Hear Their Voices!

April 24, 2008 - Robert Leiter, Literary Editor

A good deal of fuss was made back in January when PBS aired its three-part series called "The Jewish Americans" -- and rightly so. But no such commensurate fuss has been made over the coffee-table-sized book, also called The Jewish Americans, that serves as a companion to the TV show -- and that's too bad, since the hefty volume has been published in a lovely format by Doubleday.

The book is the work of the skilled young scholar Beth S. Wenger, who holds the Katz Family Chair in American Jewish History, and is associate professor of history, at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also heads the Jewish Studies Program. She is, appropriately enough, the author of New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise and co-editor of both Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections and Encounters With the 'Holy Land': Place, Past and Future in American Jewish Culture. She also served on the board of scholars who advised producer David Grubin as he helped put together the three-part PBS series.

Wenger begins right at the beginning, with the arrival of the first Jews -- 23 of them -- who disembarked in New Amsterdam (later to become New York) in 1654, and takes us as close to the present moment as possible with a discussion of playwright Tony Kushner's major work Angels in America and, by extension, gay Jewish life in America.

Impassioned Zionist Louis D. Brandeis

The key to the book lies in its subtitle: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America. Wenger provides a brief introduction to each section but then allows the participants in the events to speak for themselves, whether it's Marcus Spiegel explaining in a letter to his wife what it was like to serve as a colonel in the Civil War, or comedian and actor Carl Reiner discussing the origins of the Mel Brooks character, the 2,000 Year Old Man.

Wenger has also illustrated each section with some splendid images that show a keen attention to detail. The richness of the voices and the beauty of the images are what make this book something other than just a standard history of American Jewry.

For example, here is famed scholar Solomon Schechter noting, in an address he gave just two years after arriving in the United States, that he saw few obstacles standing in the way of American Jews leading fully Jewish lives:

"There is nothing in American citizenship which is incompatible with our observing the dietary laws, our sanctifying the Sabbath, our fixing a Mezuzah on our doorposts, our refraining from unleavened bread on Passover [sic], or our perpetuating any other law essential to the preservation of Judaism. On the other hand, it is now generally recognized by the leading thinkers that the institutions and observances of religion are part of its nature, a fact that the moribund rationalism of a half century ago failed to realize. In certain parts of Europe every step in our civil and social emancipation demanded from us a corresponding sacrifice of a portion of the glorious heritage bequeathed to us by our fathers. Jews in America, thank God, are no longer haunted by such fears. We live in a commonwealth in which by the blessing of God and the wisdom of the Fathers of the Constitution, each man abiding by its laws has the inalienable right of living in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience. In this great, glorious and free country we Jews need not sacrifice a single iota of our Torah; and, in the enjoyment of absolute equality with our fellow citizens we can live to carry out those ideals for which our ancestors so often had to die."

Scholar Solomon Schechter

Or take Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis' exquisitely rendered depiction of his own movement from indifference to a new awareness of Judaism:

"During most of my life my contact with Jews and Judaism was slight. I gave little thought to their problems, save in asking myself, from time to time, whether we were showing by our lives due appreciation of the opportunities which this hospitable country affords.

"My approach to Zionism was through Americanism. In time, practical experience and observation convinced me that Jews were by reason of their traditions and their character peculiarly fitted for the attainment of American ideals. Gradually it became clear to me that to be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists."

Wenger understood quite clearly that it's the voices that matter most. She leads us to them, then steps out of the way. And while her book may fit into the traditional format of a coffee-table volume, it ends up being more than that. It begs, in fact, to be read, to be lingered over -- and not simply for its good looks.