Jonathan Krasner’s excellent book tells the story …

Jonathan Krasner’s excellent book tells the story of Samson Benderly and his disciples and the effect that they had on American Jewish education in the first half of the twentieth century. Because the history of Jewish education in America is very much the story of how American Jews have sought to define themselves in this land, Krasner’s work also is valuable to general students of American Jewish life. The Benderly Boys is meticulously researched. It uses personal letters, interviews, detailed organizational minutes, photos, and close reading of curricula and other texts to construct a vivid picture of the individuals studied and the age in which they worked. Krasner is a gifted writer, and his analysis is uniformly fair and insightful.