Arthur A. Goren. The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews: The Modern Jewish Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. 274 pp.

Abstract

This volume is a collection of ten studies previously published by the author. Its theme is the “unfolding communal life of American Jews—the way Jews transplanted, changed and invented their social institutions and ideologies and created over time an impressive organizational culture” (p. 9). Each chapter, originally conceived as an independent article, has substantial depth and a richness of historical detail. The volume is unified by a sustained, if prismatic, attention to two topics. The first is the internal (that is, Jewish communal) and external (that is, civic and American) politics of twentieth-century American Jews. The second is what the author calls their “public culture.” By public culture he refers to the large public events such as mass rallies, funerals, parades, and pageants that marked American Jewish life, particularly in New York, in the first half of the twentieth century. Public culture provided an expressive metier for socialist or Zionist politics. It gave expression to the collective identities of Jewish subgroups or, on occasion, to the entire community. The treatment of public culture is reminiscent of George Mosse's work on the role of public rituals in European and Jewish nationalism.