Judging Jewish Identity in the United States masterfully examines a seminal legal case to provide a grand, trenchant narrative about the vital yet overlooked role religion plays in the project of American race-making. Glauz-Todrank deftly meshes historical examination with legal analysis, uncovering dimensions of the Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb case that highlight the complicated relationship between racial formation and religion, free exercise and hate violence, Judaism and whiteness. By reflecting back on this critical case, Glauz-Todrank equips readers with the intellectual tools to reckon with rising anti-Semitism today and gain intimate insight into the turbulent tension between religious minority status and belonging in America.
— Khaled A. Beydoun, Wayne State University and author of American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear
As the first Supreme Court case to address the question of whether Jews count as a racial group, Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb (1987) has attracted the attention of scholars of race and American law, as well as scholars of antisemitism and evolving conceptions of Jewish identity. Until now, however, little has been known about the victims of the attack on a synagogue which led to their filing a lawsuit claiming protection under civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race. Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank has filled this lacuna with a series of interviews with the former leaders and members of the Shaare Tefila Congregation, probing their motivations for bringing the lawsuit. Her book sheds important light on how American Jews have defined their Jewish identity in relationship to the established categories of both race and religion. It simultaneously enriches our understanding of “how Judaism became a religion” and complicates the story of how “Jews became white,” thereby contributing to two important bodies of scholarship.
— Nomi M. Stolzenberg, University of Southern California
In Judging Jewish Identity, Annalise Glauz-Todrank shows how race and religion were intertwined in the 1987 Supreme Court decision, Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, the landmark case where Jewish Americans first won the right to legal protection based on racial claims. The book details the many ways in which race became central to the synagogue’s lawyers strategies, the defendants in the case, the local community, as well as to members of the congregation, while it deftly highlights the contradiction between the racialization of European Jews as white people and a new strategy to use race and civil rights legislation to defend themselves from antisemitic vandalism.
— Bruce D. Haynes, University of California, Davis