A Community in Spite of Itself: Soviet Jewish Emigres in New York (review)

92 SHOFAR Winter 1995 Vol. 13, No.2 BOOK REVIEWS A Community in Spite of Itself: Soviet Jewish Emigres in New York, by Fran Markowitz. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1993. 317 pp. $49.00 (c); $19.95 (P). "It is important to understand," says Lera, one of author Fran Markowitz's Soviet Jewish emigre informants, "that we did not come to America just to live-we were already living in Russia-but to live better." This sentence contains not only something of the intent, hopes, and expectations of the more than 50,000 Soviet Jews who made New York their home between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s, but also something of the flavor of the reception they were given by Americans, and specifically American Jews, who brought their own expectations, assumptions , and hopes to the encounter. Whatever "living better" may have included, it most certainly did not include forming a separate and distinct community, be it Russian, JeWish, Soviet, or other. Indeed, SovietJews, sophisticated, educated urbanites for the most part, imagined they would readily "fit in" in America, not stand out. Things did not turn out exactly as planned. In the (former) Soviet Union, Soviet Jews did not constitute a community though they did constitute a juridico-historical category. It was only once they had arrived in America that Soviet Jews came to be aware of their distinctiveness as a group, and, in Markowitz's view at least, to form a community. Markowitz's contention that Soviet Jews have formed a community, however unwittingly (the "in spite of itselr' of her title), contradicts the view of many who have had dealings with Soviet Jewish immigrants. This view holds that while Soviet Jews have most definitely made new lives for themselves in America, they have not created a community. Markowitz does not agree. She knows this group, she understands it, she believes Soviet Jewish immigrants in America are a community, and she offers her book as proof. The methods by which she endeavors to establish this proof are several. In the first place, she suggests alternative definitions of community . Although, for example, the formal organizations we traditionally look for in an ethnic community are missing in the Soviet Jewish case, Markowitz contends that the knowledge, sentiments, and patterns 'of Book Reviews 93 sociability manifested by Soviet Jews have produced a "fabric of mutual understanding-a subculture or community" that unites them and makes them a community. She uses her chapters to explore different aspects or notions of community-Community as History and Destiny, Community as Social Relations, etc. She observes the responses of Soviet Jewish immigrants to what has confronted them in America-the impact of longer working days on friendship patterns, for example, or the unanticipated challenge to their Jewishness and subsequent exclusion from AmericanJewish social circlesand then evaluates these experiences in terms of the developmen~ of group identity and the forging of community. She asks interesting questions-why, for instance, does the refined and respectful term of address commonly used by Russian speakers (first name plus patronymic) fall away in America when other values and social traits stubbornly persist? She offers insights based on her observations and interviews. In the matter of fashion, for instance, she notes that Russians do not "dress" for Americans, but for one another; expensive clothes and jewelry tell your fellow immigrants that you have succeeded in America. Markowitz then sets her findings into a theoretical framework or measures them against current anthropolOgical, sociological, psychological theories of group formation, group maintenance, group beh~vior, etc. What she wants to know is, what are the prime valuesibehaviorsof this group, are they unique, how and why, and is this enough to make them a community? For the reader, and especially the Jewish reader, the going is both easy and interesting since Markowitz's research runs the gamut from smiling behavior to international relations. Having Russian voices speak to one from the page makes the reading experience more immediate than had the information been filtered through the writer. It allows us to hear opinions, soundings-off (SovietJews, for example, have very definite views about permissiveness in America from schooling to crime) directly from the interviewees, and...