Synopses & Reviews
Review
andquot;Gil Ribak's provocative study explores brilliantly how old-world Jewish visions of Christians and frustrations with 'Yankee' WASP elites in 'Gentile New York' dominated Jewish immigrant consciousness.andquot;
Review
andquot;Jews have long had complex and paradoxical relationships with gentiles, who have sometimes been oppressors, sometimes neighbors and in many instances 'righteous' people who have saved the lives of Jews. This book views immigration through a new lens: it examines how Eastern European Jews perceived and interacted with the diverse set of peoples in the U.S. who were their neighbors, coworkers, adversaries, and sometimes collaborators. The book does a masterful job of portraying the history of these diverse images and encounters. It is carefully researched and provides vivid examples. Ribak has done scholars and other readers a service by bringing together a rich and varied set of materials.andquot;
Review
andldquo;Gentile New York is a very important study, which will change our view of American Jewish history. Ribak builds his argument on a very solid documental foundation, and we can only admire his meticulousness and analytical insight.andrdquo;
Synopsis
The very question of andldquo;what do Jews think about the goyimandrdquo; has fascinated Jews and Gentiles, anti-Semites and philo-Semites alike. MThis critical look at the origins of Jewish liberalism in America provides a more complicated and nuanced picture of the Americanization process. Gentile New York examines these newcomersandrsquo; evolving feelings toward non-Jews through four critical decades in the American Jewish experience. Gil Ribak considers how they perceived Gentiles in general as well as such different groups as andldquo;Yankeesandrdquo; (a common term in many Yiddish sources), Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, and African Americans.
Synopsis
The Jazz Age of the 1920s is an era remembered for illegal liquor, innovative music and dance styles, and burgeoning ideas of social equality. It was also the period during which second-generation Jews began to emerge as a significant demographic in New York City.
In Their Own Image examines the
growing cultural visibility of Jewish life amid this vibrant scene.
From the vaudeville routines of Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, and Sophie Tucker, to the slew of Broadway comedies about Jewish life and the silent films that showed immigrant families struggling to leave the ghetto, images and representations of Jews became staples of interwar popular culture. Through the performing arts, Jews expressed highly ambivalent feelings about their identification with Jewish and American cultures. Ted Merwin shows how they became American by producing and consuming not images of another group, but images of themselves. As a result, they humanized Jewish stereotypes, softened anti-Semitic attitudes, and laid the groundwork for today's Jewish comedians.
An entertaining look at the role popular culture plays in promoting the acculturation of an ethnic group,
In Their Own Image enhances our understanding of American Jewish history and provides a model for the study of other groups and their integration into mainstream society.
About the Author
GIL RIBAK is the Schusterman Postdoctoral Fellow at the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, the University of Arizona. His articles have appeared in American Jewish History, Israel Studies Forum, War and Peace in Jewish Tradition, and Midstream, among other publications.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. andldquo;Never Before Have Gentiles Hated Jews So Muchandrdquo;: The Images of Non-Jews in Eastern European Jewish Society in the Late Nineteenth Century
2. andldquo;Lovers of Manandrdquo;: The Images of Americans among Eastern European Jews in the Last Third of the Nineteenth Century
3. andldquo;In Goodness They Even Exceed the Englishandrdquo;: The Idealization of andldquo;Yankeesandrdquo; in the 1880s and 1890s
4. andldquo;The American Is Not Very Musical and Not So Sociableandrdquo;: The Beginnings of an Attitudinal Change in the Early 1900s
5. andldquo;You Could Almost Forget That He Is Not a Jewandrdquo;: The Jewish Labor Movement and Secularized Chosenness, 1909andndash;1914
6. andldquo;The andlsquo;Greenandrsquo; Italian Pays the Same Good Taxes as the 14-Karat Yankeeandrdquo;: The War in Europe and the Beginnings of Reorientation toward Certain Minority Groups, 1914andndash;1917
7. andldquo;What the American Can Do in His Angerandrdquo;: World War I and the Red Scare, 1917andndash;1920
Epilogue: Self-Image and Its Limitations
A Note on Methodology and Sources
Notes
Index