Dianne C. Ashton
Rowan University (Glassboro, NJ 08028-1702)
FT-51453-03
Summer Stipends
Research Programs
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[Grant products]
Totals:
$5,000 (approved)
$5,000 (awarded)
Grant period:
6/1/2003 – 7/31/2003
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Domestic Judaism Goes Public: A Social History of American Hanukkah
During summer 2003 I will complete the archival research and write the first chapter of a new volume on the social history of Hanukkah in America. That chapter will be part of the first book-length scholarly study of the significance of a Jewish holiday for American Jews. The first chapter will examine nineteenth-century American Jewish press, sermons, and original hymns to identify the place and meanings of Hanukkah and identify clerical, doctrinal, class, and gender contestations about its importance to Jews in Victorian America. During that century Hanukkah began its transformation from a little-noted event to, by late twentieth century, the second most-likely-to-be celebrated Jewish holiday in America.
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