American Jewish Studies Research Articles

Jews and American Public Life: Essays on American Jewish History and Politics by David G. Dalin. With a Foreword by Jonathan D. Sarna, (May 2022, ISBN 9781644698815, $139, 320pp, Hardback). North American Jewish Studies. Boston: Academic Studies Press

Jews and American Public Life: Essays on American Jewish History and Politics by David G. Dalin. With a Foreword by Jonathan D. Sarna, (May 2022, ISBN 9781644698815, $139, 320pp, Hardback). North American Jewish Studies. Boston: Academic Studies Press

Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice by Rachel B. Gross

Reviewed by: Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice by Rachel B. Gross Cara Rock-Singer Rachel B. Gross, Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice (New York: New York University Press, 2021) Rachel B. Gross’s Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice is a crucial intervention into what can best be described as doggedly normative narratives of religious authenticity that have dominated the scholarship, and popular understandings, of American Jewish religion. Within religious studies and Jewish studies, the problematic fit of Judaism into the white, Protestant-inflected category of religion is well-established. Historians of American religion have drawn out the extent to which narratives of religious declension are predicated on androcentric and racialized assumptions about what religion is and where, how, and by whom it is practiced. Nevertheless, in American Jewish studies, these narratives persist. Beyond the Synagogue draws on lived religion methodology to rethink the divide between Jewish religion and culture as well as history and memory. Gross defines religion “as meaningful relationships and the practices, narratives, and emotions that create and support these relationships,” adapting Robert Orsi’s and Kathryn Lofton’s emphases on “relationships and structures” that bind people to kin and community, both living and ancestral (6). In turn, Gross sets her sights on “the mundane practices” and seemingly secular institutions engaged in “buying and selling certain items [that] connect[] people to religious networks through [End Page 138] affective norms” (7). The book argues that practices of “nostalgia for Eastern European Jewish pasts function[] as a mitzvah (literally, commandment),” a term she uses expansively to reflect the way the category is invoked in Jewish law (halakha) as well as colloquially to refer to “good deed[s]” (7–8). Based on ethnographic participant-observation, interviews, and close readings of material culture and digital media, Gross tells a new story of American Judaism as it has developed from the 1970s to the present that privileges emotional rather than textual claims to Jewish authenticity. In doing so, Gross paints a more inclusive picture of the landscape of American Jewish religion. The first chapter positions American Jewish religion within twentieth- and twenty-first-century social scientific and historical narratives about the decline of religious institutions, rise of the “nones,” and secularism and assimilation. Gross also historicizes nostalgia within modern gendered histories of Protestant piety, the white ethnic revivals of the 1960s, and US public history’s increasingly affective engagement with the past. She identifies the 1970s as a period of transformation in “how [American Jewish nostalgia] has been organized and standardized and how it has become a central way of being Jewish” (32). After laying out her methodological intervention and theorizing the category of nostalgia, the book proceeds through a series of four chronologically organized and thematically overlapping case studies. Chapter two examines Jewish participation in a popular American pastime, family genealogical research. Gross’s analysis reveals how the “shared religious framework of intimate and authoritative nostalgia,” whether drawn from family lore, ship manifests, or DNA evidence, is interpellated into Jewish “memorial activities, literary forms, and historical accounts” (43). In chapter three, Gross moves beyond the synagogue as such to examine synagogue restoration projects that gained momentum in the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter argues that heritage spaces are carefully curated to produce ambivalent “elegiac nostalgia” that celebrates financial progress out of poverty as it romanticizes spiritually rich bygone eras. At synagogues-turned-museums, which are haunted by ghosts of the past, docents, tourists, and attendees of prayer quorums negotiate knowledge, meaning, and proper practice. Chapters four and five focus on children’s material culture and Ashkenazi foodways, respectively. Though nostalgia is “often assumed to be a condition of aging,” Gross shows how in the first decades of the twenty-first century children and parents used books and dolls, especially those distributed and produced by PJ Library and American Girl, to form intimate, affectionate relationships to ancestors and their stories. Chapter five examines the twenty-first-century Jewish food revival, focusing on how restaurateurs have improvised on Jewish Deli cuisine. The “playful and campy nostalgia” (161) of culinary revivals centers the gut—the belly laugh or the full belly—as the way to the...

Kałczewiak, Mariusz. Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture

Article Kałczewiak, Mariusz. Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture was published on January 1, 2022 in the journal Latin American Jewish Studies (volume 1, issue 1).

Introduction to Special Issue on Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Jewish Studies

Introduction to Special Issue on Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Jewish Studies

Kaminsky, Amy K. The Other/Argentina: Jews, Gender, and Sexuality in the Making of a Modern Nation

Article Kaminsky, Amy K. The Other/Argentina: Jews, Gender, and Sexuality in the Making of a Modern Nation was published on January 1, 2022 in the journal Latin American Jewish Studies (volume 1, issue 1).

Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States by Laura Limonic

Reviewed by: Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States by Laura Limonic Yael Siman Laura Limonic . Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States . Detroit, MI : Wayne State University Press , 2019 . 264 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000707 Laura Limonic's Kugel and Frijoles raises a series of questions relevant to the social sciences, migration studies, and Latin American Jewish studies: In what ways do immigrants navigate ethnic and racial categories in their host society? How is "insider" status obtained within existing social hierarchies, and how does it influence life chances? To what extent are immigrants able to define their identities to situate themselves within American society? How do various groups interact with the host society's structural conditions, leading to particular outcomes, such as assimilation? Limonic specifies two conditions conducive to immigrant assimilation in the United States: high human and social capital combined with racial proximity to the host society's mainstream. To test her hypotheses, Limonic conducted eighty-five in-depth interviews of Latin American Jewish immigrants—mostly from Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela—as well as participant observation in Argentina. Additionally, she analyzed data from the Pew Center's study on American Jews. She presents new information on an understudied population. Limonic considers assimilation the main outcome for Latino Jews in the United States, and nonassimilation for Jews in Latin America. However, socioeconomic, political, and cultural realities are more complex. Limonic nods to the diversity of the Latin American landscape, but subsumes it under an overriding commonality: "While it is not possible to describe the rich history of immigration, community building, and economic and social insertion of Jews in Latin America in one chapter, it is possible to glean from these cases concordant themes that unite the Jewish experience across Latin America" (43). These themes include status as religious minorities vis-à-vis the Catholic majority, strong communal institutions, and elevated levels of antisemitism, which contribute to the development of an ethnic and cultural Jewish identity that differs from Jewish identities in the United States. However, there are multiple realities in Latin America and its Jewish communities. Limonic argues that Latin American Jews "have a strong sense of Jewishness and are often immersed in vibrant and robust communities." But, as has been widely analyzed (by Haim Avni, Judit Bokser Liwerant, and [End Page 220] Sergio DellaPergola), Jewishness and the character of Jewish communities are not identical across the region. This diversity even appears in Limonic's interviews. She writes that Latin American Jews are not wholly excluded from the mainstream, but rather they hold some prominent positions and take part in the cultural traditions of their countries. Thus, the insularity of Jewish communities varies across countries, subethnic groups, and levels of religiosity. Still, Limonic argues that Jewish insularity is the dominant pattern in the region. While Limonic points to important contrasts between Jewish life in Latin America and the United States ( kehillah vs. a congregational model), there are similarities that are not equally underscored. For example, exogamous marriage rates are more similar between Argentina and the United States (close to 50 percent) than in Mexico or Venezuela. Recent studies and local surveys also point to different intensities and modalities of antisemitism in the region, which do not necessarily contrast starkly with realities in the United States. While the book's main focus is on Latino Jews in the United States, a deeper study of their original communities is required to better understand the relation between the cultural backgrounds of Jewish immigrants, their historical legacies, national political and cultural contexts, and their "situational choices" in US communities. Studies of the region show that unique regional crises have had a differing impact on Jewish communities in Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico. Venezuelan Jews arrived in larger numbers to areas such as Miami-Dade County, and perhaps with a greater sense of vulnerability and insecurity than other Latin American Jewish immigrants. Their transnational links with their home country might have diminished not only because of their assimilation into American culture, but also given their political distance from the ruling regime and the mass exile of their community. Limonic clearly defines assimilation and the mechanisms through which immigrants achieve it. Nevertheless, the...

Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice ed. by Sarah Phillips Casteel and Heidi Kaufman, and: The New Jewish American Literary Studies ed. Victoria Aarons

Reviewed by: Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice ed. by Sarah Phillips Casteel and Heidi Kaufman, and: The New Jewish American Literary Studies ed. Victoria Aarons Laura Arnold Leibman (bio) Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice. Edited by Sarah Phillips Casteel and Heidi Kaufman. University of Virginia Press, 2019. 352 pp. The New Jewish American Literary Studies. Edited by Victoria Aarons. Cambridge University Press, 2019. 242 pp. Since the publication of Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2001) and Michael P. Kramer and Hana Wirth-Nesher's Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature (2003), the field of American Jewish literature has changed dramatically not only in terms of how it is defined but also in methods used for interpreting that new diversity. Enter these recent essay collections. In Caribbean Jewish Crossings, editors Sarah Phillips Casteel and Heidi Kaufman shed light on Jewish life in the Caribbean through an analysis of literature from this region by and about Jews. The essays deliberately cross disciplinary borders, borrowing from history, art, and anthropology. In contrast, The New Jewish American Literary Studies as edited by Victoria Aarons takes a more theory-driven approach and self-consciously engages in a philosophical discussion of the goals and methods used in literary analysis. The different strategies speak to a more fundamental split in comparative literature and cultural studies. While both approaches are equally valid, Caribbean Jewish Crossings may prove more useful for those outside of literature departments. It is also the more radical in its implicit challenge to US-centered interpretations of "Americanness." The essays included in Caribbean Jewish Crossings take a broad approach to defining Jewish American literature. First, there is the location of the Caribbean itself. A key shift in Jewish American literary studies since 2001 has been a change in how "America" is understood. Caribbean Jewish Crossings rethinks both "America" and the methods used for interpreting that diversity. Prior to 1825, the largest Jewish communities in the Americas were all in the Caribbean, and for the first time, Caribbean Jewish Crossings provides an overview of what Caribbean Jews have contributed to American literary studies. Second, the volume sidesteps policing who or what is a Jew by embracing authors of Jewish [End Page 285] descent—regardless of their halachic status--as a way of thinking about Jewishness in the Caribbean as inherently cross-cultural. Third, and equally important, the volume balances analysis of writings by Jewish-descended people from the Caribbean with those by non-Jewish Caribbean authors who "have a long tradition of weaving together African and Diasporic narratives and, in the process, have identified or forged cultural and historical connections between them" (2). Methodologically, the volume is also interested in "critical ambivalences" as it moves between the vocabularies of Jewish and Caribbean studies (4). This ambivalence reflects the scholars' refusal to position Jews as solely victims or solely oppressors. This tactic is crucial, as it allows the essays to address both the impact of slavery and the Holocaust on Caribbean Jewish literature without privileging one over the other. In all of these arenas, the book functions as a case study of how scholars can rethink Jewish American literary history by thinking about American Jews—and American Jewish studies--as part of an intertwined, transnational nexus. Caribbean Jewish Crossings is divided into four sections. "The Emergence of Caribbean Jewish Literary Culture" begins in the second half of the eighteenth century in Suriname with an analysis of David Nassy's Essai historique (1788) by Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger. This essay points to the way that the volume willingly engages questions of how the definition of "literature" has changed across the centuries. "Revisiting the Inquisition and the Sephardic Caribbean" focuses on the inquisition, providing important ideas for how the Caribbean literature stands at the crossroads of Europe as well as North and South America. "Colonialism and Caribbean Holocaust Memory" uses writing both by and about Jews to decenter the Holocaust as a Jewish study by looking at how Jewish and Black diasporas intertwine. Compellingly, "Contemporary Voices: Narrative and Poetry" consists of a brief selection of contemporary literature by writers from a wide geographic range, including works translated from Dutch. The drawbacks...

Israel’s perception of Jews’ safety during democratization in Argentina (1982–1984): the experiences of Israeli diplomats in Latin American contexts of crisis

ABSTRACTBy examining reports and discussions among Israeli diplomats from 1982 to 1984, this paper seeks to expand the discourse on Israeli-Latin American-Jewish relations, investigating Israel’s perceptions of Jews’ safety in Argentina during the end of its dictatorship. The analysis deepens the understanding of the experiences and dynamics in Israel’s approaches towards Argentine Jews in contexts of crisis, tracing the development of Israeli views, including difficulties in maintaining relations with the Jewish community during times of political uncertainty. Despite the numerous critical political crises in Argentine and Latin American history, Israeli diplomats’ attempts to cope with Latin American political ambiguity has not received enough attention in Latin American-Jewish studies, especially in terms of the triangle of the Israeli-Latin American-Jewish community. This article proposes to refine these approaches, exploring Israel’s decisions and attitudes in terms of its relations with Latin America and with Jews, not only according to the dichotomy between the politics and ethnicity of the Jewish State.

Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy by Chaim Waxman

Reviewed by: Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy by Chaim Waxman Marc. B. Shapiro (bio) Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy. By Chaim Waxman. Liverpool: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2017. vi + 226 pp. In his new book, Chaim Waxman combines a few different areas of study. There is the sociology of the American Jewish community, in particular the Orthodox. Together with this, there is a good deal of history of the Orthodox segment, and both of these areas are combined with analysis of halakhic evolution in the American Orthodox community. This latter point is very significant, since at the end of the day what defines the Orthodox community is its adherence to halakhah. This is a valuable book, and anyone interested in American Jewish studies and halakhic development will gain much from Waxman's analysis. The reader will quickly see that there is actually a lot in the book that really has nothing to do with American Orthodoxy per se [End Page 111] but is about Orthodoxy as a whole, or the situation in Israel. I think, therefore, that the stress on American Orthodoxy in the title is not apt, as Waxman's insights go beyond the American scene. For example, there is a discussion of the Louis Jacobs affair in England, which would seem to have nothing to do with the United States. Waxman assumes that the dispute over Jacobs's writings was not so much about what he said but reflected British inter-Orthodox politics, and he does not think that American Modern Orthodoxy would have had the same reaction to Jacobs. I do not believe this point is correct, as Jacobs advocated a complete acceptance of higher biblical criticism, which in the 1960s was anathema to the entire Modern Orthodox community. Among the numerous important points in the book, Waxman calls attention to the fact that while many of the Modern Orthodox are selective in their observance, this is a matter of personal choice and there is no attempt to legitimate their behavior. Thus, they are not a challenge to the rabbinic authorities. In such circumstances, "Orthodoxy can tolerate deviance when it is so recognized by the actor; what it cannot tolerate is the legitimation of what it considers to be deviance through the rejection of its rabbis" (100). This is a very important point that explains a good deal about the interactions between Modern Orthodox laypeople and rabbis, including ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Waxman also notes that the very openness of Modern Orthodoxy is what limits its attractiveness for many, maybe even most. This is because many people are looking for black and white answers rather than the sort of complexity found in Modern Orthodoxy. While there is no doubt some truth to this, how do we explain why Modern Orthodoxy was the leading type of Orthodoxy throughout much of the twentieth century? Any discussion of the growth of right-wing Orthodoxy, which has occurred at the same time as Modern Orthodox growth, just to a greater extent, also must take into account the financial assistance provided by the welfare state. Let me note a few examples where I do not think matters are as clear as the author presents them. Waxman uses the 2013 Pew survey which, while valuable, also has problems that I have not seen discussed in any serious way. For example, of the evidence cited by Waxman, what is one to make of the result that two percent of Orthodox respondents are intermarried? Clearly, what the respondents regarded as Orthodox is not what anyone else would regard as such. There are other such problems in the survey which raise questions as to how people who identify as Orthodox understand the term. In addition, Waxman writes, "It should be emphasized that this does not mean that the amount and level of Talmud learning in the United States is the same as it was in eastern [End Page 112] Europe, where a much higher percentage devoted several hours daily to Talmud study" (96 n. 38). Waxman has unfortunately been taken in by a widespread haredi myth. The truth is just the opposite. There are today many more people, both in...

On Kosher Hamburgers, Yiddish Tangos, and Non-Affiliated Jews: Writing Jewish Latin America into the Americas

On Kosher Hamburgers, Yiddish Tangos, and Non-Affiliated Jews:Writing Jewish Latin America into the Americas Raanan Rein (bio) and Adriana M. Brodsky (bio) During his visit to the United States in 2018 while watching a Miami Heat basketball game, the president of the legendary soccer club Boca Juniors, Daniel Angelici, was impressed by the possibility of eating kosher food at the stadium. It was then that he decided to bring that novel idea to the "Bombonera" (the nickname for Boca Juniors' stadium). In August 2018, a kosher food stand was opened.1 Now, Jews and non-Jews alike will be able to enjoy a kosher version of the choripán, the quintessential and popular sausage snack.2 The inauguration of such a stand in one of Argentina's most renowned soccer temples received worldwide attention. Due to the importance and visibility of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires, and its long-standing involvement in Argentina's national sport, however, this should be no surprise. Indeed, one of the recent trends in Jewish-Latin American historiography precisely highlights how national cultures in the region influenced the elaboration of Jewish identities, and, simultaneously, how Jews ethnicized the larger society. This essay looks at some of the innovative contributions and challenges of Jewish Latin American historiography and what these studies can offer scholars focusing primarily on the Jewish experience in the United States. Current studies of Jewish history in Latin America insist on the importance of comparative studies, both within nations across different ethnic groups, and also across national borders within the Americas. The largest immigration to Latin America, which counted hundreds of thousands of Jews, took place between 1880 and 1930. [End Page 345] These were mainly Ashkenazi Jews driven away by pogroms, poverty, and discrimination. There was also a smaller number of Sephardi immigrants. Argentina, for example, counted only 6,085 Jews in its 1895 census, although the number was probably higher; by the 1930s, there were likely more than 200,000. In Brazil, the 1900 census listed 819 Jews. By the early 1930s, that number rose to around 30,000. And in Mexico, the official number of Jews increased from 134 in the early twentieth century to 9,000 in 1930.3 The richness of Jewish life in Latin America, which currently amounts to at least 500,000 Jews,4 has proved relevant to national histories, the Jewish world, and to the study of the relocation and movement of people and ideas, contributing to the reconfiguration of our understanding of Jewish geographies. While traditional historiography has tended to compare US Jewish experiences with European ones, attention to Jewish Latin America will better highlight the particular and unique in their case studies and what is in fact part of broader New World patterns as far as the social integration of Jews into their new host/home lands. The field of Jewish Latin American studies is a relatively new one compared to US Jewish studies, and it is therefore less bound by tradition when it comes to the historiography of organized Jewish communities and their internal dynamics. The exponential growth of this field, in particular since the foundation of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA) in 1982, does not allow us to refer to most of the studies published on different aspects of Jewish life in this hemisphere. Since there is little continuity between the Jewish experiences during the colonial period and the communities established during the years of Jewish mass migration to the Americas from the late nineteenth century onwards, this essay focuses on the modern period, and leaves the experience of Jews during the colonial period and the Anusim (those forced to convert and their descendants) for another discussion. When possible, we have given priority to material available in English and accessible to the readers of the American Jewish History. We have also mostly focused on historiography, as the existing body of work in literature and cultural studies is vast and deserves its own essay. And since previous historiography overemphasized the supposed importance of antisemitism in the region, this text will refer mostly to studies about [End Page 346] Jewish integration in and contribution to the many societies...

Beyond Production vs. Consumption and Structure vs. Identity: The Case for a Renewed Jewish Economic History

Beyond Production vs. Consumption and Structure vs. Identity:The Case for a Renewed Jewish Economic History Francesca Trivellato (bio) When Riv-Ellen Prell points out that "virtually all of the scholars writing in the vein of the economic turn in American Jewish history have marginalized or simply erased women as subjects and actors in history" (484), she raises an important issue that speaks to a wider academic community. At a minimum, it is not a coincidence that to make her case for the importance of women's history and gender analysis, she draws on the work of Marion Kaplan on imperial Germany and on Paula Hyman's study of both North America and Western Europe. My remarks point into an even further geographical, temporal, and thematic direction and highlight the potential implications of Jewish economic history beyond the field of North American Jewish studies. In Prell's diagnosis, women are the casualty of the recent economic turn in (American) Jewish history because of its tendency to privilege production over consumption and structure over culture. I expand on her argument to suggest two ways in which Jewish economic history can afford us the opportunity to move beyond these binaries and become more relevant for all scholars of Jewish studies and all economic historians. Building on Prell's case, I suggest that Jewish economic history needs not only to incorporate women and gender more systematically in its analysis but also to become more comparative. By doing so, it can pursue the dual goals of ascertaining what is specifically Jewish about the experience of Jewish women in the marketplace and of demonstrating to so-called general economic historians the relevance of taking Jewish particularism into consideration when writing the grand narratives about the rise of Western capitalism and modernity. My first point is that Jewish economic history should become more economic and more comparative. There is a plethora of work in economic history that addresses the role of women, their economic contributions, and the discrimination they suffered. This is particularly the case for US history, a subject for which data are more plentiful than for other times and places. The study of the gender gap in US wages, for example, has a venerable tradition, and scholars of Jewish economic history would [End Page 523] benefit from engaging with it more directly.1 Did Jewish women enter the labor force in the same proportion as other women in their neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations? How did their wages compare with those of other women and men? What impact did the gender gap have in the sectors and tasks in which Jewish women specialized? These are some of the questions for which numbers can be compiled, and even if numbers are not sufficient to answer all our questions, they do often reveal important patterns of discrimination and change over time that otherwise are hard to account for with precision. Prell rightly stresses how women figure more in studies of consumption than production and praises work such as Sarah Abrevaya Stein's Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce (2010) for keeping all three dimensions—production, distribution, and consumption—together. I would add that an emphasis on consumption need not eschew larger causal questions. Scholarship on pre-industrial Europe has yielded provocative interpretations of the chronology and causes of the British Industrial Revolution by focusing on the role of women in the family unity of production and consumption. In a series of influential contributions, culminating in The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (2008), Jan de Vries has made the case that an increasing desire to consume goods available on the market led families in north-western Europe to increase their labor input during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this account, peasant women are the protagonists of a gradual but steady process of technological and capital expansion that ushered in industrialization. By contrast, during the Victorian age, class concerns about gender propriety once again relegated women to the domestic sphere.2 In early modern England and the Netherlands—the areas where de Vries locates the epicenter of this industrious revolution—Jews were almost exclusively an...

Neither in Dark Speeches Nor in Similitudes: Reflections and Refractions Between Canadian and American Jews ed. by Barry L. Stiefel and Hernan Tesler-Mabé

Reviewed by: Neither in Dark Speeches Nor in Similitudes: Reflections and Refractions Between Canadian and American Jews ed. by Barry L. Stiefel and Hernan Tesler-Mabé Joshua Furman (bio) Neither in Dark Speeches Nor in Similitudes: Reflections and Refractions Between Canadian and American Jews. Edited by Barry L. Stiefel and Hernan Tesler-Mabé. Ontario: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 2016. xxiii + 223 pp. "How different are Canadian Jews from the Jews of the United States?" ask Barry Stiefel and Hernan Tesler-Mabé, editors of a volume of essays about relationships and comparisons between the communities divided by the world's longest international border (xi). Stiefel and Tesler-Mabé urge us to look beyond these boundaries that too often obscure the manner in which Jews actually lived, place limits on the questions that scholars ask about North American Jewish life, and prevent us from examining assumptions about exceptionalism and singularity. As a transnational study, Neither in Dark Speeches Nor in Similitudes joins an ongoing conversation in the field of Jewish history. As Stiefel and Tesler-Mabé point out, however, despite the flowering of transnational analysis in recent decades, no systematic comparative work has been done on the Jews of the United States and Canada since Moses Rischin's 1987 [End Page 168] volume The Jews of North America. Their effort to bridge this gap, a collection of essays by American and Canadian scholars, would benefit from a stronger thematic focus instead of the chronological approach it adopts. I would also argue that frequent references in the book to "North American Jewry" and "North American Jewish studies" are problematic in a work that elides the Jews of Mexico altogether. Nevertheless, the editors are to be commended for reviving a field of study that has lain dormant for too long. The essays explore two dimensions of the relationship between Canadian and American Jews. On one level, we learn about the extent of ties in the realm of lived experience. Traversing the 49th parallel, Jews on either side of the border befriended and married each other, collaborated together on projects of religious and cultural significance, and relied on each other for economic opportunity and spiritual leadership. Lillooet Nördlinger McDonnell examines close connections between Jews in mid-nineteenth-century San Francisco and Victoria, British Columbia. As she demonstrates, Jews north of the border regularly returned to San Francisco to visit family and conduct business, and the first Torah scrolls came to Victoria from San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El. Focused on the same era, Zev Eleff analyzes the cooperative effort of Abraham De Sola, spiritual leader of Montreal's Sephardic congregation, and Jacques Judah Lyons, minister of New York's Shearith Israel, to produce a traditional Jewish calendar that pushed back against the tide of religious reform. On another level, many of the essays compare and contrast facets of American and Canadian Jewish life, bringing similarities and differences to the fore. In order to explain why the Jews of Quebec's first synagogue composed their bylaws only in English, whereas the Jews of another North American francophone community, New Orleans, wrote the bylaws of their first synagogue in both English and French, Barry Stiefel offers a series of well-reasoned historical explanations. The earliest Jews in Quebec, who worked for or supported the conquering British Army, had family and business ties to British Jewry, and eagerly sought to align themselves with the ruling class of anglophone elites, had no interest in making their synagogue bylaws comprehensible to the Québécois. Catholic antisemitism also loomed large in shaping resentment toward Jews among French Canadians. The Jews of New Orleans, by way of contrast, lived in a territory that was acquired peacefully and was characterized by a more laissez-faire approach to religious difference. Therefore, Stiefel argues, "[h]aving a French copy of Shaarei Chessed's bylaws showed that the Jewish community was a welcoming member of Louisiana's pluralistic society" (36). [End Page 169] Examining American and Canadian Jews together allows us to see how demographics, politics, markets, and culture shape the lives of individuals and communities in ways both similar and different. The aforementioned Jews of McDonnell's Victoria, we learn, were well integrated...

Interview with Adriana M. Brodsky and Darrel B. Lockhart, Presidents of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association

Interview with Adriana M. Brodsky and Darrel B. Lockhart, Presidents of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association

Signposts: Cyrus Adler’s Vision of American Jewish Historical Writing

Signposts:Cyrus Adler’s Vision of American Jewish Historical Writing Jeffrey S. Gurock (bio) If Cyrus Adler (1863–1940) came back to life today, he would be gratified with the activities of the American Jewish Historical Society [AJHS] as it commemorates its 125th anniversary in 2017. For in its scope and emphases, the society is fulfilling the vision that he had for the professionalization of a field that only in the last few decades has come fully into its own. More than 100 years ago, this first major Jewish scholar to associate himself with the society envisioned a day when trained and productive professional academics, schooled in a variety of disciplines, would examine the American Jewish experience rigorously even as he hoped for this moment in time when their work would be adjudged as valuable contributions to the wider worlds of Jewish and American scholarship. In examining the AJHS’s contemporary agenda, he would be pleased that its leadership is deeply committed to “foster[ing] awareness and appreciation of the American Jewish heritage and to serve as a national resource for research.” And he would have heartily agreed that while its public programming is well known to those who attend events at the Center for Jewish History—the home of the AJHS since 2000—the core of the society’s mission lies in the collection of historical documents and the publication of scholarly works in the field. He would be proud that its journal, American Jewish History, now publishing its 101th volume, has remained the most significant and enduring aspect of the society’s work. He would have noted with pleasure that this most important academic periodical in its field, is overseen by the society’s Academic Council, composed of 123 members who teach and write about all aspects of American Jewish studies, most with posts at universities in the US and abroad. He would be absolutely delighted that it is a field that now comprehends not only history, but sociology, anthropology, economics, literary studies, and other cognate disciplines, and that many of the Council colleagues occupy chairs in these variegated disciplines at distinguished universities. And he would have been excited that, every two years, these scholars gather at a scholars conference where a fellow academician who does not work specifically in American Jewish studies is featured in a plenary session that typically relates or compares the [End Page 489] Council members’ academic work to cutting edge studies in American and modern Jewish history. It would make abundant sense to Adler that examinations of other ethnic or racial groups, or considerations of gender relationships, are high on the agendas of these invited academicians. He, likewise, would be happy to be informed that, on occasion, Academic Council affiliates return the favor when they present at the meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA), the Organization of American Historians (OAHS), or the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). In other words, he would be most appreciative to find–upon his return visit–at this landmark moment of a century and a quarter of work, that the society is solidly positioned within the world of academe.1 To be sure, upon reviewing the history of the society since his passing in 1940, Adler would acknowledge that the road to such a contemporary respected status had been long and hard; American Jewish historical writing had to overcome its amateurish beginnings and surmount enduring prejudices among academics about the value of early professional work. But he could still stake the claim that the dream of professionalization began with him when he spoke boldly of what American Jewish historiography could become during his two addresses to the society as its president, the first in 1902, the second in 1909. Admittedly, Adler’s prime intellectual concern was not the serious study of this country’s Jews. He was an Orientalist by training and had earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in Semitics. He was the first scholar educated in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in that discipline. But Adler had a distinct and prescient vision of what American Jewish Studies might someday become.2 Actually, Adler had played an important role in launching...

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Kirsten Fermaglich, Adam Mendelsohn, and Daniel Soyer This issue of American Jewish History marks two anniversaries. The more momentous is the centenary of 1917, the fateful year in which revolutionaries overthrew the Tsar, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration endorsing a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, and the United States entered World War I. All of these events contributed, directly and indirectly, to the transformation of the Jewish world in the twentieth century, and to remaking the place of American Jewry in that world. The second anniversary we mark in this issue is that of 1892, the year in which the American Jewish Historical Society was founded. That date, 125 years distant, was admittedly less transformative than the first, but still important for the development of our own field. Two articles in this issue explore the events of 1917. Gil Ribak takes a fresh look at the historic New York City mayoral campaign of Socialist Morris Hillquit. Ribak argues that Hillquit’s appeal, especially to immigrant Jews, came more from his anti-war platform than his Socialism. In coming to that conclusion, he explores the fears that the war aroused among immigrants, and debates among pro- and anti-war Socialists. Caitlin Carenen examines wartime tensions between American Zionists and the non-Zionist Jewish establishment. Analyzing debates over American Jewish war relief efforts, as well as over perceptions of American Jews’ patriotism, Carenen argues that Zionists’ heavy-handedness delayed a rapprochement between the two segments of American Jewry. This issue also includes a report by Rachel Lithgow, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, and Josh Perelman, chief curator of the National Museum of American Jewish History, on “1917: One Year that Changed the World,” a major exhibit mounted by the two institutions this year. Several features mark the American Jewish Historical Society’s anniversary by considering the development of American Jewish Studies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Shari Rabin’s article shows that compiling statistics was a central concern and lasting contribution of nineteenth-century American Jewish leaders. Even as they used the data they gathered to establish a sense of order and unity in an increasingly fractured community, they also saw their work as a contribution to “a future history of American Israelites.” Looking at the American Jewish Historical Society itself, Jeffrey Gurock chronicles the long struggle to professionalize the field. And two pieces—Gur Alroey’s [End Page ix] contribution on American Jewish historiography in Israel (the first of a series of articles examining the state of our field), and a roundtable originating in a 2016 conference at the University of Potsdam—not only detail the difficulties of establishing the field internationally, but also demonstrate the usefulness of taking a transnational approach to the study of American Jewry. Collectively, these articles—and this issue—show how far our field has come in the century since Cyrus Adler laid out his vision of a non-parochial and serious scholarly approach to American Jewish studies. [End Page x] Copyright © 2017 American Jewish Historical Society

Transnational Perspectives on Jewish and American-Jewish Studies

Transnational Perspectives on Jewish and American-Jewish Studies

Clinging to Borders and Boundaries?: The (Sorry) State of Transnational American Jewish Studies

Clinging to Borders and Boundaries?: The (Sorry) State of Transnational American Jewish Studies

Guest Editors’ Introduction

Guest Editors’ Introduction

The Midwest Jewish Studies Association: The Second Decade and Beyond

The Midwest Jewish Studies Association:The Second Decade and Beyond Mara W. Cohen Ioannides (bio) In the fall of 1997 I attended my first Midwest Jewish Studies Association conference where I met Byron Sherwin, Peter Haas, Joe Haberer, and Gordon Young. I had no idea how important these people were to the organization. To me they were people who welcomed me warmly to the conference and encouraged my research and participation. Over the next 15 years, each of these men played an important role in my becoming a scholar of American Jewish Studies and current president of the MJSA. Byron Sherwin, still at Spertus, has been one of my faculty. Peter Haas, now at Case Western Reserve University, has become my mentor and teacher. Joe Haberer and Gordon Young, both at Purdue, became significant forces in encouraging me to take a more prominent role in the organization. Joe, in particular, was supportive when I became president of my development of the MJSA into a more student-focused organization. When I first attended the conference, the emphasis was on pedagogy. In fact my first paper was “Teaching the Troops Trupin: A Jewish Text in a Non-Jewish Class,” an examination of how I approached teaching Sophie Trupin’s Jewish woman’s homesteader memoir at a public university in the Bible Belt. While our mission statement still includes the word pedagogy, over time the papers presented have become more focused on research in Jewish Studies than on teaching Jewish Studies. In fact, at the 25th conference there was no paper on the act of teaching Jewish Studies in the modern university; although there have been quite a few papers in the last few years of pedagogical methods used in the past—an historical examination. This seems to reflect the state of Jewish Studies in the United States. As Judith Baskin explains in her essay, Jewish Studies has become part of the standard offerings at major universities. A generation of faculty has developed programs and pedagogical practices, so that the next generation has something to build from. Because of their hard work, those of us who have followed them do not have to struggle quite so much in our approaches to teaching Jewish Studies. The syllabi and methods are already in place and we can focus on tweaking them to the needs of our institutions and students. Another part of our mission is to encourage research in Jewish Studies. We are a proud sponsor of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies [End Page 145] as Peter Haas explains in his essay. In 1990, the journal was equal parts article, book review, and poetry. Poetry is no longer regularly included, and the book review section has been much expanded, all the while the articles have broadened in topics. In 2008, Joe Haberer, the original editor, published an essay about the 25 years of the journal in the journal. He humbly called it “a premier journal of Jewish Studies.” By 1988, there were “200 [subscribers], half of it from the Purdue community, the rest from across the country,” clearly showing what Joe had suspected that there was a great need for a cross-disciplinary journal of Jewish Studies. It was in this year that his formal peer-reviewed process was incorporated. The first special issue on a specific topic was on teaching Judeo-Christian relations, a parallel to the pedagogical focus of the newly founded MJSA. In 1996 the journal moved from being published by Purdue University, to being published by Nebraska University press; this move from a university to university press only emphasized the quality of the product. Later it was moved back to Purdue University to be published by Purdue University Press. Shofar has always included articles on any aspect of Jewish Studies from pedagogy to literature, from archaeology to popular culture, and anything else to which one could apply an understanding of Jewish Studies. When the journal was picked up by Project Muse in 2006, the readership expanded exponentially. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies is listed in Project Muse, with articles back to 1990 when it went from being a newsletter to a full-blown journal. The database...

Pertenencia y alteridad: Judíos en/de América Latina: cuarenta años de cambios ed. by Haim Avni et al. (review)

Reviewed by: Pertenencia y alteridad: Judíos en/de América Latina: cuarenta años de cambios ed. by Haim Avni et al. Alan Astro Pertenencia y alteridad: Judíos en/de América Latina: cuarenta años de cambios Edited by Haim Avni, Judit Bokser Liwerant, Sergio Dellapergola, Margalit Bejerano, and Leonardo Senkman. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2011. 870 pp. If any volume can claim to give a series of diverse snapshots of a discipline, it is certainly this hefty Spanish-language volume on Latin American Jewish studies. It is made up of an extensive editors’ introduction followed by thirty articles, almost all by well-known scholars. Topics covered include the comparison of Latin American Jewry with other Jewish communities throughout the world; political developments as they have affected Jews of Latin America; Jewish education, demography, and organizations on that continent; and Jewish writers from there in Spanish, Portuguese and Yiddish. (For this Yiddishist, the last-mentioned piece, by Perla Sneh, is a particularly welcome component, since Latin American Yiddish literature has been greatly under-studied.) Latin American Jewish studies has become a significant, if necessarily marginal, subfield of both Latin American studies and Jewish studies. This dual identity of the discipline is reflected in the title of volume, which translates as “Belonging and Otherness: Jews in/of Latin America: 40 Years of Change.” The subjects of study are thus portrayed as caught between belonging to and feeling a sense of otherness from Latin America; but the volume also explores their identification with and alienation from various components of Jewish identity (Jewish peoplehood, the Jewish religion, local Jewish community institutions, Zionism as an ideology, and the actual state of Israel). The en/de in the title (“Jews in Latin America” versus “Jews of Latin America”) is, as the editors themselves admit, a rephrasing of the old conundrum of whether Jews are, first and foremost, Jews or members of the societies where they live. Thus another book by one of the contributors to the volume, Raanan Rein, is entitled Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines (Boston: Brill, 2010). This question becomes epistemologically self-reflexive because, as Rein cogently sets forth, the field itself is loosely divided between two kinds of researchers: [End Page 182] those whose work falls squarely within Jewish studies (considering such topics as the impacts of antisemitism or the relationship of local communities to world Jewish organizations and the state of Israel); and those whose production fits in better with Latin American or diaspora studies. The latter scholars regard Jews as constituting one among several minority groups (such as Italians or Armenians in Argentina or Lebanese in Mexico) in a continent of basically “monistic” societies (Pertenencia, 244) that do not subscribe to ideologies of pluralism and diversity characteristic of their neighbors to the north. (Incidentally, de in Spanish means “from” as well as “of,” so that “judíos de Latinoamérica” may, as “Jews from Latin America,” imply an even greater distance than “judíos en Latinoamérica.” In fact, many of the contributors to this volume are themselves Latin Americans who have emigrated to Israel, and one of the many topics studied is the community that olim from that continent make up—or do not quite coalesce into.) The “forty years of change” in the title refers in part to the burgeoning research in a field that has benefited much from the vogue first of ethnic studies, then of cultural studies. More importantly: the last forty years are when Latin America went from mostly authoritarian régimes to democratic ones, but also saw great economic instability. The effect on Jewish communities was often quite direct. Thus the Argentinean dictatorship led many Jews to emigrate (to Israel, Western Europe, the United States, and other Latin American countries), and the involvement in leftist politics that put many Jews at risk was often accompanied by an idealization of the collectivist strain of Zionism—even while Israel refrained from criticizing the régime in Buenos Aires. (The issue is further complicated by pressure exerted by Israel in favor of Jewish prisoners, the most famous case being that of journalist Jacobo Timerman.) However, democratic elections have sometimes brought to power populist leaders who are...