Welcoming Tablet's New Columnist, Jenna Weissman Joselit
Esteemed historian and National Jewish Book Award winner Jenna Weissman Joselit joins Tablet this week as a contributor. She’ll be writing for us once a month—in her signature nimble, quirky, and energetic style—about forgotten and overlooked chapters in American Jewish history.
If you don’t know her work, remedy that immediately. She’s written seven books (so far), but I have two faves. The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950 is as erudite yet sprightly a book of social history as one could ever hope to read. It uses quirky source materials (Yiddish etiquette guides, temple bulletins, recipes) to show how Jews remade generations-old traditions to fit their perceptions of what it meant to be American. A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America is slavishly quoted all over my book Mamaleh Knows Best—it convincingly shows that the concerns of women, so frequently dismissed as Style Section fodder, are a vital way of looking at a culture.
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