Non­fic­tion

Jew­ish In America

  • From the Publisher
May 16, 2017

Since George Wash­ing­ton promised full priv­i­leges and pro­tec­tions of U.S. cit­i­zen­ship Jews have flour­ished in Amer­i­ca as nowhere else in the world. But has this come at the expense of their dis­tinc­tive­ness and unique per­spec­tive? In Jew­ish in Amer­i­ca, Rubin argues that the unique fusion” of Amer­i­can val­ues with char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Jew­ish ones has affect­ed every­thing from social atti­tudes to child-rear­ing meth­ods to vot­ing pat­terns cre­at­ing a hybrid” Amer­i­can Jew­ish iden­ti­ty which is dis­tinct from non-Jews as well as from Jews in oth­er coun­tries. Draw­ing on his­to­ry and the lat­est social-sci­ence research Rubin pro­vides answers to many intrigu­ing ques­tions: Why have Amer­i­can Jews been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly involved in social­ly lib­er­al caus­es? What accounts for Jew­ish promi­nence in acad­e­mia busi­ness med­ical the arts and oth­er fields? What can this teach non-Jew­ish Amer­i­cans espe­cial­ly those from his­tor­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized groups? Jew­ish in Amer­i­ca leads us on a thought­ful jour­ney from the his­toric to the con­tem­po­rary engag­ing us on this time­ly and impor­tant top­ic and by show­ing us what makes Amer­i­can Jews dis­tinct­ly Jew­ish offers hope for the Amer­i­can Jew­ish future.

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