In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture

by Ted Merwin

Overview

The Jazz Age of the 1920s is an era remembered for illegal liquor, innovative music and dance styles, and burgeoning ideas of social equality. It was also the period during which second-generation Jews began to emerge as a significant demographic in New York City. In TheirOwn Image examines thegrowing cultural visibility of Jewish life amid this vibrant scene.  

From the vaudeville routines of Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, and Sophie Tucker, to the slew of Broadway comedies about Jewish life and the silent films that showed immigrant families struggling to leave the ghetto, images and representations of Jews became staples of interwar popular culture. Through the performing arts, Jews expressed highly ambivalent feelings about their identification with Jewish and American cultures. Ted Merwin shows how they became American by producing and consuming not images of another group, but images of themselves. As a result, they humanized Jewish stereotypes, softened anti-Semitic attitudes, and laid the groundwork for today’s Jewish comedians.

An entertaining look at the role popular culture plays in promoting the acculturation of an ethnic group, In Their Own Image enhances our understanding of American Jewish history and provides a model for the study of other groups and their integration into mainstream society.   

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813538099
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	03/16/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

TED MERWIN is an assistant professor of religion and Judaic studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Jews on the Vaudeville Stage
2. Jews on Broadway
3. Jews in SIlent Film
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A refreshing and stimulating look at Jewish vaudeville, theater and movies sure to revise our understanding of the Jazz Age.

author of GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation - Deborah Dash Moore

Clearly written, carefully researched, and thoughtfully argued, In Their Own Image fills important gaps in existing scholarship. This book will appeal to anyone interested in American Jewish culture, American theatre and film history, and American popular culture.

author of Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage - Joel Berkowitz

Clearly written, carefully researched, and thoughtfully argued, In Their Own Image fills important gaps in existing scholarship. This book will appeal to anyone interested in American Jewish culture, American theatre and film history, and American popular culture.

From the Publisher