Beyond the Golden Door Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience [Hardcover]

Beyond the Golden Door is the first book devoted to showing how Jewish playwrights of the twentieth century have dramatized the Jewish encounter with America. Questions dealt within this study include - How do you balance old world heritage with new world opportunity? What does it mean to be a Jew - or to be an American, for that matter?Introduction The Golden Land Elmer Rice's Multiethnic New York The Bronx Arthur Miller and the Jews Prosperity and Its Discontents Neil Simon: Brighton Beach to Broadway The Musicals German Jews, Southern Jews More Fathers and Sons Jewish Daughters Epilogue Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index of Playwrights Index of Plays General Index

Novick narrates quickly through the outline of each play and the breadth of works discussed is impressive. Readers unfamiliar with the range of texts will still find themselves in deft hands: his prose is approachable, his analysis stimulating, his research thoughtful. - American Jewish History Association Beyond the Golden Door is a learned, provocative survey of a significant strain in American theatre. - American Theatre What a delight to read Julius Novick. He chooses exactly the right plays to focus on, lays out their substance with clarity, and then selects precisely the right quotes from his great predecessors and contemporary scholars in the field to heighten his own astute delvings into this extraordinary wealth of material. Perceptively, he shows you how the plays link to one another to form one of the great chains that make up America's cultural DNA. This is a beautiful and necessary book. - Michael Feingold, chief theater critic, The Village Voice Novick articulately and knowledgeably demonstrates his own emotional stake in examining drama by American Jews. By linking the works he discusses to his deep personal feelings and values, he seems to be wrestling with the difficult task of trying to preserve a Jewish identity in a secular, multicultural American society...Novickló%