Jews and American Popular Culture

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Last night I attended a talk by Paul Buhle at the Institute of Jewish 
History in New York occasioned by the publication of the 3-volume ?Jews and 
American Popular Culture? edited by Paul. He was joined by a number of 
contributors to the collection. Paul is very good at bring together people 
in such a fashion. As a kind of radical impresario, he recruited dozens of 
contributors to the Encyclopedia of the American Left as well.

Paul?s connection to the radical movement is probably more well-known than 
it is to American Jewish culture, but the two concerns are obviously 
related as Paul?s contribution to V. 3 would indicate. Titled ?Popular 
Front Culture,? it shows even when the major figures were not Jewish?like 
Dalton Trumbo or Paul Robeson?they relied on a circle of organizers, 
publicists and fans that were.

Paul first became interested in Jewish culture when doing research on his 
PhD dissertation, which was eventually published as ?Marxism in the United 
States: Remapping the History of the American Left?. As so many of the 
early socialist magazines were published in Yiddish, he found it necessary 
to learn the language despite the fact that he is not Jewish himself.

Many of the contributors would identify themselves as carrying out what 
amounts to Jewish Studies. This is a field that is clearly shaped by 
?history from below? conceptions found in E.P. Thompson or the popular 
culture studies of CLR James, who Paul was something of a disciple of. You 
can see an early contribution to this literature in Irving Howe?s ?World of 
Our Fathers?, which explored life on the Lower East Side. Although I can?t 
stand Howe?s politics, I can recommend that book. That being said, ?Jews 
and American Popular Culture? is far more oriented to the nitty-gritty than 
Howe. In Douglas Century?s article on Jewish boxing, he notes that there is 
only a single sentence in Howe?s book referring to the legendary fighters 
of the 1920s. This milieu is also explored in Saul Bellow?s novels. Bellow, 
like Howe, was a Trotskyist in the 1930s. Unlike Howe, Bellow evolved 
toward neo-conservatism in his old age.

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/jews-and-american-popular-culture/

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