Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American - Rachel Gordan

Descriere Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American - Rachel Gordan

The period immediately following World War II was an era of dramatic transformation for Jews in America. At the start of the 1940s, President Roosevelt had to all but promise that if Americans entered the war, it would not be to save the Jews. By the end of the decade, antisemitism was in decline and Jews were moving toward general acceptance in American society. \nDrawing on several archives, magazine articles, and nearly-forgotten bestsellers, Postwar Stories examines how Jewish middlebrow literature helped to shape post-Holocaust American Jewish identity. For both Jews and non-Jews accustomed to antisemitic tropes and images, positive depictions of Jews had a normalizing effect. Maybe Jews were just like other Americans, after all. \n \nAt the same time, anti-antisemitism novels and Introduction to Judaism literature helped to popularize the idea of Judaism as an American religion. In the process, these two genres contributed to a new form of Judaism--one that fit within the emerging myth of America as a Judeo-Christian nation, and yet displayed new confidence in revealing Judaism's divergences from Christianity.\n

Detalii

Brand

Oxford University Press, Usa

Categorie

ENSTK

EAN / GTIN

9780197694336

Magazine

1

Disponibilitate

in stock