Jewish Identities in 20th-Century America
Publication Date:
Publisher(s): Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry
Author(s): Marc Dollinger
Special Collection: Berman Jewish Policy Archive
Topic: Culture and religion (Religion and religious groups)
Culture and religion (Cultural heritage and preservation)
Social conditions (History)
Keywords: American Jews; Identity formation; Political behavior
Type: Report
Coverage: United States
Abstract:
In: Contemporary Jewry 24, 9-28. The article challenges generational approach to American Jews by examining three critical eras in the formation of modern American Jewish identity: the New Deal of the 1930s, the civil rights movement of the 1950s, and the social protest era of the 1960s. By doing this, the author claims, we can see the limits of linear approaches to Jewish identity. The articles concludes that American Jews have not journeyed along a generational continuum as much as they have sought to define and redefine their ethnic identity according to imperatives created in the social and political culture surrounding them.