On Rockingham Street
Reclaiming My Family’s Jewish Identity—Our Journey from Vilna to the Suburban South
- World Religions
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Published: 2021
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Publisher's Description
On Rockingham Street explores, in memoir form, how assimilation of Jewish immigrants arriving from Eastern Europe was shaped and affected by the culture of Southern suburbia in the 1950s and 1960s. It probes the key questions of Jewish survival, including whether American Judaism has left many Jews unable to answer the question "Why are we Jewish?" and whether the education of Jewish youth by the modern American synagogue is adequate to maintain Judaism as a distinctive and meaningful voice.
Endorsements (5)
“What begins as an engaging memoir of Jewish immigrants arriving from Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, then becomes a probing account of the question of what it means to be Jewish in the America of the twenty-first century.”
“This book is a very moving memoir of one family’s physical and spiritual hundred-year journey from Vilna to Chicago to Arlington, Virginia. But it is much more than that. On Rockingham Street tells the story of millions of American Jews who left their Judaism behind in Eastern Europe, their children who had a tenuous relationship with Judaism, and their grandchildren who have made a tremendous effort to reclaim their Jewish heritage.”
“Pirkei Avot teaches, ‘Turn [the Torah] and turn it, for everything is in it.’ A serious student of both Judaism and language, David Kuney applies this dictum to his family history, exploring the tensions between religion and secularism, particularism and assimilation, and being Jewish in majority-Christian America. His family is at once representative and distinct, and his questions age-old.”
“More than a beautifully written memoir and family history, On Rockingham Street is a meditation on the meaning of Jewish life and endurance. David Kuney’s sensitive analysis of all that has been lost through assimilation is complemented by the mystery of reclamation and embrace. Through the particular story of his family, Kuney offers a broader narrative about the journey back to Jewish learning and practice, and about the value of duty and devotion.”
“David Kuney’s memoir of his family’s journey offers a rich social history of the evolution of Jewish identity in America. The immigrant generation both runs away from its Jewish roots in its desire to acculturate, and yet still serves as the anchor for that very identity for their children and grandchildren. The memoir is deeply personal, but it also reflects a more universal theme: how America has made it possible for a myriad of cultural identities to emerge and flourish with a unique American twist.”
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