Review by Choice Review
The primary theme connecting these five volumes is the tension between accommodation and group survival as Jews attempted to maintain their group identity through succeeding generations. Diner finds that the German Jews of the 19th century, far from being overassimilated, maintained many of the same continuities as did the Jews of eastern Europe who followed them. Sorin contends that the eastern European Jews who came in the final decades of the 19th century created a distinctive political and general culture that amalgamated traditional Jewish values with American values. Feingold records the decline in religiousness of the second and third generation of American Jews but argues that it was balanced by the development of an active political culture that attained remarkable communal achievement. This political culture, however, was ineffective in the public spheres. Its failure, contends Feingold, accounts for the insufficient response of American Jewry to the plight of European Jews during the Holocaust. Shapiro, in the final volume, concludes that although the post-WW II decades were good for Jews, they ^D" To be read along with Howard Sachar's A History of the Jews in America (1992) and Jewish-American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia by Jack R. Fischel and Sanford Pinsker (1992). For all libraries. J. Fischel Millersville University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
