The exploring and defining of identities and societal cultures is a tenuous task at best. With that in mind, this book explores the development of the Jewish community of Leeds, England, and investigates the sense of community developed by its members. The Jewish community of Leeds offers itself as a valuable tool in assessing identity change, both real and perceived. Their varied experiences are not the sole focus of the book, as it also explores their retention of common Judaism and what became of a rich culture when confronted by alien ideas and attitudes. The period spanning the 1880s through to World War I was an era that brought thousands of Jews to Leeds, where most settled in the area known as the Leylands. In exploring their experiences in education, work, uniformed movements, worship and during the war, this book reveals a side of Jewishness in Leeds not fully understood. It develops and extends existing histories of the Leeds Jewish community. Hosting the nation’s third largest Jewish population, the city stands out in many ways, particularly with regards to the paucity of published research on this community. The existing literature reflects divisions. Ernest Krausz, Anne Kershen, Joseph Buckman, Laura Vaughn, Rosalind O’Brien and Ernest Sterne have all approached various different elements of Leeds Jewry. There is a lack of a focused yet broad picture of this key era in which the community fully blossomed. Most of the limited work on Leeds highlights and focuses on specific areas such as tailoring, disharmony or how the community contrasted to Manchester. What is needed is an effort to bring these issues and others together to better discern Britishness and Jewishness as seen by the people of Leeds (both Jew and Gentile). In discerning the unique nature of Leeds Jewry, this book provides a greater understanding of the relationships between majority and minority communities, and the impact of external and internal pressures on their interpretation of culture, belonging and acceptance.

Most American Jews today will probably tell you that Judaism is inherently democratic and that Jewish and American cultures share the same core beliefs and values. But in fact, Jewish tradition and American culture did not converge seamlessly. Rather, it was American Jews themselves who consciously created this idea of an American Jewish heritage and cemented it in the popular imagination during the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. History Lessons is the first book to examine how Jews in the United States collectively wove themselves into the narratives of the nation, and came to view the American Jewish experience as a unique chapter in Jewish history. Beth Wenger shows how American Jews celebrated civic holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July in synagogues and Jewish community organizations, and how they sought to commemorate Jewish cultural contributions and patriotism, often tracing their roots to the nation's founding. She looks at Jewish children's literature used to teach lessons about American Jewish heritage and values, which portrayed--and sometimes embellished--the accomplishments of heroic figures in American Jewish history. Wenger also traces how Jews often disagreed about how properly to represent these figures, focusing on the struggle over the legacy of the Jewish Revolutionary hero Haym Salomon. History Lessons demonstrates how American Jews fashioned a collective heritage that fused their Jewish past with their American present and future.

Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860—1920 draws on a wealth of archival material, much of which has never been published—or even read—to illuminate the ways in which Jewish girls’ adolescent experiences reflected larger issues relating to gender, ethnicity, religion, and education. Klapper explores the dual roles girls played as agents of acculturation and guardians of tradition. Their search for an identity as American girls that would not require the abandonment of Jewish tradition and culture mirrored the struggle of their families and communities for integration into American society. While focusing on their lives as girls, not the adults they would later become, Klapper draws on the papers of such figures as Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah; Edna Ferber, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Showboat; and Marie Syrkin, literary critic and Zionist. Klapper also analyzes the diaries, memoirs, and letters of hundreds of other girls whose later lives and experiences have been lost to history. Told in an engaging style and filled with colorful quotes, the book brings to life a neglected group of fascinating historical figures during a pivotal moment in the development of gender roles, adolescence, and the modern American Jewish community.