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The history of conflict between New York City’s Irish Americans and east European Jews dates back to the close of the 19th century. They disputed over jobs, union memberships, housing, and frequently over politics. These conflicts crescendoed exponentially in the decade or more of the Great Depression in Gaelic neighborhoods, now more than ever, the word on the street was that the Jews were taking over. The rhetoric and organizations of Michigan-based radio preacher Father Charles Coughlin gave voice and activism to local frustrations. However, in 1940, within a new neighborhood built in the Bronx that attracted a majority of Irish and a large proportion of Jews, there was no organized anti-Semitism, no outbursts of violence, or even significant complaints that more callow Jews were being roughed up in the streets or play areas. If animosities existed, negative feelings were kept within families and were not expressed in daily youthful encounters. Why life in Parkchester was so different is the conceit of this study. Its community history from 1940–1970s constituted a turning point in their previously-contested ethnic group relationship while what went on as Jews and the Irish ‘got along’ marks off the limits of conviviality of that time.

Jeffrey S. Gurock recounts the history of Orthodox Jews in America, from the time of the early arrivals in the 17th century to the present, and examines how Orthodox Jewish men and women coped with the personal, familial, and communal challenges of religious freedom, economic opportunity, and social integration. His absorbing narrative portrays the varied lifestyles of Orthodox Jews and exposes the historical tensions that have pitted the pious against the majority of their co-religionists who have disregarded Orthodox teachings and practice. Exploring Orthodox reactions to alternative Jewish religious movements that have flourished in a pluralistic America, Gurock illuminates contemporary controversies about the compatibility of modern culture with a truly pious life, providing a nuanced view of the most intriguing present-day intra-Orthodox struggle -- the relationship of feminism to traditional faith. The book exposes the hypocrisy of Jews who, while outwardly devout in their careful observance of religious ritual, have behaved as moral miscreants. Anyone seeking to understand the American Jewish experience will find Orthodox Jews in America to be essential reading.

Judaism's Encounter with American Sports examines how sports entered the lives of American Jewish men and women and how the secular values of sports threatened religious identification and observance. What do Jews do when a society -- in this case, a team -- \"chooses them in,\" but demands commitments that clash with ancestral ties and practices? Jeffrey S. Gurock uses the experience of sports to illuminate an important mode of modern Jewish religious conflict and accommodation to America. He considers the defensive strategies American Jewish leaders have employed in response to sports' challenges to identity, such as using temple and synagogue centers, complete with gymnasiums and swimming pools, to attract the athletically inclined to Jewish life. Within the suburban frontiers of post--World War II America, sports-minded modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis competed against one another for the allegiances of Jewish athletes and all other Americanized Jews. In the present day, tensions among Jewish movements are still played out in the sports arena. Today, in a mostly accepting American society, it is easy for sports-minded Jews to assimilate completely, losing all regard for Jewish ties. At the same time, a very tolerant America has enabled Jews to succeed in the sports world, while keeping faith with Jewish traditions. Gurock foregrounds his engaging book against his own experiences as a basketball player, coach, and marathon runner. By using the metaphor of sports, Judaism's Encounter with American Sports underscores the basic religious dilemmas of our day.

[...]while always the scholar, Adler nonetheless found a way to slip in words of praise for Jews and support for the United States’ actions during the Spanish-American War, in an account of an inquisitional trial in Mexico, a document that at first blush had no apologetic motif at all.4 But even as he granted all due respect to Straus and the coterie of dedicated amateurs who carefully defended Jewish status using history, Adler ultimately had a much higher goal in mind. [...]in communicating with other scholars about these varied fields, Adler asserted that it was important for American Jewish specialists to go beyond “political history or institutional history or ecclesiastical history”-the types of studies that until then had occupied their attention-and to delve into “the life of the people and all that relates to it.” [...]several months subsequent to this speech, Adler soberly told his colleague and friend, Professor Richard Gottheil-a frequent contributor to the journal-that while the “Historical Society… has at least established an oasis of earnestness in a desert of frivolity,” unless the group broadened its purview, it would “go the way of all such local and special Societies.” [...]Baron wrote to Marcus that without him the session “would be almost like a wedding without the bridegroom.” In coming to Peekskill, they indicated that the American Jewish story was worthy of their attention.12 From that point on-while the society’s journal on occasion published pieces that were not up to academic standards, like a 1965 article on Billy the Kid and the Jews-the American Jewish Historical Quarterly [AJHQ] increasingly became a noteworthy academic organ.13 Perhaps the best sign that the new core work of the society was maturing and garnering respect took place in 1957 when the distinguished American historian of nativism John Higham agreed to publish “Social Discrimination against Jews in America, 1830-1930” in AJHQ.

[...]when he documented the \"temper and conduct \"of the first Jews in Georgia, charles c. Jones Jr.-a Presbyterian, who in the late nineteenth century, earned a reputation as the \"historian of Georgia\"-concluded, \"[In] the record there are no stains. Axiomatically, to study the so-called \"downtown\" east european community required then-as it does today-a facility with yiddish and, to a lesser extent, Hebrew, to read the immigrants' newspapers, to examine synagogue minute books, and to understand rabbinic religious disputes, etc. [...]the earliest writers-primarily those of central european extraction-did not have ongoing relation3. ships with their potential subjects that would have afforded them the chance to hear, record and then publish their first-person accounts of their life and times.

In one most revealing criticism, a historian who has deepened our understanding of women's roles in synagogue life has implicitly suggested that Jick's social history approach, which focused solely on men's experiences, engendered in her a desire to balance the record.2 Beyond these forays into looking at prior landmark works, our focus on advancing the horizons of scholarship also led us to tap into the work of those who were making their marks in new or underappreciated areas of research. [...]the journal was, for example, a forum for studies of \"performance and Jewish cultural history\" and Jewish engagement with American sports.

The late Friday night service-usually conducted at 8 p.m. throughout the year-has been seen as a significant ritual difference distinguishing Conservative from Orthodox synagogue practice in twentieth-century America. Yet, in the 1920s-1940s, during an era of denominational indistinctiveness, some Orthodox congregations ignored the regulations of the Code of Jewish Law and followed what the Conservatives did. More generally, American Orthodox synagogues experimented with reaching potential Friday night worshippers without violating the halakhah. They created \"forums\" or quasi-services of varying sorts. In the early post-World War II period, as denominational lines calcified, some Orthodox congregations that had emulated Conservative practice gravitated toward that movement. Other Orthodox synagogues abandoned full-fledged late Friday night services. Still, \"forums\" continued to be part of the national Orthodox scene into the 1950s. In the 1980s, late Friday night experiences returned to American Orthodoxy's agenda as it sought to influence disconnected Jews.