Jewish Culture in the U.S.

Jenna Weissman Joselit's The Wonders of America is significant because it effectively accomplishes two important goals. First, it depicts in rich detail the nature and evolution of the Jewish culture and religion in the United States from the 1800s through the first half of the twentieth century. Second, it shows how that culture maintained its historical roots and heritage despite the fact that much cultural mixing and assimilation were taking place in those seventy dynamic years of change for the nation and for the Jewish culture as a unique part of that culture.

Joselit summarizes her book in the conclusion when she notes that the conservative members of the Jewish community, "The community's cultural custodians," have regularly tried to rein in the tendency of the Jewish culture to create an original mix with the dominant culture. Those custodians feel that the Jewish culture in the United States, and especially the Jewish home, should remain pure and conservative, unmixed with American elements.

The author, however, argues effectively that the Jewish culture is in no danger of being diluted by American culture. Instead, she argues that it is the Jewish flexibility and strength which allow it to survive in the dominant culture in the twentieth century, just as it survived in other cultures in earlier centuries.

These conservative "campaigns" generally fail, says Joselit, because "calls for inserting traditional Jewish values and behaviors into the present obscured

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hen a prominent rabbi issued the warning that Jewishness was about to be absorbed into the American culture: "Our distinctive characteristics are going, one by one; we are becoming more and more like our neighbors and less distinguishable from them" (p. 293). However, over a century after the rabbi made such a bold declaration, the Jewish-American culture is as strong as ever, if not stronger. This is true even after the Holocaust of World War II, when the Jewish population worldwide was drastically reduced through mass murder. However, this does not mean that the warnings of the conservative Jewish leaders should not be made, in 1880 or 1950 or 2001. They are necessary for the Jewish community to keep in mind that while flexibility can be an asset and help maintain the dynamic culture and religion, assimilation can also be a danger to a minority community. As the author notes with respect to the rabbi's 1893 warning, it was "designed to provoke and challenge rather than reassure" (p. 294). The question investigated by this book, then, is to what degree "Jewishness" has survived, and simultaneously to what degree have the more conservative aspects of the Jewish culture and religion has suffered. If there had been no flexibi

Category: History - J