From Europe to America

A History of American Jews with Commentary

by Janet Kerekes, PhD

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Synopsis

From Europe to America is a sweeping reflection on the history and identity of American Jews. The book challenges most premises that American Jews have come to consider as cornerstones of being Jewish in America today. Written with a personal and impassioned voice, Janet Kerekes argues that the great exodus of Jews from Russia was less a flight from persecution than a realization that the prospect of emancipation was going to be indefinitely on hold. Russian Jews remained confined and excluded, leaving emigration as their only path to emancipation.

Once in America, they turned their backs on two millennia of Jewish roots in Europe. This rupture produced a new Jewish identity, one built on myths, misinformation, and revisionism. The actual Jewish past in Russia, the full complement of reasons to leave, and why, in many cases Jews returned, were replaced with the tale of arrival as escape from endless pogroms and the fallacy that only America offered Jews opportunity; Europe had nothing to offer them. As Jewish life further evolved, social justice, multiculturalism, and the Holocaust often became stand-ins for tradition. Unlike celebratory immigrant sagas like Irving Howe's World of Our Fathers, or works that reduce Jewishness to trauma, From Europe to America shows how becoming a Jew in America hollowed out Jewish distinctiveness even as it promised emancipation at last.

Readers come away with a sobering portrait: a Judaism shaped by America's vision of itself; by the importation of German Reform, irrelevant in America as its chief aim was to secure emancipation; by Jews with an agenda; and by the steady substitution of myth, kitsch, and humor for religious and cultural continuity. What was lost when Jews transplanted themselves to America--ritual depth, cultural rootedness, communal norms, a shared destiny, and intellectual vibrancy--must be reckoned with.

REVIEWS and WORDS OF PRAISE

In this book, Dr. Janet Kerekes challenges several stereotypical assumptions concerning the history of the Jewish population in America. Her scholarly work testifies to serious research, at the same time, her text is imbued with a special sense of critical humour, at times even sarcastic, but full of undeniable empathy.
The clear and well-structured argumentation makes the text easy to follow, also for readers who are not experts in the field. The personal tone, as well as the heartfelt and existential interest of the author makes the book memorable and thought provoking. I am convinced that this is a gap-filling contribution to the field of Jewish history in America as well as an elegant proof of critical thinking.
--Dr. Katalin G. Kallay, Associate Professor of American Literature, Karoli Gaspar University, Budapest

Janet Kerekes has written a highly personal account of the history of American Jews and how they themselves perceive that history. In doing so she raises some wonderfully provocative issues such as the grave danger to the heart of Judaism of assimilation, of American Jews severing ties with European Jewry. She provides some fascinating history, particularly about the effects of the Enlightenment and Emancipation on Jewish populations in different countries at different times. Each chapter could be a book in itself.
--Terry Pickett, Charleston, West Virginia

The Central European Jewish experience is replete with alternating periods of emancipation and oppression, producing intense fluctuations in group identity. These events are interesting not only historically but also from the perspective of social psychology that has a great deal to say about how people define themselves in changing civilisational circumstances. This book offers exquisite insights into the links between individual human consciousness and cultural adaptation, and should be of interest to anyone who cares about the complexities and paradoxes of the human condition.
--Joseph Paul Forgas, AM, DPhil, DSC (Oxford), Scientia Professor of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney.

In From Europe to America Janet Kerekes offers an explanation of how American Jews come to be as they are today, and a look at what may be in store based on the present situation. Presenting Jewish history and experience as the background leading to the current situation of American Jewry, she makes clear some of the major factors, explodes some of the prevalent myths that American Jews have held about their past, and identifies the significant causes that have led to this moment. She makes a strong case that American Jewry remains both undereducated about Jewish History, deeply subject to influence by cultural constructs that surround them at various moments in time, and disconnected from European Jewry as a result. This book is an overview, giving a snapshot of 'how we got here'; it is neither a forward-looking blueprint for what should be, nor a description of 'how to get there'. Definitely worth reading for anyone interested in American Jewry, who wants to know what has transpired in considering what the future may hold.
--Rabbi Joe Blair, Temple Israel, Charleston, West Virginia

About the Author

Janet Kerekes holds a PhD in European history from the University of Toronto. She is the author of Masked Ball at the White Cross Cafe: The Failure of Jewish Assimilation and Multiculturalism: Reflections, and has published on Jewish assimilation in Hungary and its broader European context. She has taught and led seminars at universities in Toronto and Budapest, and has spent more than two decades engaged with Jewish communities in Canada and Hungary through education, synagogue life, and historical projects. She brings a comparative, transatlantic lens to American Jewish history.