We Remember with Reverence and Love

Hasia R. Diner

ISBN 10: 0814719937 / ISBN 13: 9780814719930

Editore: New York University Press, US, 2009

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Winner of the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies Recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Humanities-Intellectual and Cultural History It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis. In this compelling work, Hasia R. Diner shows the assumption of silence to be categorically false. Uncovering a rich and incredibly varied trove of remembrances-in song, literature, liturgy, public display, political activism, and hundreds of other forms-We Remember with Reverence and Love shows that publicly memorializing those who died in the Holocaust arose from a deep and powerful element of Jewish life in postwar America. Not only does she marshal enough evidence to dismantle the idea of American Jewish "forgetfulness," she brings to life the moving and manifold ways that this widely diverse group paid tribute to the tragedy. Diner also offers a compelling new perspective on the 1960s and its potent legacy, by revealing how our typical understanding of the postwar years emerged from the cauldron of cultural divisions and campus battles a generation later. The student activists and "new Jews" of the 1960s who, in rebelling against the American Jewish world they had grown up in "a world of remarkable affluence and broadening cultural possibilities" created a flawed portrait of what their parents had, or rather, had not, done in the postwar years. This distorted legacy has been transformed by two generations of scholars, writers, rabbis, and Jewish community leaders into a taken-for-granted truth.

Codice articolo LU-9780814719930

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: We Remember with Reverence and Love
• Editore: New York University Press, US
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0814719937
• ISBN 13: 9780814719930
• Rilegatura: Hardback
• Condizione: New
• Peso: 862 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Winner of the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies

Recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Humanities-Intellectual & Cultural History

It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis.

In this compelling work, Hasia R. Diner shows the assumption of silence to be categorically false. Uncovering a rich and incredibly varied trove of remembrances—in song, literature, liturgy, public display, political activism, and hundreds of other forms—We Remember with Reverence and Love shows that publicly memorializing those who died in the Holocaust arose from a deep and powerful element of Jewish life in postwar America. Not only does she marshal enough evidence to dismantle the idea of American Jewish “forgetfulness,” she brings to life the moving and manifold ways that this widely diverse group paid tribute to the tragedy.

Diner also offers a compelling new perspective on the 1960s and its potent legacy, by revealing how our typical understanding of the postwar years emerged from the cauldron of cultural divisions and campus battles a generation later. The student activists and “new Jews” of the 1960s who, in rebelling against the American Jewish world they had grown up in “a world of remarkable affluence and broadening cultural possibilities” created a flawed portrait of what their parents had, or rather, had not, done in the postwar years. This distorted legacy has been transformed by two generations of scholars, writers, rabbis, and Jewish community leaders into a taken-for-granted truth.

Recensione

"A startling and passionate work of history. No one has written about the early American Jewish response to the Holocaust with more insight, sophistication, and sensitivity." --Gary Gerstle, author of American Crucible

"A powerful book worthy of its important subject. Diner revises our understanding of the critical post-war decades when American Jews incorporated bitter memories of the murder of European Jews into their collective consciousness." --Deborah Dash Moore, author of GI Jews

"Diner hurls a passionate, well-delineated attack on the conventional view that postwar Jews and survivors wanted to forget the Holocaust rather than memorialize the tragedy...she uncovers a rich and varied history of how Jews have incorporated and made sense of the Holocaust...Diner is particularly compelling in her exploration of how the postwar Jewish liberal agenda-transformed by the experience of the Holocaust, immigration discrimination and anti-Semitism in America-boldly embraced the civil-rights crusade...A work of towering research and conviction that will surely enliven academic debates for years to come." Kirkus Review, 2nd Jan 09 "An important contribution to American Jewish historiography, this book is recommended for all libraries."- --Library Journal, Feb 09

"Perhaps the 'myth of silence' was a necessary stage in American Jewry s ongoing struggle to make sense of its place in a post-Holocaust world. But even if that myth once served a need, thanks to Hasia Diner s work, it must now be retired for good." --Adam Kirsch, Tablet, 23rd June 2009

"Diner hurls a passionate, well-delineated attack on the conventional view that postwar Jews and survivors wanted to forget the Holocaust rather than memorialize the tragedy...she uncovers a rich and varied history of how Jews have incorporated and made sense of the Holocaust...Diner is particularly compelling in her exploration of how the postwar Jewish liberal agenda-transformed by the experience of the Holocaust, immigration discrimination and anti-Semitism in America-boldly embraced the civil-rights crusade...A work of towering research and conviction that will surely enliven academic debates for years to come." Kirkus Review, 2nd Jan 09 "An important contribution to American Jewish historiography, this book is recommended for all libraries."- --Library Journal, Feb 09