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.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780691187471
Publisert
2018
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter