Reviews for Struggle Against Mourning

The average rating for Struggle Against Mourning based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-11-29 00:00:00 George Dean Finally, a book about Jews with a happy ending. That's a joke. Seriously though, this was riveting. Even at its most virulent and active, American antisemitism has never been as bad as American racism... if you'll allow me to leave antisemitism out of the racism category. So the stories and sociology presented here has always been kind of hidden behind the far more frightening stories and sociology of anti-African American, anti-Latino, anti-Asian and of course the war on the indigenous people of the continent. Antisemitism has also declined much more sharply than these other forms of oppression, which is what I meant about a happy ending. Still, it was pretty mind-blowing to read about all the hate especially from the time of the Civil War until the end of World War II. It's absolutely startling to read about the antisemitism during World War II... Americans blaming Jews for the war, as if it wasn't Germany that declared war on the US and the Japanese who attacked a few days before. Nope. Jews did it. Christians are so weird with that stuff! I was a bit nervous about the chapters about antisemitism in the South and among African Americans, but Dinnerstein keeps the comments of Jessie Jackson and Farrakhan well in context, while not skimping on details. I had kind of forgotten about some of those CUNY professors in the early 90s. At the time, most of that stuff just made me laugh, even if I did experience some uncomfortable personal encounters around then. Public Enemy and Flavor Flav do not make an appearance here. I feel that I learned a lot about the nature of antisemitism, and about how some of the common debates around Jewish identity can always be used both by Jews and antisemites to bolster their arguments. Take the question of are Jews a 'race'... some Jews, myself included, say "no" because there are Jews of all different skin colors and languages and because you can be labelled a Jew by antisemites even if you are not one at all simply because it fits into their argument. But then some Jews say that Jews are a nationality or whatever. And then our enemies will say that Jews have certain 'racial' characteristics, they will racialize us, but at the same time, there are plenty of antisemites who argue that Jews are not a race because we are "mongrels," meaning worse than a race since we're impure. While I'm on that subject ... there should have been more about Black and Puerto Rican Jews. The latter were certainly present in the Colonial era and the former probably as well. But did they experience antisemitism? I guess that's a whole other book. The fad of JAP jokes also gets a paragraph, but aside from that there was practically nothing about the intersection of antisemitism and misogyny. Although Dinnerstein examines the myth of the Black-Jewish alliance from the founding of the NAACP through to the Black Power era, I felt that there could have been more examination of Jewish support for white supremacy. It's of course included in the chapter on Jews in the South, but I mean in a more fuzzy way, like black face performances in Hollywood, for example. Dinnerstein points out that African American antisemitism is a way to attack white people while at the same time siding with white people against the Jews but he doesn't examine how Jews have also sought to join the mainstream by siding with white people against African Americans. I suppose since the focus is more on antisemitism than on Jewish individual's strategies this can be forgiven. Dinnerstein writes, "Jews were welcomed in colonial America because their numbers were small and white people were needed to help build new communities. Other minorities -- such as Indians and Blacks -- occupied the lowest rungs in society and there were more fears about these groups than about Jews." So Dinnerstein does make it clear that Jews have simultaneously benefited from white supremacy and been harmed by it; Presumably like other immigrant groups, especially Catholics. Another thing I was nervous about was the use of the label "antisemitism" to silence criticism of Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Dinnerstein skirted the issue but when he did address it, I wasn't offended. One telling line was, "This aspect of American antisemitism remains a gray and fuzzy area, more easily "sensed" by those who see it than proven to the satisfaction of those who do not." Take that, Dershowitz. On the other hand, Dinnerstein misses an opportunity to show how Israel's 1967 war changed US attitudes towards Jews. Ask any baby boomer Jew and they will tell you that fundamentally shattered some antisemitic stereotypes. Gone are the jokes about, "onward Christian soldiers, we'll sew the uniforms." Obviously, Jews can just be as war-like as other white people. Lastly, the book naturally only covers the time up until publication. Things don't look so rosy since white supremacists have demonstrated their mastery of the Internet and social media. Actual attacks on synagogues are back in fashion as well. So we need a new book on this subject, one with more intersectionality and a chapter from the 90s through today. I hope I didn't reap a shit storm in the comments. I'm sure I've opened more than one can of worms with this review. If you disagree with me, please be respectful. I would recommend this book to everyone.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-12-29 00:00:00 Sarith Lom A fine, well researched, thorough work on a fascinating topic. My only issue is that it maybe generalizes too much on "Christian" culture, and while it mentions various individuals related to the Jewish cause, it fails to mention Jewish people who formed/affected the cultural image of Jews in the majority.