| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism. By Gulie Ne'eman Arad. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. xii, 314 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-253-33809-3.)

This well-researched book seeks an explanation for the supposed muted response of American Jewish leadership to the lethal threat faced by their European brethren. In the process we are taken on a tour of the history of American Jewry. 1

Gulie Ne'eman Arad discovers that the half-in, half-out posture inherent in the acculturation process had much to do with the inability of communal leaders to devote full effort to the rescue enterprise. She documents their quandary with telling quotes from their journals and letters and the Anglo-Jewish press. Enriching the narrative are insights from cultural anthropology, especially as it pertains to ethnic leadership and perceptions regarding human behavior in extremis distilled from psychoanalysis and social psychology. The result is a broadly gauged narrative about the American Jewish response to the Holocaust. Unfortunately, few Jewish leaders are able to stand up to such heady fare. . . .

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