The Dynamics of Jewish Latino Relationships Hope and Caution [Hardcover]

The Dynamics of Jewish Latino Relationships centers around three themes: immigration, race and identity, and faith and religion. Each chapter explores an encounter that, for various reasons, has brought Latinos and Jews together on the same stage.1. From Community to Political Action
2. Legal, Illegal: Jewish and Latino Immigration
3. Degrees of Whiteness
4. Shifting Faiths: Latino and Jewish Religious Identities
5. The Sky is the Limit

Kevane provides us an appealing, kaleidoscopic, and much needed introduction to the palpable, elusive, and varied relationships of Jews and Hispanics in the United States. Her mix of scholarship and personal journalism brings humane, everyday insight to this important but almost invisible world of cross-cultural understandings (and misunderstandings). - Robert H. Abzug, Director, Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies, Audre and Bernard Rapoport Regents Chair of Jewish Studies, and Professor of History and American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Hope and Caution illustrates the conceptual and methodological point that ethnicity, with its rich cultural content cannot be presumed a priori, but rather must be treated as the object of empirical comparative investigation. Ethnicity as a marker of 'common ground' is lived and negotiated in historically specific and collective ways, and always relationally. Focusing on the relationship between the US Jewish and Latino communities, Kevane's work shows how Latino and Jewish perceptions of one another, their sense of shared histories, struggles, and interests result in large part from simultaneously racialized and classed constructions. This book is an insightful contribution to those interested in the dynamics of race, ethnicity, and class, as well as those interested in the intersection of religion and politics. - Marta Maldonado-Pabon, Professor of Sociology and US Latino/a Studies, Oregon State Universilã6