Jeffrey S. Gurock. The Jews of Harlem

Nearly forty years after the publication of his first monograph, When Harlem Was Jewish, 1870–1930 (1979), Jeffrey S. Gurock has returned to Harlem, revisiting the story of the Jewish community’s beginnings in the 1870s and 1880s, its heyday in the early twentieth century, and its rapid decline after World War I, and adding something that seemed unlikely in the 1970s: the return of Jews to the neighborhood. In addition to extending the story into the twenty-first century, the new volume reinforces Gurock’s earlier claims of community significance, is enhanced by recent scholarship on black-Jewish relations, and provides vivid descriptions, bringing individual and institutional stories to life. One of the deans of American Jewish history, Gurock is uniquely positioned to tell this story. His work includes monographs on topics ranging from Orthodoxy in America to Jews in sports. Much of this output has centered on New York City, where he was raised, completed his schooling, and has served as professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University since 1977. Most recently, Gurock authored Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a Changing City, 1920–2010, the third volume of the masterful three-volume City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York (2012).

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