History Lessons

History Lessons offers a remarkable trove of historical literature built upon fact and myth, mostly authored outside the academy, but instructive in understanding how American Jews constructed a new identity in their adoptive land. Beth S. Wenger's survey of nineteenth- and twentieth-century teachers’ handbooks, children's literature, and a variety of school and synagogue festivities and celebrations of American holidays and heroes reveals a continual emphasis on the parallels between Jewish tradition and American civic values and an intertwining of the historical experience of the two nations. This spirit, for example, inspired the Reform movement to proclaim Judaism's close links to Pilgrim rhetoric, while Isaac Mayer Wise, the movement's leader, named Moses and George Washington as equal partners in contributing to mankind's highest achievements. Similarly, both Moses and Abraham Lincoln were seen as the great emancipators, and Judah Maccabee's momentous victory over Jews’ foes in the second-century BCE was comparable to Washington's feat of liberating Americans from the yoke of the British

Archaeology · Jewish history · Jewish studies · Judaism · Mythology · Parallels · Pilgrim · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Theology · Variety (cybernetics · Victory · Classics · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Law · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Philosophy · Religious studies

• Jewish History beyond the Jewish People

  Open Access•Lila Corwin Berman•AJS Review The Journal of the…•2018

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