Book Talk- Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American

This program originally aired on March 19th, 2024 at 6:30pm Eastern at the Center for Jewish History.
Author Rachel Gordan joined us for an in-person discussion of her new book "Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American" with moderator and longtime friend Dara Horn. Rachel's research pulled from magazine articles, nearly-forgotten bestsellers and numerous archives including collections at the American Jewish Historical Society. She examined how positive depictions of Jews found in Jewish middlebrow literature of the mid-20th century helped to shape a newer American Jewish identity post-Holocaust. The depiction of Jewish people in literature and the press evolved significantly between 1920 and 1970; Jews went from being described as persecuted, alienated, and marginalized race of people, to being Americans who belonged to a specific religion, before largely being identified as a cultural group. Rachel Gordan's work examines how writers of popular culture were instrumental in educating the American public about Jewishness, while also reminding readers how unAmerican it was to be anti- Semitic.