The Journey Home

by Joyce Antler

• ISBN13: 9780029007358
• ISBN10: 0029007356
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2010-05-11
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

In recent decades, prominent American Jewish women like Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan have made headlines and history, challenging the constraints facing women in American public life. Few realize that these women embody a hundred-year legacy of remarkable activism. From suffrage to birth control, from trade unionism to higher education, from civil rights to feminism to every aspect of popular culture, Jewish women have been in the vanguard, leading key social movements and shaping cultural consciousness. Anarchists and Zionists, "sob sister" writers and Supreme Court justices, rabbis and reformers, personalities as diverse as Emma Goldman, Sophie Tucker and Gertrude Stein have left their indelible mark on the American century. Joyce Antler profiles these women leaders in The Journey Home, interweaving social history with brilliant portraiture. In a fresh and lively narrative, she examines the political conflicts and personal tensions that animated their lives as they redefined the landscapes of American culture and society. To change their nation they battled class and gender prejudice, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant fervor. They drew sustenance from Jewish tradition but always took independent stands.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Prologue: On the Edge of the Twentieth Century	p. 1
From the Ghetto and Beyond, 1890-1930
The Paradox of Immigration	p. 3
Autobiographies of Alienation and Assimilation
Among the Americans
"Uptown" Women and Social and Spiritual Reform	p. 40
A Witness for Religion
Withholding Sisterhood
Radical Politics and Labor Organizing	p. 73
A New World Upon the Earth
Bread and More Roses
The Dream of a Jewish Homeland	p. 98
The Zion in Your Hearts
Pioneer Woman
Wider Worlds, 1930-1960
Jewish Women in Popular Culture	p. 136
Red Hot Mamas, Iron Women, and Sob Sisters
The Most Famous Jew in the World
Pioneers in the Professions	p. 176
Teacherly Love
Prophetic Justice and Celebrity Zionism
Entering the Theatres of the World	p. 203
Fighting Fascism, Building a State
Writers, War, and Witness
Imagining Jewish Mothers	p. 233
Cold War Comedies and Tragedies
Creating a Jewish Women's History
Probing the Tradition: Feminism and Judaism, 1960-1996
Feminist Liberations	p. 259
First Mothers
The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs
Coming Out as Jewish Women	p. 285
The Feminist Assault on the Academy and Religion
No Longer "Split at the Root"
Out of Exile	p. 309
Toward Yavneh
The Jewish Edge
Musical Midrash
Journey Through Darkness
From Rebbetzin to Rebel
Too Jewish?
Chronicles of a Generation
Epilogue: When Daughters Are Cherished	p. 328
A Guide to Archival Collections	p. 335
Notes	p. 337
Acknowledgments	p. 387
Index	p. 391
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.