American Jewish History Research Articles

Le Yiddishland newyorkais: la mémoire enracinée (The Yiddishland New Yorker: the Ingrained Memory)

More than two million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe to the USA between 1880 and 1910. Most of them settled in New York City, in the immigrant district of the Lower East Side. As they were uprooted, they tried to recreate a new version of their shtetl, the villages in which most Jews had been forced to reside in Eastern Europe. The Lower East Side thus became their new Yiddishland, their home, where most institutions were modeled after the original ones. Though American Jews had already provided for most necessary institutions like synagogues or schools, what they had established did not match Russian Jews’ habits – besides the fact that Yiddish played a major part in their lives, and was totally ignored by most American Jews. Thus the new immigrants built their own synagogues, schools, and mutual benefit societies. Yiddish culture was vibrant, thanks to Yiddish theatre and the Yiddish press that flourished for decades. Today, though most Jews left the Lower East Side long ago, there remain a few synagogues and shops that have become the symbols of an everlasting Jewish identity, traces of a cherished past, marked by hardship but also the joy of having finally found freedom after centuries of persecution. The Lower East Side has become the place where part of American Jewish history took place, and as such, is a sacred place. Hasia Diner called it the ‘Jewish Plymouth Rock’, underlining the idea that it is the foundation of the American Jewish community, that combines both American and Jewish identities. Jewishness in Europe has been wiped out in many countries, and the descendants of these Russian immigrants can no longer turn to their ancestors’ European ‘home’. It is the Lower East Side that plays the part of the alte heime (the old country), and as such, makes up part of their identity. Memory and identity are deeply rooted in the ‘sacred geography’ of the Lower East Side.

Transnational traditions: new perspectives on American Jewish history

Transnational traditions: new perspectives on American Jewish history

Coming to America: The Reception of Sepharad and Ashkenaz in America

WHETHER EXCEPTIONAL OR NOT, American Jewish history is full of extraordinary moments, personalities, and motifs. The relatively late arrival of European Jewish historians to this realization, Salo Baron excepting, cannot and should not obscure the richness of the Jewish experience in the United States. It is to the credit of the towering figure of twentieth-century American Jewish historiography, Jacob Rader Marcus, that a vast array of source materials has been available to generations of researchers, who have drawn on them to convey that richness with ever-expanding nuance and sophistication.One of the characteristic features of Marcus's worldview, his four-part periodization of American Jewish history, has not necessarily stood the test of time. In 1958, Marcus delivered his presidential address to the American Jewish Historical Society in which he identified the following periods of American Jewish life: (1) the Sephardic Age (1654-1840); (2) the German Age (1841-1920); (3) the (concurrent) Eastern European Age (1852-1920); and (4) the American Age (1920- ). It was the last that spawned ''a homo novus, the American Jew''-fully at home in his country and assimilated into its cultural norms.There is an upward, teleological arc to this narrative that rises from the travails of immigration to the security of America, as well as from the varieties of cultural difference to the prospect of social compatibility with the American world. Marcus's scheme implies a unidirectional process of cultural reformation in two regards: in temporal terms, each phase effectively superseded the preceding one; and spatially, arrival in America, especially by the final phase, meant that lingering native cultures would soon wane.Recent scholarship has agitated for a more dynamic understanding of the social field in which Jews in the United States have operated. This scholarship has expanded and rethought the borders of Jewish cultural activity, arguing that the vectors move in multiple directions-not only from Europe or the Middle East to America but in the other direction as well. In recognition of the vitality of research in the field, this issue of JQR is devoted to differing facets of the American Jewish experience. The essays collected here, some from recognized experts in American Jewish history and others from those better known in other areas of scholarship, demonstrate that the creation of an American homo novus was not simply-or at all-a matter of leaving behind old cultural traces but rather a case of the often uneasy coexistence of competing cultural sensibilities into the twentieth century.The first essay, Aviva Ben-Ur's ''Kabbalistic Pharmacopoeia,'' does the service of expanding our angle of historical vision from the United States per se to the Atlantic at large. Ben-Ur follows the career of a fascinating book held in the Katz Center library, Ta'alumot h. okhmah. Composed over the course of 150 years in multiple languages and countries, the text is a repository of medical, folk, and culinary practices, with a persistent kabbalistic theme overall. It contains remedies, receipts, and transport documents revealing a journey that crisscrossed the Americas (and Europe) and reminds us that the commonly denominated ''America''- that is, the United States-was part of a much larger cultural ecosystem.The next essay, Ber Kotlerman's ''Going through the Seven Circles of Hell,'' shifts our focus back to U.S. shores and to one of the most prominent forms of American culture: film. The allure of film for American Jews, and recent immigrants among them in the early twentieth century, is well known. Far less well known is the allure of film for the great Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem, who was, an earlier biographer noted, ''a big admirer and trembling worshiper of the cinema.'' This passion even prompted Sholem Aleichem to try his hand at writing a script in 1915 in Yiddish, which he brought with him to America in the hope of having it produced. …

“A Questioning of the Jewish Status Quo”: Midstream, Shlomo Katz, and American Zionist Letters at Midcentury

Established in New York in 1955 by Zionist leader Emanuel Neumann, Midstream immediately proclaimed its identity as a Zionist publication and its intention to focus squarely upon the problems of Jewish existence in the diaspora. This article asks: How did the early Midstream, under the direction of its first editor, Shlomo Katz, attempt to position itself as a new and indispensable voice in Jewish and especially in Zionist letters? Did the magazine differ in significant ways from its ostensible competitors? How may we assess Katz’s role and legacy at Midstream? To begin answering these questions, the article examines the extent to which founding editor Shlomo Katz, as an idiosyncratic Zionist and unadulterated pessimist, shaped the magazine. For Katz as an intellectual, Jewish needs always came first. Yet in seeking to maintain Midstream as a forum for free discussion, he sometimes provided room for novel or provocative perspectives on matters of importance to the Jewish community—including, prominently, Israel. Drawing on issues from the first eighteen years of Midstream as well as archival materials pertaining to its administration, this essay illuminates a significant intellectual and cultural venue in postwar American Jewish life, one that has largely been neglected by scholars of postwar American Jewish history.

Review of 'Transnational Traditions: New Perspectives on American Jewish History'

Review of 'Transnational Traditions: New Perspectives on American Jewish History'

Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America by M.M. Silver (review)

Reviewed by: Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America by M.M. Silver Miriam Sanua Dalin (bio) Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America. by M.M. Silver. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013. 644 pp. Louis Marshall (1856–1929) was without doubt one of the most significant, powerful, and authoritative leaders the American Jewish community ever had. He argued more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any private attorney of his time and was briefly considered as a candidate for the Court himself. When Henry Ford agreed to stop publishing anti-Semitic attacks in his mass circulation newspaper The Dearborn Independent, it was Marshall who personally dictated and received Ford’s retraction and apology. He fought for twenty years against the imposition of restrictive laws that would stop further Jewish [End Page 359] immigration into the United States. Were it not for his efforts and those of his colleagues in keeping the doors of America open for as long as they were, several hundred thousand more Jews would have been lost in the Nazi genocide. Marshall rose to prominence from relatively humble beginnings. Born to poor immigrants in upstate New York, Marshall moved to Manhattan at the age of 38 in 1894 to become a partner in Guggenheimer and Untermyer, the preeminent Jewish law firm in New York City. He began his Jewish communal career as attorney, adviser, and administrator for projects funded by the city’s established Jewish elite, who hoped to aid and Americanize as quickly as possible the masses of indigent, Yiddishspeaking eastern European immigrants who were streaming into the city. The often tense interactions between the two Jewish subgroups and Marshall’s ability to navigate between them is the central theme of this book. Silver argues that the conflict between the two groups ended with conservative patrician values being fused with the energy of radical populist outlooks; this combination eventually expressed itself in a recognizably liberal Jewish ethnic style in the 1930s and afterward. Marshall’s powers of mediation extended to industrial relations. When in 1910 a massive strike among the Cloakmaker’s Union in New York left tens of thousands without work and cost millions in lost wages, it was Marshall, Silver argues, who formulated “the Protocol of Peace” that brought the strike to an end. Other scholars might disagree with this assertion, as in many accounts, Louis Brandeis played a pivotal role. Marshall’s name occurs frequently in any study of American Jewish history, but this volume is the first full-scale biography. Possible reasons are Marshall’s adherence to the Republican Party and nineteenth-century conservative principles when most Jews were moving in other directions. He sorely lacked charisma. Moreover, he was an affirmed non-Zionist when Zionism was growing in popularity among American Jews. Finally, the elite Jewish group that Marshall was associated with passed from power with the Great Depression and the coming to maturity and prosperity of East European Jews, and this may have led to a tendency to marginalize his contributions to American Jewish public life. The present volume ably fills the gap and examines how Marshall achieved such eminence in American Jewish public life that the 1920s would be called the period of “Marshall law.” During his early career, while he was pursuing his profession and fulfilling a host of civic duties, Marshall helped set the first building blocks of organized Jewish life. Key institutions that Marshall helped to found, led, or championed included the Jewish Theological Seminary and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Marshall developed a close friendship with Solomon [End Page 360] Schechter and articulated the new middle-of-the-road denomination of Conservative Judaism in all but name. The AJC was the first organization in the history of the United States to be formed by an ethnic group for the purpose of defending its rights and those of its brethren overseas. Marshall helped set its agenda from the beginning and served as AJC president from 1912 until his death in 1929. When World War I trapped millions of Jews in battle zones, Marshall brought together a wide array of Jewish groups to form the American Jewish Joint...

Ivory Towers and Tenements: American Jewish History, Scholars and the Public

Ivory Towers and Tenements: American Jewish History, Scholars and the Public

Beyond the Ivory Tower: American Jewish History for a Public Audience

Beyond the Ivory Tower: American Jewish History for a Public Audience

Against the Tide:

ABSTRACT A brief overview of the earliest scholarship on early Jewish American history and literature (including Cyrus Adler, Mayer Kayserling, Max J. Kohler, George Alexander Kohut, Isaac Markens, Oscar Straus, and Simon Wolf) is offered as an introduction to “Before the Flood,” a special issue of SAJL that presents recent, innovative scholarship on early Jewish American literature.

Ethnographers and History

Ethnographers and History Shaul Kelner (bio) 1. How does the history we choose to engage with shape the ethnographic tale we tell, and what type of historical consciousness do we bring to the work? In his 1945 manifesto on hiking as a form of Zionist education, Zev Vilnay opens with the comment, “Even in ancient times, the Israelite was accustomed to wander the Land of Israel and to know it well.”1 Most of the pamphlet goes on to address matters practical and philosophical associated with the structure, staffing and pedagogy of ritualized hiking (tiyul). Before he addresses that, however, Vilnay’s initial concern is to “recover roots,” to use Yael Zerubavel’s turn of phrase—to assert historical continuity between contemporary practice and the Jewish past.2 Vilnay’s first chapter is given over to consideration of the biblical pilgrimage festivals and to later Jewish travel writings in the Land of Israel, such as R. Estori Ha-Parhi’s 1322 Sefer Kaftor va-Ferah and R. Moses Cordovero’s accounts in Sefer Gerushin of sixteenth-century kabbalistic excursions in the environs of Safed.3 In writing Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage and Israeli Birthright Tourism4, an ethnography of the state-sponsored tours that have brought more than 300,000 Diaspora Jews to Israel since 1999, I knew well that Vilnay’s perspective was widely shared among educators engaged in the enterprise. Jewish educational travel experiences in Israel—whether for sabras (native-born Israelis),5 new immigrants or Diaspora Jews—have typically been framed as continuous with a premodern Jewish pilgrimage tradition. The ideological and legitimizing thrust of such a framing is clear. As I set out to conduct the research, I faced a choice: to participate in nationalist mythmaking, or to break with it and present the enterprise [End Page 17] of Israel-experience travel as a quintessentially twentieth- and twenty-first-century phenomenon. Each option implied a different relation to history, and each suggested a different history to engage with. I chose to emphasize a narrative of discontinuity. Birthright Israel and the twentieth-century Diaspora youth tours that preceded it are best understood, I argue, not as the contemporary manifestation of an ancient Jewish pilgrimage tradition, but as a novel practice made possible only by the political, economic, organizational, conceptual and technological resources of the modern age. Without a conception of Diaspora-state relations as a strategic asset for both parties, without a robust tourism industry and a population that enjoys en masse the luxury of leisure time to travel, without a professionalized field of Jewish education, without the technology to move hundreds of thousands of people through the air and the bureaucratic systems to coordinate it, without a philanthropic system capable of financing such an enterprise, Birthright Israel would simply be unimaginable. The history I chose to engage, therefore, looks not to the premodern Jewish past. My historical focus takes me back to the mid-nineteenth century at the earliest, to engage with three different histories. One regards the rise of the modern mass tourism industry. Another treats the Zionist movement in the prestate period, as well as its development of the cultural and institutional practices of tiyul that would later shape Diaspora youth travel to Israel. The third takes up aspects of twentieth-century American Jewish history relevant to the growth of the Israel-experience program field. This includes institutional histories of Diaspora youth travel programs, such as the Young Judaea Summer Programs in Israel. It also goes beyond an investigation of specific programs to consider broader efforts to build a field of Israel-experience education—efforts that included research, advocacy and institution building. The latter approach frames Birthright Israel within a moment in the institutional history of American Jewish education. Here, I was concerned with avoiding teleology. It would have been easy to frame the growth of the Israel-experience field as a story that begins with small, independent programs targeted to a limited number of youth-movement leaders and culminates with a massive effort to make a trip to Israel a universal rite of passage for every American Jewish young adult. But this would also have been misleading. Therefore, although the ethnography studied...

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction Dianne Ashton From time to time, scholarly journals may depart from their standard format of presenting articles involving new research in order to focus their attention on new methodologies, questions or debates currently animating their field.1 This issue of American Jewish History follows that route. Our contributors each participated in a roundtable at the 2012 Scholars Conference sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society at the Center for Jewish History in New York, where they discussed how our field has informed their work as social scientists. Focused on the theme “Beyond Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying American Jews” the conference brought together a broad range of scholars engaged in studying American Jewry, and it produced an intellectually exciting event. We are fortunate that the participants in the conference roundtable, Ethnographers and History, created a written version of their discussion to share with AJH readers. We begin with the thoughts of Riv-Ellen Prell, who chaired the roundtable. She explains that while the panel members—herself included—“hail from different disciplines: anthropology, folklore, sociology, and linguistics,” they share an “abiding interest in grounding [their] . . . studies in their deep and complex historical roots.” She helps us to understand the history of social scientists’ interest in interdisciplinary work with history and also the particular usefulness of this kind of work to those engaged in Jewish studies. Ayala Fader, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist, explains how important the knowledge of historical context is to her own research into the lives of Orthodox and Hasidic girls in Brooklyn and also into the Occupy Wall Street movement. Fader has found a fruitful way of bringing together historical knowledge and research conducted largely by observing her subjects and paying close attention to their historical memories. Fader also observes ongoing changes in the historical contexts of both of the groups she studies, as well as to such changes in her own life. As she notes, “Histories—the unwritten, the remembered and the more authoritative—are critical for understanding the dynamics of social reproduction and change.” Chava Weissler, a folklorist, studies “the expressive culture—rituals, prayers, music and crafts—of ordinary . . . Jews.” Her work has encompassed the study of twentieth-century havurot (prayer groups), [End Page vii] the prayers of eighteenth-century Jewish women in Central and Eastern Europe, and, currently, the contemporary initiative known as ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Her work shows how the language and images of Jewish piety have been used by different Jewish subgroups living in different eras. At the same time, their expressive culture reflects their broader historical contexts. Aware of the historical and linguistic factors that create the subjects she studies, she also addresses the challenge of studying works by actors who themselves were/are “often written out of history—Hasidim, women, youth, etc.” Weissler finds that her work carries with it a political assertion that her subjects are worthy objects for study. Thus, her work is embedded in the changes occurring both inside and outside the academy. Finally, ethnographer Shaul Kelner explains that his study of the program called Taglit-Birthright Israel, the “state-sponsored tours that have brought more than 300,000 Diaspora Jews to Israel since 1999,” began when he read a 1945 “manifesto” that touted the importance of hiking through the land in order to develop a Zionist consciousness and commitment. Kelner knew that this perspective was widely shared among Zionist educators. Yet, he points out, educators alone could not have created the tourism phenomenon that is Birthright Israel. It is made possible only by “the political, economic, organizational, conceptual and technological resources of the modern age.” As he conducted extensive ethnographic work with the young participants on the tours, Kelner recognized that a full understanding of the impact of Birthright Israel required that he pay serious attention to the tours’ broader historical context. Together, these pieces offer a window into new trends in interdisciplinary work on Jews in America, and they show us the different ways in which historical knowledge can be illuminating for scholars working in the social sciences. [End Page viii] Dianne Ashton Rowan University Footnotes 1. See, for example, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 81, no. 3...

City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York

Despite the vast literature and daunting demands of this monumental endeavor, five accomplished historians have produced the first-of-its-kind, three-volume comprehensive history of New York Jews. The project editor and authors recognize the city's unique diversity as well as its role in shaping a distinct Jewish experience. That experience took a powerful hold on the Jewish American imagination, and the Jewish community's political, economic, and cultural influence has become synonymous with the city. The primary focus of this richly detailed yet comprehensive historical survey is the making of New York City as a Jewish political capital and “a resource of Jewishness” for American Jews (p. xii). The study's guidelines were drawn by Deborah Dash Moore, an eminent historian of American Jewry, whose first book, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews (1981), acknowledged the unique intersection of Jews and the city. Moore has since published scholarship on a diverse array of subjects, including the history of B'nai B'rith, Jewish G.I.s, Jewish women, and the Jews of Miami and Los Angeles. She has focused on New York Jewry in studies of the city's Jewish neighborhoods and Cold War–era intra-Jewish conflict prompted by the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. Moore is thus an expert in American Jewish history and understands the centrality of New York in framing the history of the national Jewish American experience. Under her skilled editorship City of Promises traces the diverse expressions of communal dynamism emanating from successive immigrant and ethnic neighborhoods and the emergence of plural Jewish identities.

American Metaphysical Judaism

American metaphysical Judaism draws on traditional Jewish practices and texts as well as the American metaphysical religious tradition. This article challenges the relegation of American metaphysical Judaism to the category “New Age Judaism” and opens the door to exploring this area of religious expression in its historical and current forms. Drawing on my fieldwork with, and the writings of, rabbi and shaman Gershon Winkler, I offer an ethnographic exploration of Winkler’s life and religious practice as an example of American metaphysical Judaism. Winkler reads Hebrew scriptures through his “shamanic” lens, looking for what he claims has been lost, overlooked or misinterpreted in traditional Jewish interpretations; focuses on healing through manipulation of energy and “flow;” and incorporates (his construction of) Native American religious practice and insight. I argue that metaphysical Judaism should be understood as a product of American values, metaphysical spirituality and Jewish history and thought.

Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism ed. by Rebecca Kobrin (review)

Reviewed by: Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism ed. by Rebecca Kobrin Steven J. Gold (bio) Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism by Rebecca Kobrin , ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012. ix + 311 pp. The image of Jews in American society has long been linked with money, and this association has taken many forms. While stereotypes of Jewish wealth are the most common, depending on the time and place, popular culture shows Jews throughout the economic hierarchy, [End Page 453] variously depicting them as international bankers, professionals and shop owners; as members of the educated middle class; and as exploited workers. Moreover, Jewish voices–ranging from Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman to Barney Frank and Karl Marx–articulate myriad positions regarding the ethics of acquiring, sharing, manipulating and distributing wealth. In this manner, Jews’ economic postures have served multiple groups (including Jews themselves) as a Rorschach test, yielding both celebration and condemnation of their place in U.S. society. Given Americans’ longstanding concern with the nature of Jews’ economic thought and behavior, it is surprising that there has been so little scholarship on the topic. This is especially the case when one observes the burgeoning literature on the economic activities of a wide range of immigrant and ethnic groups, many of which are smaller in number and much more recently arrived than Jews. In her edited volume Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism, historian Rebecca Kobrin has assembled a series of outstanding articles that work to fill this void by examining the history and interconnected economic fate of what she identifies as two exceptionalisms to capitalism first identified in the work of Werner Sombart: those of the United States and the Jewish people. Kobrin poses three questions as central to this project: “First, through which specific niches, and at which specific moments did Jews play a role in the evolution of America’s brand of capitalism? … Second, how and through what methods did Jewish workers, entrepreneurs and businesspeople achieve this mobility? and… Third, how and in what ways did capitalism alter the practice and experience of Judaism itself?” (4). Building on Kobrin’s introduction, Ira Katznelson’s chapter investigates the historical context in which the preferences and decisions of key actors were formed. Toward this end, he provides an enlightening examination of Sombart based on multiple translations of the scholar’s writings. Following these introductory materials, the book is divided into three thematic sections. The first includes six chapters that describe Jewish niches in the American economy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Innovative and carefully researched, they reveal Jewish entrepreneurs’ ability to survive through profitable but risky (and often disreputable) endeavors like garment manufacturing, real estate development in New York’s garment district, recycling scrap materials in the Midwest, liquor entrepreneurship, the production and marketing of “race music,” and trading in American Indian artifacts. Jews’ willingness to engage in such occupations provoked anti-Semitic reactions from the larger society, thus endangering proprietors’ reputations as they earned [End Page 454] a living. In reaction, some merchants engaged in Jewish philanthropy in order to maintain a good standing, at least among coreligionists. Jewish entrepreneurs’ transgression against social norms and boundaries poses questions that continue to vex students of American Jewish history. Does Jews’ willingness to trade with minorities suggest pragmatism, tolerance or ruthlessness? Do Jewish merchants deserve credit for distributing the cultural productions of African Americans and American Indians even as they enjoyed financial benefits from doing so? Does holding Jews accountable for profiting from liquor sales or “sweating” garment workers reflect a moral double standard that would not be applied to non-Jewish merchants? Does the better treatment that Jewish merchants received in the U.S. versus Europe excuse American anti-Semitism, or does it contradict assertions of American exceptionalism? In the book’s second section on Jews and American capitalism, we read about the experience of Jewish labor activists who initially challenged capitalism by mobilizing workers into an array of multicultural, multiracial, enthnolinguistic and gender-based movements. Ultimately, however, they adopted an assimilationist approach that downplayed workers’ origins (Jews included) and abandoned socialist politics in favor of a liberal agenda...

From Fashion to Politics: Hadassah and Jewish American Women in the Post World War II Era by Shirli Brautbar (review)

Reviewed by: From Fashion to Politics: Hadassah and Jewish American Women in the Post World War II Era by Shirli Brautbar Rachel Gordan (bio) From Fashion to Politics: Hadassah and Jewish American Women in the Post World War II Era. By Shirli Brautbar. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2012. viii + 152 pp. “How did this housewife become so knowledgeable in international affairs, so able a defender of civil rights?” mused a bewildered Hadassah husband in his 1953 essay for the Hadassah newsletter. It is this puzzlement over post-WWII “Hadassah ladies” that has made them a challenging subject for students of American Jewish history. While researching my college senior thesis on the Hadassah organization in the 1950s, I remember staring into the photographed faces of 1950s Hadassah matrons standing alongside Mamie Eisenhower during a Washington, D.C., visit, and puzzling at their identity. Were they focused on fashion or politics? June Cleavers or powerful activists? The answer is, of course, a hybrid of the two. Brautbar’s From Fashion to Politics is a powerful contribution toward our understanding. More than a generation removed from the scrappy, radical colleagues of Henrietta Szold, the 1950s women of Hadassah have seemed less straightforward in their motivations, if [End Page 441] more at home in America. Shirli Brautbar’s book confirms my prior belief that motherhood was the concept that allowed postwar Hadassah women to reconcile the gender conservatism of their day with their politicization. As Brautbar explains, these women “utilized hegemonic gender ideals of domesticity and feminine consumer practices, such as fashion, to legitimate the participation of women in the nontraditional sphere of public action and education” (3). What is particularly useful about Brautbar’s study is her postwar focus (most work on Hadassah examines its early years) and the author’s thoughtful probing of Hadassah’s responses to the issues of that era: the Holocaust, ideas about Arabs, McCarthyism, civil rights, Black Power, the Six Day War, and Soviet Jewry. Yet one category of great importance to postwar American Jewish life seems under-examined in these pages: religion. Although a primary characteristic of postwar Jewish identity, religion does not appear as a central concern of Hadassah members in Brautbar’s study. Its absence signifies the gendered experience of religion at a time when Hadassah members received commendation for their political work, but, like other Jewish women, remained second-class citizens in the sanctuary. Brautbar’s book ends just a few years before the flowering of Jewish feminism, and the reader is left with a cliffhanger. What happened to this group of women–so often associated with mink stoles and cookbooks–with the onset of feminism? Future work on Hadassah might productively examine the meeting ground between “Hadassah ladies” and the women’s movement. A second major contribution of this work is its analysis of Hadassah’s postwar fashion shows and “beauty culture,” which were used, Brautbar explains, as a “platform for education and political activism and as a recruitment tool to attract women to political work” (86). Showcasing designs created by the Hadassah-sponsored Alice Seligsberg Fashion Institute in Israel, Hadassah fashion shows appealed to members’ sense of accepted forms of femininity even as these events became infused with political messages that challenged prevailing gender norms. “East meets West” may have been the theme of early 1950s publicity about Hadassah’s Fashion Institute, but Hadassah publications emphasized the differences between the exotic (Israeli women) and their American coreligionists. Israeli women were to be admired for their independence and intelligence, though perhaps not for their sense of style. Cold War America proves a fruitful period for Brautbar’s analysis, which shows that the 1950s was not the desert of feminist activity that many have assumed. Unlike scholars such as Mira Katzburg-Yungman, [End Page 442] who argues that Hadassah did not encourage a feminist identity among its members, Brautbar views the organization as politicizing a generation of American Jewish women, offering them a means of contesting traditional gender roles.1 As mothers, Hadassah women “were impelled to act politically on their children’s behalf” (5). Youth Aliyah, which rescued Jewish children from Arab lands and Iron Curtain countries, emerges as one of the most...

Staying on Board with Proper Course Adjustments: American Jewish History , 1993-2012

Staying on Board with Proper Course Adjustments: American Jewish History , 1993-2012

Lewis Feuer and the Study of American Jewish History

From 1976–1988, Lewis Feuer produced a series of significant papers in American Jewish History dealing with such subjects as Harry Wolfson, Joachim Gaunse, the history of Jews in the American academy, James Joseph Sylvester, and more. In each case, Feuer glimpsed himself in what he studied. He selected and viewed his subjects from the perspective of his own life, values and intellectual concerns.

Destructive Creators: Sender Jarmulowsky and Financial Failure in the Annals of American Jewish History

Destructive Creators:Sender Jarmulowsky and Financial Failure in the Annals of American Jewish History Rebecca Kobrin (bio) On August 30, 1914, a riot erupted on the corner of Orchard and Canal Streets in front of Sender Jarmulowsky's Bank, one of the most revered immigrant 'banks' on New York City's Lower East Side. Fears of a protracted war had prodded thousands of immigrant Jews living in New York City to run to their bankn [literally, "banks"], the Yiddish moniker for businesses that were not officially chartered banks regulated by State authorities but took deposits, made loans, transferred funds overseas and sold ship tickets. With thousands seeking to withdraw their savings in order to send to relatives still in Europe, the uncharted 'banks' of Meyer and Louis Jarmulowsky, Max Kobre and Adolf Mandel were unable to return depositors' funds. As a result, Eugene Lamb, New York State's Banking Superintendent closed these businesses on August 3, 1914.1 This was far from the first time the New York State banking authorities had forced an unchartered private bank to suspend business.2 But while the clients of other closed private banks wrote letters or brought legal action, the enraged Jewish immigrant depositors organized a protest to make all aware of their "struggle" and to bring to justice those who had cheated them out of their savings.3 On August 30, the New York Times reported, "a mob of 5,000" demonstrated "against the bankers, the State Banking Department, and [End Page 105] the District Attorney, who, they thought, should get their money back for them."4 Carrying Yiddish banners proclaiming that "the 60,000 unfortunate depositors of the East Side banks will not be quiet" until the Governor of New York State saw that they were restored their money, the mob marched to New York City Hall. There, they attacked clerks. Reserve policemen were called in as the crowd grew wild, forcing "clubs to be swung."5 The riot ended with police arresting nine men and women. But these arrests could not avert a wave of fear from spreading through the city as municipal and banking elites pondered the implications of such a riot occurring in New York City, the financial capital of the United States.6 Unlike other immigrant riots in nineteenth-century New York, this violent outburst did not just raise concern about the volatile nature of the Jewish immigrant life; it raised questions about the viability of New York's banking system as war was brewing on the other side of the Atlantic. Order was only temporarily restored. angry depositors surrounded Sender Jarmulowsky's son, Meyer's, apartment building and one desperate depositor tried to kill him at a mass meeting set up to discuss repayment.7 Meyer Jarmulowsky escaped unharmed both times, but these events forced New York City's authorities not only to shutter the bank's doors for good but also to appoint the state's most revered judge, Learned Hand, to handle its bankruptcy.8 In his investigation, Hand uncovered the fact that much of this institution's missing assets were tied up in real estate investments that could not be quickly liquidated. So Hand set up a receivership and wrote precedent-setting judicial decisions that altered the business practices of private immigrant 'banks' in New York City. Rarely discussed by scholars, immigrant 'banks' played a central role in early-twentieth-century America through their sale of ship tickets and [End Page 106] their provision of loans to immigrants who had few other credit options.9 These institutions flourished in the years leading up to 1914 not only as a result of immigrants' demand for ship tickets and credit, but also because there was a general absence of any oversight by state authorities. When the New York State Banking Department crafted new legislation in 1915 requiring the regulation of all private immigrant 'banks,' these institutions found it more difficult to make a profit. Within a few years, dozens of immigrant 'banks' were forced to shutter their doors, drastically limiting the places where immigrant entrepreneurs could find access to credit. But such dramatic measures was deemed necessary by New York officials, who believed that regulation...

Guest Editor’s Introduction

Guest Editor’s Introduction Adam Mendelsohn (bio) Why study Jews and the Civil War? The outcome of the conflict would have been no different if every Jewish recruit had proven as adroit in evading the recruiting sergeant as antisemites later alleged. Even if the more generous estimate of 12,000 Jewish soldiers is accurate, and encomiums to Jewish heroism unadorned, it is improbable that a single battle would have been altered by their absence. Certainly an earlier generation of historians, seeking to counteract the idea that Jews were interlopers with shallow roots in America, found it necessary to prove that Jews had stood “shoulder-to-shoulder” in the ranks with their Christian comrades, buff the reputation of Judah P. Benjamin as the “Brains of the Confederacy” (an antisemitic slight transmuted into a term of praise), and construct a Jewish cult of Lincoln.1 Although today some within the Jewish public still hunger for a celebratory narrative of Jewish involvement in the Civil War—an appetite hopefully sated by a new documentary on the subject—an emphasis on affirmation alone provides thin gruel for scholarship.2 Perhaps the most convincing reason to reexamine this subject is provided by a fertile harvest of new research that has begun to provide richer and more complex insights into the behavior of both Jewish men and women during the Civil War. Old chestnuts have been pruned to reveal nuance and texture; new turf has been turned to uncover fertile soil for further study.3 As happened fifty years ago, it has taken an anniversary to rekindle sustained interest in Jewish participation in America’s bloodiest war. This special issue of American Jewish History is the direct product of a conference organized by the College of Charleston in May 2011 to mark the sesquicentennial of the conflict. Historians of American Jewry have also been encouraged by a broadening of Civil War scholarship beyond the battlefield to encompass themes—the home front, memory, [End Page ix] mourning and commemoration, and the experience of minorities—more felicitous to their interest in social and cultural history. The majority of this new writing recognizes that Jewish matters were not central to the conflict. After all, even the best known wartime episode that had direct ramifications for Jews—Grant’s General Orders #11—merits only glancing attention in leading works of Civil War history. 4 Nonetheless Jewish responses to the war provide a useful point of comparison, for example, with recruits from other distinct religious and ethnic backgrounds.5 Unlike the majority of their compatriots, Jews were religious outsiders in armies that made few allowances for their differences: rations were heavy on pork, and troops were rallied with exhortations that often framed the conflict in Christological terms. On the home front, Jewish women often created their own sewing circles and charity committees to aid the war effort. Moreover, current historians maintain that the transformative conflict and its aftermath exerted considerable influence on American Jewish history. The United States was home to fewer than two-hundred thousand Jews in 1860 but the community was soon remade by waves of newcomers. Several have argued—myself included—that the war facilitated this mass immigration.6 Others have proposed that the war was an essential waypoint on the American Jewish march toward acceptance and integration. These arguments must be deployed with care and nuance. At the remove of one hundred and fifty years it is all too easy to gloss over the misery of a brutal war that cost over six-hundred thousand lives by drawing uplifting and ennobling lessons, or glibly saluting the sacrifices of both sides. Two of the articles in this special issue offer a counter-narrative that suggests that the messy aftermath of the war created new political and economic opportunities for Jews, but did so by upsetting a pre-war racial and civic order in the South that had provided them with an unusual degree of stability and inclusion. The already complicated legacy of the war for Jews was further complicated by the infusion of an often racialized strain of antisemitism into the American body politic during and after the conflict. The articles by Anton Hieke and Stuart Rockoff illustrate...

The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity (review)

Reviewed by: The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity Noam Pianko (bio) The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity. By Daniel Greene. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. xi + 261. The search for an early essay by Mordecai Kaplan in graduate school led me to discover the Menorah Journal for the first time. When I finally [End Page 88] located the print volumes of the journal, I was shocked by the contributors listed in the table of contents of the magazine. In addition to regular articles by Kaplan, the list of contributors included many of the most influential American Jewish voices of early twentieth century, including Horace Kallen, Solomon Schechter, Israel Zangwill, and Louis Brandeis. In addition to figures familiar to me from Jewish history were important public intellectuals I did not expect to find in a journal of Jewish thought. For instance, the magazine featured pieces from thinkers ranging from the American philosopher John Dewey to the British internationalist Sir Alfred Zimmern. Interested in learning more about this hub for Jewish life and thought during a crucial period in the history of American Jewish life, I searched for a monograph about the Menorah Journal. Other than a few articles, no book-length study existed. Daniel Greene’s monograph The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Association and American Diversity addresses this absence in American Jewish historiography. Greene, the director of the Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture at the Newberry Library, makes two important contributions in this book. First, the author traces the history of the Menorah Association from its origins as a student group at Harvard University in 1906 to the peak of the Menorah Association’s influence on campus life and communal conversations in the 1920s and 1930s. Greene’s well-researched account illuminates the experiences of several children of Eastern European immigrants trying to find their place at Harvard (as well as other leading universities) and their efforts to build an intellectual and organizational basis for a new generation of American Jews. Their vision of Jewish identity reminds readers that the identification of Judaism as an American religion was not an inevitable outcome of the American Jewish experience. The Menorah Journal writers sought concepts of collectivity and Jewish identity that highlighted attributes later eclipsed in American Jewish discourse, such as Hebrew culture, nationality, and even race. For these secular intellectuals, Jewish membership had more to do with descent and culture than religious belief or practice. As a result, their journal focused on art, culture, politics, and current events. Second, Greene identifies a shared agenda among many of the Menorah Journal contributors. The founders of the journal, especially Horace Kallen, attempted to define models of American pluralism that supported cultural and social diversity. This claim drastically expands the relevance of the Menorah phenomenon from an internal conversation about Jewish identity to a mainstream discussion of what it means to be American. The book thus contributes to an emerging approach to American Jewish history that David Hollinger describes as the shift [End Page 89] from communalist to dispersionist narratives. Kallen and many of his fellow Menorah Journal writers, Greene correctly argues, did not draw a distinction between their intellectual production as Jews and Americans. Scholars interested in figures such as Kallen tend to make a distinction between Jewish intellectuals as Jews and public thinkers who happen to be Jewish. This false dichotomy prevents a holistic appreciation for the rich relationship between Jewish and mainstream American concerns. Instead of portraying the Menorah Journal as a communal space for negotiating internal questions of Jewish identity, Greene demonstrates that the journal actively engaged American public culture and introduced cultural pluralism into the vocabulary of identity in the United States. The challenge with linking the origins of cultural pluralism to Jewish intellectuals, specifically Horace Kallen, is the negative legacy of this paradigm. The scholarly understanding of cultural pluralism rests heavily on the assessment of Kallen’s definition of membership as descent-based. Post-ethnic debates about diversity have shifted the basis of solidarity from descent to consent. Greene briefly acknowledges this in the book. However, a more direct...