New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950-1970, and: Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America (review)

T H E JE W I S H Q UA R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Winter 2004) 217–220 ELI LEDERHENDLER. New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950– 1970. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2001. Pp. xix Ⳮ 275. MICHAEL E. STAUB. Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Pp. 386. Until only a few years ago, the post–World War II era remained one the most unexamined epochs in American Jewish life. But recent scholarship , such as these books by Eli Lederhendler and Michael Staub, has begun to add new dimensions to the portrait of Jewish culture in postwar America. These books share a desire to interpret the shifting concerns of postwar Jews. Ultimately, however, these authors offer very different readings of the postwar era, with Lederhendler presenting a narrative about the decline of Jewish urban culture and Staub suggesting the multiple , often contradictory, expressions that characterized Jewish political life in the decades after the war. Lederhendler’s treatment of New York in the postwar years is provocative and intriguing as well as occasionally problematic. As the title of his book suggests, he argues that the postwar years witnessed the disintegration of the vibrant ethnic culture that characterized New York’s Jewish neighborhoods in the 1920s and 1930s and nurtured Jewish attachment to the city. Lederhendler’s purpose is not merely to chronicle the dramatic decline of the city’s Jewish population sparked by the suburbanization of New York Jews; he makes a broader claim. His goal is to demonstrate that the second generation’s ‘‘unselfconscious particularism wedded to a metropolitan outlook’’ dissolved in the postwar years into a ‘‘protective, self-conscious politics of confrontation’’ (p. 182). In describing this inward retreat of New York Jews he also calls into question the potency of the second-generation Jewish identity that had once fostered a brand of ethnicity that encouraged civic-mindedness and a desire to be a part of the urban collective. The book purports to be a cultural history of the period, though it is often difficult to determine precisely how Lederhendler defines this approach. He draws from the writings of Jewish authors, poets, theologians and intellectuals as well as from social-scientific surveys and political debates. The method employed to organize and analyze this vast array of material is sometimes unclear and the frequent section divisions can be disruptive to the flow of the narrative, but the discussion consistently 218 JQR 94:1 (2004) demonstrates the author’s impressive intellectual range and keen observations about the period. Lederhendler offers a decidedly pessimistic reading of postwar New York Jewry. His early chapters chronicle a cultural malaise characterized by lingering concerns about the Holocaust and a growing distrust of society ’s ability to maintain civic ideals and social order. That malaise, according to Lederhendler, also appeared in Jewish cultural expressions, as Jews disenchanted with the city began to produce works that looked nostalgically toward the imagined simplicity of the shtetl. As Judaism became increasingly institutionalized in the postwar years, religious leaders more frequently emphasized the distinct aspects of Jewish culture, retreating from the integrationist approach of previous decades. Jewish politics also reflected an inward turn; Jews had once harbored fierce attachments to the city but were particularly disappointed by the deterioration of relations with African Americans, played out in local political struggles and in the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike. Both external confrontations with other minority groups and internal divisions within the Jewish community left Jews building political and ideological boundaries around their neighborhoods and their identities, advocating their particular group interests as they grew more skeptical about the promise of the city. Michael Staub brings a different focus to postwar Jewish culture, viewing it through the lens of liberalism. Long assumed to be the most distinguishing characteristic of postwar Jews, liberalism has been little examined and poorly understood. Staub’s carefully researched and cogently argued book explores the evolution and complex dimensions of Jewish politics, calling into question many widely-held assumptions about Jewish liberalism. He reminds readers that Jewish political and cultural allegiances...