Books by Jeffrey S. Gurock

The eight-decade story of a New York neighborhood In 1940, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company opened a planned community in the East Bronx, New York. A model of what the neighborhood would become was first displayed to an excited public at the 1939 World¿s Fair. Parkchester was celebrated as a ¿city within a city,¿ offering many of the attractions and comforts of suburbia, but without the transportation issues that plagued commuters who trekked into New York City every day. This new neighborhood initially constituted a desirable alternative to inner city neighborhoods for white ethnic groups with the means to leave their Depression-era homes. In this bucolic environment within Gotham, the Irish and Italian Catholics, white Protestants and Jews lived together rather harmoniously. In Parkchester, Jeffrey S. Gurock explains how and why a ¿get along¿ spirit prevailed in Parkchester and marked a turning point in ethnic relations in the city.Gurock is also attuned to, and documents fully, the egregious side to the neighborhood¿s early history. Until the late 1960s, Parkchester was off-limits to African Americans and Latinos. He is also sensitive to the processes of integration that took place once the community was opened to all and explains why transition was made without significant turmoil and violence that marked integration in other parts of the city. This eight decade history takes Parkchester¿s tale up to the present day and indicates that while the neighborhood is today predominantly African American and Latino, and home to immigrants from all over the world, the spirit of conviviality still prevails on its East Bronx streets.As a child of Parkchester himself, Gurock couples his critical expertise as leading scholar of New York City¿s history with an insider¿s insight in producing a thoughtful, nuanced understanding of ethnic and race relations in the city.

Follows the Jewish saga in New York City from the end of the First World War into the first decade of the new millennium. This book details the complex dynamics that caused Jews to persist, abandon, or be left behind in their neighborhoods during critical moments of the past century.

Examines how sports entered the lives of American Jewish men and women and how the secular values of sports threatened religious identification and observance. This title uses the experience of sports to illuminate an important mode of modern Jewish religious conflict and accommodation to America.

Imagines what might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred. Jeffrey Gurock forces readers to contemplate how the road to acceptance and empowerment for today's American Jews could have been harder than it actually was.

In The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938–1967, Jeffrey Gurock imagines what might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred and challenges readers to contemplate how the road to acceptance and empowerment for today’s American Jews would have been harder than it actually was. As Gurock tells his tale, he concludes every chapter with a short section that describes what actually happened and, thus, further educates the reader.

Examining the intellectual influences that prompted Mordecai M. Kaplan to reject fundamental Orthodox precepts, this text asks whether an established religious group can learn from a heretic who has rejected its most fundamental beliefs.

Tells the history of Orthodox Jews in America, from the 17th century onwards, and examines how Orthodox Jewish men and women coped with the personal, familial, and communal challenges of religious freedom, economic opportunity, and social integration. This title is suitable for those seeking to understand the American Jewish experience.