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Bridging Worlds: American Adolescent Jewish Girls
Ellen L. Berg, Washington, D.C
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KLAPPER, MELISSA R. Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920. New York: New York University Press, 2005. x + 310 pp. Introduction, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8147-4780-9.
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Using diaries and memoirs, institutional papers, and periodicals, Melissa Klapper engagingly draws readers into the lives of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920. Previous literature of girlhood has often examined "urban, middle-class, northeastern Protestant girls" while that focusing on ethnicity has covered the well-trod ground of working-class immigrants, particularly those in New York City (3). Klapper's broad geographic approach and interest in "middle class or upwardly mobile working class" Jewish girls aged twelve to twenty, particularly third- to fifth-generation Americans, brings together the literatures of girlhood and of Jewish Americans (31).
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Although many historians study the meanings of children and youth in American culture, Klapper takes on the challenge of depicting their lived experiences. Readers gain entrée into the daily activities and concerns of an array of Jewish girls, such as Clara Solomon's daily schedule and dislike of Normal School during the Civil War, Jennie Franklin's high academic expectations for herself in 1890, and Emily Frankenstein's concerns over her boyfriend's interest in Christian Science in 1918. Such details bring the girls vividly to life.
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Klapper studies the experience of Jewish girls in academic programs, informal educational settings, religious education, and youth culture. She argues that the ideals of American girlhood harmonized with the goals of Jewish parents and their daughters, with the result that her subjects lived much like non-Jewish girls. Nevertheless, Klapper argues that in embracing modern American ideals, Jewish girls never did so to the expense of their Jewish identity.
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Secondary education became increasingly available to middle-class girls during this era, while working-class families frequently relied on their adolescent daughters' wages. Klapper argues that American secondary education supported "widely shared assumptions about gender and class" and thus was accepted by Jewish families as a way to "sustain tradition while still exposing students to the individual benefits of modernization." (104).
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Informal forms of education, including "print media, lectures, cultural activities, and a wide variety of programs at community institutions," also influenced Jewish girls, particularly those not in school (107). Klapper rejects criticisms of the "turn-of-the-century Americanization movement…as the worst kind of social control" (106). Instead, she claims that Jewish parents and institutions actively sought modernization and Americanization. The American middle-class emphasis on the importance of women's role within the home, Klapper argues, mirrored Jewish values and appealed to Jewish women across classes. In her discussion of informal education, Klapper's evidence comes more from the institutions and their middle-class supporters than from personal papers of the girls themselves. Girls who participated in community education programs tended to be new immigrants or members of the working class, for whom diaries and memoirs are quite difficult to find. Thus, her argument about the lived experiences of these girls is less compelling than is her discussion of middle-class Jewish girls.
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