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This book is a collection of two dozen essays published over the past four decades on American Jewish history and culture. They discuss the role that Jews have played in American culture, sports, politics, business, and religion, as well as the nature of American antisemitism. The essays argue that the Jewish experience in America has been unique and this uniqueness has encouraged Jews to define their Jewish identity in multiple ways. In no other country has Judaism and Jewishness taken on so many diverse forms. While America has not been the promised land for Jews, it has been a land of promise. Jews have prospered in America and become part of the social, cultural, political, and economic mainstream. But whether Judaism and Jewish identity have also prospered is another question.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements for Reprinted Material
Introduction
Part One: Identity
1. The Mystery of American Jewish Identity
2. The Jewishness of the New York Intellectuals: Sidney Hook, a Test Case
3. Will Herberg’s Protestant—Catholic—Jew: A Critique
4. The Impact of War: America’s Jews and World War II
Part Two: Religion
5. A Shtetl in the Sun: Orthodoxy in Southern Florida
6. The Crisis of Conservative Judaism
7. Modern Orthodoxy in Crisis: A Test Case
8. The Decline and Rise of Secular Judaism in America
Part Three: Antisemitism
9. John Higham and American Antisemitism
10. The World Labor Athletic Carnival of 1936: An American Anti-Nazi Protest
11. The Approach of War: Congressional Isolationism and Antisemitism, 1939–1941
12. Antisemitism Mississippi Style
13. The Educational Crusade of George W. Armstrong
14. Interpretations of the Crown Heights Riot
15. The Cognitive Dissonance of American Jews
Part Four: Business
16. Jewish Historians and American Capitalism
17. The Absent American Jewish Business Mogul
18. From Participant to Owner: The Role of Jews in Contemporary American Sports
Part Five: Politics
19. Waiting For Righty?: An Interpretation of the Political Behavior of American Jews
20. Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and American Jewish Memory
21. Jewish Intellectuals and the American Conservative Movement