City of Promises

City of Promises, Vol 1-3 with Deborah Dash Moore from NYU Press on Vimeo.

The history of the Jews of New York is the history of Jews in the United States. No matter their location, be it Miami, Florida or Madison, Wisconsin, Jews anywhere in this country can almost assuredly trace their roots back to New York. But missing until now has been a full, comprehensive history of Jewish life in New York City. Drawing on original research, CITY OF PROMISES: A History of the Jews of New York presents a path-breaking interpretation of a Jewish urban community at once the largest in Jewish history and the most important in the modern world.

Beginning with the first Jews to arrive to New Amsterdam in 1654, and moving through history to present day, this 3-volume boxed set explores the relationship Jews have had with New York City and how they have been a visible and integral part of the City's culture, economy, and politics.

In Volume I, Haven of Liberty: New York Jews in the New World, 1654-1865 author Howard Rock chronicles the history of the first Jews to settle in the city, highlighting their political and economic challenges.

Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer explore the Jewish built urban environment-the synagogues, tenements, shops, banks, and settlement house-to convey the extraordinary complexity of Jewish immigrant society in Volume II, Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840-1920.

And in Volume III, Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a Changing City, 1920-2010, Jeffrey S. Gurock focuses on neighborhoods, exploring Jewish life within the streets of the metropolis and showcasing the reasons for New York's continued preeminence as the capital of American Jews.

Each volume includes a unique visual essay by art historian, Diana Linden, highlighting Jewish material culture as seen through images, including early colonial portraits, art, and architecture, as well as scenes from everyday life.

Overseen by noted scholar Deborah Dash Moore, CITY OF PROMISES offers the largest Jewish city in the world, in the United States, and in Jewish history its first comprehensive account.

Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Director of the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.

Howard B. Rock, a professor of history at Florida International University for thirty-six years, has written extensively on the history of New York City. His first book, Artisans of the New Republic, triggered a new interest in artisan studies. His most recent work, Cityscapes: A History of New York in Images (with Deborah Dash Moore) was a graphic analysis of New York's 350 year history.

Annie Polland is Vice President for Programs and Education at the Lower East Side Tenemant Museum.

A native New Yorker, Daniel Soyer teaches history at Fordham University in the Bronx. He is the author of the prize-winning Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939, and co-editor and translator of My Future Is in America: East European Jewish Immigrant Autobiographies. He lives in Brooklyn.

Jeffrey S. Gurock is Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University. A prize-winning author, he has written or edited fifteen books in American Jewish history. Gurock has served as chair of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society and as associate editor of American Jewish History. He lives with his family in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.

Diana Linden is an art historian who has taught at Pitzer College and the University of Southern California, and served as Museum Educator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.