Abstract

How did East European Jewish immigrants in America remember, depict and recreate the cities of Eastern Europe? Through an examination of selected articles and poems from landsmanshaft (hometown associational) publications, this article examines the metaphors, images and idioms summoned by immigrant writers in the interwar landsmanshaft press to describe their former urban homes. Though many question landsmanshaft publications' aesthetic value, this article argues that they vividly capture the voice of the people, providing a lens through which to glimpse the inner world and popular culture of Jewish immigrants in earlytwentieth century New York. Some writers reinvented their former urban homes by deploying the leitmotif of the shtetl, while others used motherland imagery; all, however, used their recreations of the East European city to ponder the price of migration and to ruminate on the promise of America.

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