Spanning 350 years of Jewish experience in this country, A History of the Jews in America is an essential chronicle by the author of The Course of Modern Jewish History. With impressive scholarship and a riveting sense of detail, Howard M. Sachar tells the stories of Spanish marranos and Russian refugees, of aristocrats and threadbare social revolutionaries, of philanthropists and Hollywood moguls. At the same time, he elucidates the grand themes of the Jewish encounter with America, from the bigotry of a Christian majority to the tensions among Jews of different origins and beliefs, and from the struggle for acceptance to the ambivalence of assimilation.
Spanning 350 years of Jewish experience in this country, A History of the Jews in America is an essential chronicle by the author of The Course of Modern Jewish History. With impressive scholarship and a riveting sense of detail, Howard M. Sachar tells the stories of Spanish marranos and Russian refugees, of aristocrats and threadbare social revolutionaries, of philanthropists and Hollywood moguls. At the same time, he elucidates the grand themes of the Jewish encounter with America, from the bigotry of a Christian majority to the tensions among Jews of different origins and beliefs, and from the struggle for acceptance to the ambivalence of assimilation.
Annotation A history of Jews in American that is informed by the constant process of negotiation undertaken by ordinary Jews in their communities who wanted at one and the same time to be good Jews and full Americans.
A significant number of Sephardic Jews, tracing their remote origins to Spain and Portugal, immigrated to the United States from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans from 1880 through the 1920s, joined by a smaller number of Mizrahi Jews arriving from Arab lands. Most Sephardim settled in New York, establishing the leading Judeo-Spanish community outside the Ottoman Empire. With their distinct languages, cultures, and rituals, Sephardim and Arab-speaking Mizrahim were not readily recognized as Jews by their Ashkenazic coreligionists. At the same time, they forged alliances outside Jewish circles with Hispanics and Arabs, with whom they shared significant cultural and linguistic ties. The failure among Ashkenazic Jews to recognize Sephardim and Mizrahim as fellow Jews continues today. More often than not, these Jewish communities are simply absent from portrayals of American Jewry. Drawing on primary sources such as the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) press, archival documents, and oral histories, Sephardic Jews in America offers the first book-length academic treatment of their history in the United States, from 1654 to the present, focusing on the age of mass immigration.
One hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln's death, the full story of his extraordinary relationship with Jews is told here for the first time. Lincoln and the Jews: A History provides readers both with a captivating narrative of his interactions with Jews, and with the opportunity to immerse themselves in rare manuscripts and images, many from the Shapell Lincoln Collection, that show Lincoln in a way he has never been seen before. Lincoln's lifetime coincided with the emergence of Jews on the national scene in the United States. When he was born, in 1809, scarcely 3,000 Jews lived in the entire country. By the time of his assassination in 1865, large-scale immigration, principally from central Europe, had brought that number up to more than 150,000. Many Americans, including members of Lincoln's cabinet and many of his top generals during the Civil War, were alarmed by this development and treated Jews as second-class citizens and religious outsiders. Lincoln, this book shows, exhibited precisely the opposite tendency. He also expressed a uniquely deep knowledge of the Old Testament, employing its language and concepts in some of his most important writings. He befriended Jews from a young age, promoted Jewish equality, appointed numerous Jews to public office, had Jewish advisors and supporters starting already from the early 1850s, as well as later during his two presidential campaigns, and in response to Jewish sensitivities, even changed the way he thought and spoke about America. Through his actions and his rhetoric—replacing "Christian nation," for example, with "this nation under God"—he embraced Jews as insiders. In this groundbreaking work, the product of meticulous research, historian Jonathan D. Sarna and collector Benjamin Shapell reveal how Lincoln's remarkable relationship with American Jews impacted both his path to the presidency and his policy decisions as president. The volume uncovers a new and previously unknown feature of Abraham Lincoln's life, one that broadened him, and, as a result, broadened America.
A concise narrative history that brings the story of the Jewish people marvelously to life This is a sweeping and powerful narrative history of the Jewish people from biblical times to today. Based on the latest scholarship and richly illustrated, it is the most authoritative and accessible chronicle of the Jewish experience available. Michael Brenner tells a dramatic story of change and migration deeply rooted in tradition, taking readers from the mythic wanderings of Moses to the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust; from the Babylonian exile to the founding of the modern state of Israel; and from the Sephardic communities under medieval Islam to the shtetls of eastern Europe and the Hasidic enclaves of modern-day Brooklyn. The book is full of fascinating personal stories of exodus and return, from that told about Abraham, who brought his newfound faith into Canaan, to that of Holocaust survivor Esther Barkai, who lived on a kibbutz established on a German estate seized from the Nazi Julius Streicher as she awaited resettlement in Israel. Describing the events and people that have shaped Jewish history, and highlighting the important contributions Jews have made to the arts, politics, religion, and science, A Short History of the Jews is a compelling blend of storytelling and scholarship that brings the Jewish past marvelously to life.
This collection focuses on a variety of important themes in the American Jewish and Judaic experience. It opens with essays on early Jewish settlers (1654-1820), the expansion of Jewish life in America (1820-1901), the great wave of eastern European Jewish immigrants (1880-1924), the character of American Judaism between the two world wars, American Jewish life from the end of World War II to the Six-Day War, and the growth of Jews' influence and affluence. The second half of the volume includes essays on Orthodox Jews, the history of Jewish education in America, the rise of Jewish social clubs at the turn of the century, the history of southern and western Jewry, Jewish responses to Nazism and the Holocaust, feminism's confrontation with Judaism, and the eternal question of what defines American Jewish culture. Original and elegantly crafted, The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America not only introduces the student to a thrilling history, but also provides the scholar with new perspectives and insights.
The Jews: A History, second edition, explores the religious, cultural, social, and economic diversity of the Jewish people and their faith. The latest edition incorporates new research and includes a broader spectrum of people - mothers, children, workers, students, artists, and radicals - whose perspectives greatly expand the story of Jewish life.
