Jazz Age Jews (eBook)

Michael Alexander (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2018
264 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-18747-1 (ISBN)

Infos

By the 1920s, Jews were--by all economic, political, and cultural measures of the day--making it in America. But as these children of immigrants took their places in American society, many deliberately identified with groups that remained excluded. Despite their success, Jews embraced resistance more than acculturation, preferring marginal status to assimilation. The stories of Al Jolson, Felix Frankfurter, and Arnold Rothstein are told together to explore this paradox in the psychology of American Jewry. All three Jews were born in the 1880s, grew up around American Jewish ghettos, married gentile women, entered the middle class, and rose to national fame. All three also became heroes to the American Jewish community for their association with events that galvanized the country and defined the Jazz Age. Rothstein allegedly fixed the 1919 World Series--an accusation this book disputes. Frankfurter defended the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Jolson brought jazz music to Hollywood for the first talking film, The Jazz Singer, and regularly impersonated African Americans in blackface. Each of these men represented a version of the American outsider, and American Jews celebrated them for it. Michael Alexander's gracefully written account profoundly complicates the history of immigrants in America. It challenges charges that anti-Semitism exclusively or even mostly explains Jews' feelings of marginality, while it calls for a general rethinking of positions that have assumed an immigrant quest for inclusion into the white American mainstream. Rather, Alexander argues that Jewish outsider status stemmed from the group identity Jews brought with them to this country in the form of the theology of exile. Jazz Age Jews shows that most Jews felt culturally obliged to mark themselves as different--and believed that doing so made them both better Jews and better Americans.

Autor

Michael Alexander is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.6.2018
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► 20. Jahrhundert bis 1945
• Schlagworte: Abie's Irish Rose • abolitionism • Abraham Cahan • Albert Von Tilzer • Alien and Sedition Acts • Al Jolson • A. Mitchell Palmer • An Empire of Their Own • anti-defamation league • Antisemitism • August Belmont • Bernstein • Boo Hoo • Carlo Tresca • corporate liberalism • culture and society • Damon Runyon • David Belasco • Dime museum • Dutch Schultz • Eddie Cantor • Eugene V. Debs • Felix Frankfurter • God Bless America • Go Down Moses • Goldman • grossman • Hannah Arendt • Harry Austryn Wolfson • Haskalah • Herbert Croly • His Family • Hyphenated American • Industrial Workers of the World • ira gershwin • Irving Berlin • Isaac Mayer Wise • Jacob Schiff • James Abbott McNeill Whistler • Jewish emancipation • Jewish Publication Society • Jewish quota • Jews • Jimmy Durante • Joseph P. Lash • Julius Fleischmann • Krazy Kat • Leopold and Loeb • Lower East Side • Lucky Luciano • Luigi Galleani • Marx Brothers • Melting Pot • Meyer Lansky • Minstrel Show • Mr. John • Muckraker • New Class • Nicky Arnstein • Ohio Gang • Pale of Settlement • Paul Castellano • political machine • Pretty Face • Purim • Rabinowitz • Racism • Ratner's • Red Scare • Robber baron (industrialist) • Robert S. Wistrich • sacco and vanzetti • Sam Paul • Samson Raphaelson • scalawag • Slavery • Social Gospel • Something Happened • Songwriter • Studio System • tammany hall • Teapot Dome scandal • The Gambler (novel) • Theodore Dreiser • The Other Hand • The President's Daughter (1928 book) • The Promise of American Life • The Public Interest • Tin Pan Alley • tootsie • Turn state's evidence • uncle tom • V. • Walter Lippmann • William March • William Randolph Hearst • Yiddish • Zechariah Chafee • Zionism • Zionist Organization of America
• ISBN-10: 0-691-18747-9 / 0691187479
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-18747-1 / 9780691187471