Jews on the Frontier

Shari Rabin is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion at Oberlin College.

"Rabin makes a compelling case here that the full arc of American Jewish history cannot ignore the young Jewish men who pursued their livelihoods by heading for the frontier. Their religious inconsistencies, creativities, and sense of empowerment as ordinary Jews may actually serve as a better template for thinking about how Judaism developed in America." (Annals of Iowa) "Rabins clarion call to reimagine the labels we use to describe ourselves, to embrace diasporism, and to resist centralized practices speaks to a generation that actively deconstructs patriarchal and heteronormative structures, thinks more globally, and operates outside the institutional framework. . . . Jews on the Frontieris a valuable read not only for scholars of American Jewish and American religious history, but change-minded activists and citizens as well." (Marginalia Review of Books) "Jews on the Frontier stands as a significant historiographical intervention in de-centering established institutions and denominations and the Protestant secular from the narratives of minority religions and religious communities." (Reading Religion) "Rabin convincingly describes frontier mobility as the motive force behind one of the most creative and constructive eras in American Judaism." (The Journal of Southern Religion) "In [an] enlightening study largely focusing on the preCivil War South and West, Rabinexamines the intertwining of Jews and mobility in the 19th-century US...Impressively documented, this intriguing exploration is appropriate for general libraries." (Choice) "Jews on the Frontier is a compelling account of the cultural and spiritual changes experienced by American Jews outside the main coastal cities and their large congregations before the large East-European emigration waves of the late Nineteenth-Century." (Civil War Book Review) ""Scholars of immigration have toiled for years on the question of how mobility affects nationalities and group identities alike. In Jews on the Frontier, Shari Rabin gives this framework an interesting twist by investigating mobility's influence on religion. By relying on personal letters, published articles, and other first-hand testimonies, Rabin argues that the expanding United States created a uniquely American religion." (American Jewish Archives Journal) "Generating as many questions about the nineteenth century American Jewish experience as answers, Rabins study enables us to take its measure, to see Jewish life on its own terms: as a full-throttled, complex, lively culture all its own rather than a backdrop to the sea changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." (American Historical Review) "For far too long, historians of American Jews have glossed over most of the nineteenth century, as preamble for the truer or more interesting histories of twentieth-century American Jewry. Rabin offers a deeply researched, beautifully rendered case for the centrality of the nineteenth century to how we understand American Judaism. By looking toward ethnographic models, material culture, and narrative techniques, she argues that the provisionality, the instability, and the mobility of nineteenth-century Judaism created new modes of Jewish life suitable to endure in the American environment. Following in the footsteps of Robert Orsi, Leigh Eric Schmidt, and Kathryn Lofton, who all expertly wed ethnography to deep historical inquiry, Rabin allows the reader to understand the human contours of Jewish life in motion." - Lila Corwin Berman,Temple University "Jews on the Frontier is one of the most significant contributions in years to the study of nineteenth-century American Judaism with vast implications for students of American religion generally. An eye-opening and creative study of how mobility shaped distinctive patterns of religious life." - Jonathan D. Sarna,author of American Judaism: A History "Rabin's religious studies scholarship differs from the typical histories of both American Jews in particular and Jewish history more broadly… [her] scholarship attends to place and space, nature, and infrastructure, and it also analyzes national particulars without being fully bounded by them." (Journal of Religion) "The book can be read as a contribution to a number of fields ... Rabin has demonstrated convincingly the significance of mobility and thus space in the history of American Judaism and so has pointed the way for other scholars to do the same in the history of American religion more broadly." (American Religion) "American Judaism is often treated as a more recent phenomenon, with much of the scholarly focus going to the communities that emerged in the wake of the new immigration era in the 1880s through the 1920s, yet Jews have continuously resided in what would become the United States since 1654. Jews on the Frontier breaks away from this traditional view to explore how Jews engaged with their Judaism while living outside of major Jewish communities. Jews on the Frontier is a compelling book about the process of Jews adapting to American life during the nineteenth century. [This book] serves to fill in chronological and geographical gaps in the current Jewish historical scholarship." (H-Borderlands) "Jews on the Frontier is a compelling book about the process of Jews adapting to American life during the nineteenth century...[It] serves to fill in chronological and geographical gaps in the current Jewish historical scholarship." - H-Net Reviews (H-Net Reviews)