American Jewish History articles from December 1999

American Jewish History archives from December 1999

Introduction.
December 1, 1999... This special issue deals with the performance of Jewishness in a variety of popular cultural venues from the late nineteenth century through the 1950s. In essays which probe Jewishness as performance in vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies,...

First of the Red Hot Mamas: "Coon Shouting" and the Jewish Ziegfeld Girl.
December 1, 1999... Jewish women vaudevillians at the turn of the century popularized what is now a little-discussed and misunderstood performance venue, known as "coon shouting." These once well-known, now obscure popular entertainers were crossing and breaking...

Betty Boop: Yiddish Film Star.
December 1, 1999... The American dream might read something like this: two brothers from a family of five, one an immigrant, one born soon after his mother sailed to New York and came through Ellis Island, rebel against their Old World parents, refuse to finish...

"Big Chief Izzy Horowitz": Theatricality and Jewish Identity in the Wild West.
December 1, 1999... In the American musical theater, self-consciously theatrical characters have enormous freedom to determine their place within the social and cultural framework of the stage community.(1) Unlike characters who lack theatrical self-awareness,...

The Yiddish Are Coming: Mickey Katz, Antic-Semitism, and the Sound of Jewish Difference(1).
December 1, 1999... The Jew speaks the language of the nation in whose midst he dwells from generation to generation, but he speaks it always as an alien. --Richard Wagner Don't let the schmaltz get in your eyes, don't let the lox get in your socks ...

American Jewish Studies: A Periodic Report of the Status of the Field.(Brief Article)(Bibliography)
December 1, 1999... 1 Alexander, Michael. Jazz-age Jews: Arnold Rothstein, Felix Frankfurter, Al Jolson and the Jewish imagination, Yale U 2 Culver, Leigh. Performing identities in the art of John Singer Sargent [Jewish patrons], U of Pennsylvania 3...

The Damascus Affair: "Ritual Murder," Politics, and the Jews in 1840.(Review)
December 1, 1999... The Damascus Affair: "Ritual Murder," Politics, and the Jews in 1840. By Jonathan Frankel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xiv + 491 PP. Jonathan Frankel has written the first book length study of the Damascus Affair. The book...

Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism. By Seth Forman. New York: New York University Press, 1998. x + 274 pp. This book argues that Jewish communal support for civil rights liberalism in the postwar era has badly damaged future...

A Biblical People in the Bible Belt: The Jewish Community of Memphis, Tennessee, 1840s-1960s.(Review)
December 1, 1999... A Biblical People in the Bible Belt: The Jewish Community of Memphis, Tennessee, 1840s-1960s. By Selma S. Lewis. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1998. xvi + 279 pp. The turbulent waters of the Mississippi River, steamboats, cotton...

The Last of the Jews?(Review)
December 1, 1999... The Last of the Jews?. By Myron Berman. Lanham, New York and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998. xix + 161 pp. During the colonial era a small number of Sephardic and Central European Jews established roots in American soil. Some of...

Words of the Uprooted: Jewish Immigrants in Early Twentieth Century America.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Words of the Uprooted: Jewish Immigrants in Early Twentieth Century America. By Robert A. Rockaway. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. xi + 230 pp. Robert A. Rockaway begins his new book with a workmanlike 35 page introduction setting...

Lost Love: The Untold Story of Henrietta Szold, Journal and Letters.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Lost Love: The Untold Story of Henrietta Szold, Journal and Letters. By Baila Round Shargel. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997. xii + 382 pp. America's story of women's activism turns on moments of personal revelation, what...

Jewish Stars in Texas: Rabbis and Their Work.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Jewish Stars in Texas: Rabbis and Their Work. By Hollace Ava Weiner. College Station, TX.: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. xxiv + 302 pp. Jewish Stars in Texas presents highly informative, very entertaining biographies of eleven rabbis...

Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat's Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat's Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area. By Phil Brown. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. xi + 298 pp. "Unearned nostalgia" is how the late literary-cultural critic Irving Howe styled, with a...

American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania.(Review)
December 1, 1999... American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania. By Hilton Obenzinger. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. xxi + 316 pp. Fellow tourists, according to Mark Twain, had an annoying tendency to come away from their Holy...

Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership. By Naomi W. Cohen. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999. xiv + 320 pp. Naomi W. Cohen has made her academic career writing about the German Jewish elite in American...

Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism. By Lance J. Sussman. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995. 311 pp. The emergence of a vibrant Orthodox community in America represents a sea change from its modest beginnings. In his...

A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism.(Review)
December 1, 1999... A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism. By Jeffrey S. Gurock and Jacob J. Schacter. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. x + 220 pp. A Modern Heretic and a Traditional...

Sports and the American Jew.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Sports and the American Jew. Edited by Steven A. Riess. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998. xvi + 337 PP. Until recently, scholars devoted little attention to Jewish involvement in sport, but this collection makes clear that studying...

Enlarging America: The Cultural Work of Jewish Literary Scholars 1930-1990.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Enlarging America: The Cultural Work of Jewish Literary Scholars, 1930-1990. By Susanne Klingenstein. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998. xxix + 492 pp. Enlarging America is a fascinating book. At the outset, Professor Klingenstein...

Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Jewish Community.(Review)
December 1, 1999... Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Jewish Community. By Rabbi Marc Schneier. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1999. 222 pp. From the moment of his assassination at the Loraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, Martin...