THE POSEN LIBRARY OF JEWISH CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION

An extensive look at Jewish civilization and culture from the eve of World War II to the Yom Kippur War.

The ninth installment in this series covers the years between 1939 and 1973, from the Holocaust to the many facets of Diaspora, the founding of the state of Israel, and Jewish life in the United States. The material—edited by Kassow, a professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and Roskies, a professor of Jewish literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City—is generally organized with a short biographical sketch of each source followed by their written work or images. It contains works by such well-known authors as Anne Frank, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Bob Dylan, whose lyrics to the 1965 song “Like a Rolling Stone” are reproduced in full: “Most readers might not regard Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ as a ‘Jewish song,’ but its new voice, provocative and confrontational, evoked the defiance and disorientation that an entire generation was feeling,” note the editors. Less-famous writers also weigh in, such as those who wrote letters from the Westerbork transit camp during the German occupation of the Netherlands. Portions on visual culture include the architecture of Odessa-born Morris Lapidus and a photo by American Jewish photographer Rebecca Lepkoff, who documented New York City’s changing Lower East Side. At more than 1,000 pages, the work is certainly not a light read. Some material proves quite dense, such as extracts from Jacob Neusner’s There We Sat Down: Talmudic Judaism in the Making(1971), or may only appeal to a narrow audience, as with a discussion of Israeli sculpture. Still, it tackles an immense amount of information in often intriguing ways, as when novelist and screenwriter William Goldman writes of the conflict between Jews and Gentiles during his youth in prewar London with noteworthy grace, and the cover of the first issue of Captain America from 1941 reminds readers exactly how the hero, and his creators, felt about Adolf Hitler. It’s a weighty collection, to be sure, but one that’s consistently engaging.

An edifying and diverse survey of 20th-century Jewish life.