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 Bible Wars
Now that Christmas has come and gone, we’re apt to think that pitched discussions about religion in the public square (all those crèches and Christmas trees and menorahs and overwrought television commentators like you-know-who) are a seasonal affair. But if history teaches anything, it’s that these discussions are always with us. I’d even go a…
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Culture Abe’s World: Rereading ‘The Rise of David Levinsky’
It’s not often that I get the chance to reread a novel, especially a big, sprawling novel like “The Rise of David Levinsky,” a cautionary tale about the immigrant experience that Abraham Cahan, longtime editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, had published, to much acclaim, way back in 1917. But thanks to an initiative of…
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Culture Lighting the Way
As the days get shorter and Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, draws nearer, I’ve been thinking about illumination or, more precisely still, about electricity and its relationship to religious ritual. At first blush, electricity and religion made for unlikely companions: One, after all, was bound up with the laboratory and the process of experimentation; the…
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Culture Gershwin’s American ‘Rhapsody’
Once upon a time, Harry Von Tilzer, Irving Berlin, Sophie Tucker, Sid Caesar, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Billy Rose, Marcus Loew and “Mr. Television” himself, Milton Berle, were the reigning kings and queens of American popular culture. The sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants or, in many instances, recent immigrants themselves, they changed the way…
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Culture Power of Speech
I don’t know about you, but I’m no fan of the sermon. Much as I try — and I do try — to pay rapt attention to the rabbi’s words, my mind tends to wander far, far away from the subject at hand or else is completely taken up with cataloging the grammatical and syntactical…
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News Tracing Our Heirlooms: The Bezalel Imprint
With Rosh Hashanah right around the corner, some American Jews are already in a state of readiness, planning holiday menus, contemplating what to wear to services and dusting off their Kiddush cups, readying them for immersion in gobs of Hagerty Silversmiths’ Wash. As I, too, gather my little band of Kiddush cups and trays in…
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Culture A Driving Force in Jewish Life
Much has been written of late about the Interstate highway system, which celebrated its 50th birthday just last month. A legacy of the 1950s, along with Elvis Presley and Lawrence Welk, the Montgomery bus boycott and the atom bomb, its 47,000 miles of roadways transformed the American landscape and modern American life in equal measure….
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News Tennis Anyone?
Tennis, anyone? For much of the 20th century, American Jews had a passion for sports. Some took pleasure in boxing, others in baseball and basketball, and still others in keeping score. Bowling, tennis and golf also had more than their fair share of fans. Far more than an idle pursuit, a form of easy sociability…
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