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Riesman giving fundraising speech

My Grandfather the Zionist

He helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?
by Abraham Josephine Riesman via Intelligencer on June 23, 2021
A 1951 meeting between ADL leadership and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.

The Anti-Democratic Origins of the Jewish Establishment

The history of the ADL and AJC reveals that they were created to consolidate the power of wealthy men and stifle the grassroots left.
by Emmaia Gelman via Jewish Currents on March 12, 2021
Crowd at 2015 Purim Ball in New York City

How New York's 19th-Century Jews Turned Purim Into an American Party

In the 19th century, Purim became an occasion to hold parties to raise money for charities. These parties helped American Jews gain a standing among the elite.
by Zev Eleff via The Conversation on February 23, 2021
John Ossoff.

The Politics of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is not merely reductive; it is also productive.
by Rachel B. Gross via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on February 2, 2021

Working Off the Past, from Atlanta to Berlin

A Jewish American reflects on a life spent amidst the ghosts of the American South and the former capital of the Reich.
by Susan Neiman via New York Review of Books on August 26, 2019

Reconsidering the Jewish American Princess

How the JAP became America’s most complex Jewish stereotype.
by Jamie Lauren Keiles via Vox on December 5, 2018

How A Corporation Convinced American Jews To Reach For Crisco

A Proctor & Gamble ad-man on the Lower East Side recognized a big marketing opportunity when he saw one.
by Deena Prichep via NPR on December 2, 2018

Lonesome on the Lower East Side

The story of the Bintel Brief, an early twentieth-century advice column for Jewish immigrants.
by Jessica Weisberg via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 4, 2018

What Makes Jewish Comedy Jewish?

In the latter half of the twentieth century, American comedy just was Jewish comedy, tamped down to appease audiences.
by David Baddiel via The Times Literary Supplement on February 28, 2018

Want to Hear a Dirty Joke? Get a Woman to Tell It

The Courage and Comic Genius of Groundbreaking Female Stand-Ups
by Eileen Pollack via Literary Hub on January 4, 2018

Donald Trump, Jews and the Myth of Race

Until the 1940s, Jews in America were considered a separate race. Their journey to whiteness has important lessons.
by Jonathan Zimmerman via Salon on April 9, 2017

Bernie Sanders Bids for Jewish History

The Vermont senator isn’t religious, but a victory in Iowa or New Hampshire would be the first ever for a Jewish presidential candidate.
by Russell Berman via The Atlantic on January 27, 2016
A naked woman bathes.

How the Hays Code Took the Sex Out of Hollywood

A group of early 20th-century Catholics sought to impose their standards of morality onto the growing and scandal-ridden Hollywood film industry.
by Michael Koresky via Literary Hub on June 24, 2025
Irving Thalberg and his wife, with Louis Mayer.

The Wizard Behind Hollywood’s Golden Age

How Irving Thalberg helped turn M-G-M into the world’s most famous movie studio—and gave the film business a new sense of artistry and scale.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on June 9, 2025
Brown University women's glee club, including Clara Gomberg, the first Jewish woman to graduate Brown.

“A Jewess Would Not Be Acceptable”

When it came to antisemitism, women’s colleges were no better than the Ivy League.
by Amy Sohn via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on May 8, 2025
Rachel Cockerell’s “Melting Point" tells the story of an exiled people and their effort to find a place to call home.

When Jews Sought the Promised Land in Texas

While some Jewish exiles dreamed of a homeland in Palestine, the Jewish Territorial Organization fixed its hopes on Galveston.
by Kathryn Schulz via The New Yorker on April 28, 2025
City College of New York in a still from Joseph Dorman’s Arguing the World, 1997.

The 176-Year Argument

How the City College of New York went from an experiment in public education to an intellectual hot spot for working class and immigrant students.
by Vivian Gornick via New York Review of Books on April 3, 2025
Leonard Bernstein practices with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1967.

How Leonard Bernstein Changed the Canon

In 1966, the conductor arrived in Vienna with a mission: to restore Gustav Mahler’s place in 20th-century music.
by David Denby via The Atlantic on April 1, 2025
Henrietta Szold welcoming Jewish refugees from Poland to Palestine, February 1943.

Henrietta Szold & the Return to Zion

Henrietta Szold devoted her life to building a Jewish society in Palestine. But how useful is her ’cultural’ Zionism for Jewish Americans today?
by Nicholas Lemann via New York Review of Books on February 20, 2025
The entrance of Fischer Bros, a Jewish grocery store, with a line of people going out the door.

The Rise of the Jewish Grocer

From kosher butchers, fruit peddlers, and herring dealers on the Lower East Side to supermarket innovators across the country
by Jenna Weissman Joselit via Tablet on February 3, 2025

The Political Force Behind Zionism

A new book traces the rise of the Israel lobby and the challenges it has faced as global criticism of Israel has intensified.
by Ted Steinberg via Jacobin on January 27, 2025
Ballet dancers (all ages and genders)posing in christmas costumes.

How Christmas Became an All-American Holiday

What kind of Christmas did we used to know? To hear some critics and historians tell it, the holiday used to be a lot more religious than it is now.
by Samuel Goldman via Compact on December 24, 2024
A stone sign that reads "Gateways Hospital and Community Mental Health Center."

How Louis Ziskind Helped Deinstitutionalize Mental Healthcare

A community health center in Los Angeles that sought to get patients back into the community.
by Alex Sayf Cummings via Nursing Clio on September 4, 2024
Still from a "Between the Temples," showing a man and woman lying opposite each other.

How Resilient Are Jewish American Traditions?

"Between the Temples" tackles the anxieties around cultural assimilation—and finds continuity among very different generations.
by Mark Asch via The Atlantic on August 30, 2024
Storefront of Nazi-owned "Aryan Book Store" called "Silver Shirt Literature."

Bigoted Bookselling: When the Nazis Opened a Propaganda Bookstore in Los Angeles

On Hitler’s attempt to win Americans over to his cause.
by Evan Friss via Literary Hub on August 21, 2024
Gratz Cohen and the manuscript of one of his poems.

A Savannah Poet

The Civil War cut short many lives, and a new a book that blends the genres of history and memoir sets out the resurrect the memory of one of those lives.
by Jason K. Friedman via University Of South Carolina Press on July 15, 2024
Billie Holiday singing in a recording studio.

Decades After Billie Holiday’s Death, ‘Strange Fruit’ is Still a Searing Testament to Injustice

Christian and Jewish themes influenced the world of art around one of jazz’s greatest singers.
by Tracy Fessenden via The Conversation on July 15, 2024
Norman Mailer in front of Brooklyn skyline.

The New York Intellectuals’ Battle of the Sexes

Norman Mailer’s generation learned to “write like men.” But their female contemporaries from Mary McCarthy to Diana Trilling pioneered a more enduring style.
by Michael Kimmage via The New Republic on July 5, 2024
Richard Dreyfuss plays shark expert Hooper in Steven Spielberg’s classic 1975 film, “Jaws.”

The Stories Hollywood Tells About America

How three movies set on the Fourth of July reproduce popular myth, but reveal even more through what they leave unsaid.
by Emily Tamkin via New Lines on July 4, 2024
Horace M. Kallen c. 1929. Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Kultur Klux Klan and Cultural Pluralism at One Hundred

Looking back at Horace M. Kallen's collection of essays entitled "Culture and Democracy in the United States."
by Chad Alan Goldberg via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on June 27, 2024
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