A Fortress in Brooklyn
Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg
Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper
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Format: HardcoverPrice: $30.00
The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn
Hasidic Williamsburg is famous as one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy communities in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of New York City’s toughest neighborhoods during an era of steep decline, only to later oppose and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a community of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely resisted the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg’s Hasidim avoided assimilation, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.
Nathaniel Deutsch is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Michael Casper received his Ph.D. in history from UCLA and has contributed to American Jewish History and the New York Review of Books.
“A Fortress in Brooklyn is one of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States. This book makes you rethink everything you know about American Jewish history and identity.”—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University
Publication Date: May 11, 2021
28 b/w illus.
