ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As any author knows, a particular pleasure accompanies writing acknowledgments, alongside trepidation lest one forget someone who matters. To begin with the pleasure, I can recall when this book, and the three that preceded it, were only a glimmer in the eye of Jennifer Hammer. She envisioned a history of New York Jews as early as 2004 and worked assiduously, overcoming many obstacles, to see it come to fruition. She recruited me to serve as general editor, and together we found a top-flight team of historians—Jeffrey S. Gurock, Annie Polland, Daniel Soyer, and Howard B. Rock—who wrote City of Promises, an award-winning three-volume history of Jews in New York City. Along with the art historian Diana L. Linden, who produced an innovative visual essay for each of the three volumes, they crafted a definitive history of New York Jews. This volume represents the final piece of Jennifer’s project: a synthesis of City of Promises. I owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for her vision and fortitude and an enthusiasm that never flagged.

This book could not exist without the superb scholarship of Jeff Gurock, Annie Polland, Danny Soyer, and Howard Rock, as well as the insights of Diana Linden. It integrates their interpretations of New York’s Jewish history and blends their language with my own. Synthesizing three excellent books proved much more difficult than I imagined. So much very fine writing needed to be condensed or cut that it took multiple drafts to reach a final manuscript. Both Jeff and Danny recognized my quandary and volunteered not only to read but also to reread and comment on earlier versions of this book. I am enormously grateful for their sharp editorial eyes and generous suggestions. They also kept me from several errors, though, of course, I remain responsible for any that may remain.

At NYU Press, Amy Klopfenstein proved an exceptionally able assistant when Jennifer was on maternity leave. Shannagh Rowland efficiently gathered permissions for the images in the book. I am grateful for their help, along with the rest of the team at the press.

A year’s leave, or duty off campus in University of Michigan lingo, allowed me to make the transition with grace from director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies to faculty member and historian. My colleagues in Judaic Studies and in History have provided a congenial place to work and think. The staff at the Frankel Center has always been supportive. I particularly want to thank my colleagues at the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies for a fellowship in 2014–2015 that reduced my teaching duties for a semester and encouraged me to shift my focus from administration to scholarship.

Because this book draws on the three volumes of City of Promises, I benefited from fruitful discussions of those volumes with colleagues and students. Specifically, I want to mention the valuable responses of my students in the Sunday Night Study Group, a lively and sharp group of mostly suburban Detroit Jews who met monthly, ten months of the year, eager to learn about Jewish history, religion, and culture. They agreed to read each volume, which served as the basis for a significant segment of several class sessions, and they shared with me their impressions of what they read. Those remarks guided me as I rewrote this book. A different and complementary set of critiques from University of Michigan colleagues and graduate students (participants in the American Jewish Studies reading group) sent me to look for additional cultural material. I am particularly indebted to Mikhail Krutikov’s helpful suggestions regarding New York’s Yiddish literary culture, however inadequate my additions.

This book required more time to write than I expected. It took shape partly during a year of mourning. The death of my father, Martin Dash, in January 2015, reminded me forcefully of how my own story was deeply connected to the history I was telling. Although the printing industry warrants only a sentence in the book, I knew that I could not ignore my father’s field of business, given its many Jewish dimensions. The following January, my grandson Elijah celebrated his bar mitzvah. That key rite of passage also deserved a sentence. My best and most critical editor and partner in life, MacDonald, put up with my absence during my year on sabbatical in New York City. He made me set a deadline on the rewriting and reminded me of my goals. I could never have finished this without his steadfast support.

In dedicating this book to my mother, Irene Golden Dash, and to my four grandchildren, Elijah Mateo Axt, Zoe Bella Moore, Rose Alexa Moore, and Oren Jacob Moore, I wish to express my gratitude for my enormous good fortune to be embedded within four lively generations of New York Jews. My mother has lived a significant chunk of the history recounted in this book; her choices have contributed to New York Jewish culture. My grandchildren are just starting out to write new chapters of this history. I am fortunate to stand among them, glimpsing simultaneously past and future.

Deborah Dash Moore

Ann Arbor, August 2016