Description
Book SynopsisThis book focuses on the first case to provide Jewish Americans with race-based civil rights to highlight the complexity of White-perceived Jewish racialization in the United States. In 1982, vandals defaced Shaare Tefila Congregation with Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi images and slogans. In the subsequent court case, the congregation’s lawyers were required to invoke “race”-based statutes since no “religion”-based laws applied to the desecration. Annalise Glauz-Todrank offers a nuanced analysis of the ways in which the members of the congregation themselves, their lawyers, and the vandals’ lawyers used the concepts of race and religion to argue their case. Judging Jewish Identity in the United States understands “race” and “religion” as White, Christian categories and illustrates how they have been accepted and internalized in the American environment. Focusing on the 1987 case Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, Glauz-Todrank examines how the judges, in each of the three courts, viewed the White-perceived Jewish congregants as well as how the congregants responded to the vandalism, felt relief by the cleanup day that incorporated their neighbors, and pursued the case in the context of their embodied Jewish American experiences.
Trade ReviewJudging Jewish Identity in the United States masterfully examines a seminal legal case to provide a grand, trenchant narrative about the vital yet overlooked role religion plays in the project of American race-making. Glauz-Todrank deftly meshes historical examination with legal analysis, uncovering dimensions of the Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb case that highlight the complicated relationship between racial formation and religion, free exercise and hate violence, Judaism and whiteness. By reflecting back on this critical case, Glauz-Todrank equips readers with the intellectual tools to reckon with rising anti-Semitism today and gain intimate insight into the turbulent tension between religious minority status and belonging in America.
-- Khaled A. Beydoun, Wayne State University and author of American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear
Table of ContentsChapter 1. “It Was a Crime against the Community”
Chapter 2. Preparing to Take Legal Action
Chapter 3. Judging ‘Religion’ and ‘Race’ in the Federal District Court of Maryland and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
Chapter 4. Judging ‘Religion’ and ‘Race’ in the Supreme Court
Chapter 5. The Shaare Tefila Congregation after the Supreme Court Decision
Conclusion: Why Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb Matters
