History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage

by Beth S. Wenger

Most American Jews today will probably tell you that Judaism is inherently democratic and that Jewish and American cultures share the same core beliefs and values. But in fact, Jewish tradition and American culture did not converge seamlessly. Rather, it was American Jews themselves who consciously created this idea of an American Jewish heritage and cemented it in the popular imagination during the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. History Lessons is the first book to examine how Jews in the United States collectively wove themselves into the narratives of the nation, and came to view the American Jewish experience as a unique chapter in Jewish history. Beth Wenger shows how American Jews celebrated civic holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July in synagogues and Jewish community organizations, and how they sought to commemorate Jewish cultural contributions and patriotism, often tracing their roots to the nation's founding. She looks at Jewish children's literature used to teach lessons about American Jewish heritage and values, which portrayed--and sometimes embellished--the accomplishments of heroic figures in American Jewish history. Wenger also traces how Jews often disagreed about how properly to represent these figures, focusing on the struggle over the legacy of the Jewish Revolutionary hero Haym Salomon. History Lessons demonstrates how American Jews fashioned a collective heritage that fused their Jewish past with their American present and future.

Genres: History, Judaism

296 pages, Hardcover

First published July 12, 2010

Reviews

[Michael Lewyn]

This book shows how Jews tied their own history to American history in a variety of ways. Although this may seem like a dry topic, it seems relevant to some of today's headline topics. For example, early 20th c. Jews engaged in a sort of cultural appropriation by comparing Independence Day to Passover and Thanksgiving to Sukkos. The author also shows the conflict between Jewish commentators who focused on blending into American life and those who wanted to carve out space for a more distinctly Jewish lifestyle.

I found the chapter on K-12 education on Jewish history to be especially interesting; early educators of course focused on Jewish American achievement, but some went a bit overboard by spreading the legend that Jews had sailed with Columbus or even financed Columbus' voyage. More recently, popularizers of Jewish history have (correctly) focused on 1654 as the start of Jewish American history (since Jews actually set foot in North America then).