Author: Jack WertheimerPublisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584656708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
A lively collection of sixteen essays on the many ways American Jews have imagined and constructed communities
Imagining the American Jewish Community
Author: Jack WertheimerPublisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584656708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
A lively collection of sixteen essays on the many ways American Jews have imagined and constructed communities
Imagining the Jewish Future
Author: David A. TeutschPublisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438421982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
During a time of rapid change in the American Jewish community, an outstanding group of Jewish scholars and professionals address the critical problems and future prospects of American Jewry. They discuss the sharp controversies over feminism and religious language, new data on the relationship between Israelis and American Jews, and the interaction between family and synagogue. The wide scope of topics provides an understanding of the dynamics shaping the lives of American Jews and their diverse views of the future.
Envisioning Israel
Author: Allon GalPublisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814326305
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448
Book Description
Explores how North American Jews have envisioned Israel From the late 19th century to the present.
Beyond Jewish Identity
Author: Jon A. LevisohnPublisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644691183
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description
There is something deeply problematic about the ways that Jews, particularly in America, talk about “Jewish identity” as a desired outcome of Jewish education. For many, the idea that the purpose of Jewish education is to strengthen Jewish identity is so obvious that it hardly seems worth disputing—and the only important question is which kinds of Jewish education do that work more effectively or more efficiently. But what does it mean to “strengthen Jewish identity”? Why do Jewish educators, policy-makers and philanthropists talk that way? What do they assume, about Jewish education or about Jewish identity, when they use formulations like “strengthen Jewish identity”? And what are the costs of doing so? This volume, the first collection to examine critically the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish identity, makes two important interventions. First, it offers a critical assessment of the relationship between education and identity, arguing that the reification of identity has hampered much educational creativity in the pursuit of this goal, and that the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be. Second, this volume offers thoughtful responses that are not merely synonymous replacements for “identity,” suggesting new possibilities for how to think about the purposes and desired outcomes of Jewish education, potentially contributing to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish life.
Imagining Judeo-Christian America
Author: K. Healan GastonPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022666399X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361
Book Description
“Judeo-Christian” is a remarkably easy term to look right through. Judaism and Christianity obviously share tenets, texts, and beliefs that have strongly influenced American democracy. In this ambitious book, however, K. Healan Gaston challenges the myth of a monolithic Judeo-Christian America. She demonstrates that the idea is not only a recent and deliberate construct, but also a potentially dangerous one. From the time of its widespread adoption in the 1930s, the ostensible inclusiveness of Judeo-Christian terminology concealed efforts to promote particular conceptions of religion, secularism, and politics. Gaston also shows that this new language, originally rooted in arguments over the nature of democracy that intensified in the early Cold War years, later became a marker in the culture wars that continue today. She argues that the debate on what constituted Judeo-Christian—and American—identity has shaped the country’s religious and political culture much more extensively than previously recognized.
The Americanization of the Jews
Author: Robert SeltzerPublisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814739571
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 486
Book Description
How did Judaism, a religion so often defined by its minority status, attain equal footing in the trinity of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism that now dominates modern American religious life? THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE JEWS seeks out the effects of this evolution on both Jews in America and an America with Jews. Although English, French, and Dutch Jewries are usually considered the principal forerunners of modern Jewry, Jews have lived as long in North America as they have in post- medieval Britain and France and only sixty years less than in Amsterdam. As one of the four especially creative Jewish communities that has helped re-shape and re-formulate modern Judaism, American Judaism is the most complex and least understood. German Jewry is recognized for its contribution to modern Jewish theology and philosophy, Russian and Polish Jewry is known for its secular influence in literature, and Israel clearly offers Judaism a new stance as a homeland. But how does one capture the interplay between America and Judaism? Immigration to America meant that much of Judaism was discarded, and much was retained. Acculturation did not always lead to assimilation: Jewishness was honed as an independent variable in the motivations of many of its American adherents- -and has remained so, even though Jewish institutions, ideologies, and even Jewish values have been reshaped by America to such an degree that many Jews of the past might not recognize as Jewish some of what constitutes American Jewishness. This collection of essays explores the paradoxes that abound in the America/Judaism relationship, focusing on such specific issues as Jews and American politics in the twentieth century, the adaptation of Jewish religious life to the American environment, the contributions and impact of the women's movement, and commentaries on the Jewish future in America.
A Portrait of the American Jewish Community
Author: Norman LinzerPublisher: Praeger
ISBN: 0275960226
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This comprehensive look at the Jewish American community at the turn of the 21st century explores the many issues emerican Jews and their organizations are confronting, and shows how the Jewish community responds so as to remain a distinct entity while also becoming a part of the larger American culture. The contributors investigate the complex issues facing the American Jewish community in 12 areas that are at the heart of the Jewish communal enterprise. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of Jewish studies and interfaith studies, to professionals in social work and social services, and to anyone interested in American communal dynamics.
Lower East Side Memories
Author: Hasia R. DinerPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691221707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Manhattan's Lower East Side stands for Jewish experience in America. With the possible exception of African-Americans and Harlem, no ethnic group has been so thoroughly understood and imagined through a particular chunk of space. Despite the fact that most American Jews have never set foot there--and many come from families that did not immigrate through New York much less reside on Hester or Delancey Street--the Lower East Side is firm in their collective memory. Whether they have been there or not, people reminisce about the Lower East Side as the place where life pulsated, bread tasted better, relationships were richer, tradition thrived, and passions flared. This was not always so. During the years now fondly recalled (1880-1930), the neighborhood was only occasionally called the Lower East Side. Though largely populated by Jews from Eastern Europe, it was not ethnically or even religiously homogenous. The tenements, grinding poverty, sweatshops, and packs of roaming children were considered the stuff of social work, not nostalgia and romance. To learn when and why this dark warren of pushcart-lined streets became an icon, Hasia Diner follows a wide trail of high and popular culture. She examines children's stories, novels, movies, museum exhibits, television shows, summer-camp reenactments, walking tours, consumer catalogues, and photos hung on deli walls far from Manhattan. Diner finds that it was after World War II when the Lower East Side was enshrined as the place through which Jews passed from European oppression to the promised land of America. The space became sacred at a time when Jews were simultaneously absorbing the enormity of the Holocaust and finding acceptance and opportunity in an increasingly liberal United States. Particularly after 1960, the Lower East Side gave often secularized and suburban Jews a biblical, yet distinctly American story about who they were and how they got here. Displaying the author's own fondness for the Lower East Side of story books, combined with a commitment to historical truth, Lower East Side Memories is an insightful account of one of our most famous neighborhoods and its power to shape identity.
Jews in America
Author: Roberta Rosenberg FarberPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 454
Book Description
Emphasizing the changing patterns of conflict and accommodation resulting from the interaction of American and Jewish values, Jews in America will interest anyone concerned with Jewish identity and continuity in the twenty-first century.
Tradition Transformed
Author: Gerald SorinPublisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801854477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
Sorin also shows how the large migration of Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century made a lasting impact on how other Americans imagine, understand, and relate to Jewish Americans and their cultural contributions today.