Hasidic People: A Place in the New World - Hardcover

Mintz, Jerome

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674381157 ISBN 13: 9780674381155

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Extreme piety, joyous intensity, and a unique social organization have distinguished the Hasidim from other Orthodox Jews since the latter half of the eighteenth century. After the Second World War, survivors of the once thriving Hasidic communities of Eastern Europe began to settle in New York City.
Hasidic People is an engrossing social history of the New York community based on extensive interviews, observation, newspaper files, and court records. Jerome Mintz, an anthropologist, combines historical study with tenacious investigation to provide a vivid account of social and religious dynamics. In an objective and thoughtful framework he allows events to unfold through the reports and commentaries of the Hasidim and those in close association with them. Their voices fill the book with vibrant life and meaning. Mintz's work offers new insights into family life, succession in Hasidic dynasties, social change, and conflicts concerning proselytizing, the State of Israel, and Messianic expectations. From Brooklyn enclaves to settlements in the suburbs, we see a people set apart and yet living in close proximity with other ethnic groups, including blacks and Latinos, and facing competition for housing, economic development, and political representation.
Hasidic People takes the reader from the various neighborhood settlements through years of growth to the tragic riots in Crown Heights at the close of the summer of 1991. With engaging style, rich in personal insight, the book invites us into this old world within the new, a way of life at once foreign and yet intrinsic to the American experience.

About this title

Review:

By letting [his] subject speak for itself, Mintz [allows his] readers to encounter religious belief in all its unwieldy complexity...[His] work reveals a degree of immersion in his subject that few, if any, outsiders have ever achieved. (Alan Edelstein Moment)

A wonderful study...At every opportunity Mintz presents verbatim quotations from Hasidim to allow their point of view to permeate the volume. (Rabbi Norman Mark Klein Journal of Church and State)

Readers are escorted through New York's Hasidic community...They not only meet the residents but also learn why they are there, how they live and work and pray, and discover something of their internal politics...This rich ethnography offers detailed insights into a dynamic movement and a volatile community, and its charismatic and demanding leadership. (Choice)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0674381157
• ISBN 13: 9780674381155
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 446