Jewish Liberalism Research Articles

Gentile New York: Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants by Gil Ribak (review)

Reviewed by: Gentile New York: Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants by Gil Ribak Daniel Soyer (bio) Gentile New York: Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants. By Gil Ribak. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012. xi + 293 pp. In Gentile New York, Gil Ribak takes on an uncomfortable subject —uncomfortable because it turns out that Jews for the most part did not think highly of the gentiles around them. And when they did have a high opinion of certain groups of non-Jews, it was often for reasons that would strike many of us as ignoble. In examining the gentile image in the Jewish mind, Ribak seeks to debunk the myth that he sees as pervasive among American Jews that Judaism is somehow inevitably liberal. He further argues that the ways in which American Jews viewed local gentiles was informed by their experiences with different groups of non-Jews in Europe. In addition, images of specific groups changed over time. The way in which Jewish perceptions of Yankees, in particular, changed for the worse in the first decades of the twentieth century shows that there was no linear and easy path to integration into American society. Ribak thus sees his book as a brief against the American exceptionalism prevalent in American Jewish historiography and which he views as a form of presentism. Gentile New York is well-written, strongly argued, and based on extremely thorough research in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Although it will not convince everyone, it makes an important contribution by complicating the story of American Jewish ethnic and racial liberalism, demonstrating the importance of the European background to American Jewish culture, and foregrounding Jews' relations with the others they lived with. Ribak uses a transnational lens. He begins his analysis in Eastern Europe, where Jews (influenced by negative portrayals of non-Jews in the Talmud and other sacred texts) saw the peasants around them as brutal, dimwitted, and drunken embodiments of violence and physicality. But there were other non-Jews, particularly Russian and German elites, whom Jews admired for their culture and refinement. These attitudes carried over to America, where Jews looked favorably upon upper-class "Yankees" seen as modern, progressive, well-mannered, and devoid of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Irish, German and Polish immigrants, and, to some extent, African Americans, took over the demeaning place occupied by Polish and Ukrainian peasants in the old home. Ribak rightly, but sometimes frustratingly, complicates his analysis by pointing out the ubiquitous exceptions. Some Jews, disillusioned by the Russian upper class, turned to the peasantry instead, extolling the peasants' rough physicality as a model for the reform of Jewish life. [End Page 196] The dynamic of disillusionment with the elite and reassessment of ethnic alignments carried over to the United States as well. There is much evidence in Gentile New York that Jews were as quick as anyone else to employ negative stereotypes of other ethnic minorities, especially Irish, Germans, Italians, blacks, and Asians. Even the Jewish labor movement adopted an attitude of "chosenness," seeing Jews as inherently more progressive and class conscious than members of other groups. But after 1900, as the restrictionist movement gathered steam with the support of many in the Anglo-American elite, Jews began to reassess their views. More and more, according to Ribak, they found common ground with other immigrants and minorities. And they were more and more critical of "mainstream" Anglo-Americans. It is from this period, and partly from a perception of self-interest, that American Jewish liberalism on matters of race and ethnicity stems. Ribak makes a strong case that American Jews have not always been liberal in their attitudes toward members of other ethnic groups. But does he overstate his case when he downplays "historical experience" together with "religious values"? The logic of his argument and evidence does point to a liberalization of attitudes-a growing identification with the causes (if not always the individual persons) of other minorities. This growing liberalism certainly came from historical experience, but, as Ribak shows, it was not a primordial characteristic. Rather it developed over time in response to specific circumstances in America itself and was never free...

Scholarship and Worldliness: The Life and Work of Fritz Bamberger

In one of his most important scholarly writings, on the intellectual stature of the German-Jewish philosopher of the eighteenth century, Moses Mendelssohn, Fritz Bamberger marvelled at Mendelssohn's extraordinary embodiment of Judaism, philosophy, and humanity all within a single personality.1 My intent in this essay is to show, against the background of his times in Germany and America, just how the significant Jewish scholar Fritz Bamberger was likewise able to put together these elements in a fruitful, highly diverse career. It is a task not previously undertaken, a lacuna that has been waiting to be filled.2 Fritz Bamberger was born on 7 January 1902 in Frankfurt am Main, and grew up in the small town of Gelsenkirchen near Essen, where his father owned furniture stores. His parents were Liberal Jews, who visited the local synagogue occasionally and observed Jewish holidays. During the First World War the young Bamberger assisted...

»Platzmachen für Gott« – Else Lasker-Schüler , Rabbiner Kurt Wilhelm und der religiöse Liberalismus in Palästina

The article traces the involvement of the German-Jewish poetess Else Lasker-Schüler in the diverse activities of the only non-orthodox community in Jerusalem of the 1940s and its founding rabbi, Kurt Wilhelm – himself also a German immigrant. It further demonstrates how Rabbi Wilhelm attempted to transfer to Palestine the tenets of German Jewish liberalism: education, religious tolerance, humanism and meaningful religious services, and how the European Liberal Movement of Judaism supported this endeavour. In addition the essay shows how other prominent German Jewish immigrants like Martin Buber , Hugo Bergmann or Ernst Simon responded to Wilhelm’s liberalism by gathering around his Jerusalem community – and how, as a consequence, this group had a decisive influence on Else Lasker-Schüler ’s final years and works.

The war against the Jews

The sustained anti-Israel de-legitimization campaign is a corollary of the millenarian obsession with the Jews in the Christian and the Muslim worlds. Since Israel is the world's only Jewish state, and since Zionism is the Jewish people's national liberation movement, anti-Zionism – as opposed to criticism of specific Israeli policies or actions – means denial of the Jewish right to national self-determination. Such a discriminatory denial of this basic right to only one nation (and one of the few that can trace their corporate identity and territorial attachment to antiquity) while allowing it to all other groups and communities, however new and tenuous their claim to nationhood, is pure and unadulterated anti-Jewish racism, or anti-Semitism as it is commonly known.

Assimilation for Muslims and Jews?

Assimilation for Muslims and Jews?

The Communal Gadfly: Jews, British Jews and the Jewish State—Asking the Subversive Questions (review)

The Communal Gadfly: Jews, British Jews and the Jewish State-Asking the Subversive Questions, by Geoffrey Alderman. Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2009. 282 pp. $35.00. There is something in Geoffrey Alderman's book, The Communal Gadfly to irritate everybody, which is quite as Geoffrey Alderman would like it. This book, comprising selected columns written for the British Jewish Chronicle, provides an overview of both Alderman's and British Jewry's main interests from about 2002 to 2008. Although some of the columns are dated, they are a pleasure to read, educational and opinionated, when dealing with the subject of British Jewry and of British politics. It is when he raises his eyes from these local affairs to the Middle East that his critique deserts him and his articles become a drumbeat of orthodox Zionist cliches, which not even the author's inimitable style can rescue. The distinction between the two is sharp and perhaps reveals the limitations of what can and cannot be said in good Anglo-Jewish company. In discussing British Jewry, Professor Alderman, who wrote its history over a decade ago, comes from a conservative but never dull vantage point. He certainly has much material to work on and does it with unseemly glee at times-analyzing, dissecting and ruthlessly disposing of many of the guiding myths of the Jewish One of his main theses, running like an arrow through the analysis of British Jewish foibles, is that there is no such thing as a unified British Jewish community and the sooner that Jews realize this, accept it, have their institutions reflect it, and move on, the better for all. It is hard to disagree with Professor Alderman in this. The main trend in British Jewry over the last fifty years has been the decline/collapse of Central Orthodoxy as the main guiding point of British Jews and the fragmentation of the Jewish community into diverging movements. Jews in Britain, as elsewhere, are divided by religion and politics, and misrepresented by those communal leaders who pretend otherwise. One can see the best part of this book as a contemporary chronicle of a fragmenting Anglo-Jewish field, be it Masorti (Conservative) Jews opposed to Orthodox outreach, liberal Jews abandoning their attempts to be accepted by the Orthodox, or the splintering of Orthodox Jews. Many of the situations he analyzes have their analogies in the U.S., and readers will perhaps go through these sections with a sinking sense of deja-vu. Alderman is scathing of those with pretensions to speak for an increasingly mythical Jewish community. Thus, in the first section of the book, the Board of Deputies of British Jews who purportedly represent the community are treated as a bunch of bumbling idiots and the Jewish Leadership Council as a group of secretive undemocratic plutocrats-the funding fathers in Alderman's memorable put-down. In this criticism, Alderman is probably voicing the opinions of most British Jews. There is an entire section to the hapless Orthodox Chief Rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks, although devoted may be the wrong word to use here. Amidst the often very funny criticism, Alderman is making a serious point-as mainstream Orthodox Jews become less and less interested in religion, the organs of Orthodox Judaism are increasingly taken over by hardline religious leaders, and have become subservient to the diktats of Ultra-Orthodoxy. …

Truth, Illumination, and Nuclear Weapons

Truth, Illumination, and Nuclear Weapons

Expressive voting and identity: evidence from a case study of a group of U.S. voters

The source of evidence on expressive voting has been experiments, in general conducted with students. In Why are Jews Liberals? Norman Podhoretz describes behavior that substantiates the hypothesis that people vote expressively to confirm identity. He does not use the terminology of expressive voting but his study is readily interpretable in an expressive-behavior context. Podhoretz describes liberal Jews in the U.S. as expressively voting contrary to self-interest to confirm allegiance to liberalism, which he terms a “new religion”. Traditional Jews do not require the identity of the new religion and vote in accord with their self-interest. I propose another interpretation of voting by liberal Jews in which expressive utility is not contrary to self-interest.

Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany

Francis Nicosia begins his excellent book on a controversial note. Whereas previous works have tended to focus on the incompatible world views of largely liberal Jews seeking absorption and of largely illiberal Germans denying them equality, his book is intent on examining a rather more complicated connection, namely that between völkisch German nationalism and völkisch Jewish ideology. Nicosia's theme is not new. As early as 1970 George Mosse commented on the ‘influence of the volkish idea on German Jewry’. Later, Jehuda Reinharz wrote seminal pieces on the Zionist response to German antisemitism. More recently, Dina Porat and Tom Segev have examined Palestinian-Zionist policy towards the Third Reich. Even so, many of these works became involved either in quarrels about German-Jewish ‘self-deception’ or in disputes about the validity of Zionist historiography. Nicosia's work, by contrast, is indifferent to these earlier confrontations, and seeks to address the predicament of German Zionism in an old-fashioned, empathetic way.

The Emergence of Ethnic Politics in 1905: The League for the Attainment of Full Rights for the Jews of Russia

AbstractThe legalization of political activity in Tsarist Russia in 1905 created the opportunity for Jewish liberals to enter the public arena as proponents of civic and political rights for the Jews of the realm. However, unlike Jewish liberals in western and central Europe, Russian-Jewish liberals also called for the extension of national cultural rights for the Jews of Russia in addition to that of individual emancipation. They formed the League for the Attainment of Full Rights for the Jews of Russia in March 1905 and proceeded to prepare for the upcoming elections for the proposed assembly to be elected by the people later that year. However, the violent pogroms that broke out in the fall of 1905 generated a more nationalist minded-agenda as these liberals found themselves in competition with both Jewish nationalists and Jewish socialists for the attention of the people.

Identity versus Identity: Israel and Evangelicals and the Two-Front War for Jewish Votes

Republicans made major efforts to win a larger share of the Jewish vote in 2004 by emphasizing their strong support for Israel. They partially succeeded, but did not make a dent in the overall loyalty of American Jews to the Democratic party, since they lost approximately as many votes because of Jews’ negative reactions to the party’s evangelical base. We argue that both Israel and worries over evangelical influence in the country reflect concerns about Jewish identity, above and beyond disagreements on specific social issues We compare American Jewish voting behavior and liberalism to non-Jews in 2004 using a survey of Jews from the National Jewish Democratic Coalition and the American National Election Study. For non-Jews, attitudes toward evangelicals are closely linked to social issues, but for Jews this correlation is small. The Jewish reaction to evangelicals is more of an issue of identity and the close ties of evangelicals to the Republican party keeps many Jews Democratic. Attitudes toward evangelicals are far more important to Jewish voting behavior than for non-Jewish voters.

PROMISED LAND OR PERMITTED LAND: A CONSIDERATION OF JEWISH FUNDAMENTALISM IN THE LIGHT OF LEVINASIAN ETHICS

Jewish fundamentalism (a contested term that does not sit easily with the non-literal nature of much rabbinic reading of the Bible) has many sources and variants, but amongst these the most belligerent is the mode of fundamentalism expressed by some ‘strictly orthodox’ Jews in Israel. These Jews tend to justify their continued agitation for a ‘greater Israel’, accompanied by hostility not only towards Palestinians but also towards secular and politically more liberal Jews, in terms of literalist readings of Torah. This paper approaches this topic ‘sideways’ (and hence, perhaps, psychoanalytically) through tracking a remarkable reading by Emmanuel Levinas of the Talmudic passage dealing with the biblical account of the spies sent by Moses to Canaan. Levinas' ambivalent shifts between understanding these spies as motivated by an ethical refusal to see themselves as having a right to the land, and seeing them (more conventionally) as having too little faith, perhaps reflects the operations of a ‘guilt’ about which psychoanalysis may have something to say.

Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896 – 1930 (review)

Reviewed by: Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896 – 1930 Matthew Lagrone (bio) Ira Robinson. Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896 – 1930. University of Calgary Press. xii, 168. $34.95 Ira Robinson’s latest book represents a significant addition to the study of Canadian/North American Jewry. Rabbis and Their Community focuses on the development, changes, and challenges in Montreal’s immigrant Orthodox rabbinate in the first third of the twentieth century. This work is part of a growing academic correction in the common portrayal of East European immigrants. Until recently, most scholarship in this area has tilted heavily towards secular and non-Orthodox Jewish immigrants, [End Page 359] although many immigrants in fact retained their Orthodoxy. Robinson’s work shows that the story of Orthodox Jews cannot be discounted in the account of East European migration to North America, because the arc of a community’s maturity is shaped by both internal Orthodox interaction and contact with secular and liberal Jews. This study of Montreal rabbis centres on clergy and intellectuals who, if not as well known as later and more prominent Jewish leaders, made the conditions possible for Orthodoxy to flourish. Robinson retrieves these men from the dust of history, situating them in the cultural, intellectual, and religious centre of Montreal Jewry as they strove to maintain the distinctiveness of traditional Judaism while adapting to the norms of North American society. For Orthodox rabbis in this period, clerical life was demanding and difficult. Salaries were almost universally inadequate in the East European immigrant community and had to be supplemented often through the supervision of kosher meat, a recurrent topic in Robinson’s narrative. He notes that East European–born rabbis arrived in North America for two reasons: some were young and sought brighter prospects outside of Europe, and some had failed in business and turned to the rabbinate as an alternative. These rabbis – important but largely ‘forgotten’ men such as Hirsh Cohen, Simon Glazer, Getsel Laxar, and Yudel Rosenberg – had to adjust to the libertarian ethos of North America in general and North American Jewry in particular. Jewish communities in the United States and Canada were less unified than their European counterparts, and subsequently issues of authority were trickier in the absence of an acknowledged leadership. Although attempts at communal unity were partially successful, these rabbis lacked the internally compelling authority, based on law, tradition, and custom, that their European colleagues expected. Robinson devotes much of the book to a discussion of the ‘kosher meat wars’ that occupied the Montreal Jewish community. Jewish law contains detailed regulations for the proper slaughter of permitted animals, and the supervision of this practice was contested between two rabbinic groups. Controlling supervision of kosher meat was one of the few profitable enterprises for an immigrant rabbi, and this supervision also suggested who had religious authority in the Orthodox community. The first group, led by the powerful Hirsh Cohen and his supporters, was opposed by a dissident group of rabbis, led by Rabbis Laxar and Rosenberg. Cohen’s group was supported by Hirsh Wolofsky, perhaps the most influential powerbroker in the community. An editor of the leading Yiddish- and English-language newspapers of the Jewish press, Wolofsky championed Cohen as the head of kosher meat regulation, forcing the second group to resort to ad hoc flyers to cheer their supervision. Advocates of each side accused the other of improper supervision, of [End Page 360] allowing Jews to purchase unfit meat and thus inadvertently commit a halakhic transgression. The dispute involved physical confrontations and lawsuits in secular courts, but eventually a clenched-teeth peace was reached. Rabbis and Their Community provides scholars of Canadian/North American Jewry an invaluable snapshot of a significant and changing immigrant Orthodox community. Without Robinson’s research, the contributions of these rabbis would be lost. Matthew Lagrone Matthew LaGrone, Jewish Studies Program, University of Delaware Copyright © 2009 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

An Alternative Biblical Reading on Luke13:1-9

Nationalism is an important issue to consider in the study of postcolonialism. It is strongly linked to imperialism. It is necessary to look at nationalism and its implications and to pursue the relationship between nationalism and Luke’s Gospel in the light of postcolonial discourse. I shall attempt to deal with three important issues in this paper. First of all, I will look at the issue of nationalism as a postcolonial concern. I would like to investigate the definitions of the term ‘nationalism’ and the relationship between nationalism and postcolonial discourse. Secondly, I will examine the liberative aspect of nationalism in Luke’s Gospel connected to Jewish nationalist struggles against the Roman Empire. Finally, I would like to reread and reinterpret the narrative in Luke 13:1-9, which contains the issue of nationalism, in the light of postcolonial biblical reading. As we have examined, it is important to note that the issue of nationalism is strongly linked to the issue of imperialism. It seems that the Jewish nationalist movement has strong implications in Luke’s Gospel. These Jewish nationalist resistance movements only exist because of the presence of the Roman imperialism. However, Luke does not seem to mention the presence of the Jewish nationalist movement in his writings. Furthermore, most Lucan commentators tend to overlook the political issues connected to Jewish nationalism, and they strive to deny the possibility and potentiality of liberation struggles against Roman imperial power. Therefore, if we reread the texts of Luke’s Gospel in the light of postcolonial reading practices, we find that Luke’s Gospel does deal with the issue of nationalism. Clearly, Luke does not stand for the Jewish nationalist resistance movement against the Roman Empire. Rather, Luke, a co-opted intellectual, seems to take the part of the Roman Empire. Although Luke lives under the domination and oppression of the Roman Empire, he does not promote the Jewish nationalist resistance movement against Roman imperial power. It seems that Luke tacitly approves of Roman imperial dominance and oppression. Some Lucan interpreters, who tend to overlook the political issues in Luke’s Gospel, are writing from a Eurocentric interpretative perspective. By ignoring the resistance voices connected to the Jewish liberation struggles in Luke’s Gospel, they justify western colonial discourses. In addition, we need to reread the position of Luke and to reinterpret Lucan commentators’interpretation in the light of postcolonial discourses. We can discover hidden voices, i.e., the resistance voices connected to the issue of nationalism, as a result of rereading and reinterpreting the texts of Luke’s Gospel by means of postcolonial biblical reading.

The revolutionary roots of modern Yiddish, 1903-1917

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Yiddish was widely viewed, even by many of its speakers, as a corrupt form of German that Jews had to abandon if they hoped to engage in serious intellectual, cultural, or political work. Yet, by 1917 it was the dominant language of the Russian Jewish press, a medium for modern literary criticism, a vehicle for science and learning, and the foundation of an ideology of Jewish liberation. Revolutionary Roots of Modern Yiddish, 1903-1917 investigates how this change in status occurred and three major figures responsible for its transformation.Trachtenberg reveals how, following the model set by other nationalist movements that were developing in the Russian empire, one-time revolutionaries such as the literary critic Shmuel Niger, the Marxist Zionist leader Ber Borochov, and the linguist Nokhem Shtif committed themselves to the creation of a new branch of Jewish scholarship dedicated to their native language. The new 'Yiddish science' was concerned with the tasks of standardizing Yiddish grammar, orthography, and word corpus; establishing a Yiddish literary tradition; exploring Jewish folk traditions; and creating an institutional structure to support their language's development. In doing so, the author argues, they hoped to reimagine Russian Jewry as a modern nation with a mature language and culture and one that deserved the same collective rights and autonomy that were being demanded by other groups in the empire.

:The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books; A History of Biblical Culture and the Battles over the Bible in Modern Judaism.Translated by ChayaNaor. (Studia Judaica, number 38.)

Until the nineteenth century, the Talmud and its commentaries, not the Hebrew Bible, were the principal foundation of Jewish religious culture. It was only with the integration of Jews into Western societies, which also claimed the Bible but not the rabbinic literature, and with the establishment of the Zionist movement, which regarded the Bible as its historical warrant, that the biblical text came to displace the talmudic as the formative document of Jewish identity. The shift required both reinterpretation of the Bible and its defense against scholarly and popular attacks that sought to undermine the Bible's theological status, moral value, and originality. This book, an expansion and rewriting of Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran's earlier Hebrew volume, traces this revaluation and defense of the Hebrew Bible as they transpired especially in Germany and also in the Land of Israel both before and after the establishment of the Israeli state. Although numerous studies have dealt with various aspects of this subject, no work can match this one for its comprehensiveness, detail, and broad erudition. Following a discussion of the reassessment of the Bible by modernizing Jews, the authors deal with the first significant challenge to its authority: the higher criticism popularized especially by Julius Wellhausen. The documentary hypothesis that he espoused with regard to the Pentateuch undermined the orthodox Jewish concept of revelation and forced even liberal Jews to redefine their relationship to the text. Less challenging was the new science of archaeology, which, unlike the clearly problematic division of the text into various sources, could be seen in a positive light as undermining the documentary hypothesis. Its discoveries could even be used to prop up the historicity of the Bible.

Anneliese Landau and the Kulturbund: In Her Own Words

Anneliese Landau was born on 5 March 1903, in Halle an der Saale in Germany. Her parents, Rosa Landau (n?e Sadger), a piano teacher, and Salmen Mendel Landau, a businessman, were liberal Jews who observed the Jewish holidays but did not insist that Anneliese and her siblings do likewise. She studied musicology at the University of Halle with Arnold Schering and followed him to Berlin when he succeeded Hermann Abert as chair of musicology at Berlin University (Humboldt Universit?t). She earned her doctorate in 1930 and, that same year, her thesis, Das einstimmige Kunstlied Conradin Kreutzers und seine Stellung zum zeit gen?ssischen Lied in Schwaben [The Unison Art Song of Conradin Kreutzer and his Attitude Toward Contemporary Lied in Schwaben], was published by Breitkopf and H?rtel. At the behest of Alfred Einstein, editor of the Zeitschrift f?r Musikwissenschaft^ Landau began to index recently published articles for the journal's Zeitschriftenschau and to create annotated indexes of articles about Bach and Handel for the Bachand H?ndeLJahrb?cher, respectively, in 1930, a job she held till 1933. A talented speaker, her musicological lectures soon were broadcast on Berlin radio, the Leipzig-Dresden network, and throughout southern Germany, until the Nazis forced the cancellation of all contracts with Jews in broad casting in early 1933.l She briefly considered immigration to Paris, but then found work with the J?discher Kulturbund (Jewish Culture League) in Berlin, heading the lecture department, speaking throughout Germany, and writing on various musical topics for the Jewish press and for League publications. In the excerpt from her memoirs that follows, she recalls her tenure with the League, what it entailed, and how it ended shortly after Kristallnacht.

The Exodus and Racism

THE EXODUS STORY HAS BEEN A SOURCE OF BOTH IDENTIFICATION AND conflict for American Jews and blacks. As a source of identification, blacks saw themselves as Hebrew slaves pitted against white Pharaohs, while blacks' plight resonated with Jewish immigrants. As a source of tension, the Exodus story obscured how Jews were caught between blackness and whiteness. Jews were neither Pharaohs nor slaves but instead functioned as agents of the rul ing elites over blacks. Jewish vulnerability derives from potential abandonment from below and above, a type of oppression not captured by the Exodus story. When Jews combat racism and forge black-Jewish alliances, they reduce their susceptibility to becoming isolated from potential allies. Combating racism thus is central to Jewish liberation. White Christians have an important role in preventing anti-Semitism from disrupting efforts to eliminate racism and build an effective black-Jewish coalition.

Review: Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America

Review: Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America

Michael E. Staub. Torn at the Roots. The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 386 pp.

This is a uniquely informed and informative work on the vicissitudes of the radical Jewish left in America, post-1945, and the losing battle it has waged against more conservative impulses within American Jewry. It is also notably uninformative about the liberalism of American Jews that ostensibly forms the focal point of its discussion. It ably documents a variety of topics: the persistent intra-Jewish strife over political dissent, the overfree use by both sides of Holocaust rhetoric, the penchant for Jewish political discourse to indulge in citing so-called “prophetic” and “Talmudic” models to legitimize or delegitimize controversial contemporary positions, and the recent demise of an organized, active Jewish left wing. In contrast, the author displays little interest, if any, in survey data on Jewish opinion, and he is similarly unconcerned with comparing Jews and other ethnic or religious groups or otherwise contextualizing the phenomena he discusses in general American political terms. The result is a book that possesses many merits save one: it is not a well-rounded or convincing treatment of postwar American Jewish liberalism.