Race and Religion Among the Chosen People of Crown Heights

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My research and writing have been funded over the years by the International Migration Program of the Social Science Research Council, the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, Phi Beta Kappa of Northern California, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at Yale University—as well as the generous support of my family, and my own work at Wesleyan University, Dickinson College, Rutgers University, and elsewhere. I am extremely grateful to every one of the individuals and institutions who supported this project. Above all, however, my thanks go to the Crown Heights residents— close friends, acquaintances, and total strangers—who agreed to work with me in the course of my research, or at least to tolerate my silly questions . Some made my work in Crown Heights a delight while others made it an ordeal, but all challenged my assumptions and enriched my thinking in ways this text hardly begins to describe. I won’t thank any Crown Heights residents by name, as a number of my closest friends in the neighborhood specifically asked me not to. Indeed, with the exception of public figures, and other individuals already known in the media, I will not use my informants’ names in the body of the text. In all honesty, I’m afraid some wouldn’t want to be closely associated with my work. My understanding of identities like Blackness and Jewishness is substantially different from that of most Crown Heights residents—so much so that my friends in the neighborhood may wonder if I learned anything from them at all. I only hope they will read my work as a heartfelt contribution to the dialogue I have been privileged to hold with them through my research. We may disagree in fundamental ways, but we’re in this together—this borough, these identities, their history, our future. ix I’m also deeply indebted to my friends and colleagues in academia. To the anthropology faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and above all to the members of my dissertation committee—Don Brenneis , Jackie Brown, Steven Gregory, and Susan Harding—for inspiring and challenging me. To my fellow students at UC Santa Cruz, especially Nina Schnall, who knew before I did that I’d one day write this book. To all the members of my dissertation writing group, and above all to Ben Chesluk and David Valentine (the Writer’s Bloc). To the senior colleagues who helped me navigate the intersection of anthropology and Jewish studies, including Hasia Diner, Faye Ginsburg, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, and above all Jonathan Boyarin, who has supported my work in more ways than I can count. And to my students and colleagues at Wesleyan University and elsewhere—above all Liza McAlister, for her wit and wisdom. Of course I would never have finished, or even survived, this book without all the friends and loved ones who keep me in touch with the wonderful world beyond academia. First and foremost Jill, for her careful editing, her Crown Heights savvy, and her (nearly) endless patience with the demands of academic life. Also my whole Brooklyn posse, for food, drink, and general wackiness. Linner anyone? I’ve got a book to celebrate. And my family, near and far, new and old: Bernie, Toni and Laura, Carl and Anna, Mike and Rena, Ethan and Sarah. My love to you all. Finally, my editors at Rutgers University Press, Kristi Long and Adi Hovav, were unfailingly supportive and engaged with my work. I couldn’t have imagined a better environment in which to bring this project to fruition. PORTIONS of this book have been published, in different forms, in the following essays. I am grateful to their publishers for permission to reprint them here. “‘Crown Heights Is the Center of the World’: Reterritorializing a Jewish Diaspora,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 9, no. 1 (2000): 83–106. “Suits and Souls: Trying to Tell a Jew When You See One in Crown Heights.” In Jews of Brooklyn, ed. Ilana Abramovitch and Sean x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Galvin (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press and the University Press of New England, 2002), 214–223. “Food Fights: Contesting ‘Cultural Diversity’ in Crown Heights.” In Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power, and Public Life in America, ed. Melissa Checker and Maggie Fishman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 159–183. “Introduction: Race, Nation, and Religion.” In Race, Nation, and...