Radio And The Jews The Untold Story Of How Radio Influenced The Image Of Jews

From stereotypes to role models, the first comprehensive look at how Jews were portrayed on radio from the 1920s to the 1950s. Examines over 100 programs and characters, including comedy, drama, soap opera, religious programs and World War II programs. Includes an audio CD with samples of many programs broadcast more than 60 years ago.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish immigrants upended Protestant control of vaudeville and the silent film industry. This book rejects the commonly held explanations for this shift: Jewish commercial acumen and their desire to assimilate. Instead, this book argues that the “pleasure principle”—a positive view of bodily pleasures and sexuality that Jewish immigrants held ––gave rise to the role of Jewish influence on popular culture, an influence still felt today. After discussing the pivotal ascendancy of Jews in vaudeville and silent films, Cherry explores the important role that Jewish performers and middlemen played in the evolution of popular culture throughout the century, from stage and the big screen to radio, television, and the music industry. He concludes with a broader discussion of Jewish values that helps explain the continued outsized role that Jews continue to play in American popular culture.

The postwar decades were not the “golden era” in which American Jews easily partook in the religious revival, liberal consensus, and suburban middle-class comfort. Rather it was a period marked by restlessness and insecurity born of the shock about the Holocaust and of the unprecedented opportunities in American society. American Jews responded to loss and opportunity by obsessively engaging with the East European past. The proliferation of religious texts on traditional spirituality, translations of Yiddish literature, historical essays , photographs and documents of shtetl culture, theatrical and musical events, culminating in the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, illustrate the grip of this past on post-1945 American Jews. This study shows how American Jews reimagined their East European past to make it usable for their American present. By rewriting their East European history, they created a repertoire of images, stories, and ideas that have shaped American Jewry to this day.

This unique encyclopedia chronicles American Jewish popular culture, past and present in music, art, food, religion, literature, and more. Over 150 entries, written by scholars in the field, highlight topics ranging from animation and comics to Hollywood and pop psychology. Without the profound contributions of American Jews, the popular culture we know today would not exist. Where would music be without the music of Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand, humor without Judd Apatow and Jerry Seinfeld, film without Steven Spielberg, literature without Phillip Roth, Broadway without Rodgers and Hammerstein? These are just a few of the artists who broke new ground and changed the face of American popular culture forever. This unique encyclopedia chronicles American Jewish popular culture, past and present in music, art, food, religion, literature, and more. Over 150 entries, written by scholars in the field, highlight topics ranging from animation and comics to Hollywood and pop psychology. Up-to-date coverage and extensive attention to political and social contexts make this encyclopedia is an excellent resource for high school and college students interested in the full range of Jewish popular culture in the United States. Academic and public libraries will also treasure this work as an incomparable guide to our nation's heritage. Illustrations complement the text throughout, and many entries cite works for further reading. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography of print and electronic sources to encourage further research.

The average American listens to the radio three hours a day. In light of recent technological developments such as internet radio, some argue that the medium is facing a crisis, while others claim we are at the dawn of a new radio revolution. The Concise Encyclopedia of American Radio is an essential single-volume reference guide to this vital and evolving medium. It brings together the best and most important entries from the three-volume Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Radio, edited by Christopher Sterling. Comprised of more than 300 entries spanning the invention of radio to the Internet, The Concise Encyclopedia of American Radio addresses personalities, music genres, regulations, technology, programming and stations, the "golden age" of radio and other topics relating to radio broadcasting throughout its history. The entries are updated throughout and the volume includes nine new entries on topics ranging from podcasting to the decline of radio. The Concise Encyclopedia of American Radio include suggestions for further reading as complements to most of the articles, biographical details for all person-entries, production credits for programs, and a comprehensive index.

Examines the culture of Yiddish radio in the United States during radio's golden age.

This history of radio news reporting recounts and assesses the contributions of radio toward keeping America informed since the 1920s. It identifies distinct periods and milestones in broadcast journalism and includes a biographical dictionary of important figures who brought news to the airwaves. Americans were dependent on radio for cheap entertainment during the Great Depression and for critical information during the Second World War, when no other medium could approach its speed and accessibility. Radio's diminished influence in the age of television beginning in the 1950s is studied, as the aural medium shifted from being at the core of many families' activities to more specialized applications, reaching narrowly defined listener bases. Many people turned elsewhere for the news. (And now even TV is challenged by yet newer media.) The introduction of technological marvels throughout the past hundred years has significantly altered what Americans hear and how, when, and where they hear it.

Over the course of the twentieth century, Eastern European Jews in the United States developed a left-wing political tradition. Their political preferences went against a fairly broad correlation between upward mobility and increased conservatism or Republican partisanship. Many scholars have sought to explain this phenomenon by invoking antisemitism, an early working-class experience, or a desire to integrate into a universal social order. In this original study, David Verbeeten instead focuses on the ways in which left-wing ideologies and movements helped to mediate and preserve Jewish identity in the context of modern tendencies toward bourgeois assimilation and ethnic dissolution. Verbeeten pursues this line of inquiry through case studies that highlight the political activities and aspirations of three "generations" of American Jews. The life of Alexander Bittelman provides a lens to examine the first generation. Born in Ukraine in 1892, Bittelman moved to New York City in 1912 and went on to become a founder of the American Communist Party after World War I. Verbeeten explores the second generation by way of the American Jewish Congress, which came together in 1918 and launched significant campaigns against discrimination within civil society before, during, and especially after World War II. Finally, he considers the third generation in relation to the activist group New Jewish Agenda, which operated from 1980 to 1992 and was known for its advocacy of progressive causes and its criticism of particular Israeli governments and policies. By focusing on individuals and organizations that have not previously been subjects of extensive investigation, Verbeeten contributes original research to the fields of American, Jewish, intellectual, and radical history. His insightful study will appeal to specialists and general readers interested in those areas.