Jewish Communities on the Ohio River: A History (review)

“The Shylocks prefer to be on the navigable streams,” complained a nineteenth-century merchant of his Jewish competitors along the Ohio River (51). In this new book on Jewish community history in the Ohio River Valley, Shevitz shows why immigrant Jews came to this region, the challenges they faced in establishing themselves, and the texture of community life in the region’s small towns and larger cities—Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville. Her original research and clear writing contribute to our understanding of migration and mobility, regional history, and small-town Jewish life.

The greater part of this volume (chapters 2–7) analyzes the experience of Jewish newcomers and residents in the nineteenth century, mostly of central European descent. Like Hasia Diner, Shevitz is at pains to emphasize that most German-speaking immigrants to the region were committed to sustaining their Jewish identities and to supporting Jewish communal life, though particular circumstances—including demography, commerce, and proximity to Hebrew Union College—led frequently to adaptations in personal and communal practice.¹ Her three last chapters describe the arrival of eastern European immigrants, their complex interactions with the resident Jewish populations, and the decline of Jewish community, especially in the postwar period. Shevitz’s emphasis on lived experience rather than prescription or nostalgia, plus a multiplicity of detail, gives this study much value.

Jewish Communities is grounded in thorough and sometimes ingenious research in a wide range of primary sources. In addition to providing instances of chain migration, landsleit, and extended kin networks, Shevitz documents the telling effects of emergent bourgeois culture and the cult of respectability on family life and congregational culture, especially in the middle and later nineteenth century. While there is a bit of stretch in her introductory statements, such as “the Ohio River Valley was a unique cultural meeting ground,” or her characterization of the valley as “a cradle of bourgeois America,” the book does fulfill its purpose in showing how small-town Jews adapted differently to American life than their counterparts in the large urban centers (3–4).

Shevitz’s book complements other recent scholarship in a burgeoning literature. Her case studies of particular communities extend Lee Shai Weissbach’s Jewish Life in Small-Town America (2005), confirming much of his macro analysis on the micro level. While giving considerable attention to Jewish commercial life and social integration, Shevitz differs from Ewa Morawska in focusing on an earlier period of history, on the development of Jewish cultural, social, and—especially—religious institutions, and on identity formation in towns that were predominantly Protestant rather than religiously diverse.² Jewish Communities overlaps somewhat with Coalfield Jews (2006), by my colleague Deborah Weiner, since both touch on several of the same communities, but Weiner starts her story several generations later and relies more heavily than Shevitz oral histories.

All told, Shevitz has produced a thoughtful, informative book. It is less consistently lively and engaging, but when she cites a traditionalist crying out against Reform (“Get me away from your new-fangled things—they are all sins!”), we are brought directly into the experience of accommodation with all its attendant challenges, anxieties, and struggles (74). I therefore recommend Jewish Communities on the Ohio River to all those interested in how Jews ‘got comfortable’ in small-town America.