Hanna Yablonka, Yeladim beseder gamur: biyografiyah dorit shel yelidei haaretz 1948–1955 (Children by the Book, Biography of a Generation: The First Native Israelis Born 1948–1955). Rishon Letziyon: Miskal, 2018. 430 pp.

This chapter examines Hanna Yablonka's Children by the Book, Biography of a Generation: The First Native Israelis Born 1948–1955 (2018). This book is unique in that it is neither politically committed to nationalist political slogans that are thrown daily into the arena of Israeli politics in the days of Netanyahu nor connected to the one-dimensional, sweeping condemnation of critics of the Israeli enterprise on the Right and Left. Instead, it suggests to set aside, even if only for a moment, what Yablonka calls “the current Israeli discourse, which furiously shatters everything that has happened in the state since it was established, brutally erasing all the achievements of Little Israel.” Yabonka is guided by Karl Mannheim's concept of a “historical generation”: a group in which there is a shared historical consciousness derived from historical experience. She shows how the state educational system fashioned the image of the new Israeli, endowing children with a local, native identity and imbuing them with the consciousness of belonging both to the people and to the land.

Martina L. Weisz, Jews and Muslims in Contemporary Spain: Redefining National Boundaries. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2019. 189 pp.

This chapter studies Martina L. Weisz's Jews and Muslims in Contemporary Spain: Redefining National Boundaries (2019). This book aims to analyze “the place granted to Jews and Muslims in the construction of contemporary Spanish national identity, with a special focus on the transition from an exclusive, homogeneous sense of collective self toward a more pluralistic, open and tolerant one, in a European context.” This narrative of progress, however, is challenged by the excellent information provided in the book itself, which shows how these processes have been filled with contradictions and deep ambivalence, both historically and in the present, and how exclusionary nationalism has not been left behind. One of the book's richest contributions is its Jewish/Muslim comparative framework, which, as the author argues, is not usually undertaken. Ultimately, this book contains an abundance of useful information and insights for all those interested in Spain's relationship with its Muslim and Jewish minorities, the political and cultural negotiations of multiculturalism in Spain, and the way these relationships are affected by international events and diplomatic concerns.

Liat Steir-Livny, Remaking Holocaust Memory: Documentary Cinema by Third-Generation Survivors in Israel. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2019. 376 pp.

This chapter assesses Liat Steir-Livny's Remaking Holocaust Memory (2019). This book is the first comprehensive English-language study of the Israeli Third-Generation engagement with the history of the Shoah in documentary films. In analyzing “how Third-Generation documentaries provide new ideas and concepts to commemorate and preserve the memory for future generations,” Steir-Livny contrasts Third-Generation documentary films with the works of second-generation directors and explores an extensive number of films in five key areas. These key areas include the role of gender; the changing attitudes toward Germany; the use and exploration of historical film footage in Third-Generation documentary films; the function of testimonies that feature in Third-Generation documentaries “in more complex ways”; and the representation of perpetrators and bystanders in Third-Generation films. Throughout her study, Steir-Livny discusses the documentaries against the background of documentary film theories, on the one hand, and Israeli/Zionist Holocaust memory, on the other.

Omri Asscher, Reading America, Reading Israel: The Politics of Translation between Jews. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. 256 pp.

This chapter studies Omri Asscher's Reading America, Reading Israel: The Politics of Translation between Jews (2020). This book employs translation to think about how two groups — American and Israeli Jews — understand and relate to one another. It stresses how adoption of different everyday languages and residence in distinct territories produced two collectives possessing divergent modern Jewish identities: when Jewish people and institutions came to mediate, manage, and regulate the social meanings of translated texts in the United States and Israel, they employed translations to define their center in contradistinction to its perceived antipode. Asscher also convincingly demonstrates how Israeli critics of the 1950s through the 1980s took pride in the literary successes of American Jewish writers, while dismissing the contents of their writing on ideological grounds. In contrast with his points about American Jewish translations of Israeli literature and Israeli translations of American Jewish literature from the 1950s to the 1980s, Asscher's broader claim about translation lacks effective substantiation.

Laura Limonic, Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2019. 264 pp.

This chapter assesses Laura Limonic's Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States (2019). This sociological study focuses on Latinx Jews who have migrated to the United States since 1965, largely from Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. Limonic establishes that the earlier migration of Cuban Jews to Miami in the early 1960s created a precedent for other Latin American Jews to search for a new home and a new sense of identity as “Latino Jews” in the United States. Fleeing the turn to Communism after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, thousands of Cuban Jews arrived in Miami hoping to be welcomed into the American Jewish communal and religious institutions of the day. Instead, they discovered that their Cubanness made their Jewishness suspect at a time when multiculturalism was not yet in vogue. As a result, they had to build their own religious and social spaces, constructing an Ashkenazi synagogue, the Cuban Hebrew Congregation of Miami, and a Sephardic synagogue, Temple Moses.

The American Jewish Intelligentsia, the Claims of Humor—and the Case of Lenny Bruce

Several major American Jewish scholars and intellectuals have addressed the vitality and the pertinence of Jewish humor, seeing in it an entrée not only into key characteristics of communal life but also into the texture of reality itself. These academicians and critics have exposed the encounter between stand-up comedy and the social and political peculiarities of Jewish life in the United States. No comedian attracted more sustained attention than Lenny Bruce, whose career enlarged the contours of what could explored in night clubs and on long-playing records. Perhaps no satirist took greater risks, or exposed himself to greater legal danger, in both subject matter and in language. No predecessor was more willing to flaunt his own Jewish sensibility, or to present with such cynicism the hypocrisies inherent in the codes of conduct by which respectable America professed to live—which is what made Bruce the object of serious interest.

Havi Dreifuss (Ben-Sasson), Relations between Jews and Poles during the Holocaust: The Jewish Perspective, trans. Ora Cummings. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2017. 304 pp.

This chapter examines Relations between Jews and Poles during the Holocaust (2017), an English translation of Havi Dreifuss' Hebrew-language doctoral dissertation (completed in 2005). This book is a unique scholarly examination of Polish–Jewish relations during the Holocaust from a perspective of Jewish views. It is not a history of Polish–Jewish relations per se but rather a history of changing Jewish perceptions of Poland and the Poles from the beginning to the end of the Second World War. Based largely on unpublished wartime diaries and writings preserved in Yad Vashem as well as some materials from other archives, it also contains wartime photographs and a sizable, 60-page appendix of documents. The appendix itself, a rich collection of previously unpublished wartime testimonies, makes Dreifuss' book a valuable addition to any Holocaust library.

Jewish Reproduction and Children in the Modern Era

This chapter depicts some major aspects of Jewish reproduction and children in modern times. Integrating data from different sources, I discuss changes in the numbers and share of children out the total Jewish population from 1700 through today. I provide statistics on Jewish birth rate and proportion of children out of the total number of Jews from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century for selected Jewish communities in Europe, the Americas, and North Africa and Palestine. Spatial variations in levels of fertility have resulted in the concentration of a majority of Jewish children in Israel. Still, within Israel, fertility patterns for Jews have evolved in different trajectories according to ethnic extraction and religiosity. Fertility and number of children in the population have many social and economic implications, which I touch upon in my concluding remarks.

Jerold S. Auerbach, Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1896–2016. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019. xii + 309 pp.

This chapter examines Jerold S. Auerbach's Print to Fit (2019). In this book, Auerbach charges that the New York Times consistently slanted its treatment of Israel in ways that discredited its struggle for survival and instead sympathized with the enemies of Zionism. Having assiduously combed through close to a century of articles, editorials, and op-ed pieces, Auerbach has discovered, especially in recent decades, a “preoccupation with Palestinian victimization — even when Israelis were the victims.” Print to Fit is especially harsh in its treatment of two of the Times' stars, the late Anthony Lewis and Thomas L. Friedman for having so often conveyed their own disenchantment with what they held to be the moral and political failings of Israel — in particular, the extension of Jewish settlements into the West Bank. Written from the political periphery of American Jewish life, Print to Fit risks overstating its case by simplifying it.

Viktor Kel’ner, Shchit: M.M. Vinaver i evreiskii vopros v Rossii v kontse XIX–nachale XX veka (Shield: M.M. Vinaver and the Jewish Question in Russia at the End of the Nineteenth–Beginning of the Twentieth Century). St. Petersburg: Evreiskii Universitet v Sankt Peterburge. 508 pp.

This chapter focuses on Viktor Kel'ner's biography of M. M. Vinaver. Kel'ner makes several strategic choices that frame the biography. First and foremost is the focus on Vinaver and Russian society. Kel'ner's approach emerges from his belief that Vinaver's main contribution was the idea, in theory and praxis, that only by embracing Russian liberalism would Jews gain their rights. This viewpoint became a fundamental truth for Vinaver and was realized in his professional, political, and personal life, as well as in his lifelong attachment to the Kadet Party and its ideals. Fittingly, the biography hones in on Vinaver in Russian and Russian Jewish political life. His broad involvement in Jewish cultural and historical activities receives less attention. Ultimately, the book's focus on the Russian context offers a wide lens on the Russian Jewish intelligentsia as a whole.