Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American

copy of book cover

Rachel Gordan
University of Florida

Date: Tuesday,听September 10, 2024
Time:听12 - 1pm
Location:听24 Quincy Road, Conference Room

The period immediately following World War II was an era of dramatic transformation for Jews in America. At the start of the 1940s, President Roosevelt had to all but promise that if Americans entered the war, it would not be to save the Jews. By the end of the decade, antisemitism was in decline and Jews were moving toward general acceptance in American society.听Drawing on several archives, magazine articles, and nearly-forgotten bestsellers,听Postwar Stories听examines how Jewish middlebrow literature helped to shape post-Holocaust American Jewish identity. For both Jews and non-Jews accustomed to antisemitic tropes and images, positive depictions of Jews had a normalizing effect. Maybe Jews were just like other Americans, after all.听At the same time, anti-antisemitism novels and 鈥淚ntroduction to Judaism鈥 literature helped to popularize the idea of Judaism as an American religion. In the process, these two genres contributed to a new form of Judaism--one that fit within the emerging myth of America as a Judeo-Christian nation, and yet displayed new confidence in revealing Judaism's divergences from Christianity.

headshot of Rachel Gordon

Rachel Gordan is the Samuel Bud Shorstein Fellow in American Jewish Culture at the University of Florida where she teaches in the department of religion and the Center for Jewish Studies. During the听2024-2025 academic year, Professor Gordan holds a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Fellowship at the Center for Jewish听History in NYC.听She received a PhD from Harvard and her BA from Yale.听In addition to her academic publications, Gordan has been published in popular sites including Slate, LitHub, the New York Times website, and Tablet.听Postwar Stories听is her first book.