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1 American Jewish Girls and the Politics of Identity, 1860–1920 melissa r. klapper On a typical day in New Orleans during the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Clara Solomon rose early to go to the Louisiana Normal School. She dawdled over breakfast and left the house reluctantly, complaining of poor health. She would have much preferred to stay home with her mother. After a school day spent learning lessons in deportment as well as geography, arithmetic, elocution, and literature, Clara walked slowly home with friends, their usual after-school gatherings curtailed by the exigencies of war. When she got home, she discussed her day with her mother, sewed, played the piano, and waited to see if her father would be able to return from his business travels that evening. She accompanied her mother to pay a call on their Jewish neighbors and went home in time for a meal meager by prewar standards. After supper she settled down to read and do some schoolwork, all the while waiting impatiently for her sister to come upstairs to their room and companionably “book it” with her in their diaries. As she wrote her diary entry for the day, she privately cursed the war and all despicable Yankees. She and her sister washed up, returned to their diaries for a few more lines scribbled before bed, blew out the candles, and went to sleep.1 Half a continent and half a century away, eighteen-year-old Emily Frankenstein hopped out of bed early to get started on her day in Chicago during World War I. She joined her father for breakfast and helped pack him up for the day at his medical office. After getting dressed and briefly practicing her piano exercises, she walked to school. Later she took the tram downtown with several of her Jewish neighborhood friends who did not attend the same exclusive private institution she did. Then she made an excuse to her friends and left to meet her beau, Jerry, home on leave from his post as a quartermaster in the U.S. Army. When they returned to Emily’s house, they stayed outside and spooned on the porch swing until her father came out and suggested that it was time for Jerry to leave. With his departure went all thoughts of the war. Emily had not been home all day and stayed up for a while to read, do homework, and update her diary. Moving quietly around the room she shared with her sister, she prepared for bed in silence and fell asleep almost immediately.2 33 The girlhood experiences of Clara and Emily appear to differ in many respects. The Civil War affected Clara much more directly than World War I did Emily, especially in terms of the dislocations and straitened financial circumstances of the Solomon family. Clara spent much of her day at home with her family, while Emily spent most of her time with friends outside her house. Girls in New Orleans during the early 1860s spent a minimum of time walking around by themselves because of both social convention and physical danger in the tightly guarded city. Girls in Chicago during the late 1910s enjoyed more freedom to travel about the city. The schooling Clara received at the Louisiana Normal School in 1861 was considerably less rigorous than the education offered to Emily at her private girls’ school in 1918. Clara sewed daily as part of the household economy, whereas if Emily found time to sew at all, she was most likely to knit something as a present for her father or her suitor. Despite the significant gaps between their experiences, Clara and Emily also shared a great deal. Both were born in the United States. Both kept diaries as a matter of course. Both played the piano and read for pleasure on a daily basis. Both shared bedrooms with their sisters. Although they spent their time with friends differently, both held their friends in great esteem and enjoyed the activities that took place in peer environments. They both had close relationships with their families. On the surface, little of Clara’s or Emily’s daily routine seemed much affected by the fact that they were Jewish. Neither prayed daily, observed the dietary laws of kashruth, or attended Jewish schools.3 Both noted Christmas in their diaries. Yet in countless small but important ways, the fact of their Jewishness affected the very shape of their lives. Clara never attended...

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