Syllabi
American Jewish History
Strangers in Creative Tension
Dr. Dennis B. Klein
Kean University
Fall 2008
Key Themes in This Course
Historically Jews have shown a striking resilience at surviving ambient contempt in the countries they lived in, but not until their arrival in the United States have they confronted the mixed blessings of a society dedicated to promoting their civic and material success. Why and how did American Jews remain "Jewish" in America's open and relentlessly secularizing society? For American Jews who "made it," what, if anything, remained Jewish in their lives and how did that distinctive American-Jewish residue revise and transform both traditional Jewish existence and America's progressive self-understanding? How, in short, did a fundamentally Christian America and successive waves of Jewish immigrants endeavor to live together?
This is a course based essentially on informed discussion. I will occasionally offer lectures to establish historical context, but the material of this course appears to raise more questions than provide complacent answers. Consequently, we will examine source documents in order to evaluate the conflict and concert of American and Jewish cultures.
Term Paper
- Jews in the United States adopted a social model for facilitating their modern prosperity: adapt as much as possible to the governing expectations of their mostly Christian hosts without erasing their “minority” Jewish attachments. They elected not to adopt an alternative model (one, incidentally, favored today by many Muslims residing in the West): live and work in officially recognized, autonomous subcultures, observing their own rules and customs while cultivating benign channels of communication with the larger society. In a four-part paper of about 3-4 pages each, use your assigned sources to respond to the following questions –
- Show how U.S. Jews aspired to social acceptance on non-Jewish, often Christian terms;
- Comment on the strengths and weaknesses of residual Jewish attachments in an environment that demanded social conformity to society’s mainstream standards;
- Did the model of social adaptation, favored by U.S. Jews, provide a framework for social peace and prosperity at an acceptable cost to Jewish tradition and practice?
- Does this model offer a lesson for other newcomers to the United States, or does its defects support the viability of an alternative model characterized by cultural self-determination (favored by many Muslims), especially in an era of renewed religious and ethnic expression?
Required books
Dennis B. Klein, ed. American Jewish History: Strangers in Creative Tension—A Source Reader (SR)
Dennis B. Klein, ed. American Jewish History: A Course Pack (CP)
Philip Roth. Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
Jonathan D. Sarna, ed. The American Jewish Experience (AJE)
SR = Source Reader
CP=Course Pack. Constitutes additional articles that required special permission to reprint and distribute.
AJE=The American Jewish Experience
A date shown below after an assigned reading, usually assembled in the Source Reader or the Course Pack, but also including Philip Roth’s historical fiction, is the date of this primary period source’s first edition. All other reading assignments (assembled for the most part in AJE) are "secondary," interpretive sources written by (somewhat) detached, professional historians during the past 20 years or so who have no immediate stake in the outcome of developments under scrutiny.
The bibliography at the end of this syllabus includes the corpus of sources used to construct this course.
Week 1 Introduction: Dangerous Seductions: The Thrill of "Passing" in Society
Week 2 Making History: American and Jewish
1. S. M. Lipset, "A Unique People in an Exceptional Country" (CP)
2. Jonathan D. Sarna, "Introduction," (AJE, xiii-xix)
Part I / Colonial & Revolutionary America, 1654-1820
Week 3 America’s Famous “Open Society”
3. Jacob R. Marcus, "The American Colonial Jew…” AJE, 6-17.
4. Peter Stuyvesant, "Petition to Expel the Jews…”(1654) (CP)
5. Dutch West India Co., "Reply to Stuyvesant's Petition" (1655) (CP)
6, ______."Rights of the Jews of New Amsterdam" (1656) (CP)
7. Jonathan D. Sarna, "The Impact of the American Revolution…” AJE, 20-28
Week 4 More American than Jewish? (American Jews from Central Europe, 1820-1880)
8. Stefan Rohrbacher, "From Württemberg to America…,”AJE, 44-58
9. L. Kompert, "Off to America" (1848) (CP)
10. Conference of Reform Rabbis. "The Pittsburgh Platform" (1885) (CP)
Week 5 The Question of Religious Freedom
11. Naomi W. Cohen, "The Christian Agenda," AJE, 84-97
12. “The 1st Amendment: Separation of Church and State…” (CP)
Week 6 Residual Jewish Attachments: Jewish Women
13. Paula E. Hyman, "The Paradoxes of Assimilation" (CP)
14. [Special assignment]: Instead of a summary, comment in two pages (with citations) on expressions of Jewish attachments in accounts provided by Jewish women immigrants.
Part II / The East European “Mass Migration,” 1880-1945
Week 7 More Jewish than American? Too Jewish?
15. D. Dwork, "Immigrant Jews on the Lower East Side: 1880-1914," AJE, 120-35.
16. Bintel Brief: Letters to the Editor (1906) (SR)
Week 8 American in Public – Privately Jewish: Religion, Work, and Leisure
17. A.Heinze, "Adapting to Abundance…,” AJE, 166-182
18. L.Dawidowicz, "The Jewishness of the Jewish Labor Mov’t,” AJE, 185-93
19. Lary May and Elaine May, “Why Jewish Movie Moguls?” (SR)
Week 9 Trouble in Eden: Nativism and Xenophobia (part I)
20. [T. Timayenis], The American Jew: An Exposé of His Career (1888) (CP)
21. Leo P. Ribuffo, "Henry Ford and The International Jew," AJE, 201-216
22. “Protocols of the [Learned] Elders of Zion” (c. 1902) (SR)
23. Henry Ford, "The International Jew: The World's Problem" (1920) (CP)
Week 10 Trouble in Eden: Nativism and Xenophobia (part II)
24. C. Lindbergh, “Who Are the War Agitators?” (1941) (In Roth, The Plot Against America, “Postscript,” final pages)
25. Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (2004) – in three parts:
Chs. 1-3
Chs. 4-6
Chs. 7-9
Part III / Suburban Jews, 1945-Present
Week 11 When Being Jewish Wasn’t Fashionable
26. Arthur A. Goren, "A 'Golden Decade' for American Jews: 1945-1955," AJE, 294-311
27. Dorothy Thompson, "America Demands Single Loyalty" (1950) (CP)
28. Oscar Handlin, "America Recognizes Diverse Loyalties" (1950) (CP)
Week 12 American Jews and the “Jewish State”
29. Melvin I. Urofsky, "Zionism: An American Experience," AJE, 245-255
30. Louis D. Brandeis, “Zionism Is Consistent with American Patriotism” (1915) (SR)
Week 13 The Culture Wars
31. Jack Wertheimer, "The Turbulent Sixties," AJE, 330-47
32. Jonathan Kaufman, "Blacks and Jews: The Struggle in the Cities" (CP)
Week 14 America: The End of Jewish History?
33. Daniel Bell, "Reflections on Jewish Identity" (1961) (CP)
34. Philip Roth, "Goodbye, Columbus," in Goodbye, Columbus (1959) – in two parts:
Parts 1-4 (pgs. 3-61)
Parts 5-8 (pgs. 61-136)
35. Arthur Hertzberg, "United States Jewry--A Look Forward" AJE, 350-55
Bibliography
(Mostly references to assigned reading)
America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference (from the PBS American Experience video series)
[American Reform Movement]. "The Columbus Platform" (1937) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 517-18.
Bell, Daniel. "Reflections on Jewish Identity" in Commentary, June, 1961, 471-78.
Brandeis, Louis D. “Zionism Is Consistent with American Patriotism” (1915) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 496-97.
Central Conference of American Rabbis. "Reform Judaism: A Centenary Perspective Adopted at San Franscico, 1976." http://www.ccarmet.org/platforms/centenary.html.
______. "A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism Adopted at the 1999 Pittsburgh Convention." Internet: http://www.ccarmet.org/platforms/principles.html.
Cohen, Naomi W. "The Christian Agenda" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 84-97.
Conference of Reform Rabbis. "The Pittsburgh Platform" (1885) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 468-69.
Constitution of the United States of America. "Preamble" and "Article VI" (1789) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 456-57.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S. "The Jewishness of the Jewish Labor Movement in the United States" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 185-93.
Diner, Hasia R. "Inside/Outside" in A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820-1880. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 201-230.
Dutch West India Company, "Reply to Stuyvesant's Petition" (1655) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 453.
______."Rights of the Jews of New Amsterdam" (1656), 453-54.
Dwork, Deborah. "Immigrant Jews on the Lower East Side of New York: 1880-1914" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 120-35.
Feingold, Henry L. "Who Shall Bear Guilt for the Holocaust: The Human Dilemma" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 274-92.
Evans, Eli N. The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South. New York: Atheneum, 1973, vii-xi, 39-49, 72-87.
“The First Amendment: Separation of Church and State and Religious Freedom.” In American Jewish History: A Course Pack, ed. Dennis B. Klein. Ann Arbor, MI: XanEdu, 2005, 26-28.
Ford, Henry. "The International Jew: The World's Problem" (1920) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 512-14.
Freedman, Samuel G. "The Jewish Tipping Point." The New York Times Magazine, August 13, 2000, 44-47. Adapted from Jew Vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry, by Samuel G. Freedman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Gartner, Lloyd P. "The Midpassage of American Jewry" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 258-97.
Goren, Arthur A. "A 'Golden Decade' for American Jews: 1945-1955" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 294-311.
Handlin, Oscar. "America Recognizes Diverse Loyalties" (1950) in Commentary, March, 1950, 220-26.
Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. "Message of Welcome to George Washington" (1790) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 457-58.
Heinze, Andrew R. "Adapting to Abundance: Luxuries, Holidays, and Jewish Identity" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 166-82.
Hertzberg, Arthur. "United States Jewry--A Look Forward" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 350-55.
______. "Why Did the East European Jews Come to America?" in Jewish Polemics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, 114-119.
Hyman, Paula. "Paradoxes of Assimilation" in Gender and Assimilation: Roles and Representation in Modern Jewish History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995, 10-49.
Kaufman, Jonathan. "Blacks and Jews: The Struggle in the Cities" in Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States, ed. Jack Salzman and Cornel West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 107-21.
Kohler, Kaufmann. "The Concordance of Judaism and Americanism" (1911) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 471-72.
Kompert, L. "Off to America" (1848) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 463-65.
Lindbergh, Charles. “Who Are the War Agitators? The Fight for an Independent Destiny and American Neutrality in World War II” (1941). No date http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol3no4/cal-who.html.> [Also in Philip Roth, The Plot Against America, 385-90.]
Lipset, Seymour Martin. "A Unique People in an Exceptional Country," American Pluralism and the Jewish Community. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1990, 3-29.
Marcus, Jacob R. "The American Colonial Jew: A Study in Acculturation" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 6-17.
May, Larry and Elaine May, “Why Jewish Movie Moguls? An Exploration in American Culture.” American Jewish History, 1982, 26-51.
Metzker, A., ed. A Bintel Brief. Garden City: Doubleday, 1971, 143-47.
Meyer, Michael A. "America: The Reform Movement's Land of Promise" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 60-81.
Moore, Deborah Dash. "Jewish Migration in Postwar America: The Case of Miami and Los Angeles" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 314-27.
Nadel, Stanley. "Jewish Race and German Soul in 19th Century America," American Jewish History, 1987, 6-26.
Protocols of the Elders of Zion (c. 1902). The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 363-67.
Ribuffo, Leo P. "Henry Ford and The International Jew" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 201-16.
Rohrbacher, Stefan. "From Württembergk to America: A 19th Century German-Jewish Village on Its Way to the New World" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 44-58.
Roth, Philip. "Defender of the Faith" (1959). Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories. New York: Vintage / Random House, 1993, 159-200.
______. "Goodbye, Columbus" (1959), 3-136.
______. The Plot Against America. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Sarna, Jonathan D. "The Impact of the American Revolution on American Jews" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 20-28.
Stuyvesant, Peter. "Petition to Expel the Jews from New Amsterdam" (1654), The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 452.
Thompson, Dorothy. "America Demands Single Loyalty" (1950) in Commentary, March, 1950, 210-19.
[Timayenesis. T.]. The American Jew: An Exposé of His Career. New York: Minerva, 1888, 3-30, 196-219.
Urofsky, Melvin I. "Zionism: An American Experience" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 245-55.
Washington, George. "A Reply to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport" (1790) in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 458-59.
Wertheimer, Jack. "The Turbulent Sixties" in The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997, 330-47.
Wertheimer, Jack and Charles S. Liebman, "How to Save American Jews." Commentary, 101, 1 (January 1996), 47-51.
Whitfield, Stephen J. "Culture," in American Space, Jewish Time. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1988, 43-64