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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Culture Walk Softly, Carry a Big ($37,500) Stick
History comes in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it takes the form of large events that lunge across the landscape, leaving everything else in their shadow. At other moments, history is more a matter of odds and ends, a salute to the power of the serendipitous. The newspapers of late have been full of the…
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Culture For Ostricher And Poorer
Things are so grim these days, I can’t help wondering whether we might find a measure of comfort in history. It’s not a matter of learning from the past — have we ever? — so much as taking heart from the ways in which the human spirit has managed, over time, to prevail amid crushing…
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Culture Girls Just Want to Have Fun (And Do Their Duty)
Over the years, much has been made of American Jewry’s child-centeredness, of its determination to transform ancient holidays like Hanukkah into fun-filled occasions designed to appeal to the most youthful members of the community. But what of its teenagers? Has American Jewry effectively reckoned with that element of the population? Has it successfully integrated its…
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Culture When Pushke Came To Shove
Let’s give credit where credit is due. American Jews happen to be an unusually inventive lot, especially when it comes to thinking up new forms of charitable giving. From the Kol Nidre appeal to UJA’s Super Sunday and from bingo nights at the local temple to online auctions, they have managed to redefine and contemporize…
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Culture The Trail of the Elusive Etrog
Consider the etrog, the oblong, yellow citrus fruit that plays a central role in the rituals of the weeklong Sukkot festival. Traditionally sold in a protective web of silky flax, it commands a king’s ransom, prompting all manner of jokes about whether this year’s citron would prove to be, metaphorically, a lemon. At the end…
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Culture Cleveland’s Multiethnic Eden
The greening of America has assumed all sorts of forms of late, from heightened attentiveness to the kinds of foods we put on our table and the cars we drive to reusing sheets and towels while on vacation, a gesture in the direction of “conserving our country’s natural resources,” or so guests at Hilton Hotels…
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Culture Embracing Human Complexity, at Life’s Most Painful Moments
For some time now, I’ve been meaning to comment on the variety of ways by which contemporary American Jews have redefined the tradition of sitting shiva, from reducing its length to three days — and, in some instances, even to just one day — from seven, to removing the ritual practice from the precincts of…
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Culture Imperfect Idyll: Remembering A Vacation That Made History
Many of us tend to think of our vacation as an inalienable right, up there with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But history suggests otherwise, making it abundantly clear that the vacation is a social institution much like any other, subject to bias and prejudice, nastiness and ill will. The site of unfettered…
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