Reviewed by:

• Eastern European Jewish American Narratives, 1890–1930: Struggles for Recognition by Dana Mihăilescu
• Markus Krah (bio)

The transformation, adaptation, acculturation, and, if you will, Americanization of immigrants from the eastern parts of Europe around the turn of the twentieth century has been crucial to the ways in which American Jews understood and presented themselves as individuals and as a group in their American and Jewish contexts. The existing studies of these complex processes leave room for new perspectives, so Dana Mihăilescu's book is a welcome addition.

Mihăilescu, a professor of English/American Studies at the University of Bucharest, takes an innovative approach by connecting literary, philosophical, and historical perspectives on the topic. Analyzing the work of six writers who came to the US from Russia and Romania, she argues that immigration caused "the need to re-imagine the subject's ethical agency in a new regime of state, showing how the dilemmas associated with eastern European Jewish American identity represent a critical element in fashioning modern subjectivity" (xi). This re-configuration involves a shift from a "fixed-type of identity in autocratic eastern European societies to contingent, fluid identity in democratic United States." Moreover, immigrants transitioned from "double ethical standards" and a focus on self-preservation and survival (eastern Europe) to an "emphasis on ethical responsibility for the ethnic/generational/human other via critical resistance to limitations of norms in a democracy" (xi).

Mihăilescu comes to this original thesis by analyzing the novels, memoirs, and essays written by the six writers who form the source base [End Page 469] for her study: Mary Antin, Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierka, Konrad Bercovici, M. E. Ravage, and Maurice Samuel. By recuperating the voices of Romanian Jewish immigrants through the three latter authors, she aims to complete the picture of the eastern European Jewish experience of America. To the body of their work she applies the theories of philosophers Judith Butler, Axel Honneth, and Emmanuel Levinas. Butler's notion of vulnerability, Levinas's encounter with and responsibility for the other, and Honneth's concept of "recognition" in the face of moral injury are the main ingredients of the "new sense of ethical agency characterizing Jewish identity in America" (xvii).

This philosophical framework in which Mihăilescu situates eastern European Jewish immigrant identities runs as a thread throughout the book and is woven into sections sketching the historical background of the immigration experience. These considerations make up the first part of the study, preceding the analysis proper of the writings of the six authors. The analysis follows several leitmotifs which Mihăilescu traces from eastern Europe to the US in the writings of the immigrant authors. In her brief concluding chapter, she doubles down on her thesis by stating that the "awakening to the other […] marks the positive refashioning of Jewishness in America in the early twentieth century" (231). Surprisingly, however, she states that this identity reconfiguration through the experience of responsibility for the other was not unique to immigrants to the US but also characteristic of Jews who remained in Europe and engaged the other in various ways (232).

A review by a historian cannot do justice to the philosophical analysis Mihăilescu performs on her literary sources, but it does need to point out problematic aspects of the study, which is premised on questionable assumptions about the history of eastern European Jewish immigration to the US and makes claims about this experience based on the analysis of its sources. Bracketing the larger issue of a unified "eastern European" background to these immigrant experiences, Mihăilescu's thesis of the shifting identity of immigrants rests on reductive and over-simplified dichotomies and concepts, such as the opposition between "Orthodox" and "Progressives" in Eastern Europe (for which the shtetl serves as a pars pro toto) and the US (62). She stresses the differences between western and eastern European Jews by quoting Simon Dubnow and Nathan Glazer (59). She uses writings by her six authors to illustrate or prove problematically large claims about the development of different...

审核人：

• 东欧犹太美国人叙事，1890–1930年：达娜·米哈伊列斯库（DanaMihăilescu）的承认努力
• 马库斯·克拉（生物）

在二十世纪初，来自欧洲东部的移民的转变，适应，适应以及（如果您愿意的话）美国移民对美国犹太人以个人和团体的形式理解和展现自己的方式至关重要。他们在美国和犹太人的背景下。对这些复杂过程的现有研究为新观点留下了空间，因此DanaMihăilescu的书是一本受欢迎的书。

布加勒斯特大学英语/美国研究教授米哈勒斯库（Mihăilescu）采用创新方法，将有关该主题的文学，哲学和历史观点联系在一起。她分析了六位从俄罗斯和罗马尼亚来到美国的作家的作品，她认为移民导致“有必要在新的国家政权中重新想象该主题的伦理机构，这表明了与东欧犹太裔美国人身份有关的两难境地。代表了塑造现代主体性的关键要素”（xi）。这种重新配置涉及从“独裁的东欧社会中的固定身份转变为民主美国中的偶然性，流动性身份”的转变。此外，移民从“双重道德标准”过渡

Mihăilescu通过分析构成原始资料库的六位作家的小说，回忆录和散文，得出了这一原始论文。[结束页469]研究对象：玛丽·安汀（Mary Antin），亚伯拉罕·卡汉（Abraham Cahan），安齐亚·耶齐卡（Anzia Yezierka），康拉德·贝科维奇（Konrad Bercovici），ME Ravage和莫里斯·塞缪尔（Maurice Samuel）。通过使后三位作家恢复罗马尼亚犹太移民的声音，她的目标是完成对东欧东欧犹太人在美国的经历的了解。她将哲学家朱迪思·巴特勒（Judith Butler），阿克塞尔·霍内斯（Axel Honneth）和伊曼纽尔·列维纳斯（Emmanuel Levinas）的理论应用到他们的著作中。巴特勒的脆弱性概念，列维纳斯与他人的交往和对他人的责任以及霍纳斯在面对道德伤害时的“承认”概念是“表征美国犹太人身份的新的伦理机构意识”的主要成分（xvii）。

米哈伊列斯库将东欧犹太移民身份置于其中的这一哲学框架贯穿整本书，贯穿于各部分，勾勒出移民经历的历史背景。这些考虑构成了研究的第一部分，先于对六位作者的著作进行了分析。分析遵循几个主题Mihăilescu在移民作家的著作中从东欧追溯到美国。在其简短的最后一章中，她通过指出“唤醒对方[...]标志着二十世纪初美国犹太人的积极重新塑造”来进一步完善自己的论文”（231）。然而，令人惊讶的是，她指出，通过对另一方负责的经历而重新配置身份，不仅是美国移民所独有的，而且还是留在欧洲并以各种方式与另一方交往的犹太人的特征（232）。

历史学家的评论不能与米哈伊勒斯库（Mihăilescu）对她的文学作品进行的哲学分析相称，但它确实需要指出该研究中存在问题的方面，这是基于对东欧犹太移民到美国和美国的历史的可疑假设为前提的。根据其经验分析对这种经验提出主张。对于这些移民经历来说，统一统一的“东欧”背景这一更大的问题，米哈伊列斯库关于移民身份转移的论点是基于简化和过度简化的二分法和概念，例如东部的“东正教”与“进步主义者”之间的对立。欧洲（为其shtetl作为收杆TOTO亲）和美国（62）。她通过引用西蒙·杜布诺（Simon Dubnow）和内森·格拉泽（Nathan Glazer）（59）来强调西欧和东欧犹太人之间的差异。她用她的六位作者的著作来说明或证明关于不同事物发展的大量主张...