Jewish-American Identity and Critical Intercultural Communication: Never Forget, Tikkun Olam, and Kindness to Strangers

(Hardback)

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Jewish-American Identity and Critical Intercultural Communication: Never Forget, Tikkun Olam, and Kindness to Strangers explores what it means to be Jewish on a personal, sociocultural, and global-political level. This book employs 50+ interviews with diverse Jewish voices to provide a history of Jewish migration to the US and to privilege voices that are not necessarily White and Eastern European/Ashkenazic. Sobr argues for a more inclusive form of intercultural theorizing that favors intersectionality and allyship over oppression Olympics (stereotypes between members of different nondominant groups) and colorism (within nondominant group discrimination). Such siloing of differences, and further competing about whose differences are the most egregious, minimizes critical intercultural coalition opportunities allowing for such groups as those who gave power to Trump and Netanyahu to connect while inclusive progressives engage in in-fighting and separatism. The author calls for transversal dialogic politics, racially and historically accurate school curriculum, intersectionality and more inclusive intercultural communication scholarship and practice as various means of working together against white nationalism and white supremacy in the US and the world. Scholars of religious studies, cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication will find this book of particular interest.

Reviews

"In this book exploring Jewish-American identities, Dr. Sobre uncovers a series of rich veins of communication that root us within specific cultural, ethnic, historical, and personal dynamics. Impressively, she takes up an often-fraught range of questions about Jewish-American lives. In taking these up, she models nuanced critical intercultural research by engaging across spoken and written contexts with sensitivity and with a vulnerable invitation to challenge received ideas and imagine new possibilities for holding identities in productive tension."

"Sobre-Denton takes on a topic of utmost importance at a time when anti-semitism is on the rise. To analyze these rhetorics through an intercultural lens is novel, linking history, discourse, and identity construction--something useful for intercultural communication scholarship, course development, and individual learning. This book is for anyone looking to understand the nuances of Jewish identity construction within historical, political, social, and cultural context(s)."

Author Bio

Miriam Shoshana Sobr is assistant professor of instruction at the University of Texas at San Antonio.