New Jews

Caryn Aviv is a Marsico lecturer and an affiliated faculty with the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver.David Shneer is Director of the Program in Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

New Jews makes the provocative argument that the Israel-Diaspora dichotomy no longer exists. In a series of engaging ethnographies of Jewish communities in America, Russia and Israel, Aviv and Shneer reveal a new generation of Jews embarked on a renaissance liberated from old ideologies and committed to creating homes where they live. A celebration of pluralism, this sure-to-be controversial book finds Jewish unity not in slogans but in the common search for new identities. - David Biale,author of Cultures of the Jews: A New History Offers a new way to look at contemporary Jewry, not just its present complicated realities, but the history behind the recent departures. Well researched, deeply contextualized, and written in a sprightly manner, New Jews demonstrates that Jews at the beginning of the twenty-first century have created new spaces, new places, and new faces in which to live and by which to present themselves. - Hasia R. Diner,author of The Jews of the United States, 1654-2000 New Jews is a thoughtful, persuasive case for why the Diaspora matters. (Secular Culture) Examining locations as diverse as New York, San Francisco and Moscow, Aviv and probe what makes Jews feel at home. (Lilith) This is a wide-ranging work . . . there is a definite shift afoot in thinking about matters of Jewish identity, and this is a worthwhile and useful effort toward articulating new directions. (Central Conference of American Rabbis Newsletter)

• AcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroduction: From Diaspora Jews to New Jews1 Let My People Stay: Moscow's Jews after the Exodus 2 Encounters with Ghosts: Youth Tourism and the Diaspora Business 3 Temples of American Identity: Jewish Museums in Los Angeles 4 Castro, Chelsea, and Tel Aviv: Queer Jews at Home 5 Our Kind of Town: New York is a Center of the Jewish Universe Epilogue: The End of the Jews Notes Index About the Authors