Jewries at the Frontier, Accommodation, Identity and Conflict (review)

This large collection of essays from a conference held in South Africa in 1996 intends to free Jewish identities from ideological imperatives by substituting for a "core-periphery" model the paradigm of a "post-modern" frontier. Sander Gilman, in a keynote address, argues that the "core-periphery" model has had many versions, sometimes presenting halakah as the sacred law, more recently the return to Israel as the sacred trek, or the Holocaust as the teleological event. Jews failing to accept the sacred as authentic were deemed to be in a morally inferior state, galut. Gilman suggests, instead, that individual identities should be understood as "contested" versions of Jewishness in constantly changing settings. By drawing on sources as disparate as Arnoldo Momigliano's work on Josephus and recent work in Western U.S. History, he notes that Jews have thrived where cultures collide and identities can be reforged. Now even many Israelis see their society as "post-Zionist," reject an identity as "Jews," and believe that the Jewish state must abandon its self-promotional "core" propaganda and see itself as a Middle Eastern "frontier."

Students of American Jewish history will find only two essays examining our geographic hinterlands. Bernard Reisman depicts Alaska's 3,000 Jews as typically American: well-educated, often intermarried, mobile professionals seeking respite from urban turmoil. Typically, they define their Jewishness as a desire for community. Seth Wolitz, using a rabbi's autobiography, a recent novel, several plays and satiric folk songs, explains how Jews entered the Texas frontier as aliens and over two generations came to assert their right to redefine the Texan. While Wolitiz's literary mining may resonate with aficionados of popular culture, historians accustomed to verifying identity shifts by examining institutional records, tracing mobility patterns or political affiliations will either be befuddled or amused by his conclusions. They will find no references to the Galveston of Rabbi Henry Cohen.

Most of the essays illustrate how Jews have followed the European colonial diaspora. The most penetrating also recognize how Jews have used ideologies like Zionism based on a "core" interpretation to shield themselves from political responsibilities. Albert Lichtblau and Michael Johns' comparative analysis of European cultural frontiers in the Hapsburg provinces of Galicia and Bukovina places Jewish choices within the context of ethnic struggles. In predominantly Polish Galicia, most Jews were artisans submerged in a Yiddish culture. But after 1860 when Poles dominated local politics, the Jewish elite either acculturated to the Polish language or emigrated to Vienna. In more remote Bukovina, divided between Ukrainians and Romanians, the Jewish urban elite identified with and were a majority of the "German" ruling class.

Milton Shain's comparative analysis of anti-Semitism in the United States, Quebec and South Africa, and Zhu Xun's assessment of "the Jew" in Chinese literary culture both create frontiers where Jews are demonized rather than encountered. Xun's Jews are a mythos acquired through the literature on imperialism and suit the various needs of Chinese politicos. Shain accepts Todd Endelman's view that anti-Semitic policies have little to do with Jewish presence or behavior. Endelman, however, wrote primarily about a Britain that had no Jews, not about locales where Jews helped create colonial projects or anchored a mercantile class. By positing an essential "anti-Semitism," Shain feels he need not explain its relative importance in the world views and goals of the Quebecois, American Populists or Afrikaans. He argues insightfully that during the Depression America's anti-Semitic doctrinaires lacked political clout because they did not head ethno-nationalist movements. But again he ignores the countervailing behavior of Jews, their "ethnic" activism in New York politics and their influence within the New Deal.

Paul Batrop and Jon Stratton each examines Australian Jewry within the evolving structure of colonial society and ignores authenticity struggles among Jews. Batrop notes that Jews were among the first British convicts and have always been about 0.5 percent of the population. He adds...