{"product_id":"jazz-age-jews-9780691116532","title":"Jazz Age Jews","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy the 1920s  Jews were--by all economic  political  and cultural measures of the day--making it in America. But as these children of immigrants took their places in American society  many deliberately identified with groups that remained excluded. Despite their success  Jews embraced resistance more than acculturation  preferring marginal status to assimilation.  The stories of Al Jolson  Felix Frankfurter  and Arnold Rothstein are told together to explore this paradox in the psychology of American Jewry. All three Jews were born in the 1880s  grew up around American Jewish ghettos  married gentile women  entered the middle class  and rose to national fame. All three also became heroes to the American Jewish community for their association with events that galvanized the country and defined the Jazz Age. Rothstein allegedly fixed the 1919 World Series--an accusation this book disputes. Frankfurter defended the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Jolson brought jazz music to Hollywood for the first talking film  The Jazz Singer  and regularly impersonated African Americans in blackface. Each of these men represented a version of the American outsider  and American Jews celebrated them for it.  Michael Alexanders gracefully written account profoundly complicates the history of immigrants in America. It challenges charges that anti-Semitism exclusively or even mostly explains Jews feelings of marginality  while it calls for a general rethinking of positions that have assumed an immigrant quest for inclusion into the white American mainstream. Rather  Alexander argues that Jewish outsider status stemmed from the group identity Jews brought with them to this country in the form of the theology of exile. Jazz Age Jews shows that most Jews felt culturally obliged to mark themselves as different--and believed that doing so made them both better Jews and better Americans.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45789740498997,"sku":"ByrdShop_0691116539","price":20.32,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780691116532.jpg?v=1784695766","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/jazz-age-jews-9780691116532","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}