Customer Reviews

The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America

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3 star:		(1)
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This book aims to tell the story of the American- Jewish community. It includes riveting first - person accounts of individual lives. The American- Jewish community though small in number ( presently about two- percent of the American population) has made disproportionate contributions to American life in a wide - range of fields of endeavor. This somewhat awkward and heavy volume mentions certain contributions but to my mind definitely short-changes the tremendous scientific, scholarly and literary contributions made by American Jews. It too towards the end of the volume makes a serious tilt politically to the radical left. So while I applaud the overall idea and effort- and believe there certainly is much to celebrate in the overall Jewish- American story- I feel this work could have been done in a far richer and more balanced way.

While I understand the concerns of the previous reviewers, I don't think it's fair to judge a book by what it isn't. In a way the criticisms are interesting precisely because there are so many American Jewish contributors to our national life that it is incredibly hard to set limits and make final choices. There are numerous fascinating interesting voices who have a chance to speak about the incredible experience of being Jewish in America. In that sense, the book is a wonderful way to see the extraordinary range of Jewish life in The Golden Land.

Maybe it's because I once wrote a book about Jewish comedians, but I found the selections to be very congenial to my tastes. I can imagine this book as a gift to introduce people to Jewish life.

Lawrence J. Epstein, author of "At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York's Lower East Side."

The documentary of this is MUCH better than the book. I thought the book would be more detailed interviews with the people who were interviewed on the show. But instead they were transcripts of previous published interviews if the subject is deceased or transcripts of the director's interview with the subject if available. No "experts" whose research can provide additional insight into the topic or first-hand accounts of being the descendants of the figures of bygone eras. No textual description of the social or political issues involved, etc. Each chapter is about 1 individual. There is an overview of his or her accomplishments then the transcript of a contemporary or historic speech or interview with the person. The show is much more comprehensive and detailed. This was very disappointing. If you didn't catch the show on TV, by all means rent it and watch it, it is fascinating. The book, not so much. Get it from the library, the interview transcripts are interesting but not worth the purchase price.

If the book follows the show than Mr. Freedman and I have exactly the same complaint: far too much emphasis on entertainers and lawyers. Not a single word about scholars and scientists. OK, if you watch carefully, Einstein's picture flashes by, and in the final wrap up there is a snippet of Carl Sagan (who may be recognized by many) and two seconds of Dr. Judith Resnick (who died in the Challenger shuttle explosion) who is not named or identified.

....as a lifelong cartoon buff (though not Jewish), the book does tend to overlook those who have left an indelibale mark in the animation/comic book industry. While it does highlight such luminaries like Fanny Brice, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, and Barbra Streisand, yet no mention is made about those who got their start in radio, eventually becoming cartoon voiceover artists. These include: Mel Blanc (who did many Looney Tunes characters, Barney Rubble and Captain Caveman), Mae Questel (Betty Boop and Olive Oyl in the Popeye cartoon shorts of the 40's and 50's, even appearing on-screen as the landlady in 1967's "Funny Girl" singing "If a Girl Isn't Pretty" with Ms. Streisand) and Barry Gordon (did voices throughout the 70's and 80's for Jabberjaw, Snorks, and Ninja Turtles, later becoming president of the Screen Actors' Guild for a brief time). Nor does it mention the children of immigrants who branched out (it already does with Mayer and Warner), forming their own animation studios, like Max Fleischer (whose Famous Studios did Betty Boop and Popeye for Paramount starting in the early '30s, producing the latter for some thirty-some years) and Lou Scheimer (one of the co-founders of Filmation, which was behind Archies and Sabrina in 1968-70, and finishing their run with He-Man and She-Ra in the mid-80's). Also missing are comic book atrists like Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel (the creators of Superman) and Art Spiegelman (who wrote and drew MAUS, his parents' Holocaust experiences retold in a VERY cool artsy comic book-like format, which is also available for purchase here on Amazon).

Furthermore, as much as I know the animation industry has always catered their holiday specials to gentiles, but in recent years, there have been some Jewish holiday specials popping up, like "Rugrats' Chanukkah and Passover" (both Emmy winners) from Nickelodeon along with bar mitzvahs being shown in Nickelodeon's "Hey Arnold" and Disney's "Kim Possible".

All in all, the book does quite a remarkable job highlighting the noteable achievements of American-born Jews and their contributions to society with archival photographs and excerpts from their own life experiences. But the show biz aspect of it would DEFINITELY be more evenly balanced if it did include what Jews have contributed to the fields of animation and comics.

(One last postscript: there's a rabbi in both "Hey Arnold" and "Kim Possible" being voiced by the same man and that's TV/movie actor Elliot Gould, the first husband of Barbra Streisand.)

I bought this book for my father for Christmas, 2010. He is enjoying the book greatly. He and my mom spent four days at my home during the holiday, and his reading time was spent going through this book. He enjoyed sharing some of the history of Jewish Americans with me.
The book is well made, and the images are of excellent quality. I had originally seen the book in a PBS catalogue, and found it on Amazon.com for about $30.00 less than the PBS price.

As the Director of the Jewish-American Hall of Fame I was especially looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately it starts off with a glaring error (on page 2); I can only hope that the rest of the scholarship is better than this. Ms. Wenger writes "These Jews had fled the island of Recife when the Portuguese seized it from the Dutch. They took refuge aboard the Sainte Catherine, which happened to be sailing for New Amsterdam."

Here are the real facts according to references in the Jewish Section NYP Library http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/jewes/index.html:

The first book indicates that these refugees boarded a Portuguese ship, which was then captured by Spanish pirates; the Spanish pirate ship was in turn captured by a French ship, which brought the refugees to New Amsterdam.

Here's the summary from the New York Public Library's web site:
Saul Levi Mortera, Providencia de Dios con Ysrael, Verdad y Eternidad de la Ley de Moseh y Nulidad de las Demas Leies [God's Providential Care for Israel, the Truth and Permanence of the Law of Moses, and the Nullity of Other Religions] Translated from the Portuguese by Moses Raphael d'Aguilar (rabbi in Recife, 1642-8) and copied by Solomon the Salonikan, Amsterdam, 1689
Dorot Jewish Division, Jack and Helen Nash Fund
The Jews had everything to fear from the siege of Recife. The Portuguese were, as Amsterdam's chief rabbi Mortera observed, their worst enemy, "a people accustomed to take intense pleasure in making human sacrifices" of Jews. And yet, as Mortera continues in his magnum opus of 1659, a rebuttal of the then-standard Catholic contention that the Jews were doomed to unremitting misfortune (which proved their rejection by God): "God inspired Governor Barreto to have it proclaimed in the streets that nobody should so much as touch anyone of the Hebrew nation on pain of severe punishment. Not only that, but he allowed them to sell their possessions and provided passage to Holland for all 600 that remained. For want of Dutch ships, he managed to find them Portuguese ones, and so they boarded 16 vessels, many old and rickety--yet, by divine grace and providence, every one of them arrived safely. Such were the risks of the voyage and such the degree of providence, that when one of the ships was captured en route by Spaniards, who resolved to take the Jews to the Inquisition, before they could carry out their design, God provided a French vessel, which took them out of the Spaniards' hands and brought them safely to Florida or New Netherland, whence they continued in peace to Holland."

These facts are confirmed by another document on the same web site:
Minutes of the Burgomasters and Schepens
New Amsterdam, 1654
Municipal Archives of the City of New York
"September 7: Jacques de la Motte, skipper of the bark___ [illegible] requests payment of passage and board for the Jews whom he brought here from Cape St. Anthony [Cuba]. Solomon Pietersen, a Jew, appears and says that there are 23 souls, big and little, who must pay equally." It was off Cuba, then, that the French privateer attacked the Spanish ship that had attacked the Portuguese ship that was taking the Recife refugees to the Netherlands (per item 23) and now the boat came into New Amsterdam. But after an eventful trip, the Jewish passengers--perhaps half a dozen families, it is very unclear--lacked means, or friends ashore, to pay for the ride. "September 10: Skipper of the bark St. C____[page torn; St. Charles? St. Catherine?] v. various Jews. Court orders Jews' possessions sold at auction. September 16: Auction fails to cover obligation. Principal debtors to be confined until debt is paid. October 5: Sailors' spokesman demands 106 florins outstanding. Jew, Assar Leeven [Asser Levy], says no funds remain. Representative debtors ordered to stay in jail." By spring, though, there were signs of stability--and threat: "March 1, 1655: Abram de la Sina [i.e., de Lucena], a Jew, has kept his store open during the [Sunday] sermon and sold by retail and therefore shall be deprived of his trade and fined six hundred florins. Director General and [New Netherland] Council have resolved that the Jews, who came last year from the West Indies and now from the fatherland, must prepare to depart herewith."

If an amateur historian like myself can check these facts, we deserve better from an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania who serves as Director of the Jewish Studies Program.