Rachel Gordan, "Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American" (Oxford UP, 2024)

episode

New Books in Intellectual History not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from New Books in Intellectual History

Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus" (Seagull Books, 2026) 54 min · 09 Sep 2026

Kwame Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism’s High Tide: A Conversation with Howard W. French 48 min · 20 Dec 2025

All episodes from New Books in Intellectual History →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded18 Mar 2024

Publisherfeeds.megaphone.fm

Handlerec:5050398

Show notes

The period immediately following World War II was an era of dramatic transformation for Jews in America. At the start of the 1940s, President Roosevelt had to all but promise that if Americans entered the war, it would not be to save the Jews. By the end of the decade, antisemitism was in decline and Jews were moving toward general acceptance in American society. Drawing on several archives, magazine articles, and nearly-forgotten bestsellers, Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Rachel Gordan examines how Jewish middlebrow literature helped to shape post-Holocaust American Jewish identity. For both Jews and non-Jews accustomed to antisemitic tropes and images, positive depictions of Jews had a normalising effect. Maybe Jews were just like other Americans, after all. At the same time, anti-antisemitism novels and “Introduction to Judaism” literature helped to popularise the idea of Judaism as an American religion. In the process, these two genres contributed to a new form of Judaism—one that fit within the emerging myth of America as a Judeo-Christian nation, and yet displayed new confidence in revealing Judaism's divergences from Christianity. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.