This new cultural history of Jewish life and identity in the United
States after World War II focuses on the process of upward
mobility. Rachel Kranson challenges the common notion that most
American Jews unambivalently celebrated their generally strong
growth in economic status and social acceptance during the booming
postwar era. In fact, a significant number of Jewish religious,
artistic, and intellectual leaders worried about the ascent of
large numbers of Jews into the American middle class.
Kranson reveals that many Jews were deeply concerned that their
lives—affected by rapidly changing political pressures,
gender roles, and religious practices—were becoming
dangerously disconnected from authentic Jewish values. She uncovers
how Jewish leaders delivered jeremiads that warned affluent Jews of
hypocrisy and associated "good" Jews with poverty, even at times
romanticizing life in America's immigrant slums and Europe's
impoverished shtetls. Jewish leaders, while not trying to hinder
economic development, thus cemented an ongoing identification with
the Jewish heritage of poverty and marginality as a crucial element
in an American Jewish ethos.