The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn"A rich chronicle of the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg. . . . This expert account enlightens."—Publishers Weekly“One of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States.”—Eliyahu Stern, Yale UniversityThe Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section o...

For the first time, this volume centers the rich but little known history of radical Jewish politics in the Middle East and North Africa and puts it into conversation with developments in the Americas, South Africa, Soviet Asia, and Europe. Jews were attracted to radical politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to transform the societies they lived in but also out of a deep desire to belong. Somewhat paradoxically, then, radical politics held out the enticing possibility...

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, Bro...