The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950 [Paperback]

Jenna Weissman Joselit (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1996

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award Photographs, index.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A treasure trove of wondrous, forgotten lore, this vibrant social history explores how three generations of American Jews improvised on traditions to fashion a singular culture that redefined Jewish identity. Joselit (Our Gang) maintains that American Jews, in deciding what was culturally meaningful and worth preserving in Jewish observance and ritual, largely followed their own counsel, relying as much on American notions of personal happiness, privacy and consumerism as on Jewish tradition. The resulting "Jewishness," he says, was a malleable construct rooted in a domesticity that made few demands on its adherents yet called forth exuberant, short-lived displays of Jewish identification at key moments in the life cycle-birth, adolescence, marriage, death. Joselit, who teaches in Princeton's religion department, draws on a vast array of materials-parenting manuals, advertisements, cookbooks, sermons, Yiddish etiquette manuals, school primers, etc.
to show how American Jews fused the sacred and the vernacular. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Joselit (Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, 1900-1940, 1983) provides a marvelously entertaining, enlightening, and insightful view into the development of the social mores and customs of American Jewry. While she paints the American Jewish social landscape in broad brushstrokes, she also supplies myriad details based on meticulous scholarship. Joselit deftly describes how the Jewish immigrants adapted and modified age-old traditions, emphasizing those aspects of the past that seemed to meld with the perceived needs of the new environment. She even traces the development of the culinary locus of contemporary American Jewry; it is fascinating to learn that the conspicuous consumption evident at weddings and the quintessential American bar mitzvah had their genesis at the turn of the century. With both humor and affection, Joselit portrays the Americanization of Jewish culture. Highly recommended for all social history and Judaica collections.
Carol R. Glatt, VA Medical Ctr. Lib., Philadelphia
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang (April 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809015862
• ISBN-13: 978-0809015863
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,555,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an entertaining guide to how Americans reinvented Judaism, February 21, 2005

By 

Michael Lewyn (Forest Hills, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950 (Hardcover)

..showing how some behaviors that some Americans might think of as longstanding tradition were really just improvisations by American Jews, or magnification of minor customs into major events. For example, in Eastern European the Bar Mitzvah was, according to one immigrant, "no ceremony at all" - but in America it became a major life-cycle event as early as the 1880s. And the common custom of listing the names of deceased loved ones on a bronze tablet is almost entirely new, dating from the 1920s.

Other rituals declined and then rose from the dead again: Chanukah was neglected in the 19th century; as early as 1884, one rabbi wrote: "The customary candles disappear more and more from Jewish homes." Christmas trees became more common until in the 1920s, savvy Jewish marketers reinvented Chanukah as a large-scale gift-giving holiday. And as a result, by the late 20th century even some relatively secular households (like mine) ignored Christmas and made a production out of Chanukah.

Shabbat observance, though still not as widespread as one might hope, appears to have rebounded slightly from the alleged "good old days"- in 1950, only 2 percent of American Jews attended a Shabbat service of any kind, a figure that I suspect is even lower than today's status quo.

And innovation sometimes came from unlikely quarters: bat mitzvahs began in Conservative, and even Orthodox, synagogues rather than in Reform Judaism (which preferred confirmation).

Other attempts at innovation thankfully failed- for example, some synagogues' attempts to water down Shavuot by turning it into a Jewish Mothers' Day.

Another interesting feature of this book is that it shows how early American Jews came to differ from other groups. As early as the 1890s, for example, American Jews had half the infant mortality rate of Italians or Czechs. Jews were also fussier eaters- a 1930s survey showed that 42% of Jewish 2-5 years olds refused two or more of a group of foods offered, as opposed to 18% of Polish-American children. (Make of that what you will).

One moral of the book: the more things change the more they remain the same. In 1893, Rabbi Maurice Harris of Chicago asked, "Can a minority move among a majority without being absorbed by it? . . . our distinctive characteristics are going, one by one; we are becoming more and more like our neighbors." Words that could be said just as easily in 2004.

4.0 out of 5 stars Matzoh, challah and tshatshke, oh my!, April 2, 2009

By 

L. Arnold (Springfield, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950 (Paperback)

Perhaps one of the biggest strengths of Joselit's book is her ability to give a voice to the late 19th and early 20th-centry Jewish Americans, allowing them to (in a way) defend themselves and their choices. These anecdotes, quotes and articles taken from popular media at the time give the reader a "man on the ground" perspective, rather than a scholarly or even rabbinical perspective. By using examples from material culture, Joselit is able to observe the everyday Judaism, the mixing of the sacred with the profane, and the outcome of the tensions naturally found therein. Her use of illustrations, photographs, recipes and other items also serves to help the reader take a closer look into Jewish American culture, while serving as perfect examples for the Americanization and the "domesticated Jewishness" that were present at the time (5). The one complaint to be had with the book is the format of the footnotes, which are often difficult to navigate, but do little to detract from the narrative itself. Overall, The Wonders of America provides the reader with a great compendium of the Jewish American experience in the 1850s-1950s, while being an enjoyable and enlightening read for anyone interested in the topic.

5.0 out of 5 stars Sheds light on American Judaism, December 14, 2004

By 

Eric Maroney (Trumansburg, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950 (Paperback)

This books sheds must needed light on American Judaism. Often vilified as assimilationist by their enemies, this book shows how American Jews in the 20th century adapted their faith to American religious traditions. This is illustrated most dramatically in the domestic nature of American Judaism. Rituals with a home flavor, like Chanukah and Passover, take on a greater relevance than their old world counterparts. This book vividly shows that a religion that may seem to be in their death throes have actually transmuted into something related but different than its predecessor.