Black Power, Jewish Politics

Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s, Revised Edition

Marc Dollinger

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781479826896
• eBook ISBN: 9781479826933
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

Highlights Jewish participation in the civil rights movement

Black Power, Jewish Politics charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power-inspired ethnic nationalism. It shows how, in a period best known for the rise of antisemitism in some parts of the Black community and the breakdown of the alliance between white Jews and Black Americans, Black Power activists enabled Jewish activists to devise a new Judeo-centered political agenda—including the emancipation of Soviet Jews, the rise of Jewish Day Schools, the revitalization of worship services with gender-inclusive liturgy, and the birth of a new form of American Zionism.

Undermining widely held beliefs about the civil rights movement, Black Power, racism, Soviet Jewry, American Zionism, and the religious revival of the 1970s, Black Power, Jewish Politics describes a new political consensus based on identity politics that drew Black and Jewish Americans together and altered the course of American liberalism.

In the midst of national reckoning on race, this revised edition extends the book's thesis to the contemporary period, investigating the limits of white Jewish liberalism, the ways in which scholars have and have not addressed racial privilege in their work, and the dynamics around these themes in a much more diverse American Jewish community.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Introduction: Is It Good for the Jews? Black Power and the 1960s
• Chapter One: Jews and Black Nationalism in the 1950s
• Chapter Two: Jews, Group Status, and the Great Society
• Chapter Three: American Jews and the Rise of Black Power
• Chapter Four: Turning Inward: Black Power and Jewish Youth Movements
• Chapter Five: Black Power, American Jews, and the Soviet Jewry Movement
• Chapter Six: Black Power and American Zionism
• Chapter Seven: After Black Power: Jewish Politics since 1980
• Epilogue
• Afterword by Ilana Kaufman
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author