City of Promise: A History of the Jews of New York

The full saga of Jewish New York, from the first small band of refugees to a population of two million, from a community ostracized in the colonial city to one that has produced leading intellectuals, social activists, financiers, and more, appears here edited by a leading scholar of the subject and narrated by four historians. Florida International University historian Rock relates how 23 Dutch Jews fled Brazil after it fell to Portugal and the Inquisition. They landed in New Amsterdam, where they were hostilely received. But later, New York, as a British colony and then one of the original 13 states, was first to extend citizenship to its Jewish residents, and Jews adopted the ideals of the American Revolution, participating with enthusiasm in politics. New York was the pivotal point in many aspects of American Jewish history, such as the contest between Reform and Orthodox Jewry in the 1850s, and in antebellum New York Jews became financial and industrial leaders as well as theatrical and musical impresarios, founded the secular fraternal organization B%E2%80%99nai Brith, and built Jews%E2%80%99 Hospital (today%E2%80%99s Mt. Sinai). While many Jewish leaders openly supported the Southern cause in the 1850s, Jews served with distinction in the Union army, and the Jewish garment industry received a big boost with wartime%E2%80%99s demand for uniforms. Polland, of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and Soyer, of Fordham University, pick up the tale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Eastern European immigrants flooded the city. Jews left their mark on New York with a vibrant Yiddish culture, building synagogues like the striking MoorishTemple Emanu-El, establishing charities and settlement houses, department stores like Macy%E2%80%99s, banks, labor unions , and Jewish-owned general newspapers like the New York Times. Gurock describes how, in the interwar years, 90% of tuition-free CCNY%E2%80%99s enrollment was Jewish, with Nobel laureates and polio-vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk among alums. New York Jews were at the center of national Jewish organizational life, rallying support for European Jews during the Holocaust, and later for Zionism, and for Soviet Jews. Feminist leaders based in New York galvanized the nation while a 1968 battle over control of public schools was a turning point in black-Jewish relations. Art historian Linden trains her gaze on artifacts like a colonial circumcision clip, certificates of manumission of Jewish-owned slaves, and boxing gloves worn by Jewish champ Benny Leonard. Although multiple authors impede a cohesive voice and too many years of history are ambitiously stuffed into too few pages, this is overall a highly valuable and vastly immersing study of how New York came to be considered a Jewish city. (Sept.)