Making the Bible Modern: Children's Bibles and Jewish Education in Twentieth-Century America

by Penny Schine Gold

Overview

The Bible has played a critical role in the story of Judaism, modernity, and identity. Penny Schine Gold examines the arena of children's education and the role of the Bible in the reshaping of Jewish identity, especially in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, when a second generation of Eastern European Jews engaged the task of Americanizing Jewish culture, religion, and institutions. Professional Jewish educators based in the Reform movement undertook a multifaceted agenda for the Bible in America: to modernize it, harmonize it with American values, and move it to the center of the religious school curriculum. Through public schooling, the children of Jewish immigrants brought America home; it was up to the adults to fashion a Judaism that their children could take back out into America. Because of its historic role in the development of Judaism and its cultural significance in American life, Gold finds, the Bible provided Jews with vital links to both the past and the present. The ancient sacred text of the Bible, transformed into highly abridged and amended "Bible tales," was brought into service as a bridge between tradition and modernity.Gold analyzes these American developments with reference to the intellectual history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, innovations in public schooling and social theory, Protestant religious education, and later versions of children's Bibles in the United States and Israel. She shows that these seemingly simple children's books are complex markers of the pressing concerns of Jews in the modern world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801436673
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	12/16/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.94(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Penny Schine Gold is Professor of History at Knox College. She is coauthor of The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career: A Portable Mentor for Scholars from Graduate School through Tenure, author of The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France, and coeditor of Cultural Visions: Essays in the History of Culture.

What People are Saying About This

Jonathan D. Sarna

Making the Bible Modern is a landmark volume in the history of American Jewish education. By examining American Jewish children's Bibles in their broadest context, Penny Schine Gold sheds light on the books themselves, the people who wrote them, the community that embraced them, and the challenges that continue to confront those who teach the Bible to young people.

Hasia Diner

The process by which the Bible came to be the central text for the education of Jewish children in America was entwined with many phenomena: the history of education, the history of Jewish emancipation, anti-Semitism, the impact of the enlightenment on the Jews, Jewish immigration to the United States, literary criticism, and more. The storybooks for young Jewish children in America described in Making the Bible Modern are serious texts: history connected to the profound changes brought about by the Jewish encounter with modernity. Penny Schine Gold shows how high culture ultimately manifests itself in the commonplace books of childhood.

Editorial Reviews

In her thoughtful and thorough book,...Penny Schine Gold explores how American Jews strove to adapt ancient Judaism to their new, modern democratic society.

History of Education Quarterly - Rabbi Debra Pine

Gold has written a stimulating and original book that should be of interest to a wide audience. She sets her specific topic—children's Bibles produced int eh United States by Reform Jewish educators in the 1920s and 1930s—with an extended context that covers issues such as the place of the Bible within Judaism, the challenge of modernity to traditional faith, and various pedagogical approaches and their application.... Gold allows the material and its creators to speak for themselves.... This is a desirable acquisition for most public and academic libraries.

Choice

"The process by which the Bible came to be the central text for the education of Jewish children in America was entwined with many phenomena: the history of education, the history of Jewish emancipation, anti-Semitism, the impact of the enlightenment on the Jews, Jewish immigration to the United States, literary criticism, and more. The storybooks for young Jewish children in America described in Making the Bible Modern are serious texts: history connected to the profound changes brought about by the Jewish encounter with modernity. Penny Schine Gold shows how high culture ultimately manifests itself in the commonplace books of childhood."

Hasia Diner

"Making the Bible Modern is a landmark volume in the history of American Jewish education. By examining American Jewish children's Bibles in their broadest context, Penny Schine Gold sheds light on the books themselves, the people who wrote them, the community that embraced them, and the challenges that continue to confront those who teach the Bible to young people."

Jonathan D. Sarna

"Gold has written a stimulating and original book that should be of interest to a wide audience. She sets her specific topic—children's Bibles produced int eh United States by Reform Jewish educators in the 1920s and 1930s—with an extended context that covers issues such as the place of the Bible within Judaism, the challenge of modernity to traditional faith, and various pedagogical approaches and their application. . . . Gold allows the material and its creators to speak for themselves. . . . This is a desirable acquisition for most public and academic libraries."—Choice 42:3, November 2004

"'Why was the Bible elevated over the Talmud as the central text of Jewish education?' Gold asks. She writes that while the Bible 'was seen as consonant with modern sensibilities' in the interwar period, the Jewish-specific Talmud was jettisoned to make room for a new cultural setting. Moreover, she argues that the advent of 'Bible stories' for Jewish children in the 1920s and 1930s—stories that often only superficially resembled the original biblical tales"Tells us a great deal about the changes that second-generation Jews were facing. Gold focuses on the Reform movement's broad attempts to fashion Bible stories that would teach children to be both Jewish and American, and her exegesis of the cultural messages of some of the retooled Bible stories is the most compelling part of this absorbing book."—Publishers Weekly, November 17, 2003

"In her thoughtful and thorough book, . . .Penny Schine Gold explores how American Jews strove to adapt ancient Judaism to their new, modern democratic society."—Rabbi Debra Pine, History of Education Quarterly

"Making the Bible Modern is a landmark volume in the history of American Jewish education. By examining American Jewish children's Bibles in their broadest context, Penny Schine Gold sheds light on the books themselves, the people who wrote them, the community that embraced them, and the challenges that continue to confront those who teach the Bible to young people."—Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University

"The process by which the Bible came to be the central text for the education of Jewish children in America was entwined with many phenomena: the history of education, the history of Jewish emancipation, anti-Semitism, the impact of the enlightenment on the Jews, Jewish immigration to the United States, literary criticism, and more. The storybooks for young Jewish children in America described in Making the Bible Modern are serious texts: history connected to the profound changes brought about by the Jewish encounter with modernity. Penny Schine Gold shows how high culture ultimately manifests itself in the commonplace books of childhood."—Hasia Diner, New York University

From the Publisher

"Why was the Bible elevated over the Talmud as the central text of Jewish education?" Gold asks. She writes that while the Bible "was seen as consonant with modern sensibilities" in the interwar period, the Jewish-specific Talmud was jettisoned to make room for a new cultural setting. Moreover, she argues that the advent of "Bible stories" for Jewish children in the 1920s and 1930s-stories that often only superficially resembled the original biblical tales-tells us a great deal about the changes that second-generation Jews were facing. Gold focuses on the Reform movement's broad attempts to fashion Bible stories that would teach children to be both Jewish and American, and her exegesis of the cultural messages of some of the retooled Bible stories is the most compelling part of this absorbing book. (Dec.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly