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Forged in America: How Irish-Jewish Encounters Shaped a Nation

Online ISBN:
9781479826100
Print ISBN:
9781479826063
Publisher:
NYU Press
Book

Forged in America: How Irish-Jewish Encounters Shaped a Nation

Hasia R. Diner (ed.),
Hasia R. Diner
(ed.)
New York University
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Miriam Nyhan Grey (ed.)
Miriam Nyhan Grey
(ed.)
New York University
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Published online:
23 May 2024
Published in print:
28 November 2023
Online ISBN:
9781479826100
Print ISBN:
9781479826063
Publisher:
NYU Press

Abstract

Urban American life took much of its shape from the arrival of Irish and Jewish immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed, even after the passing of the immigrant generations, Irish America and Jewish America collided, cooperated, and collaborated in the cities where they resided in the context of demographic weight and geographic proximity. As religious outsiders in a Protestant nation, yet endowed with the privileges of whiteness inherent in terms of citizenship and participation in the political process, both groups had ample opportunities to come into each other’s personal and communal lives. Bringing together leading scholars, the chapters in this volume highlight instances of how Irish Americans and Jewish Americans shaped their worlds. While examples of communal antagonism are clearly evident, the collection demonstrates that those moments were not all-encompassing in how Irish and Jews negotiated their new homes and one another. The Irish, who had arrived in the United States earlier and in comparatively larger numbers than their Jewish counterparts, served to model, mentor, and mediate for the Jewish newcomers. Overall, the text situates how, in their interactions, both groups had agency in defining and redefining both their relationship to America but also their ideas of what it meant to be Irish or Jewish in a complex society. The contributors draw fascinating portraits from a variety of perspectives to show the mutuality in action and the cultural reverberations of the synergies.

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