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 Breaking Down the Break-fast
In its embrace of the new, American Jewry has given rise to any number of far-reaching ritual practices, from kosher-style cuisine to lavish bar mitzvah celebrations. But the one that really takes the cake is the post-Yom Kippur break-fast, a phenomenon that seems to have grown steadily in popularity over the years, eclipsing even the…
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News The Possibility Of Renewal
If there’s one strain that runs consistently throughout Jewish history, it’s that of loss: loss of people, places, institutions, languages, sensibilities and identities. Given this litany of woe, I have often thought that the notion of “once upon a time” seemed more apt for the Jews than for the characters of fairytales. Occasionally, though, something…
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Culture When Vegetarians Were Rare
Now that “green” has gone mainstream, affecting the cars we drive, the homes we live in and, most especially, the determinedly pure, meatless food we put into our mouths, many Americans have taken to patting themselves on their backs for their eco-consciousness. To put things in healthy perspective, I’d like to suggest that we take…
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Culture Place and Time: When History Becomes an Asset
Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but so, too, does architecture. I refer here to those buildings that survive the passage of time and the ups and downs of their respective neighborhoods only to be turned into something else: factories into condos, warehouses into restaurants. In this instance, what pleases the eye and tickles the imagination…
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Culture In the News Again, Tuberculosis Victims Have History of Seeking Cures Far and Wide
My work usually doesn’t take me too far away from home, but last month, as it happened, I found myself in Denver, where, as a guest of the Rocky Mountain Princeton Alumni Association, I had come to give a speech. Wined and dined by those “Tigers” who now call the “Mile High City” and its…
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Culture Kosher Tech
A few months back, one of my columns explored the ways in which the introduction of electricity in late-19th- and early-20th-century America affected religious ritual — unquestionably for the better. The impact of the very latest technology, from the Internet to third-generation cell phones, on American Jewish life of the 21st-century appears to be far…
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Culture The Ivy’s Barbed Embrace
Thousands of American Jewish households were on edge this month awaiting a special guest. No, it wasn’t Elijah the Prophet. It was the college admissions office. Will Chloe and Jonah be headed for Princeton next fall? Or have they set their sights on Harvard? Yale? The University of Michigan, or is it Wellesley? What about…
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Culture Between Us Girls
Strange as it may sound, I’ve been thinking a lot about dolls this month, or, more to the point, perhaps, about girl culture in modern America. Some of my thoughts were triggered by the imperatives of academic research: I was preparing a talk on the material culture of Jewish teenage girls of the 1950s for…
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