Forged in America: How Irish-Jewish Encounters Shaped a Nation

Forged in America is a volume of essays that treads new ground in American ethnic history by exploring the ways in which the experiences of Jewish and Irish immigrants were shaped by each other. Examining Jewish and Irish immigrants from a variety of perspectives, the volume offers readers original ways to envision the relationship between the histories of these two immigrant groups, illuminating how their histories are intertwined with each other rather than independent from one another.Hasia Diner's excellent essay “A Singular Encounter” begins the volume, offering a model for how to do this “intertwining” history. The historical relationship between the Irish and Jews in the United States is “singular,” Diner suggests, because of important unique components in their relationship. Jews and Irish, for example, were not economic competitors. This meant that Jewish and Irish women “allied with each other to accomplish their goals” (p. 17). As Irish women tended to dominate the teaching profession in New York City, they also had a tremendous influence on Jewish children over several generations. Meanwhile, Diner shows how American Jews often turned to experienced Irish politicians as allies to achieve their goals.Several essays complement Diner's opening piece by focusing on specific case studies. Jeffrey S. Gurock's essay on Jewish basketball players at St. John's University demonstrates how Jews successfully integrated into an Irish Catholic educational institution. Essays by Terry Golway and Robert W. Snyder reveal that not only did Irish politicians advocate for Jewish causes, but they were influenced by their Jewish constituents in powerful ways. These types of studies in political history offer fresh ground for historians of American ethnic history to analyze how ethnic political leaders have historically sought to represent the ethnic political goals of different ethnic groups.A few essays examine the ways American cultural institutions provided opportunities for Jewish and Irish immigrants to interact. James R. Barrett's “Laughter and Love between the Irish and the Jews” explores the significance of Jews and Irish sharing stage and screen to address issues of adapting to America. In a deep analysis of Abie's Irish Rose, he suggests that anxieties over mixed marriages between Jewish and Irish immigrants revealed larger concerns about cultural mixing. Lawrence Baron, in “Irish-Jewish Couples in American Film and Television,” explores similar themes, with a focus on how Irish-Jewish love stories changed over time, from one of cultural conflict between couples to more cultural symmetry, reflecting larger changes in American culture. Brett Gary offers a fascinating study of how Jewish lawyers Morris Ernst and Alexander Lindey fought tirelessly for the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses in the United States against strong censorship forces. However, while the essay makes clear that Jewish immigrant “values” shaped Ernst's interest in fighting against censorship, this particular study belongs more to the category of literary history than ethnic history as the two lawyers were interested in Ulysses as a literary work, not as an “Irish” work.Other essays are more comparative in nature. Dan Lainer-Vos compares the nationalist orientated Irish Counties Athletic Union with the Zionist orientated Union of Hebrew Youth to argue that both created “organizational mechanisms” (p. 150) that fostered nationalist values among youth. This organizational and comparative history offers an innovative approach to Irish-Jewish studies, but lacks larger historical context, and thus may leave readers wondering if there were other forces at play in strengthening the nationalist impulse among both Irish and Jewish youth. Hannah Zaves-Greene offers a riveting comparison of the public health work of Margaret Sanger and Lillian Wald. While highlighting how both women “emerged as boundary-breaking healthcare reformers” (p. 32), she explains how Wald was interested in broad healthcare reforms in contrast to Sanger, who was much more focused on birth control. However, as their respective Irish and Jewish identities did not significantly influence their work in healthcare, it is unclear why this essay belongs in this volume. Zaves-Greene does discuss how Jewish philanthropists supported Wald's work compared to the opposition Sanger endured from the Catholic community; nevertheless, this essay's contribution to the larger goals of the volume needs to be more clearly developed.My critiques notwithstanding, readers will find in this volume rich material that provide an important foundation for further research into the historical relationship between Irish and Jewish immigrants in the United States.