Key Texts in American Jewish Culture
Contributors come from a variety of disciplines, including American studies, anthropology, comparative literature, history, music, religious studies, and women's studies. Each provides an analysis of a specific text in art, music, television, literature, homily, liturgy, or 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. Still others, 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 with and borrow from each other.
?The surprisingly Jewish history of the Rorschach inkblot test,' by Benjamin Ivry
This highly readable set of essays, assembled by one of the keenest observers of American Jewish life, deftly probes issues of minority identity and distinctiveness by analyzing key texts from the cultural worlds of film, fiction, TV, and scholarship. The pace is lively and the quality high.
This sparkling collection of essays is itself a key critical text in the formation of American Jewish culture. It moves the discussion along in new and promising directions.
The surprisingly Jewish history of the Rorschach inkblot test,' by Benjamin Ivry
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Keys and Canons by Jack Kugelmass
Literature
Eros and Americanization: David Levinsky and the Etiquette of Race by Esther Romeyn
The Meanings of Marjorie Morningstar by Gordon Hutner
Is It Good for the Jews? The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Charles Dellheim
Performing Jewish Identity in Philip Roth's Counterlife by Emily Miller Budick
Film and Theater
The Limits of Empathy: Hollywood's Imaging of Jews circa 1947 by Donald Weber
Fiddling with Sholem Aleichem: A History of Fiddler on the Roof by Stephen J. Whitfield
Television
"Yesterday's Woman," Today's Moral Guide: Molly Goldberg as Jewish Mother by Joyce Antler
First as Farce, Then as Tragedy: The Unlamented Demise of Bridget Loves Bernie by Jack Kugelmass
The Arts
Jewish Universalism: Some Visual Texts and Subtexts by Ezra Mendelsohn
"My Own Kaddish": Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3 by David Schiller
Nonfiction
Louis Finkelstein's The Jews: A Mid-Twentieth-Century Presentation of Judaism by Harvey E. Goldberg
Embracing World of Our Fathers: The Context of Reception by Hasia Diner
Religion
Peace of Mind (1946): Judaism and the Therapeutic Polemics of Postwar America by Andrew R. Heinze
Kaplan's Key: A Dynamo "in de middle" of the Neighborhood by Andrew Bush and Deborah Dash Moore
Will Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew: A Critique by Edward Shapiro
One Nation, with Liberty and Haggadahs for All by Joel Gereboff
Contributors
Index
