Jewish Life in Small-Town America

2008-10-01 History

Author : Lee Shai Weissbach
Release : 2008-10-01
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 650/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Life in Small-Town America by : Lee Shai Weissbach

Download or read book Jewish Life in Small-Town America written by Lee Shai Weissbach. This book was released on 2008-10-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Lee Shai Weissbach offers the first comprehensive portrait of small-town Jewish life in America. Exploring the history of communities of 100 to 1000 Jews, the book focuses on the years from the mid-nineteenth century to World War II. Weissbach examines the dynamics of 490 communities across the United States and reveals that smaller Jewish centers were not simply miniature versions of larger communities but were instead alternative kinds of communities in many respects. The book investigates topics ranging from migration patterns to occupational choices, from Jewish education and marriage strategies to congregational organization. The story of smaller Jewish communities attests to the richness and complexity of American Jewish history and also serves to remind us of the diversity of small-town society in times past.

In the Shadow of the Shtetl

2013-11-01 History

Author : Jeffrey Veidlinger
Release : 2013-11-01
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 523/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis In the Shadow of the Shtetl by : Jeffrey Veidlinger

Download or read book In the Shadow of the Shtetl written by Jeffrey Veidlinger. This book was released on 2013-11-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history based on interviews with hundreds of Ukrainian Jews who survived both Hitler and Stalin, recounting experiences ordinary and extraordinary. The story of how the Holocaust decimated Jewish life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe is well known. Still, thousands of Jews in these small towns survived the war and returned afterward to rebuild their communities. The recollections of some four hundred returnees in Ukraine provide the basis for Jeffrey Veidlinger’s reappraisal of the traditional narrative of twentieth-century Jewish history. These elderly Yiddish speakers relate their memories of Jewish life in the prewar shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism. Despite Stalinist repressions, the Holocaust, and official antisemitism, their individual remembrances of family life, religious observance, education, and work testify to the survival of Jewish life in the shadow of the shtetl to this day.

Insecure Prosperity

2021-04-13 Social Science

Author : Ewa Morawska
Release : 2021-04-13
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 302/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Insecure Prosperity by : Ewa Morawska

Download or read book Insecure Prosperity written by Ewa Morawska. This book was released on 2021-04-13. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This captivating story of the Jewish community in Johnstown, Pennsylvania reveals a pattern of adaptation to American life surprisingly different from that followed by Jewish immigrants to metropolitan areas. Although four-fifths of Jewish immigrants did settle in major cities, another fifth created small-town communities like the one described here by Ewa Morawska. Rather than climbing up the mainstream education and occupational success ladder, the Jewish Johnstowners created in the local economy a tightly knit ethnic entrepreneurial niche and pursued within it their main life goals: achieving a satisfactory standard of living against the recurrent slumps in local mills and coal mines and enjoying the company of their fellow congregants. Rather than secularizing and diversifying their communal life, as did Jewish immigrants to larger cities, they devoted their energies to creating and maintaining an inclusive, multipurpose religious congregation. Morawska begins with an extensive examination of Jewish life in the Eastern European regions from which most of Johnstown's immigrants came, tracing features of culture and social relations that they brought with them to America. After detailing the process by which migration from Eastern Europe occurred, Morawska takes up the social organization of Johnstown, the place of Jews in that social order, the transformation of Jewish social life in the city, and relations between Jews and non-Jews. The resulting work will appeal simultaneously to students of American history, of American social life, of immigration, and of Jewish experience, as well as to the general reader interested in any of these topics.

Middletown Jews

1997 Religion

Author : Dan Rottenberg
Release : 1997
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 061/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Middletown Jews by : Dan Rottenberg

Download or read book Middletown Jews written by Dan Rottenberg. This book was released on 1997. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Middletown Jews . . . takes us, through nineteen fascinating interviews done in 1979, into the lives led by mainly first generation American Jews in a small mid-western city." —San Diego Jewish Times ". . . this brief work speaks volumes about the uncertain future of small-town American Jewry." —Choice "The book offers a touching portrait that admirably fills gaps, not just in Middletown itself but in histories in general." —Indianapolis Star ". . . a welcome addition to the small but growing number of monographs covering local aspects of American Jewish history." —Kirkus Reviews In Middletown, the landmark 1927 study of a typical American town (Muncie, Indiana), the authors commented, "The Jewish population of Middletown is so small as to be numerically negligible . . . [and makes] the Jewish issue slight." But WAS the "Jewish issue" slight? What did it mean to be a Jew in Muncie? That is the issue that this book seeks to answer. The Jewish experience in Muncie reflects what many similar communities experienced in hundreds of Middletowns across the midwest.

A Jewish Life on Three Continents

2013-05-08 History

Author :
Release : 2013-05-08
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 208/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis A Jewish Life on Three Continents by :

Download or read book A Jewish Life on Three Continents written by . This book was released on 2013-05-08. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable memoir by Menachem Mendel Frieden illuminates Jewish experience in all three of the most significant centers of Jewish life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It chronicles Frieden's early years in Eastern Europe, his subsequent migration to the United States, and, finally, his settlement in Palestine in 1921. The memoir appears here translated from its original Hebrew, edited and annotated by Frieden's grandson, the historian Lee Shai Weissbach. Frieden's story provides a window onto Jewish life in an era that saw the encroachment of modern ideas into a traditional society, great streams of migration, and the project of Jewish nation building in Palestine. The memoir follows Frieden's student life in the yeshivas of Eastern Europe, the practices of peddlers in the American South, and the complexities of British policy in Palestine between the two World Wars. This first-hand account calls attention to some often ignored aspects of the modern Jewish experience and provides invaluable insight into the history of the time.

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