depth analysis of Hasidism's egalitarian—not elitist—dimensions Draws on extensive GIS-processed databases of historical and contemporary records
