The wonders of America
Subtitle: reinventing Jewish culture 1880-1950
By: Jenna Weissman Joselit.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 349
Subjects: Jews -- United States -- Social life and customs; Jews -- United States -- Material culture; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century
Description: The selective relish with which most American Jews affirm their identity - consuming kosher delicacies once a year, extravagantly celebrating the bar mitzvahs of their sons and the weddings of their daughters has usually given rise to satire or consternation.

The Wonders of America offers an alternative perspective, for this innovative social history of Jewish culture highlights the cultural ingenuity and adaptive genius of American Jewish life - from the end of the nineteenth century through the postwar period.

Drawing on advertisements and etiquette manuals, sermons and surveys, Jenna Weissman Joselit offers a lively, mordant, and richly illustrated account of how American Jews created their distinctive culture. In vivid, often humorous detail, she describes how they raised their children, decorated their homes, shopped and cooked, celebrated holidays, and marked birth, marriage, and death as they became at home in America.

Her fresh, original analysis makes clear that it is not the theoretical debates of rabbis and scholars but the small choices of daily life that shape and sustain a culture.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-337) and index.