Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture

Winner of the 2014 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award presented by the Association for Jewish Studies


Jews have played an integral role in the history of obscenity in America. For most of the 20th century, Jewish entrepreneurs and editors led the charge against obscenity laws. Jewish lawyers battled literary censorship even when their non-Jewish counterparts refused to do so, and they won court decisions in favor of texts including Ulysses, A Howl, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Tropic of Cancer. Jew...