American Jews since 1945
History 698.002 (20745)/Judaic 517.001 (28335)
Prof. Deborah Dash Moore
Winter 2009

Classroom: Mason G449
email: ddmoore@umich.edu

     After World War II, American Jews emerged as the largest, most affluent, and most secure community of Jews in the world. This course explores what “The American Century” looked like from the perspective of this American minority group of five million focusing on questions of politics, religion and culture. Although each of these three themes intersected in complex ways, they also provide distinct angles of vision upon major events of the postwar decades. The course will begin with responses to the Holocaust, a topic it will revisit at two additional points as these responses change. It will then turn to Israel, anti-Communism, civil rights, protest politics, and politics of identity, ethnicity, and religion. It will examine some competing frameworks for interpreting religion and culture, including the rise of race, class and gender. The course invites comparative and interdisciplinary conversations from multiple perspectives.
     Class sessions will often combine secondary works with selected primary texts, including films and photographs. Although scholarship on this era has increased substantially over the last decade, many subjects still are lightly glossed in historical writing. Opportunities for interpretation abound.
     Students will be expected to read, think, reflect, synthesize, interpret, and present their readings, thoughts, reflections, syntheses, and interpretations in class both orally and in written form. There will be one paper of 5,000-6,000 words due at the end of the semester. Five short reviews of 500 words each focusing on a secondary work will be required. Students may choose which secondary works they wish to review. In addition, students will be expected to lead discussion in class of student-selected works.

• · Class participation  20%
• · Short reviews           20%
• · Final paper               40%
• · Presentations           20%

• · Jeffrey Shandler, While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (New York, 1999).
• · Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File (New Haven, 1997).
• · Diane Arbus, Magazine Work (2005).
• · Kirsten Fermaglich, American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (Hanover, NH, 2006).
• · Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Garden City, 1956).
• · Joshua M. Seitz, White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics (Chapel Hill, 2007).
• · Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge, MA, 2005).
• · Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism (Philadelphia, 1981).
• · Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York, 1999).
• · Debra Renee Kaufman, Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Orthodox Jewish Women (New Brunswick, 1991).

• · Reading:
• · Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, 2004), pp. 272-374.
• · Hasia R. Diner, The Jews of the United States (Berkeley, 2004), pp. 259-358.
• · Arthur A. Goren, “The ‘Golden Decade’: 1945-1955,” in The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington, 1999), pp. 186-204.
• · Bibliography:
• · Edward S. Shapiro, A Time for Healing: American Jewry since World War II (Baltimore, 1992).
• · Charles Silberman, A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today (New York, 1985).
• · Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in America (New York, 1992), ch. 17-25.
• · Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter: A History (New York, 1989), ch. 17-20.
• · Gerald Sorin, Tradition Transformed: The Jewish Experience in America (Baltimore 1997), ch. 12-14.
• · Samuel Heilman, Portrait of American Jews: The Last Half of the 20th Century (Seattle, 1995).

• · Reading:
• · Jeffrey Shandler, While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (New York, 1999).
• · Hasia R. Diner, “Before ‘The Holocaust,’: American Jews Confront Catastrophe 1945- 1962 in American Jewish Identity Politics ed. Deborah Dash Moore (Ann Arbor, 2008), pp. 83-116.
• · Film:
• · “Gentleman’s Agreement,” film 1947, Gentleman’s Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson (New York, 1947). Clips in class.
• · Bibliography:
• · Joshua Loth Liebman, Peace of Mind (New York: 1946).
• · Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia, 1983).
• · Andrew R. Heinze, Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the 20th Century (Princeton, 2004), ch. 9-11.
• · Shlomo Shafir, Ambiguous Relations: The American Jewish Community and Germany since 1945 (Detroit, 1999).
• · Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York, 1982)
• · Irving Heymont, Among the Survivors of the Holocaust—1945: The Landsberg DP Camp Letters of Major Irving Heymont, United States Army (Cincinnati, 1982), pp. 4-111.
• · Roman Vishniac and Elie Wiesel, A Vanished World (New York: 1983).
• · Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The Eastern European Era in Jewish History,” in East European Jews in Two Worlds: Studies from the YIVO Annual, ed. Deborah Dash Moore (Evanston,1990), pp. 1-21.

• · Reading:
• · Arthur A. Goren, “Spiritual Zionists and Jewish Sovereignty,” in The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington, 1999), pp. 145-164.
• · Hannah Arendt, “To Save the Jewish Homeland: There is Still Time,” in The Jew as Pariah, ed. Ron H. Feldman (New York, 1978), pp. 178-92.
• · Allon Gal, “Hadassah and the American Jewish Political Tradition,” An Inventory of Promises, ed. Jeffrey Gurock and Marc Lee Raphael (New York, 1995), pp. 89-114.
• · Film:
• · “Exodus,” film 1960. Exodus by Leon Uris (New York, 1958).
• · Music:
• · Theodore Bikel; DePaur chorus.
• · Bibliography:
• · Ruth Gruber, Destination Palestine: The Story of the Hagannah Ship Exodus 1947 (1948). Republished as Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation (New York 1999).
• · Marshall Sklare, “Jewish Attitudes toward the State of Israel,” in Observing America’s Jews (Hanover, NH: 1993), pp. 89-106.
• · Allon Gal, ed. Envisioning Israel: The Changing Ideals and Images of North American Jews (Detroit, 1996).
• · Melvin Urofsky, We Are One! American Jewry and Israel (Garden City, 1978).
• · Deborah Dash Moore, “Israel: Real to Reel to Real,” Entertaining America, ed. J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler (Princeton, 2003).

• · Reading:
• · Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth (New York, 1983).
• · Film:
• · “Daniel,” film, 1975. E. L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel (New York, 1971).
• · “Heir to an Execution,” by Ivy Meerpol (documentary). Clips in class.
• · Music:
• · “Strange Fruit,” Billie Holiday; Paul Robeson, “Ballad for Americans.”
• · Bibliography:
• · Robert Detweiler, Uncivil Rites: American Fiction, Religion, and the Public Sphere (Chicago, 1996).
• · Sam Roberts, The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case (New York, 2003).
• · Robert Meeropol, An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey (New York, 2004).
• · Marjorie Garber and Rebecca Walkowitz, ed. Secret Agents: The Rosenbergs, McCarthy, and Fifties America (New York, 1995).
• · Virginia Carmichael, Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War (Minneapolis, 1993).
• · Deborah Dash Moore, “Reconsidering the Rosenbergs: Symbol and Substance in Second Generation American Jewish Consciousness,” Journal of American Ethnic History (Fall 1988).

• · Reading:
• · Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton, 2006), pp. 114-255.
• · Raymond A. Mohl, South of the South: Jewish Activists and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945-1960 (Gainesville, 2004), pp. 71-122.
• · Bibliography:
• · Debra L. Schultz, Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 2001).
• · Melissa Fay Greene, The Temple Bombing (Reading, MA, 1996).
• · George Sanchez, “What’s Good for Boyle Heights is Good for the Jews,” American Quarterly 56:3 (September 2004), 633-62.
• · Gerald Podair, The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis (New Haven, 2002).
• · Marc Dollinger, The Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America (Princeton, 2000).
• · Clive Webb, Fight against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (Athens, GA: 2001), pp. 43-219.
• · Deborah Dash Moore, To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A. (New York, 1994), chapter 6.

• · Reading:
• · Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Imagining Europe: The Popular Arts of American Jewish Ethnography,” in Divergent Jewish Centers: Israel and America, ed. Deborah Dash Moore and S. Ilan Troen (New Haven, 2001), pp. 155-191.
• · Stephen Whitfield, “Fiddling with Sholom Aleichem: A History of Fiddler on the Roof” in Key Texts in American Jewish Culture, ed. Jack Kugelmass (New Brunswick: 2003), pp. 105-125.
• · Seth Wolitz, “The Americanization of Tevye or Boarding the Jewish Mayflower,” American Quarterly 40 (December 1988): 514-536.
• · Riv-Ellen Prell, “Influence and Affluence, 1967-2000,” in History of Jews and Judaism in America, ed. Marc Lee Raphael (New York: 2008), pp. 114-141.
• · Film:
• · “Fiddler on the Roof,” Film, 1971.
• · Music:
• · Klezmer revival music.
• · Bibliography:
• · Stephen J. Whitfield, In Search of American Jewish Culture (Hanover, NH 1999).
• · Mark Slobin, Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World (New York, 2000).

• · Reading:
• · Max Kozloff, New York, Capital of Photography (New Haven, 2002), pp. 46-78.
• · Richard Nagler, My Love Affair with Miami Beach (New York, 1991).
• · Diane Arbus, Magazine Work (2005).
• · Robert Frank, The Americans (1958).
• · Bibliography:
• · Saul Leiter (2008).
• · Anthony W. Lee, Diane Arbus: Family Albums (New Haven, 2003).
• · Helen Levitt, Crosstown (2001).
• · Helen Levitt, Here and There (2005).
• · William Klein, New York 1954-55 (1999).
• · Jane Livingston, The New York School: Photographs 1936-1963 (New York, 1992).
• · Garry Winogrand, The Man in the Crowd: The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand (San Francisco, 1999).
• · Deborah Dash Moore and MacDonald Moore, “Observant Jews and the Photographic Arena of Looks,” in “You Should See Yourself!” Jewish Identity in (Post)Modern American Culture, ed. Vincent Brook (New Brunswick, 2006).

• · Reading:
• · Kirsten Fermaglich, American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (Hanover, NH, 2006).
• · Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York, 1963), chap. 12, “Progressive Dehumanization: The Comfortable Concentration Camp.”
• · Film:
• · “The Pawnbroker,” film, 1965; The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant (1961). Clips in class.
• · Bibliography:
• · Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York, 1963).
• · Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 1959), part III, “Slavery and Personality.”
• · Liora Gubkin, You Shall Tell Your Children: Holocaust Memory in American Passover Ritual (New Brunswick, 2007).
• · Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections (New York, 1970).
• · Elie Wiesel, A Jew Today (New York, 1978).
• · Henry L. Feingold, “Silent No More,” Saving the Jews of Russia, The American Jewish Effort, 1967-1989 (Syracuse, 2007).

• · Reading:
• · Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Garden City, 1956).
• · Joshua M. Seitz, White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics (Chapel Hill, 2007).
• · Bibliography:
• · Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (Chicago, 1993).
• · Seth Forman, Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism (New York, 2000).
• · Gerald Gamm, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Cambridge, MA, 1999).
• · Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” in Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York, 1970), pp. 168-189.
• · Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What that Says About Race in America (New Brunswick, 1998).
• · Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998).
• · Deborah Dash Moore, “Jewish GIs and the Creation of the Judeo-Christian Tradition,” Religion and American Culture, 8:1 (Winter 1998).

• · Reading:
• · Eric J. Sundquist, Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America (Cambridge, MA, 2005), pp. 1-380.
• · Film:
• · “The Angel Levine,” (1970); Bernard Malamud, “The Angel Levine,” (1955). Clips in class.
• · Bibliography:
• · Ben Halpern, Jews & Blacks: The Classic American Minorities (1971).
• · Jonathan Kaufman, Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times between Blacks and Jews in America (New York: 1988).
• · Henry Goldschmidt, Race and Religion: Among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights (New Brunswick, 2006).
• · Robert Weisbord and Arthur Stein, Bittersweet Encounter: The AfroAmerican and the American Jew (Westport, 1970).
• · Murray Friedman, What Went Wrong? The Creation & Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance (New York, 2007).
• · Michael E. Staub, Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America (New York, 2002).
• · Deborah Dash Moore, “Separate Paths: Blacks and Jews in the 20th Century South,” 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, 1997).

• · Reading:
• · Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism (Philadelphia, 1981).
• · Riv-Ellen Prell, “Introduction,” Women Remaking American Judaism (Detroit, 2007), pp. 1-23.
• · Paula Hyman, “Jewish Feminism Faces the American Women’s Movement: Convergence and Divergence,” in American Jewish Identity Politics, ed. Deborah Dash Moore (Ann Arbor, 2008), pp. 221-240.
• · Bibliography:
• · Susannah Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader (New York, 1983).
• · Laura Levitt, Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home (New York: 1997).
• · Pamela S. Nadell and Jonathan D. Sarna, ed. Women and American Judaism (Hanover, NH, 2001).
• · Sylvia Barack Fishman, A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community (New York, 1993).
• · Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Boston, 1999).
• · Judith Plaskow, Standing again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco, 1990).

• · Reading:
• · Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” Tradition 28:4 (1994), pp. 64-130.
• · Debra Renee Kaufman, Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Orthodox Jewish Women (New Brunswick, 1991).
• · Film:
• · “The Chosen,” (1981); Chaim Potok, The Chosen (1967). Clips in class.
• · Music:
• · Shlomo Carlebach.
• · Bibliography:
• · Riv-Ellen Prell, Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism (Detroit, 1989).
• · Lunn Davidman, Tradition in a Rootless World (Berkeley, 1991).
• · Bonnie J. Morris, Lubavitcher Women in America: Identity and Activism in the Postwar Era (Albany, 1998).
• · Samuel Heilman, Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry (New York, 1992).
• · Frida Kerner Furman, Beyond Yiddishkeit: The Struggle for Jewish Identity in a Reform Synagogue (Albany, 1987).
• · Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America. (New York, 1994).
• · Samuel Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America (Chicago, 1989).

• · Reading:
• · Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York, 1999).
• · Alvin H. Rosenfeld, “The Americanization of the Holocaust,” in American Jewish Identity Politics, ed. Deborah Dash Moore (Ann Arbor, 2008), pp. 45-81.
• · Film:
• · “Schindler’s List,” (1993); Thomas Kenneally, Schindler’s List (1992). Clips in class.
• · Bibliography:
• · Oren Baruch Stier, Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations and the Holocaust (Amherst, MA, 2003).
• · Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum (New York, 2001).
• · Rochelle Saidel, Never to Late to Remember: The Politics behind New York City’s Holocaust Museum (New York, 1996).
• · Alan Mintz, Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America (Seattle, 2001).

• · Reading:
• · Student papers.