American Jewish History articles from September 2004

American Jewish History archives from September 2004

Playgrounds and Penny lunches in Palestine: American social welfare in the Yishuv.(Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America)(Organization overview)
September 1, 2004... Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, was founded in 1912 in New York City in order to give Jewish women a frontline role in the Zionist movement. Under the leadership of Henrietta Szold, the fledgling organization adopted a...

Diary of a Los Angeles Jew, 1942-1972 (an excerpt).(Excerpt)
September 1, 2004... Autobiography is rather fashionable.... Everyone is writing his or her "memoir".... They are rather repulsive. --A. S Byatt Autobiography, of course, is the highest form of fiction. --E. A. J. Honigman Three different...

"Irresponsible, undisciplined opposition": Ben Halpern on the Bergson group and Jewish terrorism in pre-state Palestine (1).
September 1, 2004... I. Introduction In December 1946, the Labor Zionist journal Jewish Frontier published an exchange between Daniel Bell (b. 1919) and Ben Halpern (1912-1990), two rising intellectual stars of twentieth-century American Jewry. The exchange...

U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. By Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, Robert Wolfe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. x + 495 pp. "History Matters" is the motto chosen by the authors of this book; having read...

Jewish Life in the Industrial Promised Land 1855-2005.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... Jewish Life in the Industrial Promised Land 1855-2005. By Nora Faires and Nancy Hanflik. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005. As Michael Moore made evident in his 1989 documentary Roger and Me, Flint, Michigan, is a scarred...

The Jews of South Florida.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... The Jews of South Florida. Edited by Andrea Greenbaum. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England, 2005. 208 pp. "Miami Beach became first a Jewish city and then a Jewish joke," notes Stephen Whitfield in this...

Food and Judaism.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... Food and Judaism. Edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon, Ronald A. Simkins, and Gerald Shapiro. Studies in Jewish Civilization, vol. 15. Omaha: Creighton University Press, 2005. xvi + 345 pp. One of the contributors to this volume, echoing a folk...

From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America. Edited by Michael W. Grunberger. New York: George Braziller for the Library of Congress, 2005. 243 pp. Commemorating 350 years of Jewish settlement in North America, this glossy,...

Judaism's Encounter with American Sports.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... Judaism's Encounter with American Sports. By Jeffrey S. Gurock. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. x + 234 pp. Jeffrey S. Gurock of Yeshiva University is one of the outstanding scholars of American Jewish history, having written...

Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920. By Melissa R. Klapper. New York: New York University Press, 2005. x + 310 pp. Analyzing firsthand accounts of girls negotiating the opposing forces of tradition and modernity in their lives,...

The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel Versus the American Jewish Establishment.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel Versus the American Jewish Establishment. By Fred A. Lazin. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. xii + 336 pp. One of the greatest exoduses in Jewish history occurred in the latter...

Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper. By Laurel Leff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xi + 426 pp. On June 1, 1942, the Seattle Daily Times, a mere regional paper in the then relative wilds...

A Concise History of American Antisemitism.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... A Concise History of American Antisemitism. By Robert Michael. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. xxi + 231 pp. There is considerable breadth to Robert Michael's A Concise History of American Antisemitism, but the study lacks parallel...

A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York. By Tony Michels. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. viii + 335 pp. On the back cover of Tony Michels's outstanding book on Yiddish socialists in New York is a promotional blurb...

American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise. Edited by Shulamit Reinharz and Mark A. Raider. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005. lix + 393 pp. This anthology of essays examining the interplay between American Jewish women,...

Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World. By Jonathan Schorsch. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xi + 546 pp. In 1642, the Venetian rabbi and scholar Leon Modena (1574-1648) received the last news he heard directly from his son...

The Rabbi's Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... The Rabbi's Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life. By Shuly Rubin Schwartz. New York: New York University Press, 2006. xiii + 312 pp. As a rabbinical student who was married to one of my classmates in the 1970s, I thought often about...

A Coat of Many Colors: Immigration, Globalization and Reform in New York's Garment Industry.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... A Coat of Many Colors: Immigration, Globalization and Reform in New York's Garment Industry. Edited by Daniel Soyer. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. vii + 285 pp. Underneath the glitzy exterior of New York's garment industry...

Haunted in the New World: Jewish American Culture from Cahan to The Goldbergs.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... Haunted in the New World: Jewish American Culture from Cahan to The Goldbergs. By Donald Weber. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 250 pp. In Haunted in the New World, literary scholar Donald Weber takes readers along on an...

Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History.(Book review)
September 1, 2004... Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History. By Lee Shai Weissbach. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. x + 436 pp. Many scholars in American Jewish history have anticipated this book eagerly, and it deserves applause from all....