Jenna Weissman Joselit, the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at the George Washington University, is a distinguished historian of the American Jewish experience and a former columnist for the Forward.
Jenna Weissman Joselit
By Jenna Weissman Joselit
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Books Christmas in America
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Those who, for one reason or another, stand outside the frame of Yuletide cheer often find their voices muted come Christmas. The singing of “Silent Night” leaves us, well, silent. Not so for the protagonist of “The Loudest Voice,” one of the most celebrated of Grace Paley’s many singular…
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Culture Where Jews Choose To Muse
November’s gala opening of the National Museum of American Jewish History, in Philadelphia, has thrust into public consciousness the centrality of museum-going to the modern Jewish experience. For increasingly large numbers of American Jews, as well as their Christian neighbors, the museum, rather than the synagogue, has become the public face of the American Jewish…
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The Schmooze Howard Jacobson’s Hanukkah Humbug
*Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree In this season of good will and holiday cheer, Howard Jacobson, the Booker Prize-winning author of “The Finkler Question” and a guest last term of George Washington’s English Department, has made mincemeat of Hanukkah. Taking to The New York Times to make his case, he suggests that this Jewish…
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The Schmooze What Would Herzl Think?
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Three cheers for Tel Aviv! Recently, the Lonely Planet travel guide singled out the Mediterranean entrepot as one of its top 10 cities for 2011. “Tel Aviv is the total flipside of Jerusalem, a modern Sin City on the sea,” it noted, adding that “hedonism is the one religion…
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The Schmooze Words on Display at the National Yiddish Book Center
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree As just about everyone knows by now, the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia has opened a spanking new, $150 million facility where, say its supporters, the “American Jewish dream has been fulfilled.” Meanwhile, the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., has just debuted a number…
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Culture A Rabbinical Saint of the Ledger
At first blush, there’s probably nothing duller than a ledger book in which columns of credits inhabit one side of the page and columns of debits the other. Only someone completely at home within the world of accountancy is capable of unlocking a ledger’s secrets and of discerning a human story where the rest of…
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The Schmooze Henry Ford and the Coin of the Realm
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Right on the heels of last week’s post about the relationship of Jews and capitalism comes this cold dose of historical reality: Henry Ford’s claim that the Jews controlled the Federal Reserve Board. I had known, of course, that the automobile tycoon was no friend of the Jews, but…
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Books The Meaning of Money
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Many moons ago, when I was a graduate student in Jewish history happily spending my days doing little else but reading, one of the most intriguing books I encountered was not Maimonides’ “Guide to the Perplexed,” or “Transactions of the Paris Sanhedrin” or, for that matter, Hannah Arendt’s “The…
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