The Soviet Jewish Americans

(Hardback)

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This lively, moving narrative provides the first comprehensive account of the emigration of nearly 500,000 Soviet Jews to the United States between 1967 and 1997. By weaving a wide variety of immigrant voices and photographs together with historical, journalistic, social service, and psychological studies of Soviet Jewish immigration, this book offers a comprehensive and highly readable introduction to the history, politics, and culture of this important new American population. Topics covered include the varied reasons for their exodus from the Soviet Union, what they found in the United States, the communities they created there, and the cultural problems they encountered. The author, an expert on this group, dispels stereotypical notions about Soviet Jewish immigrants by exploring the tremendous social, political, and cultural diversity of the nearly half million Soviet Jews now living in the United States. Making abundant use of interviews and photographs, this book is as accessible as it is informative. It opens with a history of Jewish life in the Soviet Union as remembered by elderly immigrants. Theirs are gripping memoirs of the turbulence of revolutionary Russia, the horror of Nazi occupation, Josef Stalin's post-war assault on surviving Jewish leaders, and the emergence from the ashes of a flourishing Jewish counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s. Immigrant voices narrate the history of this Jewish exodus, which began as a protest movement by a handful of courageous activists and developed into a mass migration. The second half of the book vividly evokes life in Soviet Jewish communities across the United States, from the crowded urban landscape of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, to the palmy, smoggy enclave of West Hollywood, California. Class, gender, and cultural and political divisions are all addressed in this fascinating portrait of a complex and diverse community.

Reviews

"This balanced narrative describes the complex immigration adjustment process with due consideration for the many elements that contribute to or complicate that achievement."-National Jewish Post and Opinion
.,."a fine book, covering many dimensions of this group's fate in the United States and linking their story with both ealier American Jewish migrants and contemporary non-Jewish entrants. Well written, and engaging, based on both archival research and first-hand interviews, it will appeal to novice and expert alike."-Journal of American Ethnic History
"[A] testament to the diversity of the people we commonly lump together as "Russian Jews..,."The book is well written and contains a good current bibliography, siginificant statistical information, many photographs, and thoughtful insights based on the author's keen observations and interviews with her subjects. Orleck draws deeply upon personal narratives and testimonies in her text, and these make the book personal and highly readable."-American Jewish History
"Orleck's excellent study provides the first full-scale survey of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union (FSU) to the US between 1967 and 1997....[T]his is a model survey: well-researched, highly readable, and properly contextualized."-Choice
This balanced narrative describes the complex immigration adjustment process with due consideration for the many elements that contribute to or complicate that achievement.-National Jewish Post and Opinion
...a fine book, covering many dimensions of this group's fate in the United States and linking their story with both ealier American Jewish migrants and contemporary non-Jewish entrants. Well written, and engaging, based on both archival research and first-hand interviews, it will appeal to novice and expert alike.-Journal of American Ethnic History
[A] testament to the diversity of the people we commonly lump together as "Russian Jews..,."The book is well written and contains a good current bibliography, siginificant statistical information, many photographs, and thoughtful insights based on the author's keen observations and interviews with her subjects. Orleck draws deeply upon personal narratives and testimonies in her text, and these make the book personal and highly readable.-American Jewish History
Orleck's excellent study provides the first full-scale survey of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union (FSU) to the US between 1967 and 1997....[T]his is a model survey: well-researched, highly readable, and properly contextualized.-Choice
Taking us behind the scenes, into the "Little Odessas" of the New World, Orleck's descriptive rendering of the day-to-day experiences of Soviet Jewish immigrants rewards its readers by enabling them to see the people behind the statistics.-The Journal of American History
This lively, moving narrative provides the first comprehensive account of the immigration of nearly 500,000 Soviet Jews to the United States between 1967 and 1997....This book offers a highly readable introduction to the history, politics, and culture of this important new American population.-American Reference Books Annual
"A testament to the diversity of the people we commonly lump together as "Russian Jews...."The book is well written and contains a good current bibliography, siginificant statistical information, many photographs, and thoughtful insights based on the author's keen observations and interviews with her subjects. Orleck draws deeply upon personal narratives and testimonies in her text, and these make the book personal and highly readable."-American Jewish History
..."a fine book, covering many dimensions of this group's fate in the United States and linking their story with both ealier American Jewish migrants and contemporary non-Jewish entrants. Well written, and engaging, based on both archival research and first-hand interviews, it will appeal to novice and expert alike."-Journal of American Ethnic History
"Taking us behind the scenes, into the "Little Odessas" of the New World, Orleck's descriptive rendering of the day-to-day experiences of Soviet Jewish immigrants rewards its readers by enabling them to see the people behind the statistics."-The Journal of American History
"This lively, moving narrative provides the first comprehensive account of the immigration of nearly 500,000 Soviet Jews to the United States between 1967 and 1997....This book offers a highly readable introduction to the history, politics, and culture of this important new American population."-American Reference Books Annual

Author Bio

ANNELISE ORLECK is associate professor of history and women's studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the U.S. (1995) and co-editor of The Politics of Motherhood: Activist Voices from Left to Right (1997). Her next book is a study of women and welfare activism in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is a native of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, home to a large community of Soviet Jewish Americans.