scholarly journals Gender and Ethnicity: Life Stories of Jewish-American Immigrant Women in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-34
Author(s):  
Anca-Luminiţa Iancu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Immigrant Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Historical Societies ◽  
American Immigrant ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts

Abstract In the first half of the twentieth century, immigrants left oral and written testimonies of their experience in the United States, many of them housed in various ethnic-American archives or published by ethnic historical societies. In 1942, the Yiddish Scientific Institute in New York City encouraged Jewish-American immigrants to share their life stories as part of a written essay contest. In 2006, several of these autobiographical accounts were translated and published by Jocelyn Cohen and Daniel Soyer in a volume entitled My Future Is in America. Thus, this essay examines the autobiographies of two Jewish-American immigrant women, Minnie Goldstein and Rose Schoenfeld, with a view to comparing how their gendered identity (as women and as members of their families) has impacted their choices and lives in their home countries and in the United States in the first part of the twentieth century.

The Americanization of Mahjong

Mahjong ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 162-186
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Air Force ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Domestic Industry ◽  
Community Adaptation

During the years of depression, war, and postwar expansion, mahjong evolved in the United States and abroad, creating discrete national, regional, and community forms. In the 1940s, the wives of Air Force officers created their own version, which continued to spread across postwar bases. The most influential community adaptation by far was driven by the National Mah Jongg League. Over the ensuing decades, eventually hundreds of thousands of players, mostly but not exclusively Jewish American women, played their “National” version of the international Chinese game. The changes to the game that the League initiated were enabled by their proximity to the small factories making the tiles. The locus of mahjong manufacturing for the American market moved from China to plastic fabricating shops in New York City. As factories developed in concert with distinctive regional and community-based forms of the game, American mahjong grew into a domestic industry.

“The Hora Staccato in Swing!”: Jascha Heifetz's Musical Eclecticism and the Adaptation of Violin Miniatures

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-431
Author(s):  
JOSHUA S. WALDEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Tin Pan Alley ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
History Of

AbstractJascha Heifetz (1901–87) promoted a modern brand of musical eclecticism, recording, performing, and editing adaptations of folk and popular songs while remaining dedicated to the standard violin repertoire and the compositions of his contemporaries. This essay examines the complex influences of his displacement from Eastern Europe and assimilation to the culture of the United States on both the hybridity of his repertoire and the critical reception he received in his new home. It takes as its case study Heifetz's composition of the virtuosic showpiece “Hora Staccato,” based on a Romany violin performance he heard in Bucharest, and his later adaptation of the music into an American swing hit he titled “Hora Swing-cato.” Finally, the essay turns to the field of popular song to consider how two of the works Heifetz performed most frequently were adapted for New York Yiddish radio as Tin Pan Alley–style songs whose lyrics narrate the early twentieth-century immigrant experience. The performance and arrangement history of many of Heifetz's miniatures reveals the multivalent ways in which works in his repertoire, and for some listeners Heifetz himself, were reinterpreted, adapted, and assimilated into American culture.

Drowning Voices and Drowning Shoreline: A Riverside View of the Social and Ecological Impacts of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project

Rural History ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather M. Cox ◽  
Brendan G. DeMelle ◽  
Glenn R. Harris ◽  
Christopher P. Lee ◽  
Laura K. Montondo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Commercial Vehicles ◽  
The Social ◽  
Power Project ◽  
St Lawrence River

The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project was a massive restructuring of the St. Lawrence River bordering Canada and the United States. The river had always been used for human transportation, and a shipping canal for commercial vehicles was constructed and enhanced throughout the nineteenth century. However, the river grew increasingly incapable of handling an international fleet composed of larger boats during the twentieth century. Proposals to undertake major renovations for shipping were debated at the highest levels of policy for several decades. Finally, the St. Lawrence River was substantially altered during the 1950s. These changes created a Seaway able to accommodate vessels with deeper drafts and permitted the development of hydro-electric generating facilities through the construction of dikes and dams. All of this activity involved numerous agencies in the governments of the United States, Canada, the Iroquois Confederacy, New York, Ontario, other states and provinces, as well as commercial and industrial entities in the private sector.

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