Our Parents' Lives: Jewish Assimilation in Everyday Life

by Neil M. Cowan and Ruth Schwartz Cowan

Book Overview

An account of how Eastern European Jewish immigrants moved from the old world into the new, grappling with an American lifestyle whilst trying to retain their traditional identity. Interviews with American Jews and the Cowan's use of oral narrative convey the Jewish experience of American culture.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081352296X
• ISBN13: 9780813522968
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Have I Got a Story for You! It's the Real Emes!

In a marvelous mixture of oral history and subtle theory, the Cowans explain -- illustrated by the stories of first-generation American Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe, or whose parents emigrated from the east -- how and why many of them "made it" in America. The Cowans (Ruth is a distinguished history professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the author of More Work for Mother and A Social History of American Technology; Neil is a public relations consultant) argue that Eastern European Jews in American shtetle answered the question "What is a Jew?" their own way, avoiding the twin pitfalls of total assimilation or clinging to the old ways.After you've read Our Parents' Lives, go out and rent Barry Levinson's screen gem, Avalon, to see the embodiment of the Cowans' theories, and maybe shed a tear of two.