Michael E. Staub. Torn at the Roots. The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 386 pp.
This is a uniquely informed and informative work on the vicissitudes of the radical Jewish left in America, post-1945, and the losing battle it has waged against more conservative impulses within American Jewry. It is also notably uninformative about the liberalism of American Jews that ostensibly f...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2005
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| In: |
AJS review
Year: 2005, Volume: 29, Issue: 1, Pages: 203-205 |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This is a uniquely informed and informative work on the vicissitudes of the radical Jewish left in America, post-1945, and the losing battle it has waged against more conservative impulses within American Jewry. It is also notably uninformative about the liberalism of American Jews that ostensibly forms the focal point of its discussion. It ably documents a variety of topics: the persistent intra-Jewish strife over political dissent, the overfree use by both sides of Holocaust rhetoric, the penchant for Jewish political discourse to indulge in citing so-called “prophetic” and “Talmudic” models to legitimize or delegitimize controversial contemporary positions, and the recent demise of an organized, active Jewish left wing. In contrast, the author displays little interest, if any, in survey data on Jewish opinion, and he is similarly unconcerned with comparing Jews and other ethnic or religious groups or otherwise contextualizing the phenomena he discusses in general American political terms. The result is a book that possesses many merits save one: it is not a well-rounded or convincing treatment of postwar American Jewish liberalism. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4541 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0364009405450096 |