At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews by Deborah Dash Moore Review by: Myron Berman The

American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 5 (Dec., 1981), pp. 1164-1165 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1858669 . Accessed: 08/04/2013 10:39
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 146.96.33.29 on Mon, 8 Apr 2013 10:39:41 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

1164

ReviewsofBooks

ofthenewhistory, she has methodology meltingpot was alive and bubbling in the pre- terpretative provided us withan insight intothe livesof immiWorldWar I era. ofvolumes rochildren. Unliketheplethora The Melting grants' of intermarriage, Unlikemoststudies than manticizing the Worldof Our Fathersor the "gilded sourcesrather Pot and theAltar uses statewide At Homein America to examineits ghetto"of theirgrandchildren, ofa singlecityor county therecords a ruralcoun- concentrates offer findings on themoreprosaicpursuits ofthesecsubject;thus,Bernard's scholarshipmost ond generation. Ratherthanfinding a stateof volterpointto the urban-centered This focusprovesvaluable untary culturalamnesiaamong the subjectsunder encountered. commonly ofthe third as comparedto thereturn was morecommonin investigation since,in fact,intermarriage ruralcountiesthan in the cities.Such generationto the ideals of their grandparents, Wisconsin's a continuity of valuesamongthe genand occu- Moore finds size,timeofarrival, as therelative factors ofthestate'svarious erations. ofthemembers pationalstatus withan eyetoward are also examined ethnic groups The thrust ofthe oftheauthoris an examination Here, Ber- institutions trends. with marriage New fashionedby second-generation theircorrelation for their inconsis- YorkJewsin the imageof theirnew environment. are interesting nard's findings weresalient charand socialmobility or clusterof attributes, Acculturation tency;no singleattribute, of Wis- acteristics of themembers of that generation, which maintaineda accountedforthebehavior within the remarkable to the senseof ethnicity. Contributing Alwayspresented majorgroups. consin's consis- assimilation on itssubject, of the children of ghettoparentswas ofexisting scholarship context and modestin itsclaims,The Melting the publicschool.Unlikethecontemporary careful experitently to thelitera- mentwiththe mechanism contribution Pot and theAltaris a useful languagesto of foreign ethnicexperience. the transition from to American, tureof theAmerican buffer immigrant here. Ber- publicschools in the 1920sdisapproved oftheuse of a disappointment There is, however, of the East his studyby notingthat mostre- Yiddish,the major mode of expression nard introduces ofethnic EuropeanJew,and denigrated on theviability its culturalpotenfocus closely centaccounts noton inter- tial.Whiletheformer and institutions, theentry communities, groups, approachfacilitated as a vehicle ofnewAmericans Yet he failsto use hisfindings intosociety, it did createconflicts marriage. the among the generations concerning our assumptions forreinterpreting the neglectof and fostered In thesepages,in- traditional of ethnicseparatism. forthe preservation values necessary of durability but family, religion, and morality. seemssimplyto be an interesting termarriage This unforWhat fostered ofethnicity phenomenon. thereassertion inconsequential among relatively decisionto the secondgeneration from Bernard's in derives was the re-establishment, tunatesituation at the altar. new areasof New YorkCity,ofa residence of marriage patterns pattern stop his scrutiny from of voluntary couplesseparatethemselves Did intermarried as had previously existed segregation in in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.The synaWere they, ethniccommunities? their respective a sense,ethnicalumni,who had graduatedfrom gogue became Americanizedas a functionof into middle-class supweretheyre-absorbed needswiththe goal of belonging Or, perhaps, ethnicity? from planting theformer ofreligious furor manifestation one or anotherof the ethnic communities are amenable and nostalgia forthevaluesof theold country. Powhichthey had come?Such questions in a study ofthistypethey New York oughtto liticalinvolvement of secondgeneration to examination; the impact Jewsreflected have been asked.With theiromission, urbanneedsand thedesireforsocial in a society prem- reform of intermarriage than the doctrinaire of their and significance rather politics cannot be assessed.While The immigrant ised on ethnicity parents. conthe impressive case that was Notwithstanding MeltingPot and theAltaris a book thatscholars will made by the authorforthe contiguous neighborcernedwith the Americanethnicexperience would have likedto have hood as a primary molder ofethnic she overvalues, thisreviewer finduseful, at leastposed,evenifdefinitive looksthe factor of commonidentity or peoplehood seensuchquestions to be found. answers werenowhere as a creatorof culturalvalues. Althoughshe deRALPH JANIS of Mordecai scribesin great detail the influence Council Kaplan in the development Humanities Kentucky of the synagogue-censhe could have profitably ter, applied his definition SecondGen- ofJudaismas a people-oriented to explain religion DEBORAH DASH MOORE. At Home in America: the genesisof ethnicvalues among second-generaNew York Jews. (Columbia History of Urban eration Press.1981. tionJews. Life.)New York:Columbia University That residential enhancedethcontiguity Pp. xiii,303. $15.95. to fellowethnicityis obviousbut that proximity nics did not necessarily promotethat degree of the first volume cohesionamong otherimmigrant Deborah Dash Moore has written groupsas it did in the "Columbia Historyof Urban Life" series. among theJewssuggests that a new environment withthe statistical and in- does not completely conversant Completely of ethexplainthe reassertion

This content downloaded from 146.96.33.29 on Mon, 8 Apr 2013 10:39:41 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

United States
nicityamong second-generationNew York Jews. It would have been profitablefor the author to compare the level of ethnicityof New York Jews living in such sparselysettledsections (in number of Jews) of the city, such as Queens, to Williamsburg. Another avenue of research is the family association historiesnow being collated by the Yivo Instituteof Jewish Research. One weakness of the volume is the author's reliance on secondary sources for her conclusions. Certainly Rabbi Bernard Revel, then directorof the Orthodox Yeshiva University,should not be cited as an authority on the curriculum of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary of America. I would also question Moore's explanation of the rationale manifested by the affluentGerman Jew in adopting philanthropyas his new religion. Did his desire for hegemony over the East European Jew emanate from the American concept of the stewardship of wealth or from the fearof the more assimilated classes that their immigrant coreligionistswould constitutethat degree of economic and social dependency that could generate a significantwave of antisemitism? Nevertheless,the author is to be commended for her concentration on that area of research usually neglected by ethnic historians. We anticipate furthercontributionsby the "Columbia Historyof Urban Life" series.

1165

latter were less substantial and disappeared sooner. Not only did immigrants have a "demographic headstart," they also possessed more access to the political process and confrontedfewerbarriersto labor union membership. Taken together these factors gave them highly significantadvantages over blacks in economic and social areas. According to Lieberson, an important factor in the occupational and educational gap that developed between blacks and immigrantswas the timing of the mass migration of blacks into the North. Arrivingthere in ever larger numbers during and afterWorld War I just as the flow of European immigrants sharply declined, inexperienced blacks entered the labor market at a moment when the more experienced, upwardly mobile immigrants had pre-empted the skilled and semi-skilledjobs. The decline in black education and the increase in segregation, Lieberson argues, resulted not froma deteriorationin the "quality" of black migrantsbut rather from"structural shiftsin racial relations in the northerncities" (p. 219). Increasing black isolation was, in his view, the resultof attempts by urban whites "to maintain the same degree of isolation fromblacks that existed before the flows from the south started" (p. 291). That blacks were victims of more severe formsof discrimination than white immigrants, Lieberson concludes, was the product not so much of racial, as MYRON BERMAN of economic, factors.At the heart of the matter was Richmond, Virginia "the fear of blacks based on their threat as economic competitors" (p. 383). The conclusions and implications of this volume STANLEY LIEBERSON. A Piece ofthePie: Blacks and White Immigrants since 1880. Berkeley and Los Angeles: are likelyto prompt considerable debate. Specialists in United States historywill be familiarwith much Universityof California Press. 1980. Pp. xiii, 419. of the ground that it covers,but not all will feel enCloth $34.50, paper $11.50. tirelycomfortable with some of the author's arguSociologist Stanley Lieberson attempts,in this pro- ments or with his so-called "elegant" methodologivocative volume, to provide a more comprehensive cal procedures. His references to "tautological answer than is usually given to the question: why demography," the queuing process, a "tautological did immigrantsfrom central and southern Europe approach to queuing," and other terms more often after 1880 fare so much better in the United States found in sociological literaturewill undoubtedly be than blacks? Nagged by doubts regarding tradi- alien to some. But because the volume "focuses tional answers emphasizing racism, skin color, leg- largely on past events rather than current popular acy of slavery,and cultural deprivation, Lieberson issues" (p. 15), anyone interestedin the historyof undertakes an empirical analysis of various other blacks, immigrants,race relations,and related topfactors largely unrelated to race that, he believes, ics will find Lieberson's approach enlighteningand operated to restrict opportunities for blacks and to profitable. widen the gap between them and white immiWILLARD B. GATEWOOD, JR. grants. Eschewing "the issue of inherentdifferences University ofArkansas, in intelligencebetween the races" as "a red herring" Fayetteville (p. 135), he devotes attention primarily to issues such as access to politics and education, demography, occupation, income, values, kinship structure, LOREITA J. WILLIAMS. Black Freemasonry and Middlenuclear family stability, fertility, mortality rates, Class Realities.(Universityof Missouri Studies, numand residential segregation to determine whether ber 49.) Columbia: University of Missouri Press. they "are more than merelya part of the rhetoricof 1980. Pp. 165. $15.00. race relations." Despite certain similarities between black and Few scholars of the Afro-Americanexperience have white immigrant experiences, the liabilities of the given sustained attention to the role of fraternalor-

This content downloaded from 146.96.33.29 on Mon, 8 Apr 2013 10:39:41 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions