Gentile New York: Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants by Gil Ribak (review)

In Gentile New York, Gil Ribak takes on an uncomfortable subject —uncomfortable because it turns out that Jews for the most part did not think highly of the gentiles around them. And when they did have a high opinion of certain groups of non-Jews, it was often for reasons that would strike many of us as ignoble. In examining the gentile image in the Jewish mind, Ribak seeks to debunk the myth that he sees as pervasive among American Jews that Judaism is somehow inevitably liberal. He further argues that the ways in which American Jews viewed local gentiles was informed by their experiences with different groups of non-Jews in Europe. In addition, images of specific groups changed over time. The way in which Jewish perceptions of Yankees, in particular, changed for the worse in the first decades of the twentieth century shows that there was no linear and easy path to integration into American society. Ribak thus sees his book as a brief against the American exceptionalism prevalent in American Jewish historiography and which he views as a form of presentism. Gentile New York is well-written, strongly argued, and based on extremely thorough research in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Although it will not convince everyone, it makes an important contribution by complicating the story of American Jewish ethnic and racial liberalism, demonstrating the importance of the European background to American Jewish culture, and foregrounding Jews' relations with the others they lived with.

Ribak uses a transnational lens. He begins his analysis in Eastern Europe, where Jews (influenced by negative portrayals of non-Jews in the Talmud and other sacred texts) saw the peasants around them as brutal, dimwitted, and drunken embodiments of violence and physicality. But there were other non-Jews, particularly Russian and German elites, whom Jews admired for their culture and refinement. These attitudes carried over to America, where Jews looked favorably upon upper-class "Yankees" seen as modern, progressive, well-mannered, and devoid of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, Irish, German and Polish immigrants, and, to some extent, African Americans, took over the demeaning place occupied by Polish and Ukrainian peasants in the old home. Ribak rightly, but sometimes frustratingly, complicates his analysis by pointing out the ubiquitous exceptions. Some Jews, disillusioned by the Russian upper class, turned to the peasantry instead, extolling the peasants' rough physicality as a model for the reform of Jewish life.

The dynamic of disillusionment with the elite and reassessment of ethnic alignments carried over to the United States as well. There is much evidence in Gentile New York that Jews were as quick as anyone else to employ negative stereotypes of other ethnic minorities, especially Irish, Germans, Italians, blacks, and Asians. Even the Jewish labor movement adopted an attitude of "chosenness," seeing Jews as inherently more progressive and class conscious than members of other groups. But after 1900, as the restrictionist movement gathered steam with the support of many in the Anglo-American elite, Jews began to reassess their views. More and more, according to Ribak, they found common ground with other immigrants and minorities. And they were more and more critical of "mainstream" Anglo-Americans. It is from this period, and partly from a perception of self-interest, that American Jewish liberalism on matters of race and ethnicity stems.

Ribak makes a strong case that American Jews have not always been liberal in their attitudes toward members of other ethnic groups. But does he overstate his case when he downplays "historical experience" together with "religious values"? The logic of his argument and evidence does point to a liberalization of attitudes-a growing identification with the causes (if not always the individual persons) of other minorities. This growing liberalism certainly came from historical experience, but, as Ribak shows, it was not a primordial characteristic. Rather it developed over time in response to specific circumstances in America itself and was never free...