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 The Ambivalent American Jew written by Charles S. Liebman and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust written by Laura Levitt and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us belong to communities that have been scarred by terrible calamities. And many of us come from families that have suffered grievous losses. How we reflect on these legacies of loss and the ways they inform each other are the questions Laura Levitt takes up in this provocative and passionate book. An American Jew whose family was not directly affected by the Holocaust, Levitt grapples with the challenges of contending with ordinary Jewish loss. She suggests that although the memory of the Holocaust may seem to overshadow all other kinds of loss for American Jews, it can also open up possibilities for engaging these more personal and everyday legacies. Weaving in discussions of her own family stories and writing in a manner that is both deeply personal and erudite, Levitt shows what happens when public and private losses are seen next to each other, and what happens when difficult works of art or commemoration, such as museum exhibits or films, are seen alongside ordinary family stories about more intimate losses. In so doing she illuminates how through these “ordinary stories” we may create an alternative model for confronting Holocaust memory in Jewish culture.
Download or read book America Its Jews and the Rise of Nazism written by Gulie Ne’eman Arad and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2000-12-22 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Probing these questions, Gulie Ne'eman Arad finds that, more than the events themselves, what was instrumental in dictating and shaping the American Jews' response to Nazism was the dilemma posed by their desire for acceptance by American society, on the one hand, and their commitment to community solidarity, on the other. When American Jews were faced with the desperate plight of European Jews after Hitler's accession to power, they were hesitant to press the case for immigration for fear of raising doubts about their patriotism.
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 From Ambivalence to Betrayal written by Robert S. Wistrich and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Ambivalence to Betrayal is the first study to explore the transformation in attitudes on the Left toward the Jews, Zionism, and Israel since the origins of European socialism in the 1840s until the present. This pathbreaking synthesis reveals a striking continuity in negative stereotypes of Jews, contempt for Judaism, and negation of Jewish national self-determination from the days of Karl Marx to the current left-wing intellectual assault on Israel. World-renowned expert on the history of antisemitism Robert S. Wistrich provides not only a powerful analysis of how and why the Left emerged as a spearhead of anti-Israel sentiment but also new insights into the wider involvement of Jews in radical movements. There are fascinating portraits of Marx, Moses Hess, Bernard Lazare, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, and other Jewish intellectuals, alongside analyses of the darker face of socialist and Communist antisemitism. The closing section eloquently exposes the degeneration of leftist anti-Zionist critiques into a novel form of “anti-racist” racism.
Download or read book Jews and Feminism written by Laura Levitt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By interrogating America's promise of a home for Jews as citizens of the liberal state, Jews and Feminism questions the very terms of this social "contract". Maintaining that Jews, women, and Jewish women are not necessarily secure within this construction of the state, Laura Levitt links this contractual construction of belonging and acceptance to legacies of marriage as a contractual home for Jewish women. Exploring the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe for America, as well as their desire to make this country their permanent home, Levitt raises questions about the search for stability in specific Jewish religious and cultural traditions which is linked to the liberal academy as well as feminist study, thus offering an account of an ambivalent Jewish feminist embrace of America as home.
Download or read book The Jewish American Paradox written by Robert H Mnookin and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who should count as Jewish in America? What should be the relationship of American Jews to Israel? Can the American Jewish community collectively sustain and pass on to the next generation a sufficient sense of Jewish identity? The situation of American Jews today is deeply paradoxical. Jews have achieved unprecedented integration, influence, and esteem in virtually every facet of American life. But this extraordinarily diverse community now also faces four critical and often divisive challenges: rampant intermarriage, weak religious observance, diminished cohesion in the face of waning anti-Semitism, and deeply conflicting views about Israel. Can the American Jewish community collectively sustain and pass on to the next generation a sufficient sense of Jewish identity in light of these challenges? Who should count as Jewish in America? What should be the relationship of American Jews to Israel? In this thoughtful and perceptive book, Robert H. Mnookin argues that the answers of the past no longer serve American Jews today. The book boldly promotes a radically inclusive American-Jewish community -- one where being Jewish can depend on personal choice and public self-identification, not simply birth or formal religious conversion. Instead of preventing intermarriage or ostracizing those critical of Israel, he envisions a community that embraces diversity and debate, and in so doing, preserves and strengthens the Jewish identity into the next generation and beyond.
Download or read book Ambivalence Adventures in Israel and Palestine written by Jonathan Garfinkel and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-08-17 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With lofty ideals, spectacular ambivalence, and endearing naiveté, Jonathan Garfinkel explores Israel and Palestine by talking to ordinary people. Jonathan Garfinkel can’t make up his mind—not about his girlfriend, or Judaism, or Israel. After hearing about a house in Jerusalem where Jews and Arabs coexist in peace, he decides it’s time to venture there. In Israel, nothing is as he imagined it, and nothing is as he was taught. Garfinkel gives us the people behind the headlines: from secret assignations with Palestinian activists and an uninvited visit at an Arab refugee camp to Passover with Orthodox Jewish friends and finding the truth about the mythic coexistence house, Ambivalence is the provocative, surreal, and often hilarious chronicle of his travels. In this part memoir and part quest, Garfinkel struggles with the growing divisions in a troubled region and with the divide in his soul. “Marvelous. Garfinkel deftly mines what it means to simultaneously belong, disavow, love, and loathe an identity, a culture, and a history.... A must-read.”—David Rakoff
Download or read book New Essays in American Jewish History written by Pamela Susan Nadell and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the American Jewish Archives and the tenth anniversary of Gary P. Zola as its Director, New Essays in American Jewish History includes twenty-two new articles representing the best in modern American and Jewish scholarship. More than a celebration, New Essays serves as a scholarly benchmark in the growing field of American Jewish studies." --Amazon.com.
Download or read book Post War Jewish Fiction written by D. Brauner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2001-07-18 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking study, David Brauner explores the representation of Jewishness in a number of works by postwar British and American Jewish writers, identifying a transatlantic sensibility characterised by an insistent compulsion to explain themselves and their Jewishness in ambivalent terms. Through detailed readings of novels by famous American authors such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud and Arthur Miller, alongside those by lesser-known British writers such as Frederic Raphael, Jonathan Wilson, Howard Jacobson and Clive Sinclair, certain common preoccupations emerge: Gentiles who mistake themselves for Jews; Jewish hostility towards Nature; writing (and not writing) about the Holocaust, and the relationship between fact and fiction.
Download or read book A Jew s Best Friend written by Phillip Isaac Ackerman-Lieberman and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dog has captured the Jewish imagination from antiquity to the contemporary period, with the image of the dog often used to characterize and demean Jewish populations in medieval Christendom. This book discusses the cultural manifestations of the relationship between dogs and Jews, from ancient times onwards.
Download or read book The Ambivalent Image written by Louise A. Mayo and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes religious books, fiction, comic magazines, songs, burlesque pieces, political statements, and representative newspapers and periodicals. In the religious sphere, Jews were seen as the murderers of Christ, but hostile religious images diminished considerably by the end of the century. Literary caricatures and the press depicted the Jews as pawnbrokers and peddlers, with an overwhelming concern for wealth. Discusses the Shylock image which was less venomous than the European version. On the other hand, Jews were also depicted as industrious, honorable, law-abiding, family-centered, and intelligent. Concludes that political and ideological antisemitism was not characteristic of 19th century American society - the ambivalent attitude reflected contradictions in the goal of building an open society while rejecting and excluding aliens.
Download or read book Feeling Jewish written by Devorah Baum and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sparkling debut, a young critic offers an original, passionate, and erudite account of what it means to feel Jewish—even when you’re not. Self-hatred. Guilt. Resentment. Paranoia. Hysteria. Overbearing Mother-Love. In this witty, insightful, and poignant book, Devorah Baum delves into fiction, film, memoir, and psychoanalysis to present a dazzlingly original exploration of a series of feelings famously associated with modern Jews. Reflecting on why Jews have so often been depicted, both by others and by themselves, as prone to “negative” feelings, she queries how negative these feelings really are. And as the pace of globalization leaves countless people feeling more marginalized, uprooted, and existentially threatened, she argues that such “Jewish” feelings are becoming increasingly common to us all. Ranging from Franz Kafka to Philip Roth, Sarah Bernhardt to Woody Allen, Anne Frank to Nathan Englander, Feeling Jewish bridges the usual fault lines between left and right, insider and outsider, Jew and Gentile, and even Semite and anti-Semite, to offer an indispensable guide for our divisive times.
Download or read book The American Jewish Experience written by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Center for the Study of the American Jewish Experience and published by Holmes & Meier Publishers. This book was released on 1986 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Right to Sing the Blues written by Jeffrey Melnick and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-16 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All too often an incident or accident, such as the eruption in Crown Heights with its legacy of bitterness and recrimination, thrusts Black-Jewish relations into the news. A volley of discussion follows, but little in the way of progress or enlightenment results--and this is how things will remain until we radically revise the way we think about the complex interactions between African Americans and Jews. A Right to Sing the Blues offers just such a revision. Black-Jewish relations, Jeffrey Melnick argues, has mostly been a way for American Jews to talk about their ambivalent racial status, a narrative collectively constructed at critical moments, when particular conflicts demand an explanation. Remarkably flexible, this narrative can organize diffuse materials into a coherent story that has a powerful hold on our imagination. Melnick elaborates this idea through an in-depth look at Jewish songwriters, composers, and perfomers who made Black music in the first few decades of this century. He shows how Jews such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, and others were able to portray their natural affinity for producing Black music as a product of their Jewishness while simultaneously depicting Jewishness as a stable white identity. Melnick also contends that this cultural activity competed directly with Harlem Renaissance attempts to define Blackness. Moving beyond the narrow focus of advocacy group politics, this book complicates and enriches our understanding of the cultural terrain shared by African Americans and Jews.
Download or read book Trouble in the Tribe written by Dov Waxman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Israel is dividing American Jews Trouble in the Tribe explores the increasingly contentious place of Israel in the American Jewish community. In a fundamental shift, growing numbers of American Jews have become less willing to unquestioningly support Israel and more willing to publicly criticize its government. More than ever before, American Jews are arguing about Israeli policies, and many, especially younger ones, are becoming uncomfortable with Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Dov Waxman argues that Israel is fast becoming a source of disunity for American Jewry, and that a new era of American Jewish conflict over Israel is replacing the old era of solidarity. Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews with American Jewish leaders and activists, Waxman shows why Israel has become such a divisive issue among American Jews. He delves into the American Jewish debate about Israel, examining the impact that the conflict over Israel is having on Jewish communities, national Jewish organizations, and on the pro-Israel lobby. Waxman sets this conflict in the context of broader cultural, political, institutional, and demographic changes happening in the American Jewish community. He offers a nuanced and balanced account of how this conflict over Israel has developed and what it means for the future of American Jewish politics. Israel used to bring American Jews together. Now it is driving them apart. Trouble in the Tribe explains why.
