Synopses & Reviews
The increasingly popular genre of “alternative histories” has captivated audiences by asking questions like “what if the South had won the Civil War?” Such speculation can be instructive, heighten our interest in a topic, and shed light on accepted history. In
The Holocaust Averted, Jeffrey Gurock imagines what might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred and forces readers to contemplate how the road to acceptance and empowerment for today’s American Jews could have been harder than it actually was.
Based on reasonable alternatives grounded in what is known of the time, places, and participants, Gurock presents a concise narrative of his imagined war-time saga and the events that followed Hitler’s military failures. While German Jews did suffer under Nazism, the millions of Jews in Eastern Europe survived and were able to maintain their communities. Since few people were concerned with the safety of European Jews, Zionism never became popular in the United States and social antisemitism kept Jews on the margins of society. By the late 1960s, American Jewish communities were far from vibrant.
This alternate history—where, among many scenarios, Hitler is assassinated, Japan does not bomb Pearl Harbor, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt is succeeded after two terms by Robert A. Taft—does cause us to review and better appreciate history. As Gurock tells his tale, he concludes every chapter with a short section that describes what actually happened and, thus, further educates the reader.
Review
"Jeffrey Gurocks masterful and sensitively drawn survey offers a penetrating blend of distinguished scholarship and acute observation from someone who has lived the life and knows well its complexities and nuances. Drawing upon a wide range of opinions and shades of Jewishness, he has fashioned a vivid, richly detailed, and endlessly fascinating narrative about variegated Jewish life in the iconic diaspora metropolis. Balanced, engrossing, and learned. Read and enjoy!"-Thomas Kessner,Distinguished Professor of History, City University of New York Graduate Center
Review
"In 1900, the Jewish population of New York was despised, impoverished, and ghettoized. A century later, it had become the most accomplished, the most prosperous, and the most successful ethnic group in the nation. This is the story of that journey and that achievement, and no one has told it with more authority and sensitivity than Jeffrey Gurock. And as they used to say on the subway advertisement, you don't have to be Jewish to love this book."-Kenneth T. Jackson,editor-in-chief, The Encyclopdia of New York City
Review
"In 1960, Fortune magazine published an article that trumpeted the 'Jewish élan' of New York City, and credited the Jewish community with contributing 'mightily to the citys dramatic character — its excitement, its originality, its stridency, its unexpectedness.' In his exhaustive history of Jews in New York from 1920 to the present, Gurock covers the wax and wane of immigration, segregation, suburban flight, anti-Semitism, socialist conviction and Zionism. In the 1920s, Jews continued to settle in clusters, mostly on the Lower East Side and in socialist cooperative housing in the Bronx. From there, Gurock sketches a map of the Jewish communitys sprawl: Orthodox Jews of Eastern Europe across Brooklyn, Sephardim in Flatbush and Bensonhurst, German Jews in Washington Heights and Yorkville, and an increasingly affluent mix on the West Side of Manhattan and in Jackson Heights and Forest Hills, Queens. After World War II, Hasidic sects established themselves in Williamsburg and Crown Heights, in a concentration that homogenized previous divisions. Groups that 'had once sprawled from Bratislava to Odessa were now located a few streets from one another.' Many areas suffered from poverty and crime, which increased racial tensions, and in 1964, race riots broke out. Anecdotes embroider and occasionally deepen his broad sweep: Leonard Bernsteins 'West Side Story,' for example, was initially about Italian Catholics and Jews (he later replaced the Jewish family with a Puerto Rican one)."-Anna Altman,New York Times
Review
“In his exhaustive history of Jews in New York from 1920 to present, Gurock covers the wax and wane of immigration, segregation, suburban flight, anti-Semitism, socialist conviction and Zionism.”-Anna Altman,
Review
"You don't have to live in New York, or even have visited, to enjoy the book. Gurock intermingles much of the narrative with anecdotes and interesting data."-Burton Boxerman,St. Louis Jewish Light
Review
"This is an exciting, provocative, path-breaking book. It is complex, textured in historical detail, and full of literally hundreds of various scenarios and possibilities of 'what if.' Gurock has done a masterful job."
Review
"Gurock’s book is a tour de force, on the cutting edge of an emerging genre. He has mastered American political history, European military and political history, and every aspect of American Jewry over a period of about three decades, and crafted an intelligent, entertaining, imaginative, and even suspenseful narrative. I cannot think of anyone who could have duplicated this superb book."
Review
"With imagination and erudition, courage and wit—including a suddenly stalwart Neville Chamberlain defying Hitler at Munich and a Joseph P. Kennedy (Jr.) becoming Israel's most important friend—Jeffrey Gurock ponders how a fragile and skittish American Jewry might have evolved without Pearl Harbor and Auschwitz. His surprisingly dystopian vision, filled with familiar characters in unfamiliar and intriguing roles, is sure to challenge—and, quite possibly, to infuriate."
Review
"Hot on the trail of surprise turns and eerie parallels in this 'what if' romp through the most momentous years of 20th century history, the reader ultimately confronts the dilemmas of Jewish life today."
Review
"If [Philip] Roth and [Quentin] Tarantino could rewrite the past, why not allow the historian - in this case Yeshiva University scholar Jeffrey Gurock - to play with facts and offer, with many of the trappings of scholarship, an imagined history?"
Synopsis
Jews in Gotham follows the Jewish saga in ever-changing New York City from the end of the First World War into the first decade of the new millennium. This lively portrait details the complex dynamics that caused Jews to persist, abandon, or be left behind in their neighborhoods during critical moments of the past century. It shows convincingly that New York retained its preeminence as the capital of American Jews because of deep roots in local worlds.
Synopsis
In The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938–1967, Jeffrey Gurock imagines what might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred and challenges readers to contemplate how the road to acceptance and empowerment for today’s American Jews would have been harder than it actually was. As Gurock tells his tale, he concludes every chapter with a short section that describes what actually happened and, thus, further educates the reader.
About the Author
Jeffrey S. Gurock is Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University. A prize-winning author, he has written or edited fifteen books in American Jewish history. Gurock has served as chair of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society and as associate editor of American Jewish History. He lives with his family in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.