Review - American Jewish Archives

Book Reviews 243
rapidly being assimilated into the new and open culture. They also
reminded Jews that, though their new land may be Golden, it also
threatened their existence. As in the case of the woman in Jewish soci-
ety, this thematic preoccupation exemplified Hebrew literature's
continued concern for the downtrodden and oppressed, for whom
American society can take measures to perform a meaningful tikkun.
Another issue in this notable work has to do with the extent to
which the immigrant experiences of Jews can be equated with the
other groups discussed in this study. Unlike the Irish and Poles, after
all, Jews did not leave their national homelands in order to settle in
the United States with a perception of the New World as an "exile"
from Europe. Their affinities for Poland are not the same as those of
gentile Poles. It is in this light that this reader noticed the paucity of
Jewish activists and intellectuals who took part in the Polish national
(and some Catholic) movements, which were organized in the United
States. It is a subject begging to be addressed, and one not noted by
Jacobson; namely were there Jews who took an active hand in Polish
national movements in the United States? If so why, and if not then
why not? The Jewish national agenda is again the issue that
receives the lesser attention in the author's avoidance of the Jewish-
national language and its impact on Jews in America.
- Stephen Katz
Stephen Katz is Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Language and Literature
at Indiana University. He was a Bernard and Audre Rapoport Fellow of Ameri-
can Jewish Studies, 1997-98, at the Jacob Rader Marcus American Jewish
Archives, researching American Hebrew literature.