American Jewry Documents: Eighteenth Century, Primarily Hitherto Unpublished Manuscripts. Edited by Jacob Rader Marcus. [Publications of the American Jewish Archives, Number 3.] (Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College Press; distrib. by University Publishers, New York. 1959. Pp. xix, 492. $8.50.) and Essays in American Jewish History to Commemorate the Tenth Anniversary of the Founding of the American Jewish Archives under the Direction of Jacob Rader Marcus. [Publications of the American Jewish Archives, Number 4.] (Cincinnati, Ohio: American Jewish Archives; distrib. by University Publishers, New York, 1958. Pp. xvii, 534. $7.50.)

1959 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
American Jewish History ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts ◽  
Union College

Judaism and Jewishness in Histories of American Jewry

2021 ◽  
pp. 253-260
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Jews ◽  
American Jewish History ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
American Jewish

This chapter reviews five books on American Jewish history, written by Joyce Antler, Jessica Cooperman, Kirsten Fermaglich, Rachel Kranson, and Jack Wertheimer. Reading these books together is challenging because they present substantially different interpretations of American Jews. If no definitive single interpretation of 20th-century American Jewish history emerges from these five books, what can be learned about American Jews by reading them together? Two key points emerge. Judaism proves a highly contested arena of American Jewish life. Yet despite the importance of religion, this fractious domain involves only a small portion of American Jews. Cooperman, Kranson, and Wertheimer all explore limits that confound efforts to promote Judaism in the United States among ordinary Jews. By contrast, “Jewishness” opens a valuable window into the complexity of life among Jews in the United States. Fermaglich focuses on how New York Jews coped with rising discrimination that impeded their ambitions for social and economic mobility. In her exploration of Jewish women's politics, Antler illuminates varied components of Jewish identity only occasionally influenced by religious dimensions.

Sunset

1998 ◽  
pp. 301-303
Author(s):  
Sefton D. Temkin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Will ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Union College

This chapter discusses the closing years of Isaac Mayer Wise’s life, which were spent in a mood of satisfaction. The structure for American Jewry which he had laboured to build had not been completed to his specifications, but the triad with which he was intimately connected — the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Hebrew Union College, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis — had come near enough to achieving his object. As a national figure on the American Jewish scene he stood alone. (The rival seminary in New York was teetering on the brink of dissolution.) He had the satisfaction of seeing synagogues throughout the country led by his disciples, but if anything clouded the sunset, it was the future of the college. He had carried it on his own shoulders for well-nigh twenty-five years. It was short of funds, and he failed to see among the leaders of the Union the will to ensure that Hebrew Union College was adequately supported.

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

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie Ousset-Krief
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Lower East Side ◽  
East Side ◽  
American Jews ◽  
New Yorker ◽  
American Jewish History ◽  
The Usa ◽  
American Jewish

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.

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