- 6 x 9.
- 288pp.
- 8 color and 6 B&W photographs.
- Paper
- 2004
- Available
- 978-0-472-06880-7
Add to Cart
- $29.95 U.S.
This rare and original work of cultural studies offers uncommon and engaging perspectives—as well as provocative and humorous insights—on what it means to be Jewish in America.
Jewish in America features poetry, art, essays, and stories from an impressive and respected list of contributors, including among others Stephen Greenblatt, Richard Kostelanetz, Jacqueline Osherow, Robert Pinsky, Sharon Pomerantz, Nancy Reisman, Grace Schulman, Louis Simpson, Alisa Solomon, and Stephen J. Whitfield.
In addition to pieces by some of the country's leading writers, the book features a stunning gallery of original photographs that transport the viewer from the crowded Coney Island beaches of the 1940s to the landscapes of Oaxaca, Mexico in the 1990s.
Cover photo © Frederic Brenner. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC.
Contents
Introduction
Jonathan Freedman and Sara Blair 1
Drashes
Merchants of Venice
Leonard Barkan 11
The Jew's House
Louis Simpson 16
Sephardic Culture and Me
Richard Kostelanetz 25
If Only: Finding America in Hasidism
Pearl Abraham 30
The Lower East Side Union of All the Shuls I Go To
Jonathan Boyarin 37
Of What Language, Pray, is "The American Mind?"
Martha Banta 48
A Eulogy
Stephen Greenblatt 58
Valley Boys
Gregory Orfalae 61
My Jewish Perversion
Bonnie Friedman 64
Don Rickles and Death
John Limon 74
A Gathering of Poems
The Material
Robert Pinsky 81
Eccentric Fractals (Isaiah, Math and Snow)
Jacqueline Osherow 84
The New World
Chana Bloch 90
"And the Darkness He Called Night"
Chana Bloch 91
Kol Nidrei: September 2001
Grace Schulman 92
The Messenger
Daniel Mark Epstein 94
Yom Hashoah in Florida
Rick Hilles 96
The Celebrity
Laurence Goldstein 99
The Lower Case Jew
Rodger Kamenetz 102
Essays, Stories, Histories
Jewish America through the Lens
Sara Blair 113
Intifada Diptych
Alisa Solomon 135
Israel and America: Revisioning History
Shira Wolosky 152
Playing the Angles
Sharon Pomerantz 164
Tea
Nancy Reisman 182
Is There a Jewish Text in This Class? Jewish Modernism in the Multicultural Academy
Julian Levinson 198
"Who's Jewish?": Some Asian-American Writers and the Jewish-American Literary Canon
Jonathan Freedman 214
Why America Has Not Seemed like Exile
Stephen J. Whitfield 239
Sign Under Test
Charles Bernstein 265
Contributors 272
Illustrations following page 134