In the concluding pages of Kimmy Caplan's book, the author asks his ultimate question: “Did the Immigrant rabbis and preachers succeed?” (p. 312) To achieve success, in the eyes of Caplan, is to stimulate an emotionally charged response or to generate a change in perspective or action.

The 1920s witnessed great changes in the American Jewish community. Jews moved out of their areas of first settlement and became increasingly assimilated into mainstream American life, and many became prominent figures in the world of popular music, film, the law, and organized crime. Paradoxically, as they strove to be fully integrated into American society, they also desired to maintain their separate Jewish identity. The tension this created has remained a central theme of the American Jewish experience. Michael Alexander has constructed an elegantly written and compelling interpretation of how that second generation of American Jews sought to resolve this conflict. In so doing, he offers fresh insights into the sources of American Jewish liberalism.

A feast for the imagination, Krutikov's Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity is best begun with dessert; the last chapter of this richly observed, original study of the modernist turn in Yiddish prose fiction repays with interest the reader's diligent investment in the first three-quarters of the book. Here, Krutikov not only offers the most concise and compelling version of his argument but also resolves some of the questions that bedevil his attempt to determine the role of literature in history. The problem is, of course, not his alone but of paramount importance for every student of Eastern European Jewish culture. Krutikov's diachronic reading of a single historical moment through the prism of fiction thus offers an immediate point of entry into the gap between the reality of Jewish lives in history and the construction of Jewish life in literature.

The October Revolution fostered the rise to prominence of two of the greatest Jewish art theatres of the twentieth century: the Hebrew-language Habima and the Yiddish-language Moscow State Yiddish Theater, the latter commonly referred to by its Russian acronym, Goset. The impetus for their creation predated the Revolution, with roots, respectively, in Bialystok and Petrograd; but it was only after they established themselves in Moscow that they spread their wings and attained artistic heights that would ensure a place in the annals of world theatre. Both were important participants in the great flowering of the Russian stage during the 1920s, a period that seethed with revolutionary fervor, as Moscow took the vanguard as the incubator for theatrical experimentation. It was here that the theories and artistic silhouette of the modern stage were examined, reshaped, and reinvented with an unwavering conviction that theatre matters, that it has the power to transform society.

Much has been, and continues to be, written about the Conservative movement and its impact upon both American Judaism and world Jewry. Such works differ widely in scope and emphasis. The three recently published volumes under review serve to exemplify such diversity. One examines the movement in its entirety, concentrating on the present, primarily from a sociological perspective; the others focus more on history, illuminating in different ways the roles of two of the most influential figures in Conservative Judaism in the past.

The author of this review was once invited to give a historical lecture at a venerable New York City Jewish institution. The subject of antisemitism figured prominently in the talk. “Why do they hate us so?” wailed one member of the audience among the crowd that gathered afterward. “Can you tell me?” As she walked with me to my subway stop, pouring out her despair, I patiently tried to explain to her why perceptions of Jews might have developed as they had.

With few exceptions, classical study of Jewish liturgy has focused on the words of the prayers, largely ignoring the less tangible elements of setting, gesture, halakhic guidance, and music. When scholars like Eric Werner and A. Z. Idelsohn wrote about liturgical music, they, too, considered it a text. In recent years, and influenced by trends in the larger academy, the field has become more interdisciplinary, open to the insights of other scholarly methodologies, resulting in important studies on the archaeological history of the synagogue itself, prayer gestures, liturgical halakhah, and mystical approaches to prayer. Into this context, we can welcome warmly Jeffrey Summit's The Lord's Song in a Strange Land and its ethnographic study of the musical dimension of contemporary American Jewish liturgy.

Perhaps it should be thought good luck if you've written a deeply flawed book that is overtaken and rendered very nearly useless by events. Saved by the bell, as it were, your bad book may not be noticed. (Or is it better to be embarrassed than ignored?)

Demographic studies and their findings have dominated research in to the American Jewish community since the first National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) of 1970. When it comes to Jewish identity, both national and community-based demographic studies have been criticized for providing only superficial portraits of the character of American Jewish institutional life and being even less revelatory of the inner life of American Jews. Yet, few fiscal resources and little public notice have been given to those who sought to describe American Jews and their Judaism in depth through the use of qualitative research methods. It took Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, professors of sociology and religion respectively to risk the development of a theory of Jewish identity for more than 50 percent of America's adult Jewish population based on 45 in-depth interviews and two focus groups. To be sure, the authors, both highly respected and prolific scholars, set their findings against a backdrop provided by surveys mailed back by 1005 Jews. Nevertheless, it is the insights derived from the three hour interviews that are critical to the analysis. Paralleling the work of students of American Protestantism such as Robert Bellah, Wade Clark Roof, and Robert Wuthnow, Cohen and Eisen seek to decipher the inner workings of the life journeys of moderately affiliated Jews.