The Vanishing American Jew

The Vanishing American Jew
Author: Alan M. Dershowitz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1998-09-08
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0684848988

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Explores the meaning of Jewishness in light of the increasing assimilation of America's Jews and suggests ways to preserve Jewish identity.

The Vanishing Jew

The Vanishing Jew
Author: Michael Eisenberg
Publisher:
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2017-02-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9781543128130

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For Jews, life can be comfortable in the Diaspora. However, it comes with a big price, which is not always immediately apparent but slowly eats at their Jewishness. In a highly textual new/old reading of the Bible's Book of Esther, the author examines what happened to Mordechai and his people - a people who chose to stay in Shushan, Persia, the capital city of the first multicultural empire. By looking at the text, classical commentators, and historical writings, the author examines the Persian Kingdom's recovery from its defeat by the Greeks and the parallel emigration of a handful of its Jewish residents who returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the new Temple and restore their homeland, religion, and identity. Mordechai, meanwhile, had another plan. The Persian King Ahasuerus conducted a beauty contest to choose his new wife, and Mordechai recognized his opportunity to get closer to the throne. He would help make his beautiful cousin Esther the new Queen. Mordechai gained significant influence but he and the Jews of Persia ultimately lost everything. Michael Eisenberg reveals the untold story of Purim's superstar Mordechai, an assimilated Jew, descended from four generations of immigrants, whose progeny lost their Jewish identity in pursuit of Persian power and wealth. Mordechai worked to use Esther's beauty, his Jewish brothers, and political savvy to become the deputy to the King of Persia. Although he achieved his goal in the end, the story remains a lasting Jewish tragedy, masked by drunken celebrations on Purim. This book is a must read for every Jew to whom Jewish identity is important and who is willing to honestly confront uncomfortable truths. With political instability and assimilation on the rise, the book's message has taken on a new urgency.

The Vanishing American Jew

The Vanishing American Jew
Author: Alan M. Dershowitz
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2000-01-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0446930504

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In this urgent book, Alan M. Dershowitz shows why American Jews are in danger of disappearing - and what must be done now to create a renewed sense of Jewish identity for the next century. In previous times, the threats to Jewish survival were external - the virulent consequences of anti-Semitism. Now, however, in late-twentieth-century America, the danger has shifted. Jews today are more secure, more accepted, more assimilated, and more successful than ever before. They've dived into the melting pot - and they've achieved the American Dream. And that, according to Dershowitz, is precisely the problem. More than 50 percent of Jews will marry non-Jews, and their children will most often be raised as non-Jews. Which means, in the view of Dershowitz, that American Jews will vanish as a distinct cultural group sometime in the next century - unless they act now. Speaking to concerned Jews everywhere, Dershowitz calls for a new Jewish identity that focuses on the positive - the 3,500-year-old legacy of Jewish culture, values, and traditions. Dershowitz shows how this new Jewish identity can compete in America's open environment of opportunity and choice - and offers concrete proposals on how to instill it in the younger generation.

Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic

Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic
Author: Karen Wilson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2013-05-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520275500

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"This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Jews in the Los Angeles Mosaic, organized by the Autry National Center of the American West."--Introduction.

Everyday Jews

Everyday Jews
Author: Yehoshue Perle
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2007-11-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0300116373

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When Everyday Jews was first published in Poland in 1935, the Jewish Left was scandalized by the sex scenes, and I. B. Singer complained that the novel was too bleak to be psychologically credible. Yet within two years Perle’s novel was heralded as a modern Yiddish masterpiece. Offering a unique blend of raw sexuality and romantic love, thwarted desire and spiritual longing, Everyday Jews is now considered Perle’s consummate achievement. The voice of Mendl, the novel's 12-year-old narrator, is precisely captured by this artfully simple translation. Mendl's impoverished and dysfunctional family struggles to survive in a nameless Polish provincial town. In his unsettled world, most ordinary people yearn to be somewhere else—or someone else. As Mendl journeys to adulthood, Perle captures the complex interplay of Christians and Jews, weekdays and Sabbaths, town and country, dream and reality, against a relentless and never-ending battle of the sexes.

The Vanishing American Jew

The Vanishing American Jew
Author: Alan M. Dershowitz
Publisher: Little Brown
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2014-05-10
Genre: RELIGION
ISBN: 9780316135986

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They've dived into the melting pot - and they've achieved the American Dream. And that, according to Dershowitz, is precisely the problem. More than 50 percent of Jews will marry non-Jews, and their children will most often be raised as non-Jews. Which means, in the view of Dershowitz, that American Jews will vanish as a distinct cultural group sometime in the next century - unless they act now. Speaking to concerned Jews everywhere, Dershowitz calls for a new Jewish.

American Judaism

American Judaism
Author: Jonathan D. Sarna
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 558
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300190395

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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

The Vanishing Jew

The Vanishing Jew
Author: Michael Eisenberg
Publisher:
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2020-02-10
Genre:
ISBN:

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For Jews, life can be comfortable in the Diaspora. However, it comes with a big price, which is not always immediately apparent but slowly eats at their Jewishness. In a highly textual new/old reading of the Bible's Book of Esther, the author examines what happened to Mordechai and his people - a people who chose to stay in Shushan, Persia, the capital city of the first multicultural empire. By looking at the text, classical commentators, and historical writings, the author examines the Persian Kingdom's recovery from its defeat by the Greeks and the parallel emigration of a handful of its Jewish residents who returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the new Temple and restore their homeland, religion, and identity. Mordechai, meanwhile, had another plan. The Persian King Ahasuerus conducted a beauty contest to choose his new wife, and Mordechai recognized his opportunity to get closer to the throne. He would help make his beautiful cousin Esther the new Queen. Mordechai gained significant influence but he and the Jews of Persia ultimately lost everything. Michael Eisenberg reveals the untold story of Purim's superstar Mordechai, an assimilated Jew, descended from four generations of immigrants, whose progeny lost their Jewish identity in pursuit of Persian power and wealth. Mordechai worked to use Esther's beauty, his Jewish brothers, and political savvy to become the deputy to the King of Persia. Although he achieved his goal in the end, the story remains a lasting Jewish tragedy, masked by drunken celebrations on Purim. This book is a must read for every Jew to whom Jewish identity is important and who is willing to honestly confront uncomfortable truths. With political instability and assimilation on the rise, the book's message has taken on a new urgency.

Erased

Erased
Author: Omer Bartov
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400866898

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In Erased, Omer Bartov uncovers the rapidly disappearing vestiges of the Jews of western Ukraine, who were rounded up and murdered by the Nazis during World War II with help from the local populace. What begins as a deeply personal chronicle of the Holocaust in his mother's hometown of Buchach--in former Eastern Galicia--carries him on a journey across the region and back through history. This poignant travelogue reveals the complete erasure of the Jews and their removal from public memory, a blatant act of forgetting done in the service of a fiercely aggressive Ukrainian nationalism. Bartov, a leading Holocaust scholar, discovers that to make sense of the heartbreaking events of the war, he must first grapple with the complex interethnic relationships and conflicts that have existed there for centuries. Visiting twenty Ukrainian towns, he recreates the histories of the vibrant Jewish and Polish communities who once lived there-and describes what is left today following their brutal and complete destruction. Bartov encounters Jewish cemeteries turned into marketplaces, synagogues made into garbage dumps, and unmarked burial pits from the mass killings. He bears witness to the hastily erected monuments following Ukraine's independence in 1991, memorials that glorify leaders who collaborated with the Nazis in the murder of Jews. He finds that the newly independent Ukraine-with its ethnically cleansed and deeply anti-Semitic population--has recreated its past by suppressing all memory of its victims. Illustrated with dozens of hauntingly beautiful photographs from Bartov's travels, Erased forces us to recognize the shocking intimacy of genocide.

A Vanished Ideology

A Vanished Ideology
Author: Matthew B. Hoffman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2016-06-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1438462204

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While a number of books and articles have been written about Jewish Communist organizations and their supporters in particular countries, an academic treatment of the overall movement per se has yet to be published. A Vanished Ideology examines the politics of the Jewish Communist movement in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa, and the United States. Though officially part of the larger world Communist movement, it developed its own specific ideology, which was infused as much by Jewish sources as it was inspired by the Bolshevik revolution. The Yiddish language groups, especially, were interconnected through international movements such as the World Jewish Cultural Union. Jewish Communists were able to communicate, disseminate information, and debate issues such as Jewish nationality and statehood independently of other Communists, and Jewish Communism remained a significant force in Jewish life until the mid-1950s.