Dust to Dust: A History of Jewish Death and Burial in New York
A revealing look at how death and burial practices influence the living

Dust to Dust offers a three-hundred-year history of Jewish life in New York, literally from the ground up. Taking Jewish cemeteries as its subject matter, it follows the ways that Jewish New Yorkers have planned for death and burial from their earliest arrival in New Amsterdam to the twentieth century.

Allan Amanik charts a remarkable reciprocity among Jewish funerary provisions and the workings of family and communal life, tracing how financial and family concerns in death came to equal earlier priorities rooted in tradition and communal cohesion. At the same time, he shows how shifting emphases in death gave average Jewish families the ability to advocate for greater protections and entitlements such as widows’ benefits and funeral insurance. Amanik ultimately concludes that planning for life’s end helps to shape social systems in ways that often go unrecognized.

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Dust to Dust: A History of Jewish Death and Burial in New York
A revealing look at how death and burial practices influence the living

Dust to Dust offers a three-hundred-year history of Jewish life in New York, literally from the ground up. Taking Jewish cemeteries as its subject matter, it follows the ways that Jewish New Yorkers have planned for death and burial from their earliest arrival in New Amsterdam to the twentieth century.

Allan Amanik charts a remarkable reciprocity among Jewish funerary provisions and the workings of family and communal life, tracing how financial and family concerns in death came to equal earlier priorities rooted in tradition and communal cohesion. At the same time, he shows how shifting emphases in death gave average Jewish families the ability to advocate for greater protections and entitlements such as widows’ benefits and funeral insurance. Amanik ultimately concludes that planning for life’s end helps to shape social systems in ways that often go unrecognized.

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Dust to Dust: A History of Jewish Death and Burial in New York

Dust to Dust: A History of Jewish Death and Burial in New York

by Allan Amanik
Dust to Dust: A History of Jewish Death and Burial in New York

Dust to Dust: A History of Jewish Death and Burial in New York

by Allan Amanik

Hardcover

$42.00 
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Overview

A revealing look at how death and burial practices influence the living

Dust to Dust offers a three-hundred-year history of Jewish life in New York, literally from the ground up. Taking Jewish cemeteries as its subject matter, it follows the ways that Jewish New Yorkers have planned for death and burial from their earliest arrival in New Amsterdam to the twentieth century.

Allan Amanik charts a remarkable reciprocity among Jewish funerary provisions and the workings of family and communal life, tracing how financial and family concerns in death came to equal earlier priorities rooted in tradition and communal cohesion. At the same time, he shows how shifting emphases in death gave average Jewish families the ability to advocate for greater protections and entitlements such as widows’ benefits and funeral insurance. Amanik ultimately concludes that planning for life’s end helps to shape social systems in ways that often go unrecognized.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781479800803
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 12/24/2019
Series: Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History , #7
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 655,921
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Allan Amanik is Assistant Professor in the Judaic Studies Department at Brooklyn College, CUNY. He is co-editor with Kami Fletcher of Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed (2019).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Deeds 1

1 Toward a Market and Family Alliance: Community, Kin, and Social Control in New York's Early Jewish Graveyards, 1656-1830 15

2 Acts of True Kindness: To Tend the Dead, to Foster Fraternalism, 1785-1850 47

3 "Carry Me to the Burying Place of My Fathers": Rural Cemeteries, Family Lots, and a New Jewish Social Order, 1849-80 76

4 Wives and Workingmen: Protecting Widows and Orphans, Affirming Husbands and Fathers, 1840-1940 112

5 "Fine Funeral Service at Moderate Costs": New York's Jewish Funeral Industry, 1890-1965 146

Conclusion: To Be Buried among Kin, To Be Buried among Jews 181

Epilogue 189

Acknowledgments 201

Notes 205

Bibliography 239

Index 253

About the Author 263

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