When Jews Were GIs: World War II and the Remaking of American Jewry

When Jews Were GIs: World War II and the Remaking of American Jewry
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Deborah Dash Moore

Deborah Dash Moore is professor of religion at Vassar College. A historian of American Jews, she specializes in twentieth-century urban Jewish history. Her first book, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews (1981), explores how the children of immigrants created an ethnic world that blended elements of Jewish and American culture into a vibrant urban society. To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L. A. (1994) follows those big-city Jews who chose to move to new homes in the era after World War II. Moore argues that the future shape of American Jewish life can be glimpsed in the type of communities and politics that flourished in these rapidly growing centers.

Issues of leadership have also engaged her attention. First in B'nai B'rith and the Challenge of Ethnic Leadership (1981), and more recently in the award-winning two-volume Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (1997), which she edited with Paula Hyman, Moore has identified critical features of authority and accomplishment among American Jews.

Her current work includes several new directions. Cityscapes: A History of New York in Images, a book written with Howard Rock, presents the visual dimensions of urban history. Returning to American Jewish history, Moore is examining the transformations in Jewish identity wrought by World War II. Using videotaped interviews, she is working on a study of Jewish GI's during World War II that uncovers the ethnic and religious dimensions of American military service.

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