by Melanie Weiss
Two Books Present A New Cartography Of Jewish Identity
There is much talk these days about the loss of Jewish identity or the re-imagining thereof. Two new books — Melanie Kaye/ Kantrowitz’s The Colors of Jews (Indiana University Press, $24.95) and New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora by Carolyn Aviv and David Schneer (NYU Press, $20) both lean towards optimism and possibility in their examinations of how today’s Jewish experiences fit into a global and historical view of Jewish life.