Wonders of America is an interesting look at the development of Jewish culture in America through the eyes of religion. In the work, she examines three phases of American Judaism, the immigrants, their children, and the Post-War Jews. Joselit presents a social history of American Judaism that focuses on how rituals were transformed and imbued with contemporary meanings. The story is of a struggle of identify, a conflict between the pressures of community vs. democratization, ritual vs. consumerism, and tradition vs. American culture. The Jewish culture was in a constant dialectic with itself, the drifting interest of the populace was countered by the cultural custodians, resulting in an amalgamation of the two or more views. Interspaced within the narrative were illustrations that illuminated Jaselit’s examples, drawing the reader into the Jewish world more than they would have otherwise.

There were several problems with the book, most of them issues of clarification. Joselit was not careful enough in distinguishing between the various movements within American Judaism, most notably the Reformed and Orthodox movements. Each movement was mentioned in the examples she gives throughout the work, but there was not clarification as to whether or not some examples were a function of Judaism in general or a fun ction of specific ideologies within one of the movements. This could have been alleviated if the chapters were organized with sections dealing with each of the major movements or perhaps if there were clarifying statements that informed the reader about the differences between the movements. As it is, Joselit practically assumes that there was no real difference between Reformed and Orthodox movements as they related to American culture and that is perhaps a bit hasty of a generalization.

Along these same lines, more clarification between trends of the Jewish cultures and the larger American culture as a whole would have been extremely helpful. There was an excellent opportunity to make this work more relevant to the larger picture and to better situate the culture in connecting and differentiating trends in Jewish culture and American culture. How did the subsumption of consumerism in the home compare between Jewish culture and American culture at the time. If Joselit would have made these connections, a better picture of each would have arisen. Granted, this was a social history, so the focus was from the bottom – up, but widening the scope would have helped the work in several ways.

The last problem with The Wonders of America is methodological in nature. It is not clear what method Joselit used in her study. While sources are mentioned and quoted extensively, there are no footnotes and only referenced words are cited by page number and word phrasing in the “Notes” section at the end of the book. This makes double checking her claims a nightmare. For example, on page 182, she cites a study on eating habits of children within several cultures. However, the only references for that page are listed as “clients,” “‘You learned us,’” “Jews put great emphasis,” “the taking of food,” over-protective attitude,” and “preoccupation with food” all direct quotations. Roughly three times the work is needed to track down her citation in this method than if a simple footnoting system was used.

Despite these criticisms, the book remains an interesting account of how Jewish culture adapted to it new and changing situations once it reached the Americas in large numbers. In this regard, the work is valuable in identifying the dialectic with American culture and the self-contained dialectic that shaped American Judaism.