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City of Promises
ISBN: 9780814729328
Platform/Publisher: De Gruyter / New York University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited

The full saga of Jewish New York, from the first small band of refugees to a population of two million, from a community ostracized in the colonial city to one that has produced leading intellectuals, social activists, financiers, and more, appears here edited by a leading scholar of the subject and narrated by four historians. Florida International University historian Rock relates how 23 Dutch Jews fled Brazil after it fell to Portugal and the Inquisition. They landed in New Amsterdam, where they were hostilely received. But later, New York, as a British colony and then one of the original 13 states, was first to extend citizenship to its Jewish residents, and Jews adopted the ideals of the American Revolution, participating with enthusiasm in politics. New York was the pivotal point in many aspects of American Jewish history, such as the contest between Reform and Orthodox Jewry in the 1850s, and in antebellum New York Jews became financial and industrial leaders as well as theatrical and musical impresarios, founded the secular fraternal organization B'nai Brith, and built Jews' Hospital (today's Mt. Sinai). While many Jewish leaders openly supported the Southern cause in the 1850s, Jews served with distinction in the Union army, and the Jewish garment industry received a big boost with wartime's demand for uniforms. Polland, of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and Soyer, of Fordham University, pick up the tale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Eastern European immigrants flooded the city. Jews left their mark on New York with a vibrant Yiddish culture, building synagogues like the striking MoorishTemple Emanu-El, establishing charities and settlement houses, department stores like Macy's, banks, labor unions , and Jewish-owned general newspapers like the New York Times. Gurock describes how, in the interwar years, 90% of tuition-free CCNY's enrollment was Jewish, with Nobel laureates and polio-vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk among alums. New York Jews were at the center of national Jewish organizational life, rallying support for European Jews during the Holocaust, and later for Zionism, and for Soviet Jews. Feminist leaders based in New York galvanized the nation while a 1968 battle over control of public schools was a turning point in black-Jewish relations. Art historian Linden trains her gaze on artifacts like a colonial circumcision clip, certificates of manumission of Jewish-owned slaves, and boxing gloves worn by Jewish champ Benny Leonard. Although multiple authors impede a cohesive voice and too many years of history are ambitiously stuffed into too few pages, this is overall a highly valuable and vastly immersing study of how New York came to be considered a Jewish city. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Howard B. Rock is Professor of History Emeritus at Florida International University. He is the 2012 runner-up for the Dixon Ryan Manuscript Award presented by the New York State Historical Association, for Haven of Liberty: New York Jews in the New World, 1654-1865 . He is also the author or editor of five other books.Moore Deborah Dash :

Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including Vernacular Religion: Collected Essays of Leonard Norman Primiano (NYU, 2022), Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of A City and A People (NYU, 2020), City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York (NYU, 2012), and GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Harvard, 2006).Gurock Jeffrey S. :

Jeffrey S. Gurock is the Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University. He has written or edited 25 books, including Jews in Gotham , which in 2012 was honored as Winner, Everett Family Foundation Award, Jewish Book of the Year, Jewish Book Council.Polland Annie :

Annie Polland is Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society. She was previously Executive Vice President for Programs and Education at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where she authored, Landmark of the Spirit: The Eldridge Street Synagogue. Soyer Daniel :

Daniel Soyer teaches history at Fordham University in the Bronx. He is the author of the prize-winning Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939, and co-editor and translator of My Future is in America: East European Jewish Immigrant Autobiographies.

Diana L. Linden is author of Ben Shahn''s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene and co-editor of The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere

Howard B. Rock (Author)
Howard B. Rock is Professor of History Emeritus at Florida International University. He is the 2012 runner-up for the Dixon Ryan Manuscript Award presented by the New York State Historical Association, for Haven of Liberty: New York Jews in the New World, 1654-1865 . He is also the author or editor of five other books.

Deborah Dash Moore (Author)
Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including Vernacular Religion: Collected Essays of Leonard Norman Primiano (NYU, 2022), Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of A City and A People (NYU, 2020), City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York (NYU, 2012), and GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Harvard, 2006).

Jeffrey S. Gurock (Author)
Jeffrey S. Gurock is the Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University. He has written or edited 25 books, including Jews in Gotham , which in 2012 was honored as Winner, Everett Family Foundation Award, Jewish Book of the Year, Jewish Book Council.

Annie Polland (Author)
Annie Polland is Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society. She was previously Executive Vice President for Programs and Education at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where she authored, Landmark of the Spirit: The Eldridge Street Synagogue.

Daniel Soyer (Author)
Daniel Soyer teaches history at Fordham University in the Bronx. He is the author of the prize-winning Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939, and co-editor and translator of My Future is in America: East European Jewish Immigrant Autobiographies.


Diana L. Linden (Author)
Diana L. Linden is author of Ben Shahn''s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene and co-editor of The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere