Attend a Jewish Book Council Author Talk by Award-Winning Historian Hasia Diner on
Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America
Thursday, November 7 at 11:00 A.M. at Falmouth Jewish Congregation
Everyone is welcome. Free for FJC members / $5 General Admission
Advance registration is required. Click on this page to register.
If you have difficulty, contact fjcoffice@comcast.net.
"A timely history to rebut anti-immigration rhetoric." - Kirkus Reviews
"In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Irish and Jewish Americans shared an unexpected bond. Irish Americans were the pious legatees of centuries of Catholic antisemitism. Arriving a generation or two ahead of a large group of Jewish immigrants, the Irish sometimes tried to block Jews’ advances on the ladder of upward mobility. Jewish newcomers, on the other hand, absorbed beliefs about Irish alcoholism and loutishness — stereotypes that the Protestant majority did little, if anything, to quell. Yet as the historian Hasia R. Diner emphasizes in this fresh and illuminating book, the Irish effectively eased Jews’ integration into American society. Hers is a story in which the Irish are not bullies but benefactors, not rivals but mentors. They expertly helped Jews who came from Eastern Europe to navigate their new society." - from the review by Stephen Whitfield, at the Jewish Book Council website
Read the full review by Stephen Whitfield is Professor of American Studies (Emeritus) at Brandeis University. He is the author of Learning on the Left: Political Profiles of Brandeis University (2020). https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/opening-doors-the-unlikely-alliance-between-the-irish-and-the-jews-in-america
Popular belief holds that the various ethnic groups that immigrated to the United States at the turn of the 20th century regarded one another with open hostility, fiercely competing for limited resources and even coming to blows in the crowded neighborhoods of major cities. Hasia R. Diner tells a different story, drawing from a deep well of historical sources to show how Irish and Jewish Americans became steadfast allies in classrooms, picket lines, and political machines, helping one another to become key power players in shaping America’s future.
Hasia Diner is a professor of American Jewish History and former chair of the Irish Studies program at New York University. She is the author of numerous books on Jewish and Irish histories in the U.S., including the National Jewish Book Award-winning We Remember with Reverence and Love, which also earned the Saul Veiner Prize for most outstanding book in American Jewish history, and the James Beard finalist Hungering for America. Diner has also held Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships and served as Director of the Goren Center for American Jewish History.