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The only biography of Louis Bamberger--department store magnate, merchandising genius, enlightened philanthropist, and Newark's leading citizen
Known as Newark's "Jewish Frontier," Weequahic was home to 35,000 Jewish residents from the 1930s to the 1960s. Homes built on farm lots, known as Lyons Farms, attracted the city's upwardly mobile Jewish families. Weequahic High School still remains at the heart of the community, drawing generations of alumni for annual reunions and events. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Roth, a Weequahic High School graduate, found inspiration in the community, documenting its intricacies in his work. The high school still houses a mural, The Enlightenment of Man, painted by New Deal painter Michael Lenson. This mural is regarded as one of the most important pieces of public art in the state. Jews of Weequahic captures the life of this vibrant community that has become one of Newark's legendary neighborhoods.
Louis Bamberger (1855-1944) was the epitome of the merchant prince as public benefactor. Born in Baltimore, this son of German immigrants built his business - the great, glamorous L. Bamberger & Co. department store in Newark, N.J. - into the sixth-largest department store in the country. A multimillionaire by middle age, he joined the elite circle of German Jews who owned Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Filene's. Despite his vast wealth and local prominence, Bamberger was a reclusive figure who shunned the limelight, left no business records, and kept no diaries. He remained a bachelor and kept his private life and the rationale for his business decisions to himself. Yet his achievements are ma...
Jewish settlers began arriving in Morris County as far back as the Civil War. These early Jews settled in Morristown, a market town; Dover, a mining town located on the Morris Canal; and the farming towns of Pine Brook and Mount Freedom. When each of these communities had 10 adult males, the minimum number for religious services, they established Hebrew schools, synagogues, and congregational cemeteries and made Morris County their home. Morristown and Dover Jews were prosperous merchants with heavily populated Jewish business districts located on Speedwell Avenue and Blackwell Street. Stories of live chickens hanging in the kosher butcher's window and fish swimming in glass pools reflect this bygone era. Nearby Pine Brook and Mount Freedom Jews, not able to make a living as farmers, opened summer boarding houses and grew thriving full-service kosher hotels that rivaled New York's Catskill resorts.
A Playful Path, the new book by games guru and fun theorist Bernard De Koven, serves as a collection of ideas and tools to help us bring our playfulness back into the open. When we find ourselves forgetting the life of the game or the game of life, the joy of form or the content, the play of brain or mind, body or spirit, this book can help us return to that which our soul is heir.
For almost one hundred years, generations of New Jersey customers flocked to Bamberger's. From its grand Newark flagship to numerous suburban locations, the store was hailed for its myriad quality merchandise and its dedicated staff. Its promotional events were the highlight of every season, from the Thanksgiving Parade to elaborate Christmas festivals featuring celebrities such as Bob Hope, Carol Channing and Jerry Lewis. Though the once mighty flagship closed in 1992, Bamberger's is still fondly remembered as a retail haven. With vintage photographs, interviews with store insiders and favorite recipes, nationally renowned department store historian and New Jersey native Michael J. Lisicky brings the story of New Jersey's Greatest Store back to life.
"As poet and journalist, Zionist activist and public intellectual, Syrkin's work and actions illuminate a wide range of twentieth-century literary, cultural, and political concerns. Her passions demonstrate, as Irving Howe said, "a life of commitment to values beyond the self.""--
""New Perspectives in American Jewish History: A Documentary Tribute to Jonathan D. Sarna," compiled by Sarna's former students, presents heretofore unpublished, neglected, and rarely seen historical records, documents, and images that illuminate the heterogeneity, breadth, diversity, and colorful dynamism of the American Jewish experience"--
Marc Dollinger charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power-inspired ethnic nationalism. He shows how, in a period best known for the rise of black antisemitism and the breakdown of the black-Jewish alliance, black nationalists enabled Jewish activists to devise a new Judeo-centered political agenda - including the emancipation of Soviet Jews, the rise of Jewish day schools, the revitalization of worship services with gender-inclusive liturgy, and the birth of a new form of American Zionism. Undermining widely held beliefs about the black-Jewish alliance, Dollinger describes a new political consensus, based on identity politics, that drew blacks and Jews together and altered the course of American liberalism.
Dictionary definitions of the term mishpachah are seemingly straightforward: "A Jewish family or social unit including close and distant relatives-sometimes also close friends." As accurate as such definitions are, they fail to capture the diversity and vitality of real, flesh-and-blood Jewish families. Families have been part of Jewish life for as long as there have been Jews. It is useful to recall that the family is the basic narrative building block of the stories in the biblical book of Genesis, which can be interpreted in the light of ancient literary traditions, archaeological discoveries, and rabbinic exegesis. Rabbinic literature also is filled with discussions about interactions, r...