Is there a Jewish art? Is there a single "Jewish experience"? Matthew Baigell, the acknowledged American expert on Jewish art, offers the first book ever on the history of Jewish American art from the early settlements to the present.

This volume focuses on Jewish American identity within the context of Pop art in New York City during the sixties to reveal the multivalent identities and selves often ignored in Pop scholarship. Melissa L. Mednicov establishes her study within the context of prominent Jewish artists, dealers, institutions, and collectors in New York City in the Pop sixties. Mednicov incorporates the historiography of Jewish identity in Pop art—the ways by which identity is named or silenced—to better understand how Pop art made, or marked, different modes of identity in the sixties. By looking at a nexus of the art world in this period and the ways in which Jewish identity was registered or negated, Mednicov is able to further consider questions about the ways mass culture influenced Pop art and its participants—and, to a larger extent, formed further modes of identity. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Jewish studies, and American studies.

This book explores the important and barely examined connections between the humanitarian concerns embedded in the religious heritage of Jewish American artists and the appeal of radical political causes between the years of the Great Migration from Eastern Europe in the 1880s and the beginning of World War II in the late 1930s. Visual material consists primarily of political cartoons published in leftwing Yiddish- and English-language newspapers and magazines. Artists often commented on current events using biblical and other Jewish references, meaning that whatever were their political concerns, their Jewish heritage was ever present. By the late 1940s, the obvious ties between political interests and religious concerns largely disappeared. The text, set against events of the times—the Russian Revolution, the Depression and the rise of fascism during the 1930s as well as life on New York's Lower East Side—includes artists' statements as well as the thoughts of religious, literary, and political figures ranging from Marx to Trotsky to newspaper editor Abraham Cahan to contemporary art critics including Meyer Schapiro.

Can studying an artist’s migration provide the key to unlocking a “global” history of art? The artistic biography of Michail Grobman and his group, which was active in Israel in the 1970s, open up this vital new perspective and analytical mode.

Jewish themes in American art were not very visible until the last two decades, although many famous twentieth-century artists and critics were and are Jewish. Few artists responded openly to the Holocaust until the 1960s, when it finally began to act as a galvanizing force, allowing Jewish-American artists to express their Jewish identity in their work. Baigell describes how artists initially deflected their responses into abstract forms or by invoking biblical and traditional figures and then in more recent decades confronted directly Holocaust imagery and memory. He traces the development of artistic work from the late 1930s to the present in a moving study of a long overlooked topic in the history of American art.

Born over a fifty-year period, the artists in this volume represent several generations of twentieth-century artists. Examining the work of such influential artists as Mark Rothko, Max Weber, and Ruth Weisberg, Baigell directly confronts their Jewish identity—as a religious, cultural, and psychological component of their lives—and explores the way in which this influence is reflected in their art. Drawing upon their common heritage, Baigell reveals the different ways these artists responded to the Great Immigration, the Depression, the Holocaust, the founding of the state of Israel, and the rise of feminism. Each artist’s varied Jewish experiences have contributed to the creation of a visual language and subject matter that reflect both Jewish assimilation and Jewish continuity in ways that inform modern Jewish history and changes in present-day America. Offering a fresh examination of well-known artists as well as long overdue attention to lesser-known artists, Baigell’s incisive observations are indispensable to our understanding of the Jewish themes in these artists' work. Written in a lively and spirited prose, this book is compulsory reading for those interested in modern American art and Jewish studies.

The American Jewish Year Book, now in its 116th year, is the annual record of the North American Jewish communities and provides insight into their major trends. Part I presents a forum on the Pew Survey, “A Portrait of American Orthodox Jews.” Part II begins with Chapter 13, "The Jewish Family." Chapter 14 examines “American Jews and the International Arena (April 1, 2015 – April 15, 2016), which focuses on US–Israel Relations. Chapters 15-17 analyze the demography and geography of the US, Canadian, and world Jewish populations. In Part III, Chapter 18 provides lists of Jewish institutions, including federations, community centers, social service agencies, national organizations, synagogues, Hillels, day schools, camps, museums, and Israeli consulates. In the final chapters, Chapter 19 presents national and local Jewish periodicals and broadcast media; Chapter 20 provides academic resources, including Jewish Studies programs, books, articles, websites, and research libraries; and Chapter 21 presents lists of major events in the past year, Jewish honorees, and obituaries. An invaluable record of Jewish life, the American Jewish Year Book illuminates contemporary issues with insight and breadth. It is a window into a complex and ever-changing world. Deborah Dash Moore, Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Judaic Studies, and Director Emerita of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan A century from now and more, the stately volumes of the American Jewish Year Book will stand as the authoritative record of Jewish life since 1900. For anyone interested in tracing the long-term evolution of Jewish social, political, religious, and cultural trends from an objective yet passionately Jewish perspective, there simply is no substitute. Lawrence Grossman, American Jewish Year Book Editor (1999-2008) and Contributor (1988-2015)

In the late nineteenth century in Europe and to some extent in the United States, the Jewish upper middle class—particularly the more affluent families—began to enter the cultural spheres of public life, especially in major cities such as Vienna, Berlin, Paris, New York, and London. While many aspects of society were closed to them, theater, the visual arts, music, and art publication were far more inviting, especially if they involved challenging aspects of modernity that might be less attractive to Gentile society. Jews had far less to lose in embracing new forms of expression, and they were very attracted to what was regarded as the universality of cultural expression. Ultimately, these new cultural ideals had an enormous influence on art institutions and artistic manifestations in America and may explain why Jews have been active in the arts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to a degree totally out of proportion to their presence in the US population. Jewish cultural activities and aspirations form the focus of the contributions to this volume. Invited authors include senior figures in the field such as Matthew Baigell and Emily Bilski, alongside authors of a younger generation such as Daniel Magilow and Marcie Kaufman. There is also an essay by noted Los Angeles artist and photographer Bill Aron. The guest editor of the volume, Ruth Weisberg, provides an Introduction that places the individual contributions in context.

How Jews think about and work with objects is the subject of this fascinating study of the interplay between material culture and Jewish thought. Ken Koltun-Fromm draws from philosophy, cultural studies, literature, psychology, film, and photography to portray the vibrancy and richness of Jewish practice in America. His analyses of Mordecai Kaplan's obsession with journal writing, Joseph Soloveitchik's urban religion, Abraham Joshua Heschel's fascination with objects in The Sabbath, and material identity in the works of Anzia Yezierska, Cynthia Ozick, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth, as well as Jewish images on the covers of Lilith magazine and in the Jazz Singer films, offer a groundbreaking approach to an understanding of modern Jewish thought and its relation to American culture.

In this updated second edition, David Desser and Lester D. Friedman demonstrate how the Jewish experience gives rise to an intimately linked series of issues in the films of these and other significant Jewish directors.