reviews - Jewish Book Council

REVIEWS
AMERICAN JEWISH STUDIES
AN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: ADELINE MOSES LOEB
AND HER EARLY AMERICAN JEWISH ANCESTORS
John L. Loeb, Jr., Kathy L. Plotkin, Margaret Loeb Kempner, Judith E. Endelman; Eli N. Evans, intro.
Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, 2009. 350 pp. $49.95
ISBN: 978-0-9822032-0-0
If ever a physical book resembled its topics, this remarkable biography does. Elegantly presented,
its coverage of its subject’s life and genealogical provenance are a revelation. Physical
presentation almost overtakes the text’s uniqueness—portraits, maps, and many—6th cousins—genealogical charts. Oversize, it captures a world of atypical Americana—Jews.
Adeline Moses Loeb fit two descriptions: “fine woman,” family-centered, respectable, modest
beginnings, strong personality; and “fine lady,” beautifully gowned, charitable, proud of her
heritage, with some rags (sort of)-to-riches tales. She was affectionately and realistically recalled
by her daughter, Margaret Loeb Kempner, in “Mother’s Life with Father,” unpublished and
written some years ago. Grandson John L. Loeb, Jr., the force behind the book, gives due credit
to his grandmother’s outstanding, permanent philanthropy, as well as the paternal Loeb lineup
of financial successes.
While Adeline Loeb has only 33 discrete pages devoted to her, her name and background
appear throughout, ranging from Jewish sea-farers, arriving here in the 17th century, to post-
Civil War sagas of the South, iconic merchants, successful financiers, and highest-level friends.
With a smooth, unchallenging style, it details membership in and publication by the Sons of
the Revolution in the State of New York, to a not-in-your-face presentation of upper
South/lower South dissensions, notably, discussion of Jewish ownership of “property-in-man.”
Intermarriage—heavy, if surnames are an indicator—is not mentioned. A most unusual book,
full of scholarly threads worth following.
Appendices, bibliography, family charts and maps, general index, guide to family trees,
name index. ABS
Howard Megdal
Collins, 2009. 320 pp. $22.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-155843-6
THE BASEBALL
TALMUD: A DEFINI-
TIVE POSITION-BY-
POSITION RANKING
OF BASEBALL’S
CHOSEN PLAYERS
The Baseball Talmud is a book for Jewish
baseball statistic geeks. That said, it
should be added that the book, like the Talmud,
is sprinkled with lively anecdotes and
wry observations worthy of a stand-up comic.
Howard Megdal, baseball writer for the
New York Observer and several baseball publications,
uses sophisticated sabermetrics and other
research to identify and rank all 160 Jewish
major leaguers, less than 1 percent of 16,696
players who have made it to the bigs. Megdal’s
definition of Jewish is, to use his word, expansive,
but his standards are exacting and based
on such measures as Baseball Prospectus’
WARP3 (wins above replacement player) and
formulas that adjust for differences between
baseball parks and eras.
After selecting the greatest Jewish baseball
player—Hank Greenberg or Sandy Koufax?—
Megdal ranks the remaining top ten and fearlessly
predicts the top ten years out. He then
ranks all the Jewish players by position, noting
a lack of good second basemen. And for the
finale Megdal names the all-time Jewish team
and classes it, adjusted for parks and eras,
unbeatable.
All in all The Baseball Talmud will make for
endless arguments on off-season Shabbos afternoons.
Although Megdal is serious about his
stats, he has a light touch with language, and
his asides and anecdotes provide a neat balance
to his pursuit of statistical affirmation. Glossary,
illustrations, index. MLW
WE REMEMBER
WITH REVERENCE
AND LOVE: AMERICAN
JEWS AND THE MYTH
OF SILENCE AFTER
THE HOLOCAUST,
1945–1962
Hasia R. Diner
New York University Press, 2009. 527 pp. $29.95
ISBN: 978-0-8147-1993-0
In this well-researched and passionately
argued book, Hasia Diner challenges the
conventional view that postwar American
Jewry showed little interest in the Holocaust
until the 1960’s and, in fact, wanted to forget
it rather than memorialize it. She maintains
that nearly every historian, literary scholar, and
cultural critic who has commented on American
Jews in this period and their relationship
to the Shoah, asserted with utter certainty that
American Jews made little of the Holocaust,
repressed it and did not make it an important
part of their communal lives. Whether motivated
by guilt, shame, fear, indifference, or the
desire to assimilate, American Jews simply did
not memorialize or focus on the Holocaust
until the Eichmann trial in 1960–61 and
Israel’s stunning victory in the Six Day War of
1967 made it socially and culturally acceptable
to do so. Coming out of World War II, American
Jews were too busy with the emergence of
the State of Israel, the threats of the Cold War,
moving to the suburbs, financing a synagoguebuilding
boom and carving out their place in
society to have room in their public culture for
the tragedy of European Jewry.
Diner rejects this conventional view and
claims that it is categorically false and based
on thin evidence and gleaned from few
sources. Uncovering a rich and varied trove of
documentation—in literature, song, liturgy,
public display, and many other forms, We
Remember with Reverence and Love shows that
American Jews were deeply engaged in
memorializing the Holocaust in a multiplicity
of ways and that it was a powerful element
of Jewish life in postwar America. Whether in
liturgy or pedagogy, in staged ceremonies or
in the deliberations of Jewish organizations
and in the activities of their youth groups, the
tragedy of European Jewry was central to Jew-
26 Jewish Book World Spring 5770/2010 www.jewishbookcouncil.org