Letters to the Editor

To The Editor:

While I welcome critical assessments of my work, I feel compelled to write because I strongly believe that Gertrude Dubrovsky's review of my book, Class, Networks, and Identity: Replanting Jewish Lives from Nazi Germany to Rural New York in the Volume 89 Number 3 September 2001 issue of American Jewish History is not only inaccurate but seriously misleading. Indeed, it is a veiled attack on all sociological work in the name of mere story telling. By stating that the "self-conscious use of the language of sociology gets in the way of the story" and suggesting that "the artificial language of the sociologist" gets in the way of appreciating that "Life is, after all, with people, and not with theories about them," Dubrovsky reveals her contempt for sociological and, more broadly, social scientific studies of the Jewish experience. I am afraid if this review is not seriously answered that it will only increase the chasm between a scientific study of the Jewish experience, and what it means for understanding society in general, and a very parochial view of how Jewish history should be studied.

Aside from her more general attacks on sociological theories and methods, Dubrovsky makes inaccurate and misleading statements about the methodology, arguments, and content of my book that I am compelled to address.

Dubrovsky begins her review with a critique of my methodology, claiming that I base my study largely on interviews and am "naive" to think that people will give unbiased responses. Furthermore,. she writes that interviews should be corroborated with primary documents, implying that my book was based solely on interviews. Dubrovsky quotes out of context and thereby distorts what ethnographers mean when they insert themselves into the world of those they study. It does not mean they are part of the interview, but rather that they try to understand (not interpret, something that Dubrovsky implies I do) the world from the point of view of those who they study. What she fails to convey is that this is an "extended case study" which I discuss in the introduction and use two methods of collecting and analyzing data, one of which is ethnographic in nature (primarily unstructured interviews) and the second of which is the use of primary and secondary sources. Dubrovsky implies that I use no primary documents, which is simply not the case. In fact, I very clearly state on page 4, "I extended the case through the second method of collectitig data, reviewing primary and secondary sources. . . Documents in the American Jewish Archives, particularly the records of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and the Jewish Agricultural Society, provide cross-referencing material to the interviews and extensions . . . " If Dubrovsk:y indeed read the book, she would have seen the primary documents used and the degree of cross referencing.

Dubrovsky takes issue with several arguments I make, but misconstrues as to what I actually argue. She states that my discussion of women's roles is questionable and somehow inaccurate. She belittles my argument that "women 5 reproductive work was essential in creating a community that also served to maintain and convey a Jewish identity" by stating "The only kind of reproductive activity of which I am aware is that of bearing children, a task limited so far to women, and certainly necessary to the fliture of Judaism." Here, Dubrovsky totally misses the point made by numerous feminist scholars of the important role women play in the social reproduction of the family and the class position of the family. It is shocking that she does not understand this ba~sic term and misses, therefore~ the significance of the very flill range of work women performed. Dubrovslry also claims that I am wrong to claim that while men tended to the farm, women tended to the summer guests. Yet, that was indeed the particular division of labor for the group and time I was referring. In fact, I argue that summer guest homes and summer camps, both contributed to the family business, showing that...