Leading scholar and author of the celebrated five-volume series, The Jewish People in America, Henry L. Feingold offers a fresh and inspiring look at the Russian/Soviet Jewish emigration phenomenon. Haunted by its sense of failure during the Holocaust, the Soviet Jewry movement set for itself an almost unrealizable goal of finding sanctuary for Jews from a hostile Soviet government. Working together with activists in Israel and Europe, and with a remarkable group of refuseniks that had been denied the right to emigrate, this courageous group mounted a relentless campaign lasting almost three decades. Although Feingold credits Israel with initiating the struggle for Soviet Jewry and fostering it within American Jewry, he maintains that it was the actions of a secure and confident American Jewry that finally delivered the Jews from the Soviet Union. Feingold's mastery of detail and broadness of scope provide a prodigious and sweeping account of the American Jewish movement. He finds early roots of the effort in the American Jewish involvement with Jewish emigration in late Tsarist Russia which bear a startling resemblance to the Kremlin's reaction during the cold war. He highlights both the human dimension of the exodus as well as the complex international ramifications of the movement especially in the Middle East. Silent No More concludes by pondering the role of the movement's effective public relations campaign, which focused on the human right of freedom of movement in hastening the collapse of the Soviet empire. His rigorous scholarship sheds light on an important, yet rarely told episode in history, one that will enliven further examination of the subject. This book will be of interest to scholars of American Jewish history, the cold war, Israeli studies, and American ethnic and immigration history.

This monumental work answers the grand question of where American Jewish liberalism comes from and ultimately questions whether the communal motivations behind such behaviour are strong enough to withstand twenty-first-century America.

In this groundbreaking study, Henry L. Feingold--one of the most prominent historians today--examines the special challenges facing American Jews. The twin processes of American acculturation and secularization have acted like a powerful whirlpool, pulling them away from their inherent sense of separateness as Jews. They became Americans.

Volume IV: A Time for Searching.

In "A Time for Searching," Henry Feingold chronicles the turbulent period between 1920 and 1945--when Jews were poised to enter the mainstream of American life--and explores issues that would preoccupy America's Jewish community for the rest of the century. Despite the specter of anti-semitism, signs of success and acceptance were everywhere.