Nancy Sinkoff - From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History

Nancy Sinkoff

Wayne State University Press

Detroit

Copyright 2020 by Nancy Sinkoff. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

ISBN 978-0-8143-4510-8 (hardback); ISBN (ebook) 978-0-8143-4511-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945846

Published with support from the Goldman Scholarly Publication Fund.

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For Ezra, Miriam, and Reuben

and in memory of

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (19322009)

Correspondence with Albert Einstein, Maurice Friedberg, Pearl Ketcher, Shulamith Nardi on behalf of Zalman Shazar, Gavin Langmuir, Yitzhak Zuckerman (Antek, Yitskhok Tsukerman), Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Simon Wiesenthal, Jacob Rader Marcus, Zarek and Senia Davidson, Noam Chomsky, Marie Syrkin, Israel Gutman, Barry M. Katz, Eberhard Jckel, Shalom Luria (Sholem Lurya), and Allen Hoffman

In the summer of 1989 I summited Cascade Mountain, the easiest of the Adirondacks High Peaks, with my eldest son on my back. Little did I know then that the climb would lead to a two-and-a-half-decade pursuit of joining the Adirondack 46ers, a somewhat exclusive club of hikers who have reached the top ofand successfully descendedall forty-six highest mountains in the Adirondack park. In the summer of 2015, I finished my quest on Hough Mountain in the Dix range with my husband and a hiking partner, earning badge #9079. I read Lucy S. Dawidowiczs memoir the same year as that first High Peak step. Little did I know then that I would embark on her biography years later, after winding my way through the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the salons of Frederick the Greats Berlin. Like hiking the Adirondacks, this journey has been full of extraordinary pleasures: expansive intellectual vistas, uncharted horizons, inspired collegiality, and unexpected scholarly discoveries. It has also been full of metaphorical spruce traps, weather inversions, blisters, sore muscles, exhaustion, and a few false summits. It gives me enormous pleasure now to thank the institutional, intellectual, and intimate companions who sustained me during this adventure.

Rutgers UniversityNew Brunswick and the Departments of Jewish Studies and History have been my academic homes for over twenty years. This book has been enriched by conversations with my colleagues, including Leslie Fishbein, Ziva Galili, Paul Hanebrink, Gary Rendsburg, Paola Tartakoff, Jeffrey Shandler, Azzan Yadin-Israel, and Yael Zerubavel, with particular thanks to David Greenberg and David Fogelsong, who read the manuscript in one of its earlier iterations, and to Rudy Bell, Carolyn Brown, Barbara Cooper, Seth Koven, Phyllis Mack, Bonnie Smith, and Camilla Townsend, who offered support along the way. Early on in the process, I was the recipient of the Workmens Circle/Dr. Emanuel Patt Visiting Professorship in Eastern European Jewish Studies at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which allowed me to dig into the YIVOs extraordinary archives. I also received support from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. Holding the Donald C. Gallup Fellowship in American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University gave me the opportunity to plumb John Herseys papers in that wonderful place. In 2012, a semester at the Frankel Institute at the University of Michigan in the working group Jewish Politics allowed me to engage with colleagues equally obsessed with the questions that have preoccupied me for much of my scholarly life. Deborah Dash Moores generosity then and later in the process of completing the book was always graciously offered. Mia Sarah Bruch and Michael Schlie gave me important critiques of my work, and Andrew Sloin continues to be one of my favorite interlocutors on modern East European Jewish social and political history. A short-term fellowship at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati as the Lowenstein-Wiener fellow in 201415 was indispensable to my being able to comb through the collections of the American Jewish Committee. A year at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in 201617 as the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow in Historical Studies was a dream come true, giving me the space, time, and scholarly resources to complete the books first long draft. I am grateful to Jonathan Haslam for shepherding our small group engaged with transnational politics; to Marian Zelazny for all of her administrative skills; to Marcia Tucker, Kirstie Venanzi, Cecilia Kornish, and Karen Downing for their generous assistance in the IAS library; and to Alexis May, my capable research assistant. To Robert Goulding, Rebecca Maloy, Susanne Hakenbeck, and Despina Stratigakos, I raise a glass to your friendship and scholarship.

My thanks to and admiration for the stewards of the past, the many librarians and archivists who work tirelessly to preserve documents, photographs, and artifacts that make books like this one possible, are simply boundless. Susan Malbin, Melanie Meyers, and Elizabeth R. Hyman of the American Jewish Historical Society, where Lucy S. Dawidowiczs papers are held, provided invaluable assistance over many years. So, too, did Gunther Berg, Fruma Mohrer, Stephanie Halperin, and Marek Web of the YIVO Archives; Zachary Loeb and Ilya Slavutskiy at the Center for Jewish History; Charlotte Bonelli of the American Jewish Committee Library and Archives; Rebecca Altermatt of the Hunter College Archives; Dana Herman, Kevin Profitt, Joe Weber, and Gary Zola of the American Jewish Archives; Reut Golani at the Yad Vashem Archives; Misha Mitsel of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives; Susan Malsbury and Andrea Felder at the New York Public Library, with special thanks to Carolyn Vega and Mary Catherine Kinniburgh of the Berg Collection; Shulamith Z. Berger, curator of Special Collections and Hebraica-Judaica at the Yeshiva University Library; Bonnie Fong, Kevin Mulcahy, and James Niessen of the Rutgers University Libraries; Dafna Itzkovich, Anat Bratman-Elhalel, Zvika Oren, and Noam Rachmilevitch of the Ghetto Fighters House; Vincent Slatt and Jeffrey Carter of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Naomi Steinberger of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America Library; and Zachary Baker, emeritus, Reinhard Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica Collections of Stanford University.

Over the years I have had the good fortune to have had several research assistants, many of whom came to work with me through the Rutgers Aresty Undergraduate Research Program. They include David Brien, Samantha Cutler, Jessica Rabkin, Jennifer Samad, and the incomparable Nicole Kofman. I also wish to thank Ethan Schwartznow launched on his own academic careerfor his excellent work. Yet no one has been more important than Amy Weiss, PhD, whose meticulous research and organization skills, intelligence, and professionalism were essential to the books completion. I eagerly await the publication of her own book.

Many colleagues, near and far, were incredibly generous with their time, engaging with me in email conversations, tracking down buried correspondence with Lucy S. Dawidowicz, vetting citations at what seemed like all hours of the day, and discussing different sections of the book. I am delighted to thank Natalia Aleksiun, Edward Alexander, Leyzer Burko, Boaz Cohen, Lois Dubin, Arie Dubnow, Gabriel Finder, David Fishman, Robert Franciosi, Kevin Gaines, Elisabeth Gallas, Semyon Goldin, Malachi Hacohen, Dana Herman, Brad Sabin Hill, Laura Jockusch, Edward Kaplan, Joshua Karlip, Samuel Kassow, Michael Kimmage, Rebekah Klein-Pejov, Arthur Kurzweil, Cecile Kuznitz, Lisa Leff, Marjorie Lehman, Michael Marissen, Scott Miller, Yehuda Mirsky, Marina Mogilner, Avinoam Patt, Kathy Piess, Eddy Portnoy, Bilha Shilo, Gerald Sorin, Daniel Unowsky, Penny von Eschen, Michael Weitzman, and Laurence Zuckerman. Marsha Rozenblit merits a special thank you for her support.