American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York
(eBook)

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    [year] => 2022
    [artist] => Nomi M. Stolzenberg
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    [language] => ENGLISH
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    [title] => American Shtetl
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    [synopsis] => "A New Yorker Best Book of the Year" "Honorable mention for the Saul Veiner Book Prize, American Jewish Historical Society" Nomi M. Stolzenberg holds the Nathan and Lilly Shapell Chair at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She has written widely on law and religion. Twitter @nomideplume1 David N. Myers holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His many books include Jewish History: A Very Short Introduction. Website davidnmyers.com Twitter @DavidNMyersUCLA 
	A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soil

Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history-but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. This book tells the story of how this group of pious, Yiddish-speaking Jews has grown to become a thriving insular enclave and a powerful local government in upstate New York. While rejecting the norms of mainstream American society, Kiryas Joel has been stunningly successful in creating a world apart by using the very instruments of secular political and legal power that it disavows.

Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers paint a richly textured portrait of daily life in Kiryas Joel, exploring the community's guiding religious, social, and economic norms. They delve into the roots of Satmar Hasidism and its charismatic founder, Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, following his journey from nineteenth-century Hungary to post–World War II Brooklyn, where he dreamed of founding an ideal Jewish town modeled on the shtetls of eastern Europe. Stolzenberg and Myers chart the rise of Kiryas Joel as an official municipality with its own elected local government. They show how constant legal and political battles defined and even bolstered the community, whose very success has coincided with the rise of political conservatism and multiculturalism in American society over the past forty years.

Timely and accessible, American Shtetl unravels the strands of cultural and legal conflict that gave rise to one of the most vibrant religious communities in America, and reveals a way of life shaped by both self-segregation and unwitting assimilation. "Extraordinary and riveting."---Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker "
	An extraordinarily detailed and fascinating analysis."---Glenn C. Altschuler, Jerusalem Post "A brilliant, eye-opening, thought provoking, easy to read and enjoyable book."---Israel Drazin, Times of Israel "An impressive charting of the legal, cultural, and political machinery set in motion by the creation of a new religious settlement, which eventually became a bona fide municipality. . . . Stolzenberg and Myers provide a fluidly written, lively account of what happens when game but untested religious pioneers encounter the very different challenges of the suburbanized countryside."---Lis Harris, New York Review of Books "Anyone interested in the future of Jews in diaspora (not only Hasidic Jews) should be grateful to [Stolzenberg and Myers] for what they've accomplished. . . . Fine-grained in their narrative, offering impressively detailed documentation, leaving plenty of room for the interplay of contingency, strong and often clashing personalities, and the larger structural issues of capital, territory, and state law."---Jonathan Boyarin, Marginalia "
	[American Shtetl] describes in arresting detail the trajectory and triumph of arguably one of the most paradoxical villages in the United States. But the fact-intensive story Myers and Stolzenberg captivatingly tell also permits the astute observer to extract an important insight of constitutional significance: religious minorities do not always lack the political power to protect their interests, as is often assumed. Kiryas Joel may not be rich, but it has clout."---Zalman Rothschild, Los Angeles Review of Books "
	I. . . recommend [Ameri
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    [subtitle] => The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York
    [publisher] => Princeton University Press
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