Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History.

Shevitz, Amy Hill

Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History. By Lee Shai Weissbach. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. x + 436 pp.

Many scholars in American Jewish history have anticipated this book eagerly, and it deserves applause from all. Recently, scholars have given increased recognition to the non-New-York Jewish experience, but the study of non-New-York communities has lagged. Lee Shai Weissbach has opened one of the most important of these avenues of study: Jews in the small towns of the United States.

This was a daunting task. As Weissbach points out, though the vast majority of American Jews have lived in cities, the majority of individual communities have been small. The data on these communities are usually fragmentary and/or must be culled from general local histories; institutional records--if they ever existed--are evanescent. This makes Weissbach's achievements in research and analysis particularly impressive.

His sample consists of 490 places throughout the United States that in 1927 had, according to the American Jewish Year Book, more than 100, but fewer than 1000, Jews. (In 1878, about 29 percent of American Jews lived in such places; in 1927, about 8 percent.) Though admitting this sample is "to some extent arbitrary" (31), Weissbach gives ample justification. He concentrates on what he calls the "classic era" of the American small town, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American small towns' period of "greatest salience" (7). This overlaps the massive immigration of East European Jews, though Weissbach covers the Central European migration in one chapter, to lay the groundwork. By emphasizing patterns--of settlement, institution-building, family life--he identifies three areas of fundamental difference between the small-town Jewish experience and the urban: occupation, community-building, and Jewish self-definition.

First, small-town Jews were distinguished by the way they earned their livings: virtually all were merchants. Central European Jews were an important component of small towns' commercial growth in the mid-nineteenth century. When East European Jews became a significant factor starting in the 1890s, their motivation, too, was business opportunity. Given the vagaries of the entrepreneurial life, small Jewish communities were "in a perpetual state of flux" (71). Although some families might remain in a town for generations, the largest proportion of Jews did not stay even their entire lives. The more successful were likelier to stay, meaning that nearly all small-town Jews were middle-class.

Second, in building Jewish community, small-towners faced unique challenges; intra-communal cooperation was much more in evidence than in the Jewish communities of the cities. Jewish institutions were usually organized as soon as more than a handful of Jews was available. Almost all of the subject towns had congregations--an impressive 89 percent in 1927. Some even had two, generally Reform and Orthodox. The synagogue building was the central address for the Jewish community: in fact, Weissbach points out, many "became, perhaps inadvertently, the very kinds of multi-faceted institutions that were being actively promoted in big cities ... as 'synagogue centers'" (188). However, less than one-quarter of the communities had full-time rabbis (using 1919 as a sample year). They were forced to find creative alternatives for leadership: itinerant "reverends," rabbis borrowed from neighboring cities, rabbinical students, and knowledgeable local laity.

The small-town context also shaped Jewish identity in several ways. Especially noticeable is the much swifter and more complete transformation of traditional East European immigrants. By the 1930s, these immigrants were virtually indistinguishable from the descendants of the Central European migration. Even if in separate congregations, both groups were involved in civic and political activities, even in interfaith events. (By the 1950s, Orthodoxy had disappeared from small towns, usually because the congregations had moved into the Conservative movement.)

Also, Jewish separateness was shaped by the reality that in the "sometimes intrusive atmosphere of small town America" (242), each individual Jew was more exposed and likely to be viewed as representative of all Jews. Small-town Jews felt a greater personal need for Jewish communal life than did urbanites, and this reinforced the family feeling of their communities.

In the course of his narrative, Weissbach tackles two cliches about small towns: they were cesspools of antisemitism, and all the Jews in such places intermarried and assimilated. He believes that antisemitism was less overt in small towns, because it would be so personal. Intermarriage-though unquantifiable--was probably somewhat more frequent than in the cities. However, Jews created regional networks of association that provided introductions to potential spouses. Where there was a will, there was a way.

From a scholarly perspective, Weissbach's book is unassailable. He worked hard for his data, and he uses it carefully. Interspersed with paragraphs laden with the numbers of social history are references to specific local cases and occasional quotes that flesh out the numbers. He includes a substantive methodological appendix, bibliographic essay, and tables of population data.

(An aside: perhaps we ought to give a second thought to saying that Jews, in changing their behaviors in America, "mimicked" their Gentile neighbors. This word has a negative connotation, of servility, fakery, even ridiculousness. Jews adopted certain Gentile models in America--as they have done all over the world.)

One hopes this valuable study will spur interest in small communities. There is more to be said about the pre-mass migration period. Small-town life in America was different then, and the nature of that context for acculturation might help clarify the similarities and differences between Central and East European Jews, thus contributing to further discussion on what has been called "the pivotal century." Likewise, studying the period after World War II, as some small communities die and others are folded into the metropolis, will suggest how communities respond to change.

Though this is a book about place, Weissbach downplays place as region in favor of place as type of community. There may be more to say about region, however; in this respect, it would be useful to look at the circumstances in which some communities deviated from the overall pattern. Examining the response to local conditions would highlight individual and communal Jewish goals and desires and the various strategies used toward these ends.

American Jewish historians should be grateful to Weissbach for expanding the horizons of the field. American historians generally should also pay attention to what the Jewish experience can teach about the small town as an American phenomenon.

Amy Hill Shevitz

California State University, Northridge