Jewish Studies Research Guide

Jonathan D. Sarna's award-winning American Judaism is now available in an updated and revised edition that summarizes recent scholarship and takes into account important historical, cultural, and political developments in American Judaism over the past fifteen years.   Praise for the first edition:   "Sarna . . . has written the first systematic, comprehensive, and coherent history of Judaism in America; one so well executed, it is likely to set the standard for the next fifty years."--Jacob Neusner, Jerusalem Post "A masterful overview."--Jeffrey S. Gurock, American Historical Review "This book is destined to be the new classic of American Jewish history."--Norman H. Finkelstein, Jewish Book World   Winner of the 2004 National Jewish Book Award/Jewish Book of the Year

Since Peter Stuyvesant greeted with enmity the first group of Jews to arrive on the docks of New Amsterdam in 1654, Jews have entwined their fate and fortunes with that of the United States--a project marked by great struggle and great promise. What this interconnected destiny has meant for American Jews and how it has defined their experience among the world's Jews is fully chronicled in this work, a comprehensive and finely nuanced history of Jews in the United States from 1654 through the end of the past century. Hasia R. Diner traces Jewish participation in American history--from the communities that sent formal letters of greeting to George Washington; to the three thousand Jewish men who fought for the Confederacy and the ten thousand who fought in the Union army; to the Jewish activists who devoted themselves to the labor movement and the civil rights movement. Diner portrays this history as a constant process of negotiation, undertaken by ordinary Jews who wanted at one and the same time to be Jews and full Americans. Accordingly, Diner draws on both American and Jewish sources to explain the chronology of American Jewish history, the structure of its communal institutions, and the inner dynamism that propelled it. Her work documents the major developments of American Judaism--he economic, social, cultural, and political activities of the Jews who immigrated to and settled in America, as well as their descendants--and shows how these grew out of both a Jewish and an American context. She also demonstrates how the equally compelling urges to maintain Jewishness and to assimilate gave American Jewry the particular character that it retains to this day in all its subtlety and complexity.

A panoramic history of the Jewish American South, from European colonization to today In 1669, the Carolina colony issued the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which offered freedom of worship to "Jews, heathens, and other dissenters," ushering in an era that would see Jews settle in cities and towns throughout what would become the Confederate States. The Jewish South tells their stories, and those of their descendants and coreligionists who followed, providing the first narrative history of southern Jews. Drawing on a wealth of original archival findings spanning three centuries, Shari Rabin sheds new light on the complicated decisions that southern Jews made--as individuals, families, and communities--to fit into a society built on Native land and enslaved labor and to maintain forms of Jewish difference, often through religious innovation and adaptation. She paints a richly textured and sometimes troubling portrait of the period, exploring how southern Jews have been targets of antisemitism and violence but also complicit in racial injustice. Rabin considers Jewish immigration and institution building, participation in the Civil War, the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, and Jewish support for and resistance to the modern fight for Black civil rights. She examines shifting understandings of Jewishness, highlighting both the reality of religious diversity and the ongoing role of Christianity in defining the region. Recovering a neglected facet of the American experience, The Jewish South enables readers to see the South through the eyes of people with a distinctive religious heritage and a southern history older than the United States itself.

Inventive poetry explores Jewish identity in America "How can I teach a prayer / I only know how to recite?" "America, whose death / didn't you come from?" These are some of the questions that poet Joshua Gottlieb-Miller wrestles with in his beautiful, gripping new collection. By turns experimental and documentary, Dybbuk Americanadraws out the questions around Jewish identity in the United States, and what it means to pass on Jewish identity to one's child. This hybrid text draws on art, mysticism, and history, taking the dybbuk, a figure from Jewish folklore, as its central metaphor. A dybbuk is a restless spirit who inhabits another's body, and as a possessing spirit the dybbuk is often treated as a demonic force, but it can be read as merely trying to climb the ladder of the afterlife. In other words, a kind of striver. Enacting the idea of competing selves in one body,Dybbuk Americanaplays with form via a series of text boxes that create a multi-channel effect on the page. The body of the poem can be read with surrounding and intercutting text boxes to generate multiple interpretations. This innovative poetic technique maintains a dialogue with Jewish literary lineages: Talmudic commentary and interpretation of the oral law, as well as the fragmented nature of geniza, a place where Jews store sacred documents when they fall out of use.Dybbuk Americanaweaves together the father-son arc within a larger socio-political commentary and historical narrative. Poems move deftly between the ironic and the mystic, from aphoristic questioning and inventive narratives, to interview, oral history, and archival materials. In these lines, "the angels./ They get as close as they can." Witty, curious, warm, and searching, Dybbuk Americanasignals a fresh voice in Jewish-American poetry. [sample text] CHAIN MIGRATION It took ten men to make a minyan, but only one name of G-d for us to share, so we settled on America, one by one, we settled on America, man and woman. My grandfather earned his way over shoveling coal in the hold of a boat. Grandmother sewed gold into her coat. In secret they sewed, they sold, they glowed. I dream of gold. G-d's name in gold milked and honeyed in the dust beneath our boots-- our dust. And when they made a minyan and didn't realize it? And when they married in and didn't realize it? No matter: they sewed, they sold, they glowed. Yes, they sold their solid gold, sold gold into gold, sewed gold together into dust. When I was born they gave me a dead man's name. But that's true for everyone.

A vivid look at the wartime experiences of a Jewish woman in the Confederate South Emma Mordecai lived an unusual life. She was Jewish when Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population of the Old South, and unmarried in a culture that offered women few options other than marriage. She was American born when most American Jews were immigrants. She affirmed and maintained her dedication to Jewish religious practice and Jewish faith while many family members embraced Christianity. Yet she also lived well within the social parameters established for Southern white women, espoused Southern values, and owned enslaved African Americans. The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai is one of the few surviving Civil War diaries by a Jewish woman in the antebellum South. It charts her daily life and her evolving perspective on Confederate nationalism and Southern identity, Jewishness, women's roles in wartime, gendered domestic roles in slave-owning households, and the centrality of family relationships. While never losing sight of the racist social and political structures that shaped Emma Mordecai's world, the book chronicles her experiences with dislocation and the loss of her home. Bringing to life the hospital visits, food shortages, local sociability, Jewish observances, sounds and sights of nearby battles, and the very personal ramifications of emancipation and its aftermath for her household and family, The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai offers a valuable and distinct look at a unique historical figure from the waning years of the Civil War South.

"A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom highlights the key role Jews and Judaism played in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. As the most visible non-Christian religion, Judaism was central to the debate over religious freedom in America at a critical juncture. The decision to extend citizenship to all religions existed as a debate during the Founding generation. However, the debate was unambiguously decided against the idea of the nation being defined exclusively by Christianity. A Promise Land discusses the key struggle of early America to achieve the broadest possible definition of religious liberty in line with the separation of church and state"