The new book Reconstructing the Old Country: American Jewry in the Post-Holocaust Decades provides as interdisciplinary perspective on how American Jews in the post-Holocaust era were shaped by European Jewish refugees. Out of their encounters with each other came imaginative reconstructions of wartime or prewar Eastern Europe Jewish life, as well as political and philanthropic activism aimed at defending still-existing Jewish communities in the region.
The book is a collection of essays and its list of contributing scholars includes Levitsky, as well as other experts in literature, art, history, ethnography, and other related fields. The 1950s and early 1960s have sometimes been viewed as a period of creative dormancy for the American Jewish community, but Reconstructing the Old Country illuminates the unique literary, photographic, artistic, dramatic, and political creations of this period.
Scholars and students of American Jewish history, and literature in particular, can find more information on the book here.
