Research Catalog

Our parents' lives : Jewish assimilation and everyday life / Neil M. Cowan, Ruth Schwartz Cowan.

Title
Our parents' lives : Jewish assimilation and everyday life / Neil M. Cowan, Ruth Schwartz Cowan.
Author
Cowan, Neil M.
Publication
New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, 1996.

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Additional Authors
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, 1941-
Description
xxvii, 336 p. : ill.; 21 cm.
Summary
Ruth and Neil Cowan provide a stirring account of how Eastern European Jewish immigrants moved from the old world into the new, grappling with an American lifestyle while trying to hold on to their traditional identity. Originally published in the 1980s, Our Parents' Lives is an intimate and rich depiction of the everyday tensions that were caused by assimilation and can still be felt today. Through the Cowans' powerful use of oral narrative, we learn how currently held Jewish beliefs about health, sex, and education were permanently shaped by the experience of Jewish immersion into Christian-American culture. This reissue includes a new chapter on death and dying.
Subject
  • Jews > United States > Interviews
  • Jews, East European > United States > Interviews
  • Jews > Cultural assimilation > United States
  • Immigrants > United States > Interviews
  • Oral history
  • United States > Ethnic relations
Genre/Form
Interviews
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-322) and index.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
"Dangerous just to be":Life in the Old Country -- "Tempest tossed": Learning to live in America -- Breaking away from Torah: The impact of American schooling -- The evil eye, the x ray, and the promise of good health -- "Of course I was a virgin when I married": Changing sexual mores -- "Trapped in the book": Childbirth and child care -- Yiddishkeit: The key to success in America -- "It's a free country": Remaining Jewish in America -- "in America, even death was different": Transforming burial rituals and funeral practices.
ISBN
  • 081352296X
  • 9780813522968
LCCN
^^^96019113^
OCLC
35174725
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library