Celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month

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This book is the first systematic history of Jewish archiving activities in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine. It argues that collecting and preserving archives was not only about the past, but also about the future. A series of case studies showcase how the question of who could claim to own history led to contentious debates and struggles, both before the Holocaust and especially in its aftermath in the context of the restitution of Nazi-looted archives.

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Bringing readers all the richness and complexity of Jewish life in America through cutting-edge historical and interdisciplinary research, American Jewish History (AJH) is the most widely recognized journal in its field. Founded in 1892, AJH is the official publication of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), the oldest national ethnic historical organization in the United States.

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A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soilSettled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. This book tells the story of how this group of pious, Yiddish-speaking Jews has grown to become a thriving insular enclave and a powerful local government in upstate New York. While rejecting the norms of mainstream American society, Kiryas Joel has been stunningly successful in creating a world apart by using the very instruments of secular political and legal power that they disavow.Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers paint a richly textured portrait of daily life in Kiryas Joel, exploring the community's guiding religious, social, and economic norms. They delve into the roots of Satmar Hasidism and its charismatic founder, Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, following his journey from nineteenth-century Hungary to post–World War II Brooklyn, where he dreamed of founding an ideal Jewish town modeled on the shtetls of eastern Europe. Stolzenberg and Myers chart the rise of Kiryas Joel as an official municipality with its own elected local government. They show how constant legal and political battles defined and even bolstered the community, whose very success has coincided with the rise of political conservatism and multiculturalism in American society over the past forty years.Timely and accessible, American Shtetl unravels the strands of cultural and legal conflict that gave rise to one of the most vibrant religious communities in America, and reveals a way of life shaped by both self-segregation and unwitting assimilation.

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An online exhibition of books from Special Collections, Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Western Washington University 

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Reveals nostalgia as a new way of maintaining Jewish continuityIn 2007, the Museum at Eldridge Street opened at the site of a restored nineteenth-century synagogue originally built by some of the first Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York City. Visitors to the museum are invited to stand along indentations on the floor where footprints of congregants past have worn down the soft pinewood. Here, many feel a palpable connection to the history surrounding them.Beyond the Synagogue argues that nostalgic activities such as visiting the Museum at Eldridge Street or eating traditional Jewish foods should be understood as American Jewish religious practices. In making the case that these practices are not just cultural, but are actually religious, Rachel B. Gross asserts that many prominent sociologists and historians have mistakenly concluded that American Judaism is in decline, and she contends that they are looking in the wrong places for Jewish religious activity. If they looked outside of traditional institutions and practices, such as attendance at synagogue or membership in Jewish Community Centers, they would see that the embrace of nostalgia provides evidence of an alternative, under-appreciated way of being Jewish and of maintaining Jewish continuity. Tracing American Jews’ involvement in a broad array of ostensibly nonreligious activities, including conducting Jewish genealogical research, visiting Jewish historic sites, purchasing books and toys that teach Jewish nostalgia to children, and seeking out traditional Jewish foods, Gross argues that these practices illuminate how many American Jews are finding and making meaning within American Judaism today.

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Contents: Two cheers for ethnicity -- Yiddish leftists as early intra-ethniks / Elissa Sampson -- From the classroom to the soapbox : multiethnic workers schools and leftist parties / Robert M. Zecker -- Parkchester : a suburb in a city and the challenge to ethnicity, 1940-circa 1970 / Jeffrey S. Gurock -- Overrepresented minorities : comparing the Jewish and Asian American experiences / Jonathan Karp -- "A bunch of blond meshugeners" : Mormons in the American Jewish imagination / Julian Levinson -- Jewish American writers and the J-word / Hana Wirth-Nesher -- "I didn't know there were Epsteins in Puerto Rico" : Jewish ethnicity in American comedy / Jarrod Tanny -- Like other (mixed parentage) Jews, only more so : a mixed methods analysis of Jews of color / Bruce A. Phillips.

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.Golden Ages is an ethnographic study of young singers in the contemporary Brooklyn Hasidic community who base their aesthetic explorations of the culturally intimate space of prayer on the gramophone-era cantorial golden age. Jeremiah Lockwood proposes a view of their work as a nonconforming social practice that calls upon the sounds and structures of Jewish sacred musical heritage to disrupt the aesthetics and power hierarchies of their conservative community, defying institutional authority and pushing at normative boundaries of sacred and secular. Beyond its role as a desirable art form, golden age cantorial music offers aspiring Hasidic singers a form of Jewish cultural productivity in which artistic excellence, maverick outsider status, and sacred authority are aligned.

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This volume explores how Jewish American writers like Sholem Asch, Jacob Glatstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anna Margolin, Saul Bellow, and Grace Paley think of themselves as world writers, and the successes and failures that come with this role.

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This study examines how American Jews contended with living in a fundamentally Christian state from colonial times to the present. Emphasis is placed on the manner in which Jewish actions have contributed to the development of a separation between Church and State in the USA.

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'Jews on the Frontier' is a religious history of the United States that begins in an unexpected place: on the road with mobile Jews. It follows them out of eastern cities and into the American frontier, where they found unprecedented economic opportunity but also anonymity, loneliness, instability, mistrust, scarcity, and diversity, all of which complicated the many legal obligations of traditional Jewish life.

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A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family's displacement across four countries, Kantika--song in Ladino--follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way--a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge--her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old. Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body--in work, art and love--serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women, this lush, lyrical novel from Elizabeth Graver celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one's one and only life. --

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Nautilus and Bone chronicles the life and work of the radical, passionate Russian-Jewish American poet Anna Margolin on her path toward self-determination. Blending myth, surrealism, historical fact and fiction, this collection of persona poems brings to life one of the most celebrated Yiddish poets of her generation.--

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In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just a block or two up from the East River on Division Avenue, Surie Eckstein is soon to be a great-grandmother. Her in-laws, postwar immigrants from Romania, live on the first floor. Her daughter Tzila Ruchel lives on the second. She and Yidel, a scribe in such demand that he makes only a few Torah scrolls a year, live on the third. Wed when Surie was sixteen, they have a happy marriage and a full life, and are looking forward to some quiet time together. When Surie discovers she is pregnant-- at fifty-seven-- it is a shock. She feels ashamed, unable to share the news even with her husband. -- adapted from jacket

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Contents: Baltimore's first Jews -- A city and mother in Israel -- The "great wave" hits Baltimore -- Bawlmer Jews: the interwar years -- From Baltimore to Pikesville -- The challenges of a new century.

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An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother's maternal line. Using family heirlooms to unlock the mystery of Moses's ancestors, Once We Were Slaves overturns the reclusive heiress's assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives as poor Christian slaves in Barbados. Tracing the siblings' extraordinary journey throughout the Atlantic World, Leibman examines artefacts they left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and, finally, New York, to show how Sarah and Isaac were able to transform themselves and their lives, becoming free, wealthy, Jewish, and-at times-white. While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten population of mixed African and Jewish ancestry that constituted as much as ten percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived, and sheds new light on the fluidity of race-as well as on the role of religion in racial shift-in the first half of the nineteenth century--

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Drawing on several archives, magazine articles, and nearly-forgotten bestsellers, Rachel Gordan examines how Jewish middlebrow literature helped to shape post-Holocaust American Jewish identity. Positive depictions of Jews in popular literature had a normalizing effect, while at the same time forging the notion of Judaism as an American religion distinct from Christianity but part of America's alleged 'Judeo-Christian' heritage.

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American and British appeasement of Nazism during the early years of the Third Reich went far beyond territorial concessions. In Prologue to Annihilation: Ordinary American and British Jews Challenge the Third Reich, Stephen H. Norwood examines the numerous of ways that the two nations' official position of tacit acceptance of Jewish persecution enabled the policies that ultimately led to the Final Solution and how Nazi annihilationist intentions were clearly discernible even during the earliest years of Hitler's rule. Further, Norwood looks at the nature and impact of American and British Jewish resistance to Nazi persecution and the efforts of Jews at the grassroots level to press Jewish organizations to respond more forcefully to the Nazi menace. He examines the worldwide protest and boycott movements against Germany and German goods as well as mass demonstrations by working-class and lower-middle-class Jews in many American and British cities. Prologue to Annihilation details how the events of 1930-1936 tested American and British societies' willingness to accept Nazism and its anti-Jewish philosophy and illuminates the divisions that existed even within the Jewish community about how best to challenge Nazi antisemitic policies and atrocities--

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In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community--heaven and earth--that sustain us. Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird --Publisher's description.

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Storytelling, as oral tradition and in writing, has long played a central role in Jewish society. Family, educators, and clergy employ stories to transmit Jewish culture, traditions, and values. This comprehensive bibliography identifies 668 Jewish folktales by title and subject, summarizing plot lines for easy access to the right story for any occasion. Some centuries old and others freshly imagined, the tales include animal fables, supernatural yarns, and anecdotes for festivals and holidays. Themes include justice, community, cause and effect, and mitzvahs, or good deeds. This second editio

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Antisemitism is a topic on which there is a wide gap between scholarly and popular understanding, and as concern over antisemitism has grown, so too has the debates over how to understand and combat it. This handbook explores its history and manifestations, ranging from its origins to the internet. Since the Holocaust, many in North America and Europe have viewed antisemitism as a historical issue with little current importance. However, recent events show that antisemitism is not just a matter of historical interest or of concern only to Jews. Antisemitism has become a major issue confronting and challenging our world. The volume starts with explorations of antisemitism in its many different shapes across time and then proceeds to a geographical perspective, covering a broad scope of experiences across different countries and regions. The final part discusses the manifestations of antisemitism in its varied cultural and social forms. With an international range of contributions across 40 chapters, this is an essential volume for all readers of Jewish and non-Jewish history alike--

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An absorbing account of how two Jewish brothers devoted themselves to the struggle for racial equality in the United States. In the late nineteenth century, Joel and Arthur Spingarn grew up in New York City as brothers with very different personalities, interests, and professional goals. Joel was impetuous and high-spirited; Arthur was reasoned and studious. Yet together they would become essential leaders in the struggle for racial justice and equality, serving as presidents of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, exposing inequities, overseeing key court cases, and lobbying presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy. In The Spingarn Brothers, Katherine Reynolds Chaddock sheds new light on the story of these fascinating brothers and explores how their Jewish heritage and experience as second-generation immigrants led to their fight for racial equality. Upon graduating from Columbia University, Arthur joined a top Manhattan law practice, while Joel became a professor of comparative literature. The two soon witnessed growing racial injustices in the city and joined the NAACP in 1909, its founding year. Arthur began to aim his legal practice toward issues of discrimination, while Joel founded the NAACP's New York City branch. Drawing from personal letters, journals, and archives, Chaddock uncovers some of the motivations and influences that guided the Spingarns. Both brothers served in World War I, married, and pursued numerous interests that ranged from running for Congress to collecting rare books and manuscripts by Black authors around the world. In this dual biography, Chaddock illustrates how the Spingarn brothers' unique personalities, Jewish heritage, and family history shaped their personal and professional lives into an ongoing fight for racial justice--

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Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young people, Essie, goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her. Along the way, the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they've left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold. With cinematic sweep and tender observation, the author presents a totally original drama about individual purpose, the fluid nature of identity, and the power of love to change and endure--

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Carlie Hoffman - When There Was Light--