Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American

by Rachel Gordan

The period immediately following World War II was an era of dramatic transformation for Jews in America. At the start of the 1940s, President Roosevelt had to all but promise that if Americans entered the war, it would not be to save the Jews. By the end of the decade, antisemitism was in decline and Jews were moving toward general acceptance in American society.Drawing on several archives, magazine articles, and nearly-forgotten bestsellers, Postwar Stories examines how Jewish middlebrow literature helped to shape post-Holocaust American Jewish identity. For both Jews and non-Jews accustomed to antisemitic tropes and images, positive depictions of Jews had a normalizing effect. Maybe Jews were just like other Americans, after all.At the same time, anti-antisemitism novels and ?Introduction to Judaism? literature helped to popularize the idea of Judaism as an American religion. In the process, these two genres contributed to a new form of Judaism--one that fit within the emerging myth of America as a Judeo-Christian nation, and yet displayed new confidence in revealing Judaism's divergences from Christianity.

310 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2024

Reviews

[Darlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Jews growing up in the second half of the 20th c. could expect to see certain books in their home libraries: Wouk's This Is My God and Marjorie Morningstar, Gentlemen's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson, Uris' Exodus, and maybe Steinberg's As a Driven Leaf.

Gordan explains in her excellent book how all of these publications, in addition to Life Magazine's famous article on an Orthodox Jewish American family, contributed to helping Jews and non-Jews alike learn what it meant to be Jewish. She also highlights how it was after WWII that American writers and society developed the idea of the three "American" religions--Protestant, Catholic, and Jew, and how books helped bring Judaism into that triumvirate.

It's well worth a read by anyone interested in religion in America, and how we got to where we are today. It may be of particular interest to 21st c. Jewish adults who might not understand or appreciate the middle class, middle brow literature that led to their place in American society.

[Marsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unusual book that was quite thought-provoking. Lots of detail about anti-antisemitism books in the later 1940s and 1950s that showed gentiles that Jewish people are 'just like you and me' and are normal Americans who simply follow Judaism, a mainstream religion just like Protestantism and Catholicism.

[ASC Library]

808.8 Gor