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JEWISH BOOK ANNUAL
JEW ISH FOLKLORE AND ANTHROPOLOGY
T h e R a p h a e l P a t a i A w a r d
Hasidic People: A Place in the New World,
by Jerome R. Mintz
(Harvard University Press)
Hasidic People
is a meticulous and sensitive urban ethnography
of a traditional East European Jewish sect, transplanted onto
American soil, where members of its several subgroups have
been and continue to be challenged by a complex heteroethnic
and heterosocial environment. Mintz’s description focuses on
Hasidim as people negotiating their lives between religious rules
and the lure of the secular world; between social expectations
and personal desires. He does not limit himself to the larger,
better-known Hasidic communities, but in a pioneering manner
treats many of the smaller and less well-studied groups. Mintz
brilliantly presents Hasidic culture as a patchwork quilt of in
dividual lives, subduing his own analytical voice and letting the
Hasidic people tell the stories of their lives in their own words.
JEW ISH HISTORY
T h e G e r r a r d a n d E l l a B e rm a n A w a r d
Jews in Christian America: The Pursuit of Religious Equality,
by Na
omi W. Cohen (Oxford University Press)
Spanning the entire history of the Republic,
Jews in Christian
America,
by Naomi W. Cohen, offers an elegant and sophisti
cated interpretation of how American Jews shored up the wall
separating church and state as a means of insuring their own
equality. In the course of this ongoing struggle, Jews have
played a critical role in shaping American principles. By exam
ining the Jewish experience in America through the prism of
church/state issues, Cohen provides a unique perspective to as
sess the place of Jews in American society and indeed America’s
continuing efforts to define itself.
JEW ISH THOUGHT
D o n o r A n o n y m o u s
Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Wom
en in Jerusalem,
by Susan Starr Sered (Oxford University Press)
Women as Ritual Experts
by Susan Starr Sered is a major con