American Jewish History articles from March 2002

American Jewish History archives from March 2002

A grateful farewell.
March 1, 2002... With this issue, the editors for the past 20 years (1982-2002) are handing the reigns of the journal to two worthy successors, Eli Faber and Rafi Medoff. Both are scholars of distinction as well as editors of excellence, and we are confident...

Introduction.
March 1, 2002... Every reader of American Jewish History is probably able to enumerate the historiographic revisions contained in Leon Jick's The Americanization of the Synagogue, 1820-1870 (1976). Lucidly argued, vividly written, Jick argued that the changes...

Perspectives: history from a variety of vantage points.
March 1, 2002... Leon Jick's classic swept me off my feet when I first read it some 20 years ago. Here was a boldly written, brave new departure establishing the American landscape as the seedbed for Reform. Although lacking a strong original source base and...

A new key: decorum and the study of Jews and Judaism.
March 1, 2002... The philosopher Susanne Langer wrote in 1942 that a new key had emerged in philosophy, the study of "the problem of meaning" over "the problem of observation." This new formulation did not happen all at once, according to Langer. Rather,...

From the ladder to the umbrella: the metaphors of American Jewish religious life.
March 1, 2002... It's hard to imagine undertaking any serious study of American Jewish religious life without turning first and foremost to the synagogue. Synagogue 2000, an ambitious, multi-faceted project dedicated to strengthening this crucial institution,...

The path to Reform Judaism: an examination of religious leadership in Cincinnati, 1841-1855.
March 1, 2002... One Saturday morning in 1841, the president of Cincinnati's Bene Israel congregation summoned the members of his vestry together for an emergency and extraordinary Sabbath session. He reported that Mr. Samuel Kahn had called upon him and...

The Americanization of the Synagogue, 1820-1870: an historiographical appreciation.
March 1, 2002... When Leon Jick set out to write The Americanization of the Synagogue, historical scholarship on American Jewry, and especially on American Judaism, was largely parochial. Important studies of American Judaism had appeared--Marshall Sklare's...

The Americanization of the Synagogue: a reexamination.
March 1, 2002... In 1954, American Jewry observed its Tercentenary marking three hundred years since the first group of Jews arrived on the North American continent. At that time, the American Jewish Committee commissioned Moses Rischin, then a graduate student...

Von der Gemeinde zur "Community": Judische Einwanderung in Chicago, 1840-1900.(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... By Tobias Brinkmann. Studien zur Historischen Migrationsforschung, 10. Osnabruck: Universitatsverlag Rasch, 2002. It is somewhat difficult to translate the German title of Tobias Brinkmann's book, based on his Ph.D. dissertation at the...

In the Catskills: a Century of the Jewish Experience in "The Mountains".(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... Edited by Phil Brown. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. xvi + 415 pp. The Catskills are awash in nostalgia, the surest sign that the Borscht Belt era is dead and gone. Brown University sociologist Phil Brown, founder of the...

[Orthodoxy in the New World: Immigrant Rabbis and Preaching, 1881-1924].(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... By Kimmy Caplan. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2002. 395 pp., in Hebrew. Hundreds of rabbis, most of them young, Lithuanian, and products of that province's famous yeshivot, came to the United States during the...

Passover Revisited: Philadelphia's Efforts to Aid Soviet Jews, 1963-1998.(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... By Andrew Harrison. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2001. 268 pp. The 1960s to the 1990s witnessed the rescuing of about one and a half million Jews from the Soviet Union. In Passover Revisited: Philadelphia's Efforts to Aid...

Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States and Jewish Refugees, 1945-1948.(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... By Arieh J. Kochavi. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. 400 pp. The story of the Jewish displaced persons after World War II--both the liberated survivors of the concentration camps and those who joined them during...

An Ethnographic Study of an American Conservative Synagogue.(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... By Martin Laskin. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002. xv + 313 pp. An Ethnographic Study of an American Conservative Synagogue could be titled more simply and accurately A History of Temple Beth Shalom. The Temple, or TBS as it is...

The Six-Day War and World Jewry.(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... Edited by Eli Lederhendler. Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2000. x + 340 pp. "Some events, when they occur," Eli Lederhendler and the editorial board of The Six-Day War and World Jewry (Haim Avni, Sergio DellaPergola, and Gideon...

Baksheesh Diplomacy: Secret Negotiations Between American Jewish Leaders and Arab Officials on the Eve of World War II.(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... By Rafael Medoff. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001. 190 pp. Very little has been written about the American non-Zionist involvement in issues relating to Palestine during the 1930s. Rafael Medoff's book Baksheesh Diplomacy, which studies...

"Jewishness" and the World of "Difference" in the United States.(Book Review)
March 1, 2002... Edited by Marc Lee Raphael. Williamsburg, VA: The College of William and Mary, 2001. 93 pp. This volume of six strong essays challenges the conventional paradigm governing American Jewish studies. It sheds light not only on Jewish...

Letters to the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... To The Editor: While I welcome critical assessments of my work, I feel compelled to write because I strongly believe that Gertrude Dubrovsky's review of my book, Class, Networks, and Identity: Replanting Jewish Lives from Nazi Germany to...