Tradition Transformed

by Sorin, Gerald

• ISBN13: 9780801854477
• ISBN10: 0801854474
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-03-11
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Throughout American history, from the colonial era to the present, Jews have found America generally hospitable. Yet even in this relatively receptive country, which essentially replaced Israel as the "promised land," there have been vexing questions for Jews -- questions about the costs of freedom and mobility, especially with regard to the erosion of Jewish tradition and distinctiveness.In this one-volume history of the Jewish experience in America, Gerald Sorin argues that, from colonial times to the present, "acculturation" and not "assimilation" has best described the experience of Jewish Americans. American Jews, Sorin explains, have maintained their unique ethnic characteristics yet have become part of mainstream, middle-class American life. Sorin also shows how the large migration of Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century made a lasting impact on how other Americans imagine, understand, and relate to Jewish Americans and their cultural contributions today.Drawing together all aspects of American Jewish history, this concise volume deals with the transformation of a people, their religion, their move into trade and commerce, their political commitments domestically and internationally (especially after the Holocaust), and their contributions to education and culture.

Author Biography

Gerald Sorin is Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of History at the State University of New York, New Paltz. He is the author of A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880-1920 (Volume 3 of The Jewish People in America), available from Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Foreword	xi
Preface and Acknowledgments	xiii
Perspectives and Prospects	1	(10)
The Threshold of Liberation, 1654--1820	11	(10)
The Age of Reform, 1820--1880	21	(13)
The Eastern European Cultural Heritage and Mass Migration to the United States, 1880--1920	34	(27)
Transplanted in America: The Urban Experience	61	(30)
Transplanted in America: Smaller Cities and Towns	91	(16)
Jewish Labor, American Politics	107	(19)
Varieties of Jewish Belief and Behavior	126	(21)
Power and Principle: Jewish Participation in American Domestic Politics and Foreign Affairs	147	(13)
Mobility, Politics, and the Construction of a Jewish American Identity	160	(19)
Almost at Home in America, 1920--1945	179	(15)
American Jewry Regroups, 1945--1970	194	(20)
Israel, the Holocaust, and Echoes of Anti-Semitism in Jewish American Consciousness, 1960--1995	214	(20)
The Ever-Disappearing People	234	(21)
Bibliographical Essay	255	(30)
Index	285