Cincinnati's American Israelites Blog 2.0

When I look back at the entries of these blog posts from 2007, I love seeing the richness of sources, people, and events they detail, and the freedom I took to expand on some of the small but fascinating items that can make historical research so much fun (but that don't always make it to our published treatises ...).

Unfortunately/Fortunately, I've been taken up with a few too many other responsibilities and such since then to have much time for this work I love.  Due to a welcome sabbatical, I'm excited to be back in the thick of Jewish Cincinnati research.  In addition to advancing my book project, I am also hoping to go back to sharing some of my favorite morsels of Cincinnati Jewish wisdom and experience via the blog format.  What with digital photography and social media, there are a lot more possibilities for going deeper and farther with this material than in 2007.

Beyond social media, the passage of time and the accrual of differing experiences have also changed my relationship to this work in significant ways.  When I first began my Cincinnati research many years ago as a graduate student, I was able to benefit from the insights of people who knew people who knew people stretching back to the beginning of organized Jewish life in Cincinnati.   Jacob Rader Marcus didn't quite overlap with Isaac Mayer Wise in Cincinnati, but it seemed like he did. (He wasn't so far off, Marcus came to Cincinnati in 1911, while Wise died in 1900).  Now, I'm realizing that by having talked to so many Jewish Cincinnatians in their 80s and 90s (and 100s) in the 1980s/90s and early 2000s, I now am one of the holders of precious oral wisdom linking today's Jewish Cincinnati to its past -- a realization that is both surprising and sobering.

Finally, as my own interests and opportunities have changed, so has my relationship to this work.  As a faculty member at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, I mostly focused on congregations as containers for Jewish community and experience.  Having now had the opportunity to work at the Jewish Women's Archive and as director of the Jewish Communal Leadership Program at the University of Michigan, I think of Jewish community much differently than I did back then.

Clearly much of the significance of Cincinnati's American Israelites arises from their creation and stewardship of the first successful national institutions of American Jewish life (the congregation-oriented Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Hebrew Union College).  Today, however, I find the community's leadership in creating local and national frameworks for broader communal work even more stunning.  More on this later.  But it's important to note that immigrant relief work at the turn of the nineteenth century propelled Cincinnati Jews into leadership not only in the creation of national frameworks for Jewish community, but also in a broad array of municipal and civic reform efforts in the city of Cincinnati and beyond.

Looking forward to further adventures ...