Black Power, Jewish Politics
Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s
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Author: Marc Dollinger
Series: Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture and Life
Marc Dollinger charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power — inspired ethnic nationalism. He shows how, in a period best known for the rise of black anti-Semitism and the breakdown of the black-Jewish alliance, black nationalists enabled Jewish activists to devise a new Judeo-centered political agenda — including the emancipation of Soviet Jews, the rise of Jewish day schools, the revitalization of worship services with gender-inclusive liturgy and the birth of a new form of American Zionism. Undermining widely held beliefs about the black-Jewish alliance, Dollinger describes a new political consensus, based on identity politics, that drew blacks and Jews together and altered the course of American liberalism.
Subject: History
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Marc Dollinger is the author of “Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America,” and co-editor of “California Jews and American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader.” He holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University.
- "This book provides an important intervention in American Jewish history, a field that for the most part makes Jews the authors of their destiny, in which their ideas, sensibilities, reactions, and concerns for the most part explain everything. Indeed, in the robust literature on the history of Jewish-black interactions, Jews act and blacks receive—whether money, advice, or access to Americans with real power. Jews, in that broad interpretive trope, gave, and African Americans, by necessity, took. In Black Power, Jewish Politics, Dollinger upends this familiar and deeply planted way of thinking. He treats Jews as the takers and not the givers. Jews, particularly although not exclusively the younger rising generation born in the post–World War II era and very much participants in the assertive politics of the 1960s, learned from African Americans and created a new political culture that in turn shook up Jewish life in America."— The American Jewish Archives Journal
- “Black Power, Jewish Politics” is essential reading to anyone interested in the history of Jewish Americans, black-Jewish relations, civil rights and 20th-century politics, as well as to contemporary political activists. — American Jewish History
- Dollinger’s well-written and provocative work provides an innovative interpretation of the mythic story of the alliance between Jews and blacks forged over the 20th century and rent asunder in the post-civil rights era as a result of the rise of black power. — Journal of American History
- Dollinger offers a highly detailed, engrossing depiction of the responses of major Jewish organizations to the civil rights movement and to the varied government and public policy understandings of racism and proposals for remediation. ... (By) examining the positions of major Jewish organizations, this book reconfigures the standard narrative in crucial ways and makes an important contribution to Jewish cultural and political history. ... Dollinger has reoriented the field of black-Jewish relations in crucial ways and changed the way we think about American Jewish history in the post-World War II era. This is an important book and an exciting book. — Shofar
- This book offers exciting new directions for American Jewish scholarship and helps reframe our understanding of Jewish engagement with African Americans, civil rights and American identity. — Cheryl Greenberg, Trinity College
- Dollinger’s illuminating book illustrates that many American Jewish leaders were not only sympathetic to “black power” but were supportive of it. ... This book will significantly change how we view the American Jewish 1960s and their aftermath. — Shaul Magid, Indiana University, Bloomington