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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News Stepping Into American Life
Been to a Jewish wedding of late? If you, like me, have had the good fortune to attend one recently, surely you’ll agree that one of its most striking features is the range of sounds emanating from the bandstand, from the upbeat strains of klezmer and Israeli music to the rhythms of Motown, the twang…
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News Henry Ford: The Change-Averse Revolutionary
As readers of the Forward know all too well, the modern world is no stranger to antisemitism. Although an animus against the Jews of the West dates as far back as antiquity, one of the most notorious, pernicious and enduring of antisemitic tracts — “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” — is actually an…
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News Mourning the Loss of a Lower East Side Jewel
The razing last month of the First Roumanian-American Congregation, Shaarey Shamoyim, one of the oldest synagogues on New York City’s Lower East Side, hit me hard. Really hard. Following the collapse of the building’s 150-year-old roof, the city’s Department of Buildings felt it had no choice but to tear down the entire structure, lest lives…
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News Giving The Melting Pot Its First Stir
Every so often a play comes along that not only speaks directly to the concerns of its generation — to its specific anxieties and aspirations — but also renders those concerns with such crystalline clarity that the play emblematizes its moment in time. For my generation, that play was “Angels in America.” For my parents’…
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News Talk About a Bruising Confirmation
If you happened to find the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings somewhat contentious, you might be surprised to learn that they had nothing on the furor that, 90 years ago in January 1916, greeted President Wilson’s nomination of Louis Dembitz Brandeis to the highest court in the land. The president’s selection of the Boston lawyer…
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News December’s Longstanding Dilemma
As Christmas cheer settles over the nation, making its inescapable presence felt everywhere, America’s Jews typically respond in any number of tried and true ways. Some sheepishly admit to enjoying the whole nine yards, from the strains of Handel’s “Messiah” to the sights of gaily bedecked Christmas trees, and succumb to Christmas’s considerable charms. Others…
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News A Ticket Out of the Ghetto
These days, life seems so volatile, so captive to the vagaries of both history and Mother Nature, that it is comforting, now and then, to be able to point to something — a view of the world or an institution, say, that has held its own over time and circumstance. Happily, there is just such…
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News Before We Begin, Let Us All Reach Into Our Pockets
Of all the cultural practices associated with American Jews, the Kol Nidre appeal, I used to think, has got to be among the most ill-considered, let alone poorly timed, of rituals. No sooner do American Jews, most of whom have not set foot inside a synagogue since the previous Yom Kippur, take their seats, than…
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