A Fortress in Brooklyn

Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg

A Fortress in Brooklyn
Nathaniel Deutsch, Michael Casper
Hardback
h235 x 156mm - 408pg
13 Jul 2021 US
9780300231090
Out of Print
Hasidic Williamsburg is famous as one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy communities in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of New York City' s toughest neighborhoods during an era of steep decline, only to later oppose and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a community of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely resisted the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg' s Hasidim avoided assimilation, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.
"A Fortress in Brooklyn is one of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States. This book makes you rethink everything you know about American Jewish history and identity. "-Eliyahu Stern, Yale University "Deutsch and Casper have written a fascinating study of a little known-and even less understood-group and its engagement with gentrification. Anyone who wants to understand the peculiar dynamic that is contemporary Brooklyn needs to read this book. "-Deborah Dash Moore, author of Jewish New York: The Remarkable History of a Story and a People. "A Fortress in Brooklyn sheds light on one of New York City' s most enigmatic subcultures, charting the evolution of Williamsburg from embattled American shtetl to icon of urban chic. Absorbing and well researched, it is a signal contribution to our understanding of Brooklyn in all its richness and complexity. "-Thomas J. Campanella, author of Brooklyn: The Once and Future City "In this rich, revelatory book , Deutsch and Casper meticulously chronicle how Williamsburg' s Satmar Hasidim were shaped by, and in turn reshaped, the urban landscape of postwar Brooklyn, successively grappling with the challenges of poverty, street crime, deindustrialization, and gentrification. "-Michael Woodsworth, author of Battle for Bed-Stuy: The Long War on Poverty in New York City "In studying the intersections of religion, race, and real estate in Hasidic Williamsburg, Deutsch and Casper take us beyond the stereotypes to show us life on its gritty, exalted, charged, and ever-changing streets. "-Naomi Seidman, University of Toronto
Nathaniel Deutsch is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among his books are The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World and The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement, for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Michael Casper received his Ph. D. in history from UCLA and has contributed to American Jewish History and the New York Review of Books.
Status: Out of Print
ISBN-13: 9780300231090
Published: 13 Jul 2021
Published In: United States
Imprint: Yale University Press
Publisher: Yale University Press
Format: Hardback
Height: 235mm
Width: 156mm
Spine: 15mm
Weight: 666g
Pages: 408

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