American Jewish Identity Politics. Ed. by Deborah Dash Moore. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. 336 pp. Cloth, $80.00, ISBN 978-0-472-11648-5. Paper, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-472-03288-4.)

Abstract

Deborah Dash Moore, the director of Judaic studies and professor of history at the University of Michigan, has collected most of the David Belin lectures on American Jewish identity politics delivered at the university between 1991 and 2004. Assimilation, individual self-examination, and pluralism emerge as competing themes that have since the 1970s fractured, but also strengthened American Jewish life. Moore's essay (1992) explains how during World War II provincial Jewish draftees acquired new understandings of America and of themselves as they encountered Protestant America in training camps. At war and later at college through the G.I. Bill, they pursued new vocations in new locales and asserted a new Jewish identity. Alvin H. Rosenfeld (1995) examines how, when memorializing World War II's central event for Jews—the Holocaust—American Jews have expressed American values through popular culture both to encourage thought and to invoke the victimhood of identity politics. The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the film Schindler's List (1993) deepen understanding, while the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and Judy Chicago's art subordinate the Holocaust to lesser considerations. Hasia R. Diner's essay (2004) questions the assertion that American Jews, until the shock of the Six Day War in 1967, subordinated memory of the Holocaust to other issues. Her use of Yiddish-language materials and institutional records demonstrates continuous memorializing, but does not directly address crucial issues raised by other scholars.