JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888–1988

JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888–1988 PDF Author: Jonathan D. Sarna
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827615507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Published to mark the 100th anniversary of The Jewish Publication Society, Jonathan Sarna’s engaging blend of anecdote and analysis presents the personalities and the controversies, the struggles and the achievements behind a century of publishing by the oldest English-language publisher of Jewish books in the world. Includes black and white photographs and extensive listings of JPS officers and editors, governing boards, and authors, translators, and illustrators, up to 1988.

JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888–1988

JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888–1988 PDF Author: Jonathan D. Sarna
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827615507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Published to mark the 100th anniversary of The Jewish Publication Society, Jonathan Sarna’s engaging blend of anecdote and analysis presents the personalities and the controversies, the struggles and the achievements behind a century of publishing by the oldest English-language publisher of Jewish books in the world. Includes black and white photographs and extensive listings of JPS officers and editors, governing boards, and authors, translators, and illustrators, up to 1988.

Coming to Terms with America

Coming to Terms with America PDF Author: Jonathan D. Sarna
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827618786
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
Coming to Terms with America examines how Jews have long "straddled two civilizations," endeavoring to be both Jewish and American at once, from the American Revolution to today. In fifteen engaging essays, Jonathan D. Sarna investigates the many facets of the Jewish-American encounter--what Jews have borrowed from their surroundings, what they have resisted, what they have synthesized, and what they have subverted. Part I surveys how Jews first worked to reconcile Judaism with the country's new democratic ethos and to reconcile their faith-based culture with local metropolitan cultures. Part II analyzes religio-cultural initiatives, many spearheaded by women, and the ongoing tensions between Jewish scholars (who pore over traditional Jewish sources) and activists (who are concerned with applying them). Part III appraises Jewish-Christian relations: "collisions" within the public square and over church-state separation. Originally written over the span of forty years, many of these essays are considered classics in the field, and several remain fixtures of American Jewish history syllabi. Others appeared in fairly obscure venues and will be discovered here anew. Together, these essays--newly updated for this volume--cull the finest thinking of one of American Jewry's finest historians.

Thinking Jewish Culture in America

Thinking Jewish Culture in America PDF Author: Ken Koltun-Fromm
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739174479
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Thinking Jewish Culture in America argues that Jewish thought extends our awareness and deepens the complexity of American Jewish culture. This volume stretches the disciplinary boundaries of Jewish thought so that it can productively engage expanding arenas of culture by drawing Jewish thought into the orbit of cultural studies. The eleven contributors to Thinking Jewish Cultures, together with Chancellor Arnold Eisen’s postscript, position Jewish thought within the dynamics and possibilities of contemporary Jewish culture. These diverse essays in Jewish thought re-imagine cultural space as a public and sometimes contested performance of Jewish identity, and they each seek to re-enliven that space with reflective accounts of cultural meaning. How do Jews imagine themselves as embodied actors in America? Do cultural obligations limit or expand notions of the self? How should we imagine Jewish thought as a cultural performance? What notions of peoplehood might sustain a vibrant Jewish collectivity in a globalized economy? How do programs in Jewish studies work within the academy? These and other questions engage both Jewish thought and culture, opening space for theoretical works to broaden the range of cultural studies, and to deepen our understanding of Jewish cultural dynamics. Thinking Jewish Culture is a work about Jewish cultural identity reflected through literature, visual arts, philosophy, and theology. But it is more than a mere reflection of cultural patterns and choices: the argument pursued throughout Thinking Jewish Culture is that reflective sources help produce the very cultural meanings and performances they purport to analyze.

New Perspectives in American Jewish History

New Perspectives in American Jewish History PDF Author: Mark A. Raider
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 1684580536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
""New Perspectives in American Jewish History: A Documentary Tribute to Jonathan D. Sarna," compiled by Sarna's former students, presents heretofore unpublished, neglected, and rarely seen historical records, documents, and images that illuminate the heterogeneity, breadth, diversity, and colorful dynamism of the American Jewish experience"--

The Dynamics of American Jewish History

The Dynamics of American Jewish History PDF Author: Jacob Rader Marcus
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584653431
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
In this volume, Gary Phillip Zola brings together an assortment of Jacob Rader Marcus's most important unpublished essays. Marcus called upon American Jewry to study its heritage, insisting on the link between individual Jews and the larger Jewish community.

Becoming American, Remaining Jewish

Becoming American, Remaining Jewish PDF Author: Toni Young
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874136944
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
"Becoming American, Remaining Jewish traces the development of Wilmington, Delaware's first Jewish community in order to understand what the Jews created and why, what values were reflected in the institutions they established and the causes they advocated, and what changed over the years. Readers concerned about questions of identity and community today will find much stimulating material in this story." "The appendix, which contains the names of more than two thousand adult Jews lived in Wilmington between 1879 and 1920, is the most comprehensive list of early Jewish Wilmingtonians ever published. With its information on country of birth and first occupation, the list is a valuable resource for historians and genealogists."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism

America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism PDF Author: Gulie Ne’eman Arad
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253338099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
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.

Cultures of the Jews, Volume 3

Cultures of the Jews, Volume 3 PDF Author: David Biale
Publisher: Knopf Group E-Books
ISBN: 0307483495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Scattered over much of the world throughout most of their history, are the Jews one people or many? How do they resemble and how do they differ from Jews in other places and times? What have their relationships been to the cultures of their neighbors? To address these and similar questions, some of the finest scholars of our day have contributed their insights to Cultures of the Jews, a winner of the National Jewish Book Award upon its hardcover publication in 2002. Constructing their essays around specific cultural artifacts that were created in the period and locale under study, the contributors describe the cultural interactions among different Jews–from rabbis and scholars to non-elite groups, including women–as well as between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish world. What they conclude is that although Jews have always had their own autonomous traditions, Jewish identity cannot be considered the fixed product of either ancient ethnic or religious origins. Rather, it has shifted and assumed new forms in response to the cultural environment in which the Jews have lived. Modern Encounters, the third volume in Cultures of the Jews, examines communities, ways of life, and both high and folk culture in the modern era in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe; the Ladino Diaspora; North Africa and the Middle East; Ethiopia; mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel; and the United States. From the Trade Paperback edition.

When General Grant Expelled the Jews

When General Grant Expelled the Jews PDF Author: Jonathan D. Sarna
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0805212337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
On December 17, 1862, just weeks before Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, General Grant issued what remains the most notorious anti-Jewish order by a government official in American history. His attempt to eliminate black marketeers by targeting for expulsion all Jews "as a class" from portions of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi unleashed a firestorm of controversy that made newspaper headlines and terrified and enraged the approximately 150,000 Jews then living in the United States, who feared the importation of European anti-Semitism onto American soil. Although the order was quickly rescinded by a horrified Abraham Lincoln, the scandal came back to haunt Grant when he ran for president in 1868. Never before had Jews become an issue in a presidential contest and never before had they been confronted so publicly with the question of how to balance their "American" and "Jewish" interests. Award-winning historian Jonathan D. Sarna gives us the first complete account of this little-known episode—including Grant's subsequent apology, his groundbreaking appointment of Jews to prominent positions in his administration, and his unprecedented visit to the land of Israel. Sarna sheds new light on one of our most enigmatic presidents, on the Jews of his day, and on the ongoing debate between ethnic loyalty and national loyalty that continues to roil American political and social discourse. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)

Cultures of the Jews

Cultures of the Jews PDF Author: David Biale
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307483460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1234

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Book Description
WITH MORE THAN 100 BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT Who are “the Jews”? Scattered over much of the world throughout most of their three-thousand-year-old history, are they one people or many? How do they resemble and how do they differ from Jews in other places and times? What have their relationships been to the cultures of their neighbors? To address these and similar questions, twenty-three of the finest scholars of our day—archaeologists, cultural historians, literary critics, art historians , folklorists, and historians of relation, all affiliated with major academic institutions in the United States, Israel, and France—have contributed their insight to Cultures of the Jews. The premise of their endeavor is that although Jews have always had their own autonomous traditions, Jewish identity cannot be considered immutable, the fixed product of either ancient ethnic or religious origins. Rather, it has shifted and assumed new forms in response to the cultural environment in which the Jews have lived. Building their essays on specific cultural artifacts—a poem, a letter, a traveler’s account, a physical object of everyday or ritual use—that were made in the period and locale they study, the contributors describe the cultural interactions among different Jews—from rabbis and scholars to non-elite groups, including women—as well as between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish world. Part One, “Mediterranean Origins,” describes the concept of the “People” or “Nation” of Israel that emerges in the Hebrew Bible and the culture of the Israelites in relation to that of the Canaanite groups. It goes on to discuss Jewish cultures in the Greco-Roman world, Palestine during the Byzantine period, Babylonia, and Arabia during the formative years of Islam. Part Two, “Diversities of Diaspora,” illuminates Judeo-Arabic culture in the Golden Age of Islam, Sephardic culture as it bloomed first if the Iberian Peninsula and later in Amsterdam, the Jewish-Christian symbiosis in Ashkenazic Europe and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the culture of the Italian Jews of the Renaissance period, and the many strands of folklore, magic, and material culture that run through diaspora Jewish history. Part Three, “Modern Encounters,” examines communities, ways of life, and both high and fold culture in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, the Ladino Diaspora, North Africa and the Middle East, Ethiopia, Zionist Palestine and the State of Israel, and, finally, the United States. Cultures of the Jews is a landmark, representing the fruits of the present generation of scholars in Jewish studies and offering a new foundation upon which all future research into Jewish history will be based. Its unprecedented interdisciplinary approach will resonate widely among general readers and the scholarly community, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and it will change the terms of the never-ending debate over what constitutes Jewish identity.