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Gil Ribak

University of Arizona, The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, Faculty Member

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I am a tenured Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona. In 2021-2022, I served as the European Union's Marie S. Curie Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), in Freiburg, Germany. In the past I taught Jewish Studies and History at Oberlin College (2014-2016), and served as the director of the Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles (2012-2014). Among the courses I taught are "Introduction to Modern Israel", "The Jewish People in America", "Introduction to Modern Yiddish Culture", "Jewish-Black Relations in the United States", "Introduction to Jewish Civilization" and "Comparative Jewish Politics, 1848-1948". I earned my Ph.D. in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007. I was a Fulbright dissertator, a Lewin Postdoctoral Fellow in American Jewish History at Washington University in St. Louis (2007-2008), and a Schusterman Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona (2010-2012).

My articles were published in "AJS Review", "American Jewish History", "East European Jewish Affairs", "Israel Studies Forum", "Jewish Quarterly Review", "Journal of American Ethnic History", "Modern Judaism", "Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies"; and in "Kivunim Chadashim", "Midstream", and "Zmanim", in addition to numerous book chapters. My book, "Gentile New York: The Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants", was published by Rutgers University Press in 2012. I'm interested in Jewish history, American history, Yiddish culture, immigration, and inter-ethnic relations.

Currently I am writing a book manuscript about the representation of Black Africans and African Americans in popular Yiddish culture.
Supervisors: Tony Michels
Phone: 520-626-5788
Address: 845 N. Park Ave., Ste. 420,
Tucson, AZ 85721
U.S.A.

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Books by Gil Ribak

"Gentile New York: The Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants" - Introduction (Rutgers University Press, 2012)

Papers by Gil Ribak

“The Original Yente: Yente Telebende and the Yidishe Mame’s Long Shadow of Misogyny”

AJS Perspectives, 2023

This article focuses on Yente Telebende, who was one of the most successful characters in early ... more This article focuses on Yente Telebende, who was one of the most successful characters in early twentieth-century American Yiddish culture. Yente served as an archetype for subsequent Jewish mothers, whether in Yiddish or English, whether in literature, theater, or film; she was the prototype and an adverse pioneer - bossy, meddlesome, manipulative, and pushy. Though beloved by women and men alike, Yente Telebende cast a misogynistic shadow on the representation of Jewish mothers for years to come.

My Mom Drank Ink: The “Little Negro” and the Performance of Race in Yente Telebende’s Stage Productions

In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies , 2023

This article examines the representation of Black people in Yente Telebende. She was one of the m... more This article examines the representation of Black people in Yente Telebende. She was one of the most successful characters in early twentieth-century American Yiddish culture, appearing in comic columns by humorist B. Kovner (Penname of Yankev Adler) in the socialist Forverts (1910s-1920s) and in several popular theater productions that the Forverts promoted. A recurring character was the friend of Yente’s son, called the “Little Negro/Niger” (ניגער'ל), the only nameless character in Kovner’s sketches. The article revises the historiographical convention, according to which Yiddish culture viewed African Americans as “America’s Jews”; and demonstrates how the Yiddish press and theater were immersed in contemporary American racial imagery and vocabulary. Furthermore, the written and performed character of the “little Negro” shows that we should not take at face value much of the ideological line of Yiddish newspapers and their hierarchy between “shund” and “proper” culture, as the same authors commonly produced both.

The Organ of the Jewish People: The "Yidishes Tageblat" and Uncharted Conservative Yiddish Culture in America

Jewish Quarterly Review, 2022

The article examines the history of the first sustainable Yiddish daily in the world, Yidishes ta... more The article examines the history of the first sustainable Yiddish daily in the world, Yidishes tageblat (Jewish Daily News), published in New York between 1885 and 1928). The history of the Tageblat exposes two lacunas in the existing scholarship about Yiddish culture in America. First, there are almost no English-language studies about Orthodox Yiddish newspapers. Second, whereas many historians have accepted and repeated a characterization of the Tageblat as an “Orthodox” paper, in reality it exhibited mildly traditional views that catered to many immigrants’ aching for homey Yiddishkayt, which did not necessitate rigorous observance of Jewish law. The newspaper’s conservatism was anchored in the concept of klal-yisroel (the Jewish people as a whole) rather than specific precepts. The article examines various writers/editors in the paper and shows how they were far not only from Orthodoxy, but sometimes even from traditionalism. This topic also illuminates the paucity of studies about conservative as well as lowbrow American Yiddish culture, especially in comparison to the plethora of studies about radical (socialist, communist, etc.) Yiddish culture. Finally, the article analyzes the difficulty to isolate and define the Tageblat’s kind of traditionalism as a historical phenomenon.

Video Link: "Crude Creatures": The Representation of Black People in Yiddish Culture

Carl-Schurz-Haus Freiburg, 2022

This talk (March 2022, Freiburg, Germany) examines the portrayal of Black people in Yiddish Cultu... more This talk (March 2022, Freiburg, Germany) examines the portrayal of Black people in Yiddish Culture. There was often a scathing gap between Yiddish writers and newspapers’ genuine horror about, and condemnation of lynchings, violence against Blacks, disenfranchisement and racial segregation on the one hand, and the ways in which they represented Black people on the other. Blacks did not seem as “America’s Jews” to Yiddish writers (as several scholars have claimed), but rather a reincarnation of Eastern European Slavic peasants. In addition to the Old World reservoir of images, Yiddish culture reflected the prevalent social and racial concepts of early-twentieth-century America, which had put “Nordics” at the helm of human progress, as well as common representations of Black people in popular culture. Thus one can find depictions in Yiddish culture of Blacks as cannibals, primitive creatures, oversexed, prone to violence, childlike, or just happy-go-lucky people. Both the Old World connotations and American entrenched patterns of displaying and enacting racial hierarchy led Yiddish writers, at times against their own ideologies, to reaffirm repeatedly America’s social order and imagery. My findings are significant not only to the field of Jewish Studies, but to the larger context of immigration history as well, as they show how would-be immigrants have preconceived imagery of Blacks prior to setting foot in America.

“Israelis Are from Mars, American Jews Are from Venus? Cultural Differences and Rivalry in American Jewish Attitudes toward Israel”

Israelis: A Multidisciplinary Bilingual Periodical for the Study of Israel & Zionism , 2021

The article examines how American Jews viewed and represented Israel and Israelis to argue that c... more The article examines how American Jews viewed and represented Israel and Israelis to argue that cultural differences and outright rivalry have played an important role in their attitudes toward the Jewish state. While often masquerading as such, those attitudes have little, if anything, to do with political or religious convictions per se. I look at the historical relations between the world’s two largest Jewish populations, public opinion surveys, studies of American Jews’ positions on various issues, the writings of intellectuals and communal leaders, and popular culture. Episodes of rivalry occurred in the recent controversy whether Israel or the U.S. has the largest Jewish population in the world, as well as the struggle (late 1970s and 1980s) between the Israeli government and major American Jewish organizations over to where would/should Soviet Jews ultimately go. I show that cultural differences and estrangement continue to run deep also when American Jews live in Israel and Israelis live in America. In addition, I deal with the portrayal of Israelis in American Jewish popular culture (literature, television and cinema) to demonstrate how they come across rude, pushy, loudmouthed, and male chauvinistic, but also as cold and ruthless. The gap between the view of Israel as an abstract term and the view of actual Israelis, and the conflation of the political and the cultural are still quite prevalent in the ways American Jews think about and depict Israel and Israelis. Moreover, that gap illuminates a wider question: have the ongoing discussions about Israel enabled American Jews – both Israel’s staunchest supporters and its harshest critics, both mainstream organizations and more marginal groups – to sidestep other real questions that are at the center of Jewish life in America, such as the challenges of building viable communities, intermarriage, and dwindling numbers?

“’Cleanliness Like That of the Germans’: Eastern European Jews’ Views of Germans and the Dynamics of Migration and Disillusionment”, in Steven J. Gold (ed.), Wandering Jews: Global Jewish Migration

Wandering Jews: Global Jewish Migration, 2020

The article focuses on Eastern European Jews’ views of Germans before, during, and after emigrati... more The article focuses on Eastern European Jews’ views of Germans before, during, and after emigration to the U.S. Those images should be understood within the intriguing dynamic of modernization: whereas modernizing Jews often idealized those whom they perceived as more developed and carriers of a higher culture, there was a pattern of initial admiration and later disenchantment. Idealization required distance: the appeal of German culture was largely depended on a certain distance between Germany and the large Jewish population centers of Eastern Europe. As more concrete contacts were formed, various expressions of rejection and enmity toward Jews had frequently turned high regard into disillusionment. My analysis uses a transnational framework to advance our knowledge of not only Jewish attitudes and intergroup relations, but also of the dialectical effects of modernization, which would continue to shape such relations west of the Atlantic as well.

"Reportage from Blotetown: Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin (Tashrak) and the Shtetlization of New York City", in East European Jewish Affairs 50 (Fall 2020): 57-74

East European Jewish Affairs , 2020

The neglected-but-popular Yiddish humorist Tashrak (penname of Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin) offers not j... more The neglected-but-popular Yiddish humorist Tashrak (penname of Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin) offers not just an opportunity to discover understudied aspects of the Jewish urban experience and modern Yiddish culture, but also allows us to tap into a less refined level of beliefs, behavior, judgments and attitudes of Yiddish-speaking Jews in America. Tashrak wittily conveyed to his readers a comforting image of the New World: New York City was just an enlarged shtetl, where traditionalists and assimilationists, radicals and nationalists, employers and employees, and the rich and poor clashed over a host of issues, while encountering a number of stereotypical non-Jews. In his representation of internal Jewish divisions and disputes, relations with non-Jews, and the trials of modernity and assimilation, Tashrak followed, to some extent, the literary paths of earlier Yiddish and Hebrew writers. Yet critics often frowned upon his politics as either conservative or apolitical, and considered his literary style as lowbrow, thus they disregarded his work altogether, or referred to it as worthless.

Drunkards Lying on the Floor: Jewish Contempt for Non-Jewish Lower Classes

AJS Perspectives , 2020

Jewish contempt and fear of the non-Jewish lower classes had to do with their socioeconomic posit... more Jewish contempt and fear of the non-Jewish lower classes had to do with their socioeconomic position as middlemen, who were also members of an ethno-religious minority, and reliant upon central authority for their ultimate safety. Anxiety about non-Jewish masses was interwoven with disdain for their behavior.

“There Was No Uncorrupt Israel": The Role of Israelis in Delegitimizing Jewish Collective Existence (2019)

Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Dynamics of Delegitimization, ed. Alvin H. Rosenfeld , 2019

The article focuses on the role of far-left Israelis in recent years in delegitimizing Jewish col... more

"Helpless Refugees or the Seed of Amalek: A Cautionary Note about the Use of Judaism as a Means to justify Various Political Agendas”, CrossCurrents 67 (3) (2017): 555-564

Negroes Must Not Be Likened to Jews - Modern Judaism 37 (2017)

The article examines Eastern European Jewish immigrants' perceptions of African Americans in the ... more

“For Peace, Not Socialism”: The 1917 Mayoralty Campaign in New York City and Immigrant Jews in a Global Perspective, in American Jewish History, Vol. 101 (October 2017).

The article focuses on the mayoralty race in New York City in 1917. Whereas several scholars have... more The article focuses on the mayoralty race in New York City in 1917. Whereas several scholars have explained the electoral outcome of that campaign as the peak of Jewish immigrants' support for the Socialist Party (SP), this article shows a different picture. The height of the SP’s electoral success among Jewish voters in 1917 had little to do with socialism per se, and was mostly related to the party’s unequivocal anti-war position. The many socialists who joined pro-war organizations (and the independent stance taken by Socialist Congressman Meyer London) on the one hand; and the support Socialist candidate Morris Hillquit received among the usually anti-radical Orthodox Jews on the other, illustrate that the main dividing lines in the 1917 mayoralty campaign did not revolve around socioeconomic issues, but around the question of war and the ensuing draft. Both the Socialists (including Hillquit himself) and their opponents recognized this, and ran their campaigns accordingly.

“’The Shkotsim Were Even Worse than the Dogs’: Yiddish Memoirists and the Reimagining of the Eastern European Jewish Experience in Postwar America”, in Sheila Elana Jelen and Eliyana Adler (eds.), "Reconstructing the Old Country: American Jewry in the Post-Holocaust Decades"

The chapter focuses on a group of Yiddish memoirists – Zionists, socialists, orthodox, and nonpar... more The chapter focuses on a group of Yiddish memoirists – Zionists, socialists, orthodox, and nonpartisan – who came to America before the Holocaust while their recollections were published in the two decades after the war. Critics have focused on how American-born Jews sentimentalized the Jewish past in Eastern European in a host of cultural products—books, theater and musical productions, and movies—but
postwar Yiddish memoirists largely preceded them in providing the flipside, or the darker opposite, of that sentimentality.

’You Can’t Recognize America’: American Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism as a Transnational Phenomenon after World War I

During the immediate years after World War I American Jewish commentators from across the spectru... more During the immediate years after World War I American Jewish commentators from across the spectrum had begun viewing anti-Jewish enmity as an interrelated phenomenon that straddled the Atlantic. On the one hand, they often blamed the growing antisemitism in America on immigrant groups like Poles and Germans. On the other, they also saw the simultaneous rise of anti-Jewish hatred in Europe as linked to the circulation of American anti-Jewish literature by Ford and his ilk. Moreover, as antisemitism in America coincided with the fact that American troops fought alongside the White forces in Russia and Polish Americans were involved in anti-Jewish atrocities, Jewish observers increasingly cast Americans as part of a larger, antagonistic Gentile world.

This article appears in Christian Wiese and Cornelia Wilhelm (eds.), "American Jewry: Transcending the European Experience? "

Video link: Same Old, Same Old? The Resurgence of ‘Negation of the Diaspora’ in Contemporary Israeli Society”

Video link: “A Flight to a Fabricated Universalism: The Role of Israelis in Delegitimizing Jewish Collective Existence”

Much has been written about the resurgence of antisemitism in the first decade of the 21st centur... more Much has been written about the resurgence of antisemitism in the first decade of the 21st century, and how self-styled “progressive” Jews are those who sometimes spearhead the attack against Zionism and the Jewish State. My paper seeks to historicize that phenomenon and demonstrate how common it was among some modernizing Jews to assault the very existence of a Jewish collective, in the name of various universalistic ideologies.

“Getting Drunk, Dancing, and Beating Each Other Up: The Images of the Gentile Poor and Narratives of Jewish Difference among the Yiddish Intelligentsia, 1881-1914”

This is a chapter in Leonard J. Greenspoon (ed.), "Wealth and Poverty in Jewish Tradition: Studie... more This is a chapter in Leonard J. Greenspoon (ed.), "Wealth and Poverty in Jewish Tradition: Studies in Jewish Civilization, Volume 26" (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2015), 203-224. The article examines the imagery of Gentile poverty and the Gentile poor, especially in comparison to the Jewish poor, as expressed by the Yiddish intelligentsia both in Eastern Europe and America in the three decades before World War I.

“Between Germany and Russia: The Images of Poles and the Ensuing Cultural Trajectories among Yiddish and Hebrew Writers between 1863 and World War I” in Polin, vol. 28 (2015)

Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies 28 , Nov 2015

“Toldot ha-mechaber” (biography), in Pinchas Giller (ed.), Moshe Ha-Cohen Reicherson, Be’er Moshe (Los Angeles: Fryd, 2015) (Hebrew)

"Gentile New York: The Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants" - Introduction (Rutgers University Press, 2012)

“The Original Yente: Yente Telebende and the Yidishe Mame’s Long Shadow of Misogyny”

AJS Perspectives, 2023

This article focuses on Yente Telebende, who was one of the most successful characters in early ... more This article focuses on Yente Telebende, who was one of the most successful characters in early twentieth-century American Yiddish culture. Yente served as an archetype for subsequent Jewish mothers, whether in Yiddish or English, whether in literature, theater, or film; she was the prototype and an adverse pioneer - bossy, meddlesome, manipulative, and pushy. Though beloved by women and men alike, Yente Telebende cast a misogynistic shadow on the representation of Jewish mothers for years to come.

My Mom Drank Ink: The “Little Negro” and the Performance of Race in Yente Telebende’s Stage Productions

In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies , 2023

This article examines the representation of Black people in Yente Telebende. She was one of the m... more This article examines the representation of Black people in Yente Telebende. She was one of the most successful characters in early twentieth-century American Yiddish culture, appearing in comic columns by humorist B. Kovner (Penname of Yankev Adler) in the socialist Forverts (1910s-1920s) and in several popular theater productions that the Forverts promoted. A recurring character was the friend of Yente’s son, called the “Little Negro/Niger” (ניגער'ל), the only nameless character in Kovner’s sketches. The article revises the historiographical convention, according to which Yiddish culture viewed African Americans as “America’s Jews”; and demonstrates how the Yiddish press and theater were immersed in contemporary American racial imagery and vocabulary. Furthermore, the written and performed character of the “little Negro” shows that we should not take at face value much of the ideological line of Yiddish newspapers and their hierarchy between “shund” and “proper” culture, as the same authors commonly produced both.

The Organ of the Jewish People: The "Yidishes Tageblat" and Uncharted Conservative Yiddish Culture in America

Jewish Quarterly Review, 2022

The article examines the history of the first sustainable Yiddish daily in the world, Yidishes ta... more The article examines the history of the first sustainable Yiddish daily in the world, Yidishes tageblat (Jewish Daily News), published in New York between 1885 and 1928). The history of the Tageblat exposes two lacunas in the existing scholarship about Yiddish culture in America. First, there are almost no English-language studies about Orthodox Yiddish newspapers. Second, whereas many historians have accepted and repeated a characterization of the Tageblat as an “Orthodox” paper, in reality it exhibited mildly traditional views that catered to many immigrants’ aching for homey Yiddishkayt, which did not necessitate rigorous observance of Jewish law. The newspaper’s conservatism was anchored in the concept of klal-yisroel (the Jewish people as a whole) rather than specific precepts. The article examines various writers/editors in the paper and shows how they were far not only from Orthodoxy, but sometimes even from traditionalism. This topic also illuminates the paucity of studies about conservative as well as lowbrow American Yiddish culture, especially in comparison to the plethora of studies about radical (socialist, communist, etc.) Yiddish culture. Finally, the article analyzes the difficulty to isolate and define the Tageblat’s kind of traditionalism as a historical phenomenon.

Video Link: "Crude Creatures": The Representation of Black People in Yiddish Culture

Carl-Schurz-Haus Freiburg, 2022

This talk (March 2022, Freiburg, Germany) examines the portrayal of Black people in Yiddish Cultu... more This talk (March 2022, Freiburg, Germany) examines the portrayal of Black people in Yiddish Culture. There was often a scathing gap between Yiddish writers and newspapers’ genuine horror about, and condemnation of lynchings, violence against Blacks, disenfranchisement and racial segregation on the one hand, and the ways in which they represented Black people on the other. Blacks did not seem as “America’s Jews” to Yiddish writers (as several scholars have claimed), but rather a reincarnation of Eastern European Slavic peasants. In addition to the Old World reservoir of images, Yiddish culture reflected the prevalent social and racial concepts of early-twentieth-century America, which had put “Nordics” at the helm of human progress, as well as common representations of Black people in popular culture. Thus one can find depictions in Yiddish culture of Blacks as cannibals, primitive creatures, oversexed, prone to violence, childlike, or just happy-go-lucky people. Both the Old World connotations and American entrenched patterns of displaying and enacting racial hierarchy led Yiddish writers, at times against their own ideologies, to reaffirm repeatedly America’s social order and imagery. My findings are significant not only to the field of Jewish Studies, but to the larger context of immigration history as well, as they show how would-be immigrants have preconceived imagery of Blacks prior to setting foot in America.

“Israelis Are from Mars, American Jews Are from Venus? Cultural Differences and Rivalry in American Jewish Attitudes toward Israel”

Israelis: A Multidisciplinary Bilingual Periodical for the Study of Israel & Zionism , 2021

The article examines how American Jews viewed and represented Israel and Israelis to argue that c... more The article examines how American Jews viewed and represented Israel and Israelis to argue that cultural differences and outright rivalry have played an important role in their attitudes toward the Jewish state. While often masquerading as such, those attitudes have little, if anything, to do with political or religious convictions per se. I look at the historical relations between the world’s two largest Jewish populations, public opinion surveys, studies of American Jews’ positions on various issues, the writings of intellectuals and communal leaders, and popular culture. Episodes of rivalry occurred in the recent controversy whether Israel or the U.S. has the largest Jewish population in the world, as well as the struggle (late 1970s and 1980s) between the Israeli government and major American Jewish organizations over to where would/should Soviet Jews ultimately go. I show that cultural differences and estrangement continue to run deep also when American Jews live in Israel and Israelis live in America. In addition, I deal with the portrayal of Israelis in American Jewish popular culture (literature, television and cinema) to demonstrate how they come across rude, pushy, loudmouthed, and male chauvinistic, but also as cold and ruthless. The gap between the view of Israel as an abstract term and the view of actual Israelis, and the conflation of the political and the cultural are still quite prevalent in the ways American Jews think about and depict Israel and Israelis. Moreover, that gap illuminates a wider question: have the ongoing discussions about Israel enabled American Jews – both Israel’s staunchest supporters and its harshest critics, both mainstream organizations and more marginal groups – to sidestep other real questions that are at the center of Jewish life in America, such as the challenges of building viable communities, intermarriage, and dwindling numbers?

“’Cleanliness Like That of the Germans’: Eastern European Jews’ Views of Germans and the Dynamics of Migration and Disillusionment”, in Steven J. Gold (ed.), Wandering Jews: Global Jewish Migration

Wandering Jews: Global Jewish Migration, 2020

The article focuses on Eastern European Jews’ views of Germans before, during, and after emigrati... more The article focuses on Eastern European Jews’ views of Germans before, during, and after emigration to the U.S. Those images should be understood within the intriguing dynamic of modernization: whereas modernizing Jews often idealized those whom they perceived as more developed and carriers of a higher culture, there was a pattern of initial admiration and later disenchantment. Idealization required distance: the appeal of German culture was largely depended on a certain distance between Germany and the large Jewish population centers of Eastern Europe. As more concrete contacts were formed, various expressions of rejection and enmity toward Jews had frequently turned high regard into disillusionment. My analysis uses a transnational framework to advance our knowledge of not only Jewish attitudes and intergroup relations, but also of the dialectical effects of modernization, which would continue to shape such relations west of the Atlantic as well.

"Reportage from Blotetown: Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin (Tashrak) and the Shtetlization of New York City", in East European Jewish Affairs 50 (Fall 2020): 57-74

East European Jewish Affairs , 2020

The neglected-but-popular Yiddish humorist Tashrak (penname of Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin) offers not j... more The neglected-but-popular Yiddish humorist Tashrak (penname of Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin) offers not just an opportunity to discover understudied aspects of the Jewish urban experience and modern Yiddish culture, but also allows us to tap into a less refined level of beliefs, behavior, judgments and attitudes of Yiddish-speaking Jews in America. Tashrak wittily conveyed to his readers a comforting image of the New World: New York City was just an enlarged shtetl, where traditionalists and assimilationists, radicals and nationalists, employers and employees, and the rich and poor clashed over a host of issues, while encountering a number of stereotypical non-Jews. In his representation of internal Jewish divisions and disputes, relations with non-Jews, and the trials of modernity and assimilation, Tashrak followed, to some extent, the literary paths of earlier Yiddish and Hebrew writers. Yet critics often frowned upon his politics as either conservative or apolitical, and considered his literary style as lowbrow, thus they disregarded his work altogether, or referred to it as worthless.

Drunkards Lying on the Floor: Jewish Contempt for Non-Jewish Lower Classes

AJS Perspectives , 2020

Jewish contempt and fear of the non-Jewish lower classes had to do with their socioeconomic posit... more Jewish contempt and fear of the non-Jewish lower classes had to do with their socioeconomic position as middlemen, who were also members of an ethno-religious minority, and reliant upon central authority for their ultimate safety. Anxiety about non-Jewish masses was interwoven with disdain for their behavior.

“There Was No Uncorrupt Israel": The Role of Israelis in Delegitimizing Jewish Collective Existence (2019)

Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Dynamics of Delegitimization, ed. Alvin H. Rosenfeld , 2019

The article focuses on the role of far-left Israelis in recent years in delegitimizing Jewish col... more

"Helpless Refugees or the Seed of Amalek: A Cautionary Note about the Use of Judaism as a Means to justify Various Political Agendas”, CrossCurrents 67 (3) (2017): 555-564

Negroes Must Not Be Likened to Jews - Modern Judaism 37 (2017)

The article examines Eastern European Jewish immigrants' perceptions of African Americans in the ... more

“For Peace, Not Socialism”: The 1917 Mayoralty Campaign in New York City and Immigrant Jews in a Global Perspective, in American Jewish History, Vol. 101 (October 2017).

The article focuses on the mayoralty race in New York City in 1917. Whereas several scholars have... more The article focuses on the mayoralty race in New York City in 1917. Whereas several scholars have explained the electoral outcome of that campaign as the peak of Jewish immigrants' support for the Socialist Party (SP), this article shows a different picture. The height of the SP’s electoral success among Jewish voters in 1917 had little to do with socialism per se, and was mostly related to the party’s unequivocal anti-war position. The many socialists who joined pro-war organizations (and the independent stance taken by Socialist Congressman Meyer London) on the one hand; and the support Socialist candidate Morris Hillquit received among the usually anti-radical Orthodox Jews on the other, illustrate that the main dividing lines in the 1917 mayoralty campaign did not revolve around socioeconomic issues, but around the question of war and the ensuing draft. Both the Socialists (including Hillquit himself) and their opponents recognized this, and ran their campaigns accordingly.

“’The Shkotsim Were Even Worse than the Dogs’: Yiddish Memoirists and the Reimagining of the Eastern European Jewish Experience in Postwar America”, in Sheila Elana Jelen and Eliyana Adler (eds.), "Reconstructing the Old Country: American Jewry in the Post-Holocaust Decades"

The chapter focuses on a group of Yiddish memoirists – Zionists, socialists, orthodox, and nonpar... more The chapter focuses on a group of Yiddish memoirists – Zionists, socialists, orthodox, and nonpartisan – who came to America before the Holocaust while their recollections were published in the two decades after the war. Critics have focused on how American-born Jews sentimentalized the Jewish past in Eastern European in a host of cultural products—books, theater and musical productions, and movies—but
postwar Yiddish memoirists largely preceded them in providing the flipside, or the darker opposite, of that sentimentality.

’You Can’t Recognize America’: American Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism as a Transnational Phenomenon after World War I

During the immediate years after World War I American Jewish commentators from across the spectru... more During the immediate years after World War I American Jewish commentators from across the spectrum had begun viewing anti-Jewish enmity as an interrelated phenomenon that straddled the Atlantic. On the one hand, they often blamed the growing antisemitism in America on immigrant groups like Poles and Germans. On the other, they also saw the simultaneous rise of anti-Jewish hatred in Europe as linked to the circulation of American anti-Jewish literature by Ford and his ilk. Moreover, as antisemitism in America coincided with the fact that American troops fought alongside the White forces in Russia and Polish Americans were involved in anti-Jewish atrocities, Jewish observers increasingly cast Americans as part of a larger, antagonistic Gentile world.

This article appears in Christian Wiese and Cornelia Wilhelm (eds.), "American Jewry: Transcending the European Experience? "

Video link: Same Old, Same Old? The Resurgence of ‘Negation of the Diaspora’ in Contemporary Israeli Society”

Video link: “A Flight to a Fabricated Universalism: The Role of Israelis in Delegitimizing Jewish Collective Existence”

Much has been written about the resurgence of antisemitism in the first decade of the 21st centur... more Much has been written about the resurgence of antisemitism in the first decade of the 21st century, and how self-styled “progressive” Jews are those who sometimes spearhead the attack against Zionism and the Jewish State. My paper seeks to historicize that phenomenon and demonstrate how common it was among some modernizing Jews to assault the very existence of a Jewish collective, in the name of various universalistic ideologies.

“Getting Drunk, Dancing, and Beating Each Other Up: The Images of the Gentile Poor and Narratives of Jewish Difference among the Yiddish Intelligentsia, 1881-1914”

This is a chapter in Leonard J. Greenspoon (ed.), "Wealth and Poverty in Jewish Tradition: Studie... more This is a chapter in Leonard J. Greenspoon (ed.), "Wealth and Poverty in Jewish Tradition: Studies in Jewish Civilization, Volume 26" (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2015), 203-224. The article examines the imagery of Gentile poverty and the Gentile poor, especially in comparison to the Jewish poor, as expressed by the Yiddish intelligentsia both in Eastern Europe and America in the three decades before World War I.

“Between Germany and Russia: The Images of Poles and the Ensuing Cultural Trajectories among Yiddish and Hebrew Writers between 1863 and World War I” in Polin, vol. 28 (2015)

Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies 28 , Nov 2015

“Toldot ha-mechaber” (biography), in Pinchas Giller (ed.), Moshe Ha-Cohen Reicherson, Be’er Moshe (Los Angeles: Fryd, 2015) (Hebrew)

“’The Jew Usually Left Those Crimes to Esau’: The Jewish Responses to Accusations about Jewish Criminality in New York, 1908-1913”

AJS Review, Apr 2014

Too Arab? Joshua Cohen’s Mizrachi Problem

Times of Israel - The Blogs, 2022

This is my commentary on the book "Moving Kings" by Joshua Cohen. It focuses on the depiction of ... more

A review of Gennady Estraikh - "Transatlantic Russian Jewishness: Ideological Voyages of the Yiddish Daily Forverts in the First Half of the Twentieth Century", in "Slavic Review", 80 (Winter 2021): 960-961

Slavic Review , 2021

A review of Marc Volovici, "German as a Jewish Problem: The Language Politics of Jewish Nationalism", in "Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism" 4 (Spring 2021): 143-147.

Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism , 2021

The book focuses on the role that the German language and culture played among Jewish nationalists.

A review of Jacob Jay Lindenthal, "Abi Gezunt: Explorations into the Role of Health and the American Jewish Dream", in "Studies in Contemporary Jewry: Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures" 31 (2020): 307-309.

"Studies in Contemporary Jewry: Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures", 2020

A review of Markus Krah's "American Jewry and the Re-Invention of the East European Jewish Past" - "American Jewish History", Volume 103, Number 2, April 2019, pp. 239-241

American Jewish History , 2019

"Golden Land and Promised City, Revisited" - in "Reviews in American History", Volume 46 (1), March 2018, pp. 114-120

Reviews in American History, 2018

A review of Jeffrey S. Gurock, The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline, and Revival of a Jewish Com... more

“A Yeshiva Student in Tsarist Russia, a Peddler and a Storekeeper in America, and an Urban Zionist Pioneer: The Transnational Life of Menachem Mendel Frieden”, a review of Lee Shai Weissbach (ed. and translator), "A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden"

A review of Daniel Katz, "All Together Different: Yiddish Socialists, Garment Workers, and the Labor Roots of Multiculturalism"

American Jewish Archives Journal, 2013

A review of Jeanne E. Abrams, "Dr. Charles David Spivak: A Jewish Immigrant and the American Tuberculosis Movement"

American Jewish History, Jun 2010

“De-essentialism and Its Discontents”, a review of Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman (eds.), "Rethinking European Jewish History"

H-Net, 2009

“How Jewish Does it Look?”, a review of Susan G. Solomon, "Louis I. Kahn's Jewish Architecture: Mikveh Israel and the Midcentury American Synagogue"

H-Net, 2009

A review of Daniel Soyer and Jocelyn Cohen (eds.), My Future is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants

American Jewish Archives Journal, 2007

NMJHS - Asch article (2018).pdf

This short article reviews The career of Yiddish writer Sholem Asch, and his travel to the Southw... more

A Flight to Fabricated Universalism: The Role of Israelis in Delegitimizing Jewish Collective Existence

The paper focuses on Israelis from the Far Left, and traces their attacks against Jewish collecti... more The paper focuses on Israelis from the Far Left, and traces their attacks against Jewish collective existence and even what they see as collective Israeli traits. Those attacks have contributed and strengthen the de-legitimization of Jewish self-determination, and fan the flames of the new antisemitism that masks itself as anti-Zionism.

I link such attacks to the political heritage of radical Jews, assault the very existence of a Jewish collective, in the name of various universal ideologies, such as socialism/Marxism, or anarchism. One example was the responses of some radical Jews in Russia to the pogroms of 1881-1882.

“’Americans Hate the Mongols Even More’: The Presentation of Chinese and Japanese Virtues among immigrant Jewish intellectuals in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century America”

My paper examines the bifurcated representations of Chinese and Japanese among immigrant Jewish i... more My paper examines the bifurcated representations of Chinese and Japanese among immigrant Jewish intellectuals in turn-of-the-twentieth-century America. Whereas Jewish commentators often displayed exoticism and bigotry that matched contemporary American racial conceptions on the one hand, they still expressed sympathy and identification on the other: Jewish observers constantly referred to Asian physical features, purported dirtiness and savagery, yet they also sympathized with Asian suffering and recognized shared interests in fighting racism in America. Moreover, by discussing Asian traits Jewish immigrants were able to portray their self-image and concerns while attributing them to others: Asians were also a hardworking, beneficial immigrant minority, which was hated for its different religion and origins.

“Jewish Identity in the U.S.: Getting the Conceptual Picture Right”

“’Proud People, Cultured Antisemites’: The Images of Germans Before and During Emigration among Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Eastern European Jews”

“’Between Fonye and Ashkenaz’: The Images of Slavs and Germans among Eastern European Jews and Their Linguistic Dimension in the Late Nineteenth Century”

“’Jews Are Not Robbers by Nature’: The Yidishes Tageblat and the Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902”

Given at the Biennial Scholars’ Conference on American Jewish history (Washington DC 2004)

Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR)

The topic is "Gentiles", and my entry is on Gentiles in Modern Judaism, vol. 10, 36-38.