Jews in America

A celebration of the Jewish experience in America, this selective panorama weds essays, letters, documents, fiction excerpts and poems with paintings (Larry Rivers, Ben Shahn, Raphael Soyer, Jack Levine) and photographs documenting Jewish life, history and religious observance. The texts include Revolutionary War patriot Haym Solomon's 1778 petition to the Continental Congress; George Washington's supportive letter of 1790 to a Rhode Island congregation; the eloquent 1844 appeal by newspaper editor, judge and diplomat Mordecai Noah, urging the founding of a Jewish nation; and works by poet Emma Lazarus, theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of Reform Judaism. Fiction excerpts by Howard Fast, Anzia Yezierska and Henry Roth offer an often sardonic look at the immigrant experience; selections by Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Grace Paley depict Jews as an integral part of American society. Karp is a rabbi in New York City. (Nov.)