Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity - Softcover

Berman, Lila Corwin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520256816 ISBN 13: 9780520256811

Publisher: University of California Press, 2009

Synopsis

Lila Corwin Berman asks why, over the course of the twentieth century, American Jews became increasingly fascinated, even obsessed, with explaining themselves to their non-Jewish neighbors. What she discovers is that language itself became a crucial tool for Jewish group survival and integration into American life. Berman investigates a wide range of sources - radio and television broadcasts, bestselling books, sociological studies, debates about Jewish marriage and intermarriage, Jewish missionary work, and more - to reveal how rabbis, intellectuals, and others created a seemingly endless array of explanations about why Jews were indispensable to American life. Even as the content of these explanations developed and shifted over time, the very project of self-explanation would become a core element of Jewishness in the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

Lila Corwin Berman is Associate Professor of History, the Murray Friedman Chair of American Jewish History, and the Director of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University.

From the Back Cover

"This is an outstanding contribution to the literature on social science and the intellectual construction of Jewish identity in the U.S. The author has done a superb job of linking the Jewish missionary movement within the religious sector with the Jewish sociological trends and the dilemma of Jewish assimilation."—Janet Jacobs, author of Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews

From the Inside Flap

"This is an outstanding contribution to the literature on social science and the intellectual construction of Jewish identity in the U.S. The author has done a superb job of linking the Jewish missionary movement within the religious sector with the Jewish sociological trends and the dilemma of Jewish assimilation."Janet Jacobs, author ofHidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520256816
• ISBN 13: 9780520256811
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272