Al Jolson and the Jews

Award-winning author Michael Alexander explored Jewish identity for Al Jolson, Felix Frankfurter and Arnold Rothstein in a talk titled "Mammy, Don't Ya Know Me?" at the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life on January 30, 2008. By the 1920s, Jews were -- by all economic, political and cultural measures of the day -- making it in America. Yet many deliberately identified with groups that remained marginalized. Alexander, author of the National Jewish Book Award-winning "Jazz Age Jews" (2003), tells the stories of Al Jolson, Felix Frankfurter and Arnold Rothstein. The gangster accused of fixing the 1919 World Series (Rothstein); the defending lawyer for the infamous Sacco and Vanzetti murder trial, who went on to become a Supreme Court justice (Frankfurter); and the star of the first talkie (Jolson) all became heroes to the American Jewish community for their association with events that galvanized the country and defined the Jazz Age. Alexander's book pulls together from the threads of their lives a theological explanation of 1920s Jews, who thought of themselves as outsiders no matter how successful they became. Michael Alexander is the Murray Friedman Professor of History and director of the Myer and Rosaline Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University. Established in memory of USC alumnus Burton Lewis, the Burton Lewis Lecture Series focuses on the Jewish role in arts and culture -- a topic of great interest and close to the heart of the late Mr. Lewis and his family.