AMERICAN HISTORY / JEWISH STUDIES

MAKING A LIFE, BUILDING A COMMUNITY

A History of the Jews of Hartford

In the first analytical history of this important Jewish community, David G. Dalin and Jonathan Rosenbaum place Hartford within the larger contexts of American social, urban, ethnic, and Jewish history by comparing its unique experience to those of New England and other American Jewish communities.

The authors discuss Jewish firsts particular to Hartford but significant for America including the entrance of Herman P. Koppelmann, Abraham A. Ribicoff, and Joseph I. Lieberman into national politics; the early espousal of Zionism by all factions within the Jewish community; and the establishment of one of the first day schools outside New York City.

Drawing extensively on such primary sources as synagogue minute books, newspapers, family memoirs, scrapbooks, correspondence, sermons, Jewish organizational records, and an important new collection of oral histories, the authors skillfully document internal divisions and issues of communal cohesiveness. This careful study will be pivotal for anyone, scholar or casual reader alike, interested in American social or ethnic history and the immigrant experience.

"One of the best and most comprehensive histories that we have of a mid-sized American Jewish community ... a model of what local Jewish community history can and should be."
—Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University

"[Making a Life, Building a Community] will stand for decades as the definitive history of the Jews of Hartford."
—Christopher Collier, Connecticut State Historian

"A valuable contribution to the history of how Jews achieved equality in American life while continuing to uphold and express their Jewishness."
—U.S. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut

David G. Salin is associate professor of American Jewish history at the University of Hartford.

Jonathan Rosenbaum is the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford and the director of its Greenberg Center.