Representations of self and other in American Jewish history and social studies schoolbooks: An exploration of the changing shape of American Jewish identity

This dissertation explores the power of Jewish history and social studies textbooks as agents of socialization and identity formation in the United States. It examines the shaping of American Jewish identity, communal values, and orderings of experience through an analysis of the images in the texts. Central to the enterprise of identity formation is the erection of boundaries. By exploring the evolving nature of the binary construction of Self and Other in Jewish schoolbooks this dissertation provides a gauge of how American Jews have continually renegotiated their bifurcated identities.This study makes the following conclusions: (1) Unabashedly negative descriptions of Christians were more characteristic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than they were of the interwar years and beyond. (2) Textbook authors of German-Jewish extraction engaged in "othering" Eastern European Jews before 1924 due to the anti-immigration climate and Classical Reform Judaism's teleology. (3) During the interwar years, the definition of Self undergoes a marked change as American Jews increasingly conceive of themselves as a distinct ethnic group. Guided by cultural pluralist educators like Samson Benderly and Emanuel Gamoran, textbook authors provide readers with idealized and integrated archetypes meant to facilitate both acculturation and Jewish survival. (4) The increasing coloration of the Other in American tones and accents demonstrates the rapidity of American Jewish cultural integration. (5) As American Jews increasingly engaged in projection in their construction of both the "New Jew" and his Arab antagonist, they more and more used the canvas of Palestine to work out their own efforts to negotiate their way in American society.The final chapter examines the phenomenon of American Jewish syncretism and coalescence by documenting the erosion of traditional boundaries in the post-war period. Since 1945, liberal Jewish movements have struggled to define Jewish distinctiveness without resorting to crude stereotyping, which cuts against the grain of the dominant multicultural epistemological model.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 2002.School code: 0021