 | Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity Subjects: Jews -- United States -- Identity; Jews -- United States -- Social conditions -- 20th century; Jewish leadership -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Judaism and the social sciences; Religion and sociology -- United States; United States -- Ethnic; 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. Berman Lila Corwin : 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. |
