Hasia R. Diner. How America Met the Jews

How America Met the Jews is a small volume based on a series of lectures given at Brown University by Hasia R. Diner. The impetus for her volume developed during 2004–2005, when many celebrations of 350 years of Jewish life in America sang the country’s praises. Despite ongoing antisemitism, Jews have long asserted that America offered them a welcome unmatched by any of the other countries of their diaspora. Indeed, the National Museum of American Jewish History, situated on Philadelphia’s historic Independence Mall, proclaims “Only in America” in large glowing letters to passersby. The many speeches touting the virtues of America given during that commemorative year prompted Diner to do a more clear-eyed examination of the economic, legal, social, and technological conditions that Jews encountered in North America, compared with “the particular experiences that Jews had encountered elsewhere” (vii). She argues that the history of American Jewry took its particular shape as those conditions “met” those experiences. The factors were, first, the centrality of immigration in American history, so that Jewish immigrants shared a common experience with much of the rest of the American population. Second, Jews enjoyed the obvious benefit of being classified as white, largely because most Jews had emigrated from Europe. Third, America’s “materialism, linked to its economic dynamism,” created economic conditions in which the mercantile expertise Jews gained from their historical involvement in trade and commerce could flourish (11). Fourth, the United States’ religious landscape enabled Judaism to thrive, albeit through the creation of various denominations. Finally, Diner argues that America’s two-party system, seldom linked to ideology, offered a political life that did not hinder Jews.

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