Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties

From Library Journal
Historian Svonkin examines American attitudes toward anti-Semitism, prejudice, and discrimination during the late 1940s and 1950s and how key Jewish organizations (the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress) spearheaded the struggle against discrimination in this country. These organizations achieved some success in breaking down political barriers for Jews and other minorities and in confronting anti-Semitism. In many ways they even secularized the message of Judaism. But they never fully succeeded because, the author points out, "even as Jews were increasingly 'at home in America' they still felt 'uneasy at home.'" The irony is that during the radicalized 1960s these organizations seemed passe and no longer attracted young Jews involved in liberal social and political causes. Academic in nature, this work is recommended for libraries with strong American Jewish history collections.?Paul M. Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., Ill.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
A detailed study of how, during the 1940s and '50s, three major American Jewish organizations--the American Jewish Committee (AJC), American Jewish Congress, and Anti-Defamation League (ADL)- -fundamentally broadened their mission and then partly subverted it by becoming caught up in the era's anti-communist hysteria. Historian Svonkin traces how all three national agencies shifted their focus from defense against anti-Semitic groups to opposing prejudice of all types and promoting the new ideal of intergroup relations. They did so using a broad and often innovative strategy involving research, radio and TV ads, curricular materials, and human-relations workshops. In the process, their staffs and the social scientists associated with them played down the socioeconomic causes of discrimination; influenced by Freudianism, they tended to see prejudice in terms of individual pathology. Svonkin also demonstrates how the agencies' intergroup-relations agenda was undercut when they embraced (though very reluctantly in the case of the AJCongress) ``a constrained and defensive cold war liberalism'' that denied civil liberties to ``avowed communists, and even some suspected communists.'' In a concluding chapter Svonkin analyzes how, beginning during the 1960s, ``a reassertion of ethnoreligious particularism'' characterized Jewish leaders, who were already coming to view assimilation as at least as much of a threat to Jewish life as anti-Semitism. Clearly written and extremely well documented, Svonkin's book could have benefited from more exploration of the American historical and sociological context. A bit dry and targeted toward the specialist, this is, however, an informative and at times absorbing exploration of the roots of both the human-relations movement that characterized the civil-rights era and of current Jewish communal ideologies and policies. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"An extravagantly-researched, tightly-focused survey of the internal development of three important Jewish organizations fighting discrimination at a crucial time.... There is a fascinating story behind the bureaucratic history Svonkin has recounted." -- Boston Book Review


Review
"The first serious history of these organizations during this era, a truly pathbreaking account. Svonkin gracefully leads us through the complex but fascinating terrain of civil rights and civil liberties in the aftermath of World War II." -- Deborah Dash Moore, Vassar College


Boston Book Review
An extravagantly-researched, tightly-focused survey of the internal development of three important Jewish organizations fighting discrimination at a crucial time. . . . There is a fascinating story behind the bureaucratic history Svonkin has recounted.


Deborah Dash Moore Vassar College
The first serious history of these organizations during this era, a truly pathbreaking account. Svonkin gracefully leads us through the complex but fascinating terrain of civil rights and civil liberties in the aftermath of World War II.


Leonard Dinnerstein, author of Uneasy at Home: Anti-Semitism and the American Jewish Experience
A well-written, informative, and sophisticated analysis.


Book Description
This vital contribution to the story of civil rights in modern America traces the political evolution of Jewish defense organizations from their initial incarnations as groups concerned primarily with defending American Jews against the virulent anti-Semitism of the 1920s and 1930s to their leading role in the fight against all forms of prejudice during the middle half of this century.


About the Author
Stuart Svonkin received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University and will complete his J.D. from Harvard Law School in the Spring of 1999. He has taught American History and Jewish History at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research.


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Examines the seminal role played by American Jewish organizations in what participants during the 1940s and 1950s called the intergroup relations movement, which enlisted social scientists and social reformers in a collaborative battle against prejudice and discrimination against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Read all 6 "From The Critics" >


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