Abstract
From 1976–1988, Lewis Feuer produced a series of significant papers in American Jewish History dealing with such subjects as Harry Wolfson, Joachim Gaunse, the history of Jews in the American academy, James Joseph Sylvester, and more. In each case, Feuer glimpsed himself in what he studied. He selected and viewed his subjects from the perspective of his own life, values and intellectual concerns.
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Notes
In his autobiography, Feuer described his turn to Jewish Studies this way: “As I turned 60 years of age, I began to write more frequently on Jewish subjects. . . My chief aim in these Jewish studies was to tell a story of hope and accomplishment not of ideology nor of prophetic criticism, but of work done and a position achieved through the respect that the love of work and its realization have always inspired.” (Feuer 1988: 83).
That name, according to Feuer, may actually have been a cross between the name Joachim (as in Joachim Gaunse) and the biblical Job, whose misfortunes and suffering Gaunse’s career echoed. Strangely, Feuer’s theory has gone unnoticed by subsequent scholars. His work is not even referenced in a recent volume of essays devoted to New Atlantis (Price 2002).
Feuer failed to mention Wolfson’s oft-repeated characterization of himself as a “non-observant Orthodox Jew” (Schwarz 1978: viii). Privately, Wolfson was also less than ecumenical. The triumphalistic Jewish holiday of Purim, with its pronounced anti-gentile bias, was, he once smilingly revealed to my father, his favorite Jewish holiday.
Further Reading
Feuer, L. S. 1976. Recollections of Harry Austryn Wolfson. American Jewish Archives, 28(1), 25–50.
Feuer, L. S. 1982. The Stages in the Social History of Jewish Professors in American Colleges and Universities. American Jewish History, 71(4), 432–465.
Feuer, L. S. 1984a. America’s First Jewish Professor: James Joseph Sylvester at the University of Virginia. American Jewish Archives, 36(2), 152–201.
Feuer, L. S. 1984b. Meyer Liben Remembered: A Reflective Memoir. Midstream, 30(6), 42–46.
Feuer, L. S. 1986. Francis Bacon and the Jews: Who Was the Jew in the “New Atlantis”. Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 29, 1–25.
Feuer, L. S. 1987a. Jews in the Origins of Modern Science and Bacon’s Scientific Utopia: The Life and Work of Joachim Gaunse, Mining Technologist and First Recorded Jew in English-Speaking North America. Cincinnati: The American Jewish Archives.
Feuer, L. S. 1987b. Recollections of Alfred North Whitehead in the Harvard Setting (1931–1937). The Yale Review, 76(4), 530–550.
Feuer, L. S. 1987c. The East Side Philosophers: William James and Thomas Davidson. American Jewish History, 76(3), 287–310.
Feuer, L. S. 1988. A Narrative of Personal Events and Ideas. In S. Hook, W. L. O’Neill, & R. O’Toole (Eds.), Philosophy, History and Social Action: Essays in Honor of Lewis Feuer (pp. 1–85). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Hollinger, D. A. 2002. Why Are Jews Preeminent in Science and Scholarship? The Veblen Thesis Reconsidered. Aleph, 2, 145–163.
Klingenstein, S. 1991. Jews in the American Academy 1900–1940: The Dynamics of Intellectual Assimilation. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Marcus, J. R. 1970. The Colonial American Jew 1402–1776 (Vol. 3). Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Marcus, J. R. 1989. United States Jewry 1776–1985 (Vol. 1). Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Marcus, J. R. 1995. The American Jew, 1585–1990: A History. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing Inc.
Price, B. (Ed.). 2002. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Sarna, J. D. 1997. Jacob Rader Marcus (1896–1995). American Jewish Year Book, 97, 633–640.
Schwarz, L. W. 1978. Wolfson of Harvard: Portrait of a Scholar. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
Weinberger, J. (Ed.). 1989. New Atlantis and the Great Instauration (Revth ed.). Wheeling: Harlan Davidson.
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Sarna, J.D. Lewis Feuer and the Study of American Jewish History. Soc 50, 352–355 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-013-9671-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-013-9671-z