Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950

Title: Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950
Author: Jenna Weissman Joselit
I: 1709574
ISBN: 0809015862
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Published: 1996
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 368
Section: History | Jewish | General
Condition Note: Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description: The selective relish with which most American Jews affirm their identity - consuming kosher delicacies once a year, extravagantly celebrating the bar mitzvahs of their sons and the weddings of their daughters has usually given rise to satire or consternation. The Wonders of America offers an alternative perspective, for this innovative social history of Jewish culture highlights the cultural ingenuity and adaptive genius of American Jewish life - from the end of the nineteenth century through the postwar period. Drawing on advertisements and etiquette manuals, sermons and surveys, Jenna Weissman Joselit offers a lively, mordant, and richly illustrated account of how American Jews created their distinctive culture. In vivid, often humorous detail, she describes how they raised their children, decorated their homes, shopped and cooked, celebrated holidays, and marked birth, marriage, and death as they became at home in America. Her fresh, original analysis makes clear that it is not the theoretical debates of rabbis and scholars but the small choices of daily life that shape and sustain a culture.