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Members of the Tribe

Name: Members of the Tribe
Author: Zev Chafets
ISBN: 9780307799203

by Zev Chafets

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Overview

Chafets travels through Jewish America and introduces a range of characters that he meets on his journey, showing all sides of the Jewish community in America.

An irreverent and startling portrait of Jewish America by a writer The New York Times described as "a 1980s Tocqueville."

Synopsis

An irreverent and startling portrait of Jewish America After two decades in Israel, Ze’ev Chafets returned to his native land to embark upon an extraordinary odyssey: a six-month, thirty-state search for America’s Jews. From side streets to mean streets, from the small-town serenity of the country to the hustle and bustle of the big city, he discovered Jews in some expected and unexpected places to create this portrait of American Judaism and Jewish life in America today. Meet the “members of the tribe” as Chafets—never the passive observer—barnstorms through the deep South, where he encounters the last Cajun Jews in the bayou, and travels to Mississippi to discover a congregation of good old boychiks. He joins a Midwestern “Jewhunt” led by a political organizer from AIPAC (the Israeli lobby), and in a maximum security synagogue in Pennsylvania he worships with a congregation of convicts whose shammes is doing time for armed robbery. At every stop Chafets comes across fascinating and memorable characters: a Buddhist named Wasserman who claims to have Jewish sports karma; America’s only native-born wonder-working rabbi; a Gross Pointed matron who wears a Jewish star to ward off anti-Semites. Chafets goes to the boardrooms of big-time Judaism in New York and Los Angeles, to back rooms in the Lone Star State where he spins yarns with some Texas Jewboys, to Cisco’s Restaurant in Austin, Texas, where he talks with Kinky Friedman, America’s best-known Jewish country and western singer. From a weekend in the Catskills with nearly two thousand Jewish singles to a meeting with the geriatric Jewish jocks of Century Village in Florida, Chafets takes a close look at how contemporary Jews really live. Whether he is describing the plight of a gay congregation in San Francisco in the throes of a deadly epidemic, or the poignancy of services at a storefront synagogue of black Jews whose cantor sings Hebrew prayers with gospel melodies, Members of the Tribe evokes the fears and hopes, concerns and aspirations of American Jews. Engaging, moving and insightful, this remarkable chronicle is a compelling look beyond stereotypes at people who, for reasons they don’t always understand, continue to be members of the tribe.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

American Jews may be ``members of the tribe'' by virtue of their birthright, but they are also complacent, overly obsessed with the Holocaust and in danger of self-extinction through assimilation. These are some of the forthright opinions arrived at by Chafets, himself a Jew, as he crisscrossed the United States after a 20-year absence. He lives in Israel and grew up in Pontiac, Michigan. This outsider status gives him a unique vantage point, and his entertaining, breezy, impressionistic travelogue grapples with important issues. He also ventures down seldom-traveled roads as he visits the Jews of the Louisana bayou, a gay synagogue in San Francisco, Jewish prayer services in a Pennsylvania prison, Jews trapped in poverty in a welfare hotel. Author of Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men , Chafets takes an opinionated stance whether he is discussing the Jewish Defense League, rivalry between Chasidic sects or American Jews' relationship to Israel. (October)

Library Journal

Curious about ``the variety and complexity of American Jewish life and the unpredictable ways it affects individuals,'' Chafets, an American-born Israeli journalist, spent six months traveling through ``Jewish America'' in 1986. Here, he introduces us to the fascinating array of characters he metSouthern Jews, gay Jews, rich Jews, poor Jews, black Jews, radical Jews, old Jews, young Jews, Jewish prisoners, Holocaust survivors, and more. Chafets favors the strange and exotic, emphasizes assimilation and intermarriage, ignoring evidence of American Jewish revival and renewal, and makes no claim to be objective or comprehensive. He does, however, have an engaging and sprightly style. For most libraries.Jonathan D. Sarna, Hebrew Union Coll. - Jewish Inst. of Religion, Cincinnati