At the end of the summer of 1955, Jewish novelist Herman Wouk’s (1915-2019) fourth novel, Marjorie Morningstar was published. At this point in his career, Wouk was a celebrity-writer, having won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his war novel, The Caine Mutiny…
As Chanukah transformed in 20th century America from a smaller, home-based festival to a popular public holiday, businesses saw an opportunity to manufacture and market decorations and gifts to Jewish consumers.
In the mid-19th century, new waves of German Jewish immigrants focused on Christmas as a winter holiday, in order to…
In response to the massive waves of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century, leaders of the German-Jewish community in New York City founded the rather forbiddingly named Industrial Removal…
Death masks, molded from plaster in the first hours after death before the features have stiffened or atrophied, were used for centuries to preserve the appearance of nobility and other eminent persons as models for posthumous sculptures or painted portraits. In the 19th century,…
German-Jewish Americans at Home at the Turn of the Last Century: A Late 19th-Century Photo Album
“. . . the [Jewish) religion which was to be prized and saved is fast becoming a watery Unitarianism, and its adherents are allowing themselves, where permitted, to become completely assimilated. Reform Judaism which began as a compromise is ending as surrender.”
—Marvin Lowenthal, “Zionism: A Menorah…
