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The peer-reviewed series seeks to provide an international platform for new approaches to the study of modern Jewish history. Covering the period from the Enlightenment to the 21st century, the series focuses on cutting-edge work in social, cultural, economic, and political history. It seeks to explore new avenues in the understanding of modern Jewries in their historical contexts, encouraging a multi-layered exploration of topics which transcend the analytical boundaries of ethnicity, nation, and religion. The series embraces monographs and challenging research-oriented anthologies dedicated to a deeper understanding of essential themes in the main fields of Jewish studies, such as Jewish thought, migration, biography, Israel and the Middle East, Holocaust studies, the history of memory, and identity.

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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.

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Markus Krah, School of Jewish Theology, University of Potsdam.

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