Bridges to an American City: A Guide to Chicago's Landsmanshaften, 1970 to 1990 (review)

134 SHOFAR Spring 1995 Vol. 13, No.3 Tulchinsky does not paint a romantic or even a compelling portrait of Canadian Jewish life. No attempt is made to create heroes or icons. His writing is clear and undramatic. The book's strength is that it provides detailed descriptions-business histories, the actions ofcommunityleaders, Jewish involvement in the clothing industry, negotiations in Montreal with the Catholic and Protestant communities over the education of Jewish children, the various machinations needed to establish a Canadian Jewish Congress in 1919, etc.-with considerable skill. Indeed, Tulchinsky makes original contributions as well as providing valuable insights into the overall context in which the major developments took place. For those who are interested in Canadian Jewish history, this book is undoubtedly the place to begin. One regrets that Tukhinsky did not spend more time describing the flavors of daily life, the work of important artists and poets, although he does quote from A. M. Klein and J. 1. Segal, or the changes brought by secularization and a North American commercial culture. This is an ambitious book, and it would perhaps have been too much to expect that the author would reach much beyond the major figures, the important events, and the particular political battleground in which the community struggled in "taking root." There is much to be grateful for in Professor Tulchinsky's work. David Taras Canadian Studies Program University of Calgary Bridges to an American City: A Guide to Chicago's Landsmanshaften, 1970 to 1990, by Sidney Sorkin. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. 480 pp. $68.75. Sustained research, the kind that is required when embarking on a project that deals with uncharted territory, takes persistence and a high level of motivation. Perseverance is the key, and then there needs to be that extra incentive to propel us along our path from one clue to the next. Scholars have only relatively recently begun to concede that a personal link to the research topic, however loose or explicit the connection might be, can be instrumental or at least noteworthy. By noteworthy, some authors mean not only that this relationship of researcher to research is meaningful , but that it is a relationship that should literally be spelled out, accounted for, communicated. In the academic community, experts in a Book Reviews 135 variety of fields will continue to debate the validity of this position. In the meanwhile, right or wrong, there will always be a cadre of less rigorously trained but resourceful investigators unabashedly dedicated to their research projects. These, for lack of a better term, amateur researchers are unfazed by the obstacles they inevitably encounter as they pursue their detective work. This "work" is typically not their primary employment, but they are steadfast and productive. Bridges to an American City is the outcome of this kind of energetic effort by Sidney Sorkin, a teacher in Chicago's public school system, who set out to document his city's landsmanshaft community. Sorkin, let me say from the outset, admirably achieved his goal. Anyone who has tried to decipher the inner world that East European Jewish immigrants built for themselves and by themselves in the urban centers to which they gravitated knows how ambitious an endeavor it is that Sorkin took upon himself. Landsmanshaftn, Jewish ethnic voluntary associations based on members' shared origins in an East European city or town, were formed by newcomers in order to help meet their considerable social, educational, and financial needs. They were a vital and creative grass-roots response on the part of a transplanted population. It is both fascinating and frustrating to try and locate materials to confirm the existence of these groups. Scholars of the communal history of American Jewry have always grasped the significance of these ethnic mutual-aid societies, but it has never been an easy task to locate the requisite primary sources or the informants who would be most useful. Bridges to an American City is a model of the kind of guides we need if we are to fully understand the ways in which immigrants accommodated to American life while retaining their special bonds of memory. The Jews of Chicago generated many landsmanshaftn. Sorkin's chief accomplishment...