Postwar stories

• Verfasst von: Gordan, Rachel [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Postwar stories
• Titelzusatz: how books made Judaism American
• Verf.angabe: Rachel Gordan
• Verlagsort: New York, NY
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: [2024]
• Umfang: xi, 298 Seiten
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Oxford scholarship online
• ISBN: 978-0-19-769433-6
• Schlagwörter: (g)USA / (s)Judentum / (s)Literatur / (z)Geschichte 1945-1976
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Online-Ausgabe
• RVK-Notation: HU 1520
• K10plus-PPN: 1890033766

Abstract

Drawing on several archives, magazine articles, and nearly-forgotten bestsellers, Rachel Gordan examines how Jewish middlebrow literature helped to shape post-Holocaust American Jewish identity. Positive depictions of Jews in popular literature had a normalizing effect, while at the same time forging the notion of Judaism as an American religion distinct from Christianity but part of America's alleged 'Judeo-Christian' heritage

Abstract

"It seems so obvious today to identify Judaism as a "religion" that it comes as a surprise to learn that it is only since the Second World War that Judaism has been widely considered a "religion" by most non-Jewish Americans. The consensus among American Christians before then was that Judaism was a race. This changed with the war. Into this historical narrative about the dramatic transformations of post-WWII American Judaism, Postwar Stories brings the cultural achievements of two strands of midcentury middlebrow literature: anti-antisemitism novels of the 1940s and Introduction to Judaism literature of the 1940s and 1950s. While middlebrow literature did not cause societal change on its own, the books and magazine articles analyzed in Postwar Stories furnished an arena for articulating and questioning explanations of postwar American Jews and Judaism. For Jewish readers, depictions of Jews in anti-antisemitism and Introduction to Judaism literature were capable of providing reassurance or harm, depending on the associations and emotions they evoked. For young people coming of age in the late 1940s, reading a popular novel about antisemitism that became an Academy Award-winning film, or encountering a Life magazine story about Judaism could make a strong impression on their understanding of the significance of antisemitism and Judaism in American culture. Popular culture matters when studying American attitudes, because books, magazine articles, and films provide an intimacy to otherwise foreign subjects, making them personally meaningful to readers and viewers"--