During its nearly thirty years in business, J. Roth / Bookseller of Fine & Scholarly Judaica was a microcosm of the Los Angeles Jewish community and one of the premier Jewish bookstores in the United States. It thrived in the glow of the Jewish ethnic pride movements of the sixties and seventies but was unable to market its uniquely broad definition and collection of Jewish literature after the resurgence of Orthodox Judaism and the assimilation of Jewish writing into the corporate book superstores during the late eighties and early nineties. Through a combination of memoir and critical analysis, and by connecting both to larger forces that helped shape Jewish and American book retailing in the twentieth-century, Laurence Roth not only illustrates the importance of one American Jewish bookstore to its customers and to the family that helped run it. He explores, too, the role of Jewish bookstores in the assembly and transformation of Jewish cultures and how independent bookstores like J. Roth Bookseller, which mostly disappear from history, often had outsized effects on their communities. Breaking with conventional modes of scholarship, Roth tells a unique and troubled story that rarely gets told, one that is both personal and analytical, theoretical but rooted in the everyday.
Laurence Roth is the Charles B. Degenstein Professor of English and director of the Jewish & Israel Studies Program and The Build Collaborative (a project-based center for liberal arts, business, and creativity) at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Inspecting Jews: American Jewish Detective Stories; coeditor, with Nadia Valman, of The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Jewish Cultures; and editor of Modern Language Studies, the scholarly journal of the Northeast Modern Language Association.
Tuesday, December 9, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM
Unpacking my Father’s Book Store: The Life and Times of J. Roth Bookseller in Los Angeles, 1966-1994
Laurence Roth (Susquehanna University)
Moderator: David N. Myers (UCLA)
Arnold Band Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies
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