| Jazz Age Jews Contributor(s): Alexander, Michael (Author) |
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ISBN: 0691116539 ISBN-13: 9780691116532 Publisher: Princeton University Press OUR PRICE: $39.90 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2003 Annotation: "Michael Alexander's "Jazz Age Jews" is an imaginative interpretation of American Jewish history. Beautifully and forcefully written, this account focuses on how Jews in the United States have perceived of themselves as outsiders. Alexander's arguments will raise eyebrows, infuriate some, and stimulate widespread discussion. Nonetheless, his approach may be a forerunner of a new way to examine American Jewish history."--Leonard Dinnerstein, author of "Anti-Semitism in America, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust," and "The Leo Frank Case" ""Jazz Age Jews" is a significant contribution to our understanding of American Jewish culture and society. It reinterprets the meaning of Jewish identification with the outsider in the 1920s and demonstrates the profound impact such Jewish behavior and beliefs had on American culture. Alexander knows how to tell a good story and has chosen wonderful case studies as the means to spin his narratives. With new ideas on almost every page, this is an excellent book."--Deborah Dash Moore, author of "At Home in America" |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - 20th Century |
| Dewey: 973 |
| Physical Information: 0.68" H x 5.74" W x 9.02" (0.81 lbs) 264 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: By the 1920s, Jews were--by all economic, political, and cultural measures of the day--making it in America. But as these children of immigrants took their places in American society, many deliberately identified with groups that remained excluded. Despite their success, Jews embraced resistance more than acculturation, preferring marginal status to assimilation. The stories of Al Jolson, Felix Frankfurter, and Arnold Rothstein are told together to explore this paradox in the psychology of American Jewry. All three Jews were born in the 1880s, grew up around American Jewish ghettos, married gentile women, entered the middle class, and rose to national fame. All three also became heroes to the American Jewish community for their association with events that galvanized the country and defined the Jazz Age. Rothstein allegedly fixed the 1919 World Series--an accusation this book disputes. Frankfurter defended the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Jolson brought jazz music to Hollywood for the first talking film, The Jazz Singer, and regularly impersonated African Americans in blackface. Each of these men represented a version of the American outsider, and American Jews celebrated them for it. Michael Alexander's gracefully written account profoundly complicates the history of immigrants in America. It challenges charges that anti-Semitism exclusively or even mostly explains Jews' feelings of marginality, while it calls for a general rethinking of positions that have assumed an immigrant quest for inclusion into the white American mainstream. Rather, Alexander argues that Jewish outsider status stemmed from the group identity Jews brought with them to this country in the form of the theology of exile. Jazz Age Jews shows that most Jews felt culturally obliged to mark themselves as different--and believed that doing so made them both better Jews and better Americans. |