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154 SHOFAR Fa112000 Vol. 19, No.1 concise language the theories, ideas, and influences that fonned the intellectual culture ofthese exceptional academic figures that I would consider one ofthe strengths ofher book. It is not a history ofJewish-American literature, far from it, but it gives the reader a precise and lucid view ofthe most important literary issues facing the academic world in the past sixty years. The third immigrant generation, it is said, tries to recapture what the first knew and the second had tried to forget, and although that fonnula does not always follow in this book, it does bear a rough resemblance to what can be more clearly perceived in Jewish-American culture in the twentieth century. Robert Alter, who did studies of Hebrew literature, Malamud, and Roth, observed that such scholarship was regarded as "some kind of parochial diversion" (p. 293) by his colleagues in the late 60s, the "Golden Age" of Jewish-American literature. Ruth R. Wisse, who became Harvard's first professor of Yiddish literature, and who had been born in Czernowitz in what is now the Ukraine, spoke Yiddish from childhood through her fonnative years in Montreal. Despite resistance, finally, as Klingenstein shows, Jewish academics could regard their own culture as worthy of attention as literature. The irony ofthis turn ofevents is that as Jewish culture in this country is under the pressure ofassimilation, as the younger generation seems to be more and more detached from such concerns as ethnic background and heritage-at least as revealed in the yearly statistics ofthose who regard themselves as Jewish-American-the academy has finaliy, ifreluctantly, embraced the culture that unassirnilated Jews ofLevin's generation took for granted. Ifmy own experience in my course in Jewish-American literature is at all typical, the core knowledge young Jews oftoday possess oftheir religious and cultural heritage is terrifyingly limited. It is the challenge of Jewish intellectuals to develop a growing, young audience for their scholarship and the culture upon which it is based or find themselves without an audience. Klingenstein's book gives a wealth of background on how we got where we are now, but where we are going in the world that we have inherited from our fathers is quite another matter. The book is well worth the investment. Joel Shatzky Department of English State University ofNew York College at Cortland How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America, by Karen Brodkin. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. 243 pp. $18.00 (p). I wish that the insights and analyses in Brodkin's volume were as sparkling and imaginative as her title. Alas, they are not. Karen Brodkin, a professor ofanthropology Book Reviews ,~ .- 155 at the University ofCalifornia (Los Angeles), has tried to trace how Jews traversed the line from being outsiders to becoming insiders. She has combed most ofthe published works on the subject ofJews, acculturation, assimilation, gender-based experiences and limitations, and institutionalized racism and its decline in the United States since 1945. Her conclusions are that Jews wanted to become part of the mainstream in the United States, but when they did, many ofthem were ambivalent rather than comfortable with their new status. Moreover, she focuses especially on the complexities with which Jewish women had to contend. Her explorations into why and how Jews tried to "create a Jewish ethnoracial identity" has led her to vast generalizations about white ethnic immigrantexperiences and the so-called desires ofJews. These containmany truths, but they also ignore the fact that different European groups brought their own cultural values with them to the New World and that these helped shape both their experiences and development. Brodkin's assessments and analyses repeat what most educated people already know. We are informed that it is, and always has been, better to be white, male, and Protestant in the United States than it is (was) to be a person of color (or one who, regardless ofcolor, is nonetheless regarded as "non-white"), female, and non-Protestant. We are also instructed about other historical experiences which no educated person today would dispute: only a small minority ofimmigrants and their children benefited from public education at...

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