Portrait of American Jews: The Last Half of the Twentieth Century

by Samuel C. Heilman

Book Overview

Has America been a place that has preserved and protected Jewish life? Is it a place in which a Jewish future is ensured? Samuel Heilman, long-time observer of American Jewish life, grapples with these questions from a sociologist's perspective. He argues that the same conditions that have allowed Jews to live in relative security since the 1950s have also presented them with a greater challenge than did the adversity and upheaval of earlier years.
...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295974710
• ISBN13: 9780295974712
• Release Date: November 1995
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A fascinating look at today's American Jews by a sociologist

This book efficiently, elegantly and in a highly readable way provides a close look at the situation of American Jews in the last five decades of the twentieth century. It covers the assimilationist trends of the 1950's the counterculture of the 1960's and 1970's and the division of the the 1980's and 1990's into a small core of committed Jews and a large periphery of Jews who are proud of their Jewish culture but barely attached to it. A must for anyone who wants to understand where today's American Jews have come from and where they are going.