Mark Bauman: Review of Lee Shai Weissbach's Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History (Yale)
BECAUSE OF HISTORICAL FORCES and cultural norms, in America Jews have been a remarkably urban people.
In 1878, 71 percent lived in the 26 metropolitan areas that boasted at least a thousand Jewish inhabitants, whereas over half of the general population did not live in cities until 1920. With the increased influx of Jews from Eastern Europe, and particularly Russia, from 1881 to the 1920s, the number and proportion of Jews in American cities rose ever higher. And yet a tiny but important segment chose to move into the American hinterland, where they exerted disproportionate influence on civic and cultural uplift in towns and smaller cities. Downtown business clusters made it appear that Jews dominated retail trade. Jews also created their own community life and institutions.
Lee Shai Weissbach, professor of history at the University of Louisville, has studied the lives of Jews who lived in these communities with Jewish populations between 100 and 1,000 during what he calls their "classic era," roughly 1887 to 1927. The period marks both the rise and decline (in isolation as well as number) of such communities. Having published several scholarly articles on the subject, this seminal volume incorporates 15 years of research.
Weissbach maintains that, while broad similarities exist between Jewish experiences throughout the country, local environments--whether they be small towns, or commercial or industrial metropolises--exerted tremendous influence over patterns of adjustment. In the cities, Jews participated in a greater diversity of occupations, and a substantial working class was employed in the textile industry. Thus, labor union membership and socialist inclinations marked participation in city life for many East European Jewish immigrants.
Few of those drawn to small towns served as industrial workers, and almost all rose quickly into the middle class through retail trade. For those so inclined, socialism became an intellectual exercise rather than a class-conscious activity, and unionism was almost unheard of. The Depression probably had a lesser impact on small-town Jews because of the independent economic niche they filled. A result of close kinship ties in an environment where they knew everyone, small-town Jews "never felt alone or anonymous," as some might have felt in cities. Still, with fewer potential spouses available because of smaller populations, Jews in small towns were more likely to intermarry than their urbanized brethren.
The contrasts seem endless. Jews found greater acceptance and integration in small towns than in cities, although they still felt the barbs of anti-Semitism and insensitivity, and were virtually always viewed as separate and distinctive. With populations only capable of supporting one or two congregations, and while some conflict existed between Central and East European, Reform and Orthodox, cooperation and accommodation were more the norm than in large metropolises with numerous, competing synagogues and community institutions. For small-town Jews, synagogues served as all-purpose centers of social as well as religious life; but erecting buildings and obtaining the services of rabbis, and keeping them beyond a few years, posed real challenges.
Weissbach persuasively argues that the Jewish encounter in what he calls "triple-digit" communities deserves independent study, even beyond what it reflects in contrast to city life.
Immigrant Jews were drawn to these locations because transportation and natural resources made them market centers. Kin and landsleit networks often defined the movement of people to specific locations, and eased adjustment. Many started with little capital as peddlers, obtaining goods from Jewish wholesalers, while others, after first having accumulated capital elsewhere in America, began as shopkeepers. Friends and relatives served as clerks and opened satellite stores. From the Civil War to well into the 20th century, the road to department stores and success in a variety of businesses, and ultimately the professions, beckoned. Mobility in and out of towns as an area's opportunity came and went was as typical as economic mobility.
During the 19th century, Jews from central Europe started congregations and burial and benevolent societies, a pattern replicated during the era of mass migration by Jews from Eastern Europe. In fact, contrary to the image of "German" Jewish town formation, most of these communities were established by "Russian" Jews. Even where earlier Jewish communities existed, the newcomers usually exerted substantial influence because of their larger numbers. In "vibrant Jewish enclaves," writes Weissbach, these traditionalists created "miniature version[s] of the quasi-mythical 'Lower East Side' of New York City."
Yiddish culture, Zionism, and ethnic businesses and consciousness flourished. Nonetheless, these Jews underwent a similar process of acculturation as their predecessors, and by the time of World War II, traditional practices and observances had eroded. Conservative and Reform congregations took the place of most Orthodox shuls, and the Americanization of East European Jewish culture was more complete in small towns than in cities.
Although some of the small towns rose into medium or even large-sized cities after 1945, most either declined, stagnated, or came under the shadow of larger metropolises. They became "places of memory." Where and when economic opportunity lessened, Jews moved out. Yet university towns and recreation/retirement havens witnessed the revitalization of Jewish communities during the last decades of the 20th century, and into the present. The processes of community life, death, and mobility continue unabated as Jews adapt and fill ever-changing niches.
Weissbach presents statistics for 490 small towns, although he focuses on 12. The statistics--even his multiple examples intended to humanize the story are data-heavy--and discussions of prior demographic studies and the use of sources are important for researchers, especially for comparative purposes. But they make for arduous reading, particularly in the early chapters. Weissbach uses primary sources quite creatively. Congregational dues and the makeup of local Industrial Removal Organization committees show that Jews in small towns tended to be neither rich nor poor but thoroughly middle class. Jewish Publication Society membership lists illustrate ties with larger Jewish communities and a cosmopolitan outlook. Student rabbis, along with circuit-riding rabbis and non ordained "ministers," conducted services in the absence of sustained rabbinical leadership, and their reports bring these "triple-digit communities" to life.
Much of American Jewish history has been written as New York Jewish history writ large. But because of the large size and concentration of the New York Jewish population, its story is really unique and distinctive. Professor Weissbach reminds us that the story of American Jewry is truly national in scope.
Providing strong arguments against distinctions based on region, Jewish Life in Small-Town America is a masterful, nuanced work that offers a standard for future histories of individual communities, and fascinating insights into the variety of both American Jewish experiences and small-town American cultures. Regardless of distinctions based on adaptation to local environments, it emphasizes the strength of old-world religion and culture in assisting immigrant Jews to find a home in America, even while maintaining group identity and culture.