Bringing Zion Home examines the role of culture in the establishment of the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel in the immediate postwar decades. Many American Jews first encountered Israel through their roles as tastemakers, consumers, and cultural impresarios—that is, by writing and reading about Israel; dancing Israeli folk dances; promoting and purchasing Israeli goods; and presenting Israeli art and music. It was precisely by means of these cultural practices, argues Emily Alice Katz, that American Jews insisted on Israel's "natural" place in American culture, a phenomenon that continues to shape America's relationship with Israel today. Katz shows that American Jews' promotion and consumption of Israel in the cultural realm was bound up with multiple agendas, including the quest for Jewish authenticity in a postimmigrant milieu and the desire of upwardly mobile Jews to polish their status in American society. And, crucially, as influential cultural and political elites positioned "culture" as both an engine of American dominance and as a purveyor of peace in the Cold War, many of Israel's American Jewish impresarios proclaimed publicly that cultural patronage of and exchange with Israel advanced America's interests in the Middle East and helped spread the "American way" in the postwar world. Bringing Zion Home is the first book to shine a light squarely upon the role and importance of Israel in the arts, popular culture, and material culture of postwar America.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.

Realizing how little control we have over our lives can make us fearful and anxious--or it can lead to greater intimacy with God, a richer prayer life, and a joyful eternal perspective. Seasons of grief, pain, and loss of control are inevitable. Despite our best efforts and steadfast faith, reality rarely matches our expectations. In an unpredictable and broken world, how do we cling to a foundation that provides purpose for today and hope for the future? In their new book, Beyond Our Control, Michael and Lauren McAfee show us how trusting God brings greater contentment than the illusion of control. With deep and abiding faith, the McAfees draw on their experiences with adoption, infertility, illness, and loss to help readers navigate unexpected circumstances. Offering biblical insights and their powerful story of pain and providence, Michael and Lauren know that no matter what happens--to their family, work, or ministry--everything is as it should be because God is in control, and he is good. The McAfees help us: recognize the illusion of control and how it leads to greater anxiety; understand why glorifying God is the richest expectation we can have for our lives; realize that Jesus' pain on the cross brings hope and healing to the pain we experience now; practice the profoundly comforting spiritual discipline of lament, which makes room for us to process grief; and use times of loss to make more room for God's work of growing and sanctifying us. If you struggle to embrace the life you have rather than the life you wanted, this book invites you to find a deeper peace in God than you could have imagined.

Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow illustrates the ways in which Sokolow's choreography circulated American modernism among Jewish and communist channels of the international Left from the 1930s-1960s in the United States, Mexico, and Israel. Drawing upon extensive archival materials, interviews, and theories from dance, Jewish, and gender studies, this book illuminates Sokolow's statements for workers' rights, anti-racism, and the human condition through her choreography for social change alongside her dancing and teaching for Martha Graham. Tracing a catalog of dances with her companies Dance Unit, La Paloma Azul, Lyric Theatre, and Anna Sokolow Dance Company, along with presenters and companies the Negro Cultural Committee, New York State Committee for the Communist Party, Federal Theatre Project, Nuevo Grupo Mexicano de Clásicas y Modernas, and Inbal Dance Theater, this book highlights Sokolow's work in conjunction with developments in ethnic definitions, diaspora, and nationalism in the US, Mexico, and Israel.

Examines the changing meanings Americans invested in their country's intensifying relationship with Israel from the 1950s to the 1980s.