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Advances in genetics are renewing controversies over inherited characteristics, and the discourse around science and technological innovations has taken on racial overtones, such as attributing inherited physiological traits to certain ethnic groups or using DNA testing to determine biological links with ethnic ancestry. This book contributes to the discussion by opening up previously locked concepts of the relation between the terms color, race, and “Jews”, and by engaging with globalism, multiculturalism, hybridity, and diaspora. The contributors—leading scholars in anthropology, sociology, history, literature, and cultural studies—discuss how it is not merely a question of whether Jews are acknowledged to be interracial, but how to address academic and social discourses that continue to place Jews and others in a race/color category.
“If the reader, after closing this volume, remains uncertain or confused about the fundamental questions related to Jews and race (though not Jews and color), this is because fundamental questions appear to remain unresolved. Overall, the essays do a marvelous job in both illustrating and illuminating this confusion.” · Studies in Contemporary Jewry
“An excellent text that will be a significant contribution to the study of Jews and race… The work approaches the topic from a variety of disciplines and geographic locations, and the breadth is in fact one of its greatest strengths.” · Rebecca Alpert, Temple University
“This is a very fine book… It is a very eclectic collection of essays on a range of related texts and issues, yet the chapters cohere, producing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, which is how a collection of essays should be. The subject of the volume is important; and many of the essays are first-rate. All of the chapters are trim and to the point.” · Emily Budick, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Efraim Sicher is Professor of Comparative and English Literature at Ben- Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He has published essays and books on modern Jewish culture, Holocaust memory, and anti-Semitism. His most recent books are The Holocaust Novel (2005), Babel in Context: A Study in Cultural Identity (2012), Rereading the City / Rereading Dickens (2nd edition 2012), and Under Postcolonial Eyes: Figuring the “Jew” in Contemporary British Writing (with Linda Weinhouse, 2012).
Foreword
Sander Gilman
Introduction: Rethinking Discourses about “Jews”
Efraim Sicher
PART I: JEWS AND RACE IN AMERICA
Chapter 1. “I’m not White – I’m Jewish”: The Racial Politics of American Jews
Cheryl Greenberg
Chapter 2. Reflections on Black/Jewish Relations in the Age of Obama
Ibrahim Sundiata
Chapter 3. Stains, Plots, and the Neighbor Thing: Jews, Blacks and Philip Roth’s Utopias
Adam Zachary Newton
Chapter 4. Spaces of Ambivalence: Blacks and Jews in New York City
Catherine Rottenberg
Chapter 5. African-American Culture, Anthropological Practices and the Jewish “Race” in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men
Dalit Alperovich
Chapter 6. Jewish Characters in Weeds: Reinserting ‘Race’ into the Postmodern Discourse on American Jews
Hannah Adelman Komy Ofir and Shlomi Deloia
PART II: JEWS AS BLACKS / BLACK JEWS
Chapter 7. A Member of the Club? How Black Jews Negotiate Black Anti-Semitism and Jewish Racism
Bruce Haynes
Chapter 8. Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel: The Discourses of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Racism
Steven Kaplan
Chapter 9. Black-Jews in Academic and Institutional Discourse
Yonah Zianga
Chapter 10. The “Descendants of David” of Madagascar: Crypto-Judaic identities in 21st century Africa
Edith Bruder
PART III: DISCOURSES OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC IDENTITIES
Chapter 11. After the Fact: “Jews” in Post-1945 German Physical Anthropology
Amos Morris-Reich
Chapter 12. Genes as Jewish History?: Human Population Genetics in the Service of Historians
Noa Sophie Kohler and Dan Mishmar
Chapter 13. Sarrazin and the Myth of the “Jewish Gene"
Klaus Hödl
Chapter 14. Blood, Soul, Race, and Suffering: Full-Bodied Ethnography and Expressions of Jewish Belonging
Fran Markowitz
Chapter 15. Jews, Muslims, European Identities: Multiculturalism and Anti-Semitism in Britain
Efraim Sicher
Chapter 16. Brothers in Misery: Re-connecting Sociologies of Racism and Anti-Semitism
Glynis Cousin and Robert Fine
Chapter 17. Race by the Grace of God: Race, Religion, and the Construction of “Jew” and “Arab"
Ivan Davidson Kalmar
Select Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index