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 here to register: https://www.falmouthjewish.org/event/jewish-book-council-author-talk-hasia-diner/

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.