The Wonders of America

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.

First sentence: "WHEN THE BRIDEGROOM places the wedding-ring upon the finger of the consenting bride, two persons consecrate themselves to the establishment of a Jewish Home," noted the wedded members of Boston's Temple Mishkan Tefila in 1922, firmly linking the private act of marriage to a lofty collective vision of community.

Year

1994

Language

English

Publisher

Owl Books

Editions

2

Pages

368

ISBN

9780805070026

Data source: Wikidata