About the Book
Intellectual biography of Holocaust historian Lucy S. Dawidowicz.
From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History is the first comprehensive biography of Dawidowicz (1915-1990), a pioneer historian in the field that is now called Holocaust studies. Dawidowicz was a household name in the postwar years, not only because of her scholarship but also due to her political views. Dawidowicz, like many other New York intellectuals, was a youthful communist, became an FDR democrat midcentury, and later championed neoconservatism. Nancy Sinkoff argues that Dawidowicz's rightward shift emerged out of living in prewar Poland, watching the Holocaust unfold from New York City, and working with displaced persons in postwar Germany. Based on over forty-five archival collections, From Left to Right chronicles Dawidowicz's life as a window into the major events and issues of twentieth-century Jewish life.
About the Author :
Nancy Sinkoff is the academic director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and professor of Jewish studies and history at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She is author of Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands, of "Yidishkayt and the Making of Lucy S. Dawidowicz" the introductory essay to Dawidowicz's reissued From that Place and Time, A Memoir, 1938-1947, and co-editor with Rebecca Cypess of Sara Levy's World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin.
Review :
A strength of this book is that it not only traces the personal journey of its biographical subject but also fills in the background of her mentors, her fellow travelers, and the organizational cultures in which she worked. As one who lived through a good part of the era described, I felt reminded, almost viscerally, of the tenor of those times. And so many of the issues that Dawidowicz addressed--such as the relationship between diaspora Jewry and Israel and American Jewry's love-hate relationship with the evangelicals--are still very much with us
--Roselyn Bell "Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance Journal"
Along with Eli Wiesel, Dawidowicz became one of the most sought-after lecturers about the Holocaust. Despite her contribution to Holocaust historiography, she has been somewhat forgotten by the public. A very engaging read, From Left to Right manages to rescue her from oblivion.
--Isabelle Rohr "JDC Archives"
By exploring with impressive research the work of a forgotten historical
figure like Dawidowicz, Nancy Sinkoff has breathed new life into the well-trodden
subject of the New York Jewish intellectuals, while also offering a cogent critique
of American Jewish exceptionalism.
--Kirsten Fermaglich "Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies"
I never quite knew how to approach Dawidowicz's legacy. She was a bold female voice who rejected the "special pleading" of second-wave feminism. She dedicated herself to Yiddish but rejected it as a basis for Jewish life. She was a frustrating, consternating figure for me, a political thinker who, along with her better known male peers, had journeyed from far left in the 1930s to neoconservative in the 1980s. As I saw it, we had so much, and so little in common. From Left to Right affirms my impression of a woman of fierce intellect and principle, a woman of her many times and places.
--Rokhl Kafrissen "Tablet Magazine"
It is customary in a book review, especially a positive book review, to ferret out something that one does not like and expand on it. Normally I would obey this code, but it isn't easy because I honestly liked everything about Nancy Sinkoff 's biography. It is well written and informative about an important person and her growth and development and place in Jewish letters. It brings attention to a neglected and fascinating New York intellectual who went from left to right and stayed there, never seeing the need to apologize for her move. It has interesting new archival material and photographs. It has interesting letter exchanges with notable figures, among them Albert Einstein, Simon Wiesenthal, and Noam Chomsky. What's not to like?
--Robert D. King "Commentary Magazine"
Nancy Sinkoff's biography is well written and an information-filled look at an important person and her growth and development and place in Jewish letters.
--Amos Lassen "Reviews by Amos Lassen"
Sinkoff has given [Dawidowicz's] entire life's work now, for the first time, the attention it deserves.
-- "Zeitschrift fu]r Geschichtswissenschaft"
Sinkoff has written a comprehensive intellectual biography of Dawidowicz that is accessible to nonexperts due to its extensive provision of historical context.
--Matthew Berkman "American Jewish Archives Journal"
Sinkoff navigates through the facts of Dawidowicz's long and eventful life with the effortless elegance of an experienced and disciplined scholar, pointing to the most probable rationale behind the ideological twists of her protagonist, but tactfully refraining from all-too-easy opinionated valuations, overgeneralizations or moral judgments.
--Jacek Partyka "Bibliotekarz Podlaski"
Sinkoff's argument is convincing and she provides a nuanced biography of a previously overlooked figure. She demonstrates the importance of including women in New York intellectual and neoconservative scholarship, and successfully links the Jewish past to modern American politics. Those interested in American intellectual history and Jewish studies should read this fascinating biography.
--Emily Hull "Journal of American Studies"
Sinkoff's attention to detail, mining of the primary sources, and innovative historiographic
approaches mark this book as both a standard and a classic for readers
in a number of fields. It shares important new insights just as it invites scholars to
investigate otherwise hidden figures whose stories prove critical to our understanding
of this pivotal moment in modern Jewish history.
--Marc Dollinger "Contemporary Jewry"
Sinkoff's book should serve as a template for other historians. It is written in an engaging style and will interest not only specialists but general readers as well.
--Samuel D. Kassow "Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs"
Sinkoff's engaging and revelatory biography is a reminder of Lucy Dawidowicz's important place among 20th-century American intellectuals. She may have been forgotten by intellectual historians, but her works should, and hopefully will, continue to find their place on the shelves of those who care for the truths of the Jewish past and who want to strengthen the prospects of the Jewish future.
--Harvey Klehr "Mosaic Magazine"
Sinkoff's work of wide-ranging, diligent historical scholarship, which emanates from a deep understanding of a century of Jewish history in America and Eastern Europe; but also the life, work and intellectual contributions of an under-appreciated and nearly-forgotten historian and public intellectual, Lucy S. Dawidowicz (1915-1990).
-- "Jewish Book Council"
The key to understanding Dawidowicz, Sinkoff persuasivelyargues, is that because of these experiences, she thought of herselfas a Jew who happened to live in America, rather than anAmerican whose ancestors happened to be Jewish. Half a centuryago, this made her unclubbable among the New Yorkintellectuals. Today, in a world less enamored of universalism, itmight make her sound more like a prophet.
-- "Air Mail"
This extensively documented, sensitive account of Lucy Dawidowicz's life and work is a pleasure to read.
--Bob Goldfarb "Jewish Book Council"
We are in Sinkoff's debt for bringing this remarkable Jewish historian's intellectual and political journey to center stage.
--Dana Herman "Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues"
With this book, Lucy Dawidowicz has found her biographer. But even beyond that important contribution, Nancy Sinkoff offers profound insight into the American Jewish psyche, chronicling its diverse cultural proclivities and political sensibilities. With literary elegance and masterful command of her sources, Sinkoff uses Dawidowicz to tell a larger story: the rise of Jewish political conservatism as a powerful force in American life from its roots in Yiddish progressive circles in New York. An outstanding achievement by a first-rate historian.
--David N. Myers "UCLA"
