The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity

by Eric L. Goldstein

What has it meant to be Jewish in a nation preoccupied with the categories of black and white? "The Price of Whiteness" documents the uneasy place Jews have held in America's racial culture since the late nineteenth century. The book traces Jews' often tumultuous encounter with race from the 1870s through World War II, when they became vested as part of America's white mainstream and abandoned the practice of describing themselves in racial terms.

American Jewish history is often told as a story of quick and successful adaptation, but Goldstein demonstrates how the process of identifying as white Americans was an ambivalent one, filled with hard choices and conflicting emotions for Jewish immigrants and their children. Jews enjoyed a much greater level of social inclusion than African Americans, but their membership in white America was frequently made contingent on their conformity to prevailing racial mores and on the eradication of their perceived racial distinctiveness. While Jews consistently sought acceptance as whites, their tendency to express their own group bonds through the language of "race" led to deep misgivings about what was required of them.

Today, despite the great success Jews enjoy in the United States, they still struggle with the constraints of America's black-white dichotomy. "The Price of Whiteness" concludes that while Jews' status as white has opened many doors for them, it has also placed limits on their ability to assert themselves as a group apart.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Jewish, Race, Judaism, American History, Social Justice

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never quite know what to fill in the race question in American forms. On one hand, my skin is definitely white. I get white privilege. It's wrong to claim that I could ever experience the extent of discrimination as POC. However, it's equally wrong to equalize Judaism with whiteness. We weren't seen as white when we were racially discriminated against everywhere. It's frustrating to hear people claim that Jews are white but only when it's convenient to them. 

Fortunately, I rarely have to fill American forms so this is rarely a problem. 

This book, however, is absolutely recommended for all Jews and Americans. Although it's somewhat clunky with its academic jargon, it's so fascinating. Through Jewish history, it highlights American racial issues. It shows why Jews are so hard to place in the Black/White American narrative and what history has gone into this topic.

The main idea is that Jews are conflicted between their desire to assimilate and their need to be distinct. Defining Judaism is challenging and has changed among the years in various attempts to fit into the American racial divide. We see how in the past hundred years, Jews have defined/ been defined as a religion, a race, an ethnicity, a nation, a culture, and a tribe with none of them really managing to get the entire picture. 

The book goes into the history of these changes. When Jews arrived in the USA, they became very aware of the racial divide. After experiencing so much antisemitism in Europe, Jews tried to fit their identity in a way that would be appealing to Americans. Initially, Jews saw themselves as a nation (or, as we say in Hebrew, am). However, with rising fears that this would lead to people calling them traitors, they began to see themselves as a race. This was because those Jews weren't very religious but were very involved in Jewish communal life. By claiming a race status, they could excuse their lack of assimilation while still living the secular and American life that they wanted. 

This backfired as it led to racial antisemitism. Interestingly, everyone accepted it as a given that Jews were from the Middle East (while nowadays, so many people attempt to claim Jews are all "European settlers"). Jews were seen through this prism of black/white which led to some people suggesting that Jews were part of the "white racial family" while others attempted to connect antisemitic thought to the racist thoughts prominent in those times. 

All together, some Jews began to claim Judaism is just a religion, with no racial element. This was a way for Jews to fit into the American society and avoid antisemitism. However, this never entirely worked, mostly because many of those Jews weren't even religious. Still, we hear echoes of this rhetoric in contemporary times. I've definitely heard people claim that Judaism is only a religion with no ethnic connection.  

What I found fascinating is that there was a period of time when American Jews represented modern times to the Americans. They were seen as businessmen, egoistic,  greedy, capitalist, and self-serving. As such, they were a reflection of what Americans felt towards the modern times. This wasn't all bad but it was also turbulent. At times when Americans felt warmly towards modern times, it reflected on Jews. Unfortunately, lower class workers could express their anxiety about changing times with antisemitism. 

Jewish and Black relations also take a big part in this book. There was a wide variety of Jewish responses to racism. After centuries of persecution, Jews didn't feel comfortable with racism. They were able to easily identify with Black people. In the same time, Jews wanted to be seen as white and assimilate into America. They were scared that if they would stand up against racism, people would turn against them. 

We can see that some Jews were very involved in civil rights, especially lawyers (living up the stereotype). Jewish immigrants often didn't understand American racial segregation and therefore, were willing to act in a way white Americans didn't (like certain Jewish store owners were on good terms with Black buyers). At the same time, there were Jews who were very racist in an attempt to separate themselves from Black people. It's not surprising that there was a huge spectrum of opinions about this. In fact, it's beautifully Jewish. There were rabbis discussing all sides. We can see that Jews tended to be quite supportive of Black issues in Yiddish, where no one else could understand them. 
 
While WW2 was catastrophic to Judaism (I was about to write European Judaism but then I remembered that it was literally yesterday when I read about the Libyan Jewish concentration camps). However, during the war, American Jews had a chance to fight against racism while also being proudly American. Fascism and racism were the enemy. Through their Americanness, they could combat it, by fighting in the war or speaking up against it at home.

Even in 2020, this conversation about Jews within the American Black/White spectrum is still alive and kicking. The epilogue goes into contemporary times and suggests that nowadays, Black people highlight racial status while white people do not. In the past, Jews had tried to fit into whiteness but right now, Jews also feel the importance of separating themselves from whiteness. Black people have attempted to place Jews as part of the white oppressor (while often also using antisemitic slurs). This is problematic.

However, Jews can't forget that they have managed to assimilate. As a whole, Jews right now have more power and wealth than Black people. This means that Jews have a responsibility to stand up for Black people. It's so sticky because Jews are able to profit from the racial system in America but still are in a fragile position. Just as German Jews were assimilated in the 1940s, there is so much trauma behind Jewish success. It does not take much to strip away the Jewish whiteness. 

We really get a chance to see how American Jews have developed. It's interesting because right now, the Jews of the world are pretty much split equally between Israel and the USA but the cultures surrounding each one are so different (what is it with American Jews and bagels? Why do American Jews assume everyone is Ashkenazi and use Yiddish like "shabbos" or "shul"?). And as Israelis continue to struggle with being privileged in their country while American Jews continue to face being a minority, I wonder how the relationship between us all will look in thirty years.   

Anyway, this is a great read. I could probably talk about this topic forever because it's just such a test of American racial discourse and it's so interesting to see how Judaism can meet this culture. I learned a lot by reading this. I do think it's a hefty read but it's also very worth it. At the end, the author discusses the idea of a post-racial America. I don't know if that's ever in the cards, considering people tend to marry within their own race in America but I like the idea that we're going to have to embrace groups and their cultures rather than attempt to fit into the mold of what being an American means. 

What I'm Taking With Me 
- I've always been weirdly irritated when American Jews talk about being "part of the tribe", like it always sounded cringey to me. However, after reading this book, I feel like I can understand where this terminology is coming from.  
- Honestly, I started this book thinking that Jews are white-passing but not white and I'm finishing it thinking the same but being able to base my opinion much better.
- I wish this book discussed these things in the context of different Jewish denominations. I mean, right now, there's a pretty big split between Orthodoxy and Reform so it would have been neat to see the way that developed. 
- I still have no idea if I passed the exam or not and I'm just growing more uneasy by the minute
---------------------------------
Ahh, I finished an exam but have no way of knowing if I passed and now I'm just going to spend the rest of the day panicking.

Review to come!

[Jan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Price of Whiteness is primarily sociology. In style it reminded me of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, which I read last year: a series of heavily footnoted chapters documenting the author's points and assertions.

The overall thesis is that "whiteness" is an ideology, not some sort of God-given fact. For example, their skin color notwithstanding, for nearly the entire 19th century in America, Irish immigrants were not considered white.

Goldstein's thesis is, further, that the utility and impact of that ideology has been to assert the relative superiority of the earlier American-born immigrants--the group we have later come to consider WASPs--and build and maintain their status and their confidence relative to black Americans, who were the former slaves, and native Americans. In the U.S., the overriding narrative has been black-white, with African Americans cast as the ultimate "other," the racial outsiders. Jews didn't completely fit into that story. They were racially ambiguous. So they have been a proverbial monkey wrench in the works.

His thesis also is--as per the title--that being accepted as "white" has costs as well as benefits. There are pressures on Jews to "melting-pot" themselves out of existence as a separate entity. Sometimes it seems he's even saying it's like extortion. Also, if one wants to engage in a battle of who has suffered more, one isn't going to win that battle, not regarding life in America, at least.

The book is organized into periods of history. For most of the 1800s, Jews were often the beneficiaries of a benign neglect because the narrative of color was so predominant, compared to Europe, where the narrative of the times was one of Aryan/Semite. Also most Jewish immigrants of that time were from Germany and central Europe. They readily adapted, ending up with jobs viewed as consistent with whiteness. My ancestors on my maternal side fit that pattern: first generation, shopkeepers; second generation, professionals.

By the 1890s or so, things got stickier. For one thing, a lot of Jews who were now immigrating from eastern Europe weren't initially acculturated to America's black-white racial narrative and didn't necessarily act "white."

The author also explains changes in attitudes toward Jews in terms of their being identified with alarming political changes in Europe and with the progress of industrialization in general. Changes were occurring in American life--urbanization, industrialization--and one way people explained the part they didn't like was by blaming Jews, who were already identified with commercialization and urbanization.

In the Progressive Age and then the '20s, there was an ambivalent response to the burgeoning popular culture, leading, for example, to blaming Jews for destroying American values for their own enrichment via Hollywood. You can see what's behind that thinking: "the international Jew" who's infiltrating, exploiting, and destroying American Christian society. In that scenario, Jews aren't "really" white, but masquerading as such for their own benefit.

On the other hand, America never rejected commercialization and popular culture en masse, since the dominant group wanted the attendant benefits. Nor were all WASPs during these times antisemitic. Some WASPs even looked on Jews as good biological material for the "melting pot." But nobody was thinking it was really a great idea for them to continue to exist as a separate entity.

The more change and the greater the economic hardship, the greater loss of confidence and the need to find someone to blame. Racial antisemitism. "The Jewish problem"--here, too; not just in Europe. Even those Americans who were not antisemitic bought into the paradigm of a Jewish problem. Public pronouncement in terms of "just a few" could be absorbed; policy to restrict immigration. Quotas, not just in the American South, as people today easily fall into thinking. For example, Harvard. Because Jews were raising the competitive bar. Also, they were "fraternizing" with Negroes, undermining American standards and values.

I was really surprised at what the author says about the era of FDR and WWII. With reference to the novel The Golem and the Jinni that I just read, you might say I felt I had discovered my maker. During that era, the powers that be here in America decided that antisemitic language and sentiment, in fact, anti-immigrant language in general, was harmful to the war effort. So they initiated propaganda (i.e., shaped public opinion) to associate that sort of thinking with Hitler and Nazism. All white European immigrants were now considered ethnic groups, not races. Prejudice against them was un-American. The only other "race" was African Americans. That's where I came on the scene and how I was "created" "white"!

Regarding Jews and African Americans, the author questions whether there ever was an actual "alliance," as lore would have it. That isn't as alarming to me as it could be to others because I'm getting in the habit of seeing how people always relate out of their needs and hopes, anyway, rather than out of some ideal of pure altruism, and I hope to accept human beings in all our glory and limitation. Anyway, in general and on average, Jews probably did relate sooner, more easily, and better to African Americans than the average white American. One can always find an economic substrata to these patterns, and early on, Jews were merchants and had to relate well to their customers, many of whom were black, i.e., Adam Smith's invisible hand in its beneficent sense. The African American "you exploited us in the ghetto" narrative comes later, from the Depression era, when the poorer Jews and other immigrants and African Americans, who by then had had their Great Migration from to South to the large cities of the North and Midwest, were all pitted against each other for crumbs in the ghetto.

The rise of black nationalism and repudiation of Jews by African Americans comes up in the last chapter. It's painful to read and more to learn from.

I'll tell one little story here. In 2008 there was a to-do at The Temple, a large synagogue on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, it being the 50th anniversary of when The Temple got blown up, back during the Civil Rights era. In the audience was one particular black man, kind of tall and gaunt, in a suit, who stood up to speak during the question-and-answer period, and I had a moment of suspense as what was going to happen. What he said, though, was that when he heard that news back in 1958 was the first he heard of the fact that white people (not just black people) could get blown up.

So each of us is born into whatever we believe is "reality," and it's up to us to get our eyes open as best we can.

Prior to the WWII era, not only did antisemites think in terms of "a Jewish race," but so, also, did Jews. It was useful for pulling together and staving off pressures to assimilate. Nor has it entirely ceased post definition as an "ethnicity." In fact the more intermarriage, and the more assimilation, the more attractive is what might now be called "tribalism," the author says.

What he's always trying to get at is the ambivalence of American Jews regarding belonging to the majority white culture. On the one hand they wanted to belong, here in America. They didn't want to be persecuted--no mystery there. They wished to thrive. They didn't want to be bullied into accepting all of the prevailing values. They could more nearly assert their particularity during periods when they were more secure. According to the author, they often can't or won't assert all their values publicly, i.e., in front of the larger culture. I would agree he has a point there.

He says that by participating in the Civil Rights movement, Jews were able to express themselves vicariously while using the cover of general American values regarding equality and so forth. He says that was the pay off for Jews during those activities and also through identification with African Americans culturally. So, in other words, it's ironic but kind of nice: African Americans benefited from Judaism's liberation story as told in the Hebrew Scriptures, while Jews, in return, benefited from the African American civil rights movement.

________________________________________________

This was a difficult read, and all along the way I was thinking of why that might be. It's academic, of course, but that's not all of it. He's cramming in a lot of information. Also, it can be he's going over difficult material and difficult terrain. I'll give him that, but I don't think that's all of it. I think he's being very careful to remain dispassionate and academic. He's being careful in what conclusions he wants the reader to draw. Regarding his main thesis about the utility of racial thinking for the white majority, he does at times refer to "unity" but most often states that racial thinking serves to build attitudes of superiority and confidence. My thinking along the "indispensable enemy" line is that unity is predominant.

By use of a common enemy a group papers over their inner conflicts and projects it all out onto "them." "They" are then the troublemakers, the divisive ones, the cause of all difficulties, and the focus of ire.

The author continually keeps his focus on race. He very rarely mentions Christian theology. In fact the only times I remember are, first, a quote of a Ku Klux Klan accusation that Jews were corrupting Christian values through Hollywood and, second, a 1920s-era quote accusing Jews of "ruining a neighborhood to make money just like Judas did," because they were renting and selling to African Americans. I know he's trying to be dispassionate by keeping Christianity out of it and focusing solely on whiteness, but I think his caution along those lines is one reason for the impeded prose.

He has focused on the dilemma of American Jews as to what they can talk about publicly and what they can't, because they want to be accepted as Americans and not damned for their particularistic concerns. Maybe he's caught on the horns of his own dilemma. He has to be so very careful!

I may be, myself, as I struggle with what Goodreads shelves I should put it on or create for it. Jews?

He sees that because Jews became "white" they gave up some of the easy moral claims that come from being excluded, but he never says why Jews should bear a particular opprobrium for being "white" that others in that category are not assessed.

Nevertheless, this is an important book because the author has plowed through all these issues, and that's why I plowed through it.

Although this review is long, believe me, it's just the tip of the iceberg! Even if the book is one you'll never read, be aware it's there for reference, should you have the need.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn't perfect (I would actually give it 4.5 stars if Goodreads wasn't so lazy) but it was the closest thing to what I was looking for. For many years I've thought about my Jewishness and what exactly it is? It's not my religion really because I don't practice; it's not exactly a cultural thing, because for most of my life I've done nothing very "Jewish" yet still 100 percent considered myself a Jew; so what is it? It feels weird calling it my race, since the way most people see race is based on the literal color of one's skin. I'm still not sure what it all means, but this book helped me see that many, many others have been thinking and talking about this same thing since Jews arrived in the US.

[Lisa]

This was way too dense and academic for me, but I also appreciate that I don't think this topic can really be boiled down too much. The book traces the variation on thought throughout time and geography.

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fire

[Shoshana · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to read but that's only because I'm not that used to academic writing. I learned a lot and it also left me with questions.

[Rochel Klionsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a must-read for students of American Jewish history and identity. I cannot believe it took me this long to find it. While overall well-researched and illuminating, it is, at times, repetitive and misses several opportunities to explore aspects of Jewish difference. The focus seems to be mostly on mainstream Jewish self-conception. There is less exploration of outside perspectives of Jews, which continue to make many Jews feel "Other," even as they, in most ways, manage to blend in with the white American majority. There is little (if any) exploration of discrimination against Jews in college admissions, despite other excellent scholarship on the topic (See Jerome Karabel's The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton) or discrimination in employment, membership, or hospitality (a la Gentleman's Agreement). Goldstein touches on the need for Jews to give up their particularistic Jewish modes of speech and dress to assimilate, but he does not give any ink to analyzing the experiences of Jews who failed to do this. Orthodox Jews, particularly Hasidim, continue to be obviously Jewish and face discrimination or, at the very least, constant uneasiness and self-consciousness as a result. As a completely assimilated Jew growing up in a very Christian area, I know how easy it can be to blend in with whites as long as one shows no outward signs of Jewishness. This didn't stop the loneliness of being the only kid who celebrated Hanukkah, hearing from friends I was going to hell for not accepting Jesus, participating in Christmas everything, having people not be able to pronounce my name, never learning about my people's history, etc. When I got to college and realized I knew nothing about my own identity, it was both painful and exciting. I felt like I had missed out on so much, but I also had a lot to learn. Now, as an Orthodox Jew, I experience daily the myriad ways that my family, my community, and I do not fit into mainstream America. My first tentative expressions of Jewishness were met with my first experiences being the target of anti-Semitic hate on my college campus, social media, and the street. But it's mostly the smaller things — the discussions about whether my husband should wear a yarmulke to his interview or I should use my Anglicized name on my resume or when introducing myself to non-Jews. I feel that the many perspectives of people I know from across the country and across the religious spectrum were excluded from this study of Jewish identity. It is a missed opportunity for a more complex, nuanced analysis of what it means to be Jewish in a black-white America.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first foray into academic nonfiction in quite awhile! Goldstein, an associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Emory University, fashions his thesis around two tenants. For much of Jewish American history (starting in the late 19th century and ending in the mid 20th century) the group felt a push and pull between two contradictory ideals. They wanted to be accepted and indeed to large degree assimilated into the white mainstream culture. Yet they also wanted to hold onto a sense of Jewish particularism (his word.)

There's a lot of verbiage in this book. From the beginning, whether or not they are perceived as "white," Jews are referred to as a distinct "race." Jews grapple with the validity of this distinction, given the parameters listed above, but "race" is, after all, the first and founding construct of American society. The underbelly of this story, and indeed any story about American groups, is how race shapes who gets to be dominant in our culture. When this book begins slavery has just been abolished, and the white establishment is scrambling to define itself as the "cultured civilization," and to pronounce Blacks as lacking in that regard.

Ergo, any conversation that American Jews have with race rely not only on WASP antisemitism, but also on their own treatment of Blacks. Goldstein lays out, throughout the decades, how Jews were probably the most sympathetic of white-adjacent groups...but that's not saying much. Despite some stand out leaders, most Jews were ambivalent-to-cowardly due to their fears of having the white establishment turn on them. A small minority even endorsed--or at least did not condemn--violence against Blacks. Very few people challenged segregation or spoke of civil rights until history, and general Jewish acceptance into white society, was more amenable to it. (And to be fair, white people did attack Jews--even violently sometimes--for getting too close to Blacks.)

The white establishment ebbed and flowed in their antisemitism; it was particularly bad during the Depression, when the less assimilated Eastern European Jews were streaming in as refugees, and occasionally when WASPS were nervous about American urban modernization, something increasingly associated with Jews. But little to none of this antisemitism rested upon the religious, "Christ Killer" imagery of Europe. The Jewish institutions that Goldstein chronicled were overwhelmingly secular, though some attention was given to the Reform (the largest movement in American Judaism, and controversial in it's break from traditional religiosity.) And, of course, the vast amount of "Jews" referenced--certainly as an American group--came from Europe. Again, Ashkenazi Jews continue to make up the bulk of American Jewish society, and were the ringleaders in wanting to join the white mainstream.

I wish that Goldstein had focused less attention on trying to convince us that each decade he chronicled was a bit different for the Jews. From what I read, there were the same ebbs and flows, and his arguing to the contrary just made his writing even more stuffy. Speaking as a former graduate student, I'm saying that academic writing often is that way; no need to make it worse. :P

The real changing point--really for American society as a whole--came in the 1960s, and Goldberg didn't even get to that until the epilogue. That was the time when, maybe due to the Vietnam War, and certainly influences that had been building up for longer, the idea of culture really changed. Whites were still in control in traditional ways, but now more people cared about "multiculturalism" and "pluralism." These are words that Jews, too, tried to use when negotiating their American identity--along with "ethnic"--particularly after the idea of a Jewish "race" went out the window post-Holocaust. American Jews had struggled for decades about their opinions of the word "race"--after all, "religion" alone didn't seem to cover it--but after WWII race was out and Jews were part of the white mainstream.

Therein comes the boomerang effect. All of those decades Jews advocated that they could assimilate into "the melting pot," but now, in the age of "multicultarialism" and skyrocketing intermarriage rates, the Jewish people (another one of those words!) wanted some of that particularity back. So to this day we continue to struggle with who we are in this country--it's just that, post-60s, the broader rules-of-civilization have changed.

Parting notes--speaking of boomerags, back during the Kishinev pogrom 100 years ago, Jews tried to draw--or deny--a link between Jewish persecution in Russia and the lynching of Blacks in the south. Then, in the 1980s, Jews drew a link to the well-known race issues of the day to try and rally internal support to save Soviet Jewry.

Among the well known secular Jewish groups, particularly of the 1910s-1930s--Zionists (still here, but certainly altered post-Israel), socialists and Communists. The Communists in particular had a habit of "shaming" their members for not being sympathetic enough to Blacks. Imagine these folks with twitter accounts! (In general, Jewish groups with different political views always seemed to be sticking their thumbs out at each other in the papers, too.)

To an extent, Jewish groups during this age put on minstrel shows with blackface as a way to probe their own frustrations with identity that they thought they couldn't while presenting as Jews. That's not to dismiss the racism of minstrel shows, but it complicates their motivations. On a related note, appropriation of Black culture goes back a ways as well.

And finally, Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, the man who inadvertently started the denomination I grew up in, made an appearance here, too. I had a feeling he would when Goldstein started gathering up alternative words to "race" that Jews propped up to describe themselves--Kaplan was big into "civilization." I've been meaning to read his book...and meanwhile, Goldstein pointed me to some Jewish fiction books from the early 20th century (even by women! Otherwise pretty underrepresented in this book, understandably.) After all of this thickly worded academia, I could definitely go for a good novel. :P

[Charles Cohen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The interplay in US history between Jews and the categorization of "white" is complex and challenging. It doesn't make it any easier that in the US, there are only two options - white, and not. Even with that seeming simplicity Jews have found a way to blur the boundaries, sometimes appearing on one side, sometimes on the other. During certain periods of history (and in certain areas of the country) Jews identified one way, and other times they shifted to a different perspective. And that's before you get into the internecine conflicts about how to identify, how to capitalize on those moments when Jews were considered white - either for themselves or on behalf of others - or simply how to lean into or push away from the label to suit American Jewry's often confused perspectives on what exactly it (or really, they) want to be.

Dense and necessary. Go read it.

[Eric]

What has it meant to be Jewish in a nation preoccupied with categories of black and white? This book documents the uneasy place Jews have held in America's racial culture form the late nineteench century through World War II, when they became vested as part of America's white mainstream. The author demonstrates how the process of identifying as white Americans was an ambivalent one, filled with hard choices and conflicting emotions for Jewish immigrants and their children.

[Monica Mitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "The Price of Whiteness," Eric Goldstein traces Jewish self-definition and response to the racialized American landscape from the late nineteenth century to modern times. He emphasizes that, whereas black and white could be interpreted as monolithic categories, albeit incorrectly, “Jews were harder than most other groups to classify as either a positive or negative factor in American life … the racial discourse about the Jews, with its mix of identification and repulsion, was as varied and inconsistent as Americans’ own feelings about their changing world” (Goldstein, 36-38). The very appeal of Jewishness as a (biological) race, for example, was a widespread form of Jewish self-definition in the late nineteenth century. It did not preclude whiteness or portray Jews as a dangerous other in American society, and it allowed Jews to balance their position between assimilating in American society and preserving their own distinctiveness. That would change as the black-white dichotomy becomes paramount in American racial identity in the twentieth century. The various Jewish factions, including the acculturated communities, East European immigrants and Zionists, begin debating and disagreeing on whether their distinctiveness should be defined by religion, race, culture or ethnicity, or if such discrete categories were capable of reflecting Jewish identity at all. Throughout the book, Goldstein portrays the troubling ambivalence that whiteness represented to American Jews.
Goldstein demonstrates how certain identifying factors, like gender, Jewishness and color, become sites for negotiating communal identity. One way that Jewish anxiety over assimilation expressed itself was in Jewish women’s interactions with non-Jews, as “many in the community feared that the increasing social interaction of Jewish women with non-Jews threatened the ultimate dissolution of the Jews as a social unit” (Goldstein, 15). The Jewish discourse around women was thus expressed in religious and racial images of Jewish womanhood. On the other hand, as Jews became more prominent in public discourse, their public figure became the site of American speculating about societal moral notions, both positive and negative (35-39). And black and white bodies became sites of Jewish identity formulation, in terms of proximity, societal norms and minority status. Gender, religion and color formed bodies that became negotiation sites of a complex identity, revealing the inextricable links between race, religion, and gender.

[clove · Rating 3 out of 5]

i wanted this book to dive deeper into explaining the larger cultural contexts of the eras it was exploring- how did war and economics impact american racialization of jews? i wanted more clear lines drawn between attitudes of white supremacy and larger political events. instead, the book dwells endlessly on the thousands of conceptions of jewish identity- culture, ethnicity, race, religion, people, civilization, etc. who used what terms when. there were certainly interesting facts and complexities explored, particularly related to black-jewish relationships over several decades (though, only from a jewish perspective, black voices and experience was starkly lacking). the writing was dull, others have explored this topic from a more nuanced and engaged standpoint.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is less about whether (European-descended) "Jews are white" (or not) and more about the contentious place American Jews have occupied in an American society that wants to define a sharp boundary between black and white. It's a bit dense, but interesting, looking at how Jews defined themselves, how they were defined by others, and how this defined their relationship with other ethnic/racial groups.

If there's a serious flaw it's that everything post-1965 is jammed into an epilogue.

3.5.

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aside from the fact that this book kinda acts like Jews of Color don't exist (and that's a pretty major problem), I thought this book was fantastic. So well researched and so thorough in scope. The social status of Jews in America has evolved in such a non-linear, fascinating path, and Goldstein does a great job of outlining our complicated, varying positions as both victims and oppressors. I've recommended this book to so many people. Really, really good.

[Adina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very helpful insights on the fluidity of the concept of race in America, paired with its very real consequences. I would have liked to see more analysis of perspectives from the Black press across time as well as more statistical analysis to get a better sense for how many people were represented by which viewpoints at different times.

[Ashira Konigsburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read but very useful for explaining historical factors that got us to this point. Lots of food for thought here.

[zoë · Rating 4 out of 5]

had to read for class but it was very interesting and insightful and all that