Looking Back: American Jews’ Relationships to Their Places of Origin

When people migrate from their land of birth to a new and different land, something of the original ambiance almost necessarily clings to the self. Memories of the old linger in the new. They may be painful or comforting, nightmares of persecution or warm recollections of what seemed a better place and time. As migrants grow into new identities they shed their old ones only gradually, sometimes with purposeful intent and sometimes with reluctance. For a long time, perhaps for a generation or more, their identities remain composite, the weight of the new increasing gradually while the old diminishes. The place of origin long remains the fatherland or the motherland, and it may for some time remain the homeland, among the German immigrants the Heimat. Multiple links connect the emigrant to the place of birth: language, family ties, and news of political events flowing across the border or ocean. They provide the continuities that make the uprooting feel less traumatic. Gendered differences appear between men and women, older and younger travelers, each relating differently to the migration experience as the pain of casting up roots is weighed against the vistas that may open up in a new historical setting.

Much has been written about the Jewish immigrant experience in America: the voyage across the Atlantic, the acclimatization, the success or failure. But in general, interest has focused forward on what the immigrants were or were not able to achieve. Less attention has been directed backward to the immigrants’ continuing relationship to the places from which they came. Did they see themselves as cutting loose from an intolerable situation, as making a wholly voluntary decision for their personal benefit, or did they see themselves as living in an American exile? Did they regard their migration as permanent or did they hope one day to return, when they had saved up enough money or when the political situation in their place of birth had radically changed?

My goal in this article is to explore these questions for each of the major waves of Jewish migrants to America and to set them into a comparative perspective, realizing that no group is homogeneous in its relationship to its past. Necessarily, some individuals will look back with nostalgia and even regret, while others will seek to expunge unwanted reminders of the past. I intend to look successively at the Sephardim of the Colonial period, the German Jews of the nineteenth century, the Eastern European Jews of the end of that century, the German Jews seeking refuge from Nazism, the Soviet Jews of the 1970s and 1980s, and finally, the Israelis. Clearly, in the course of a single essay it is not possible to delve into detail with regard to any one of these groups, but it should be possible, by noting major characteristics, similarities, and differences, to shed some light on the variety contained within the Jewish transnational experience.¹

Sephardim of the colonial period

The Sephardic Jews, who formed a community in America as early as the seventeenth century, came to their new home against a background of Catholic Church persecution. The Western Hemisphere was for them both a refuge and a domain of economic opportunity. Even as they looked back on persecution, however, they could also relate positively to countries like Holland, and slightly later to England, where they enjoyed rights not granted them elsewhere in Europe and from which most of them, directly or indirectly, had come. In particular, it was England, both before and after the American Revolution, that served them not only as a business connection but also as a sort of homeland. Moses Franks, though born in New York, was at one time sent for commercial purposes to London, which the source refers to as “home.”² Both London and Amsterdam were seen as possessing an attraction that was difficult to forget if one chose to migrate to the less impressive American cities. One source calls Amsterdam “great” and London “glorious.”³ Many of the Sephardim were merchants whose business brought them not only from Europe to America but back to it...