Which texts are so pivotal that they provide keys to understanding American Jewish culture? The contributors to this volume come from a variety of disciplines, including American studies, anthropology, comparative literature, history, music, religious studies and women's studies. Each writer provides an analysis of a specific text in art, music, television, literature, homily, liturgy and history. Some of the works discussed, such as Philip Roth's novel "Counterlife", the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" and Irving Howe's "World of Our Fathers", are already widely acknowledged components of the American Jewish studies canon. Others - such as "Bridget Loves Bernie", infamous for the hostile reception it received among American Jews - may be considered "key texts" because of the controversy they provoked. Others still, such as Joshua Liebman's "Piece of Mind" and the radio and TV sitcom "The Goldbergs", demonstrate the extent to which American Jewish culture and mainstream American culture intermingle and borrow from each other. This work expands the frame of reference used by students of culture and history both by widening the "canon" of Jewish texts and by providing a way to extrapolate new meanings from well-known sources.
| ISBN | 0813532213 | | Pages | 264 | | ISBN13 | 9780813532219
(What's this?) | | Volumes | 1 | | Publisher | Rutgers University Press | | Weight (grammes) | 535 | | Imprint | Rutgers University Press | | Published in | New Brunswick, NJ | | Format | Paperback | | Height (mm) | 230 | | Publication date | 31 May 2003 | | Width (mm) | 162 | | Library of Congress | E184.35 | | Spine width (mm) | 21 | | DEWEY | 306.089924073 | | Academic level | Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly | | DEWEY edition | DC21 | |
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Eros and Americanization - David Levinsky and the etiquette of race, Esther Romeyn; Is it good for the Jews? the apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Charles Dellheim; Performing Jewish identity in Philip Roth's counterlife film and theater, Emily Miller Budick; The limits of empathy - Hollywood's imagining of Jews ca. 1947, Donald Weber; The meanings of Marjorie Morningstar, Gordon Hunter; Fiddling with Sholem Aleichem - a history of Fiddler on the Roof, Stephen J. Whitfield; "Yesterday's woman," today's moral guide - Molly Goldberg as Jewish mother, Joyce Antler; First as farce, then as tragedy: the demise of Bridget loves Bernie, Jack Kugelmass; Jewish universalism - some visual texts and subtexts, Ezra Mendelsohn; My own Kaddish - Leonard Bernstein Symphony No. 3, David Schiller; Louis Finkelstein's The Jews - a mid-20th-century presentation of Judaism, Harvey E. Goldberg; Embracing world of our fathers - the context of reception, Hasia Diner; Peace of mind (1946) - Judaism and the therapeutic polemics of postwar America, Andrew R. Heinze; Kaplan's key - a dynamo "in de middle" of the neighbourhood, Andrew Bush and Deborah Dash Moore; Will Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew - a critique, Edward Shapiro; One nation, with liberty and Haggadahs for all, Joel Gereboff.
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