Words of the Uprooted: Jewish Immigrants in Early Twentieth Century America (review)

Robert A. Rockaway begins his new book with a workmanlike 35 page introduction setting the historical context of Jewish immigration and recounting the origins of the Industrial Removal Office (IRO), its efforts to relocate New York's unemployed Jewish immigrants to the American interior, and the many problems it encountered. Founded in 1901 by German-American Jews, the IRO was eager to facilitate immigrant assimilation and to reduce the onerous demands that dependent newcomers were placing on New York's Jewish charities.

Convinced that poor immigrants on the Lower East Side were sequestered from the most wholesome aspects of American life, the IRO aimed to encourage and subsidize Jewish out-migration from New York. IRO leaders, such as Cyrus Sulzberger and David Bressler, regarded immigrant distribution and gainful employment as vital steps toward successful adjustment to the new country. Through relocation, immigrants could escape the many social problems of the Lower East Side, while self-support would save them from the moral degradation of dependency. The formerly jobless and desperate would also experience salutary American influences so lacking in the insular New York ghetto. Fearing that growing nativism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and anti- Semitism would engulf the newcomers as well as themselves, German American Jews also looked to dispersion and assimilation as defensive measures. They believed that a successful IRO program would help to defuse these threats.

IRO traveling agents periodically crossed the country to organize local committees of cooperation within various Jewish communities. Many hundreds were formed. Each committee would assist the new resettlers, particularly in securing employment. Much IRO correspondence details troubled relationships with local committees stemming from uncooperative or demanding immigrants, newcomers entering local charity rolls, or IRO pressures to accept increasing numbers of resettlers.

Most of the book consists of a limited selection of letters to the IRO, which Rockaway divides into two parts. Part One, "The IRO as an Institution," contains letters from three sources: traveling agents, representatives of communities, and the local agents who supervised the resettlement process in their towns or cities. Part Two, "The Immigrants,"constitutes half the book and includes unsolicited letters from resettled immigrants and the IRO response. These represent the Words of the Uprooted of Rockaway's title. Immigrant letters comprise a substantial portion of the IRO archival record and provide an invaluable commentary on Jewish immigrant experience in early twentieth century America. Their full value, however, depends on a larger community and organizational context than the book provides in its introduction and brief editorial notes.

While some letters were written in Russian, German, Romanian, Hungarian, or English, Rockaway concentrates on the Yiddish letters "because these formed the vast majority of immigrant correspondence and I could translate them" (p. 35). The extent of the author's translations remains unclear, however. Once received by the IRO, the letters were promptly translated into English, and many such pairings of originals and translations survive in the archive. When he states that particular letters were originally composed in Yiddish, Rockaway does not consistently indicate whether he has prepared new translations, reproduced the original IRO office translations, or edited those translations. From copies of IRO letters that this reviewer has at hand, it appears that many of the reproduced letters fall into the latter two categories. In historiographic terms, one can argue for the greater value of the original IRO translations, because they elicited the IRO responses and influenced policy and attitudes toward the immigrants.

Rockaway sought letters that reflected several themes: tensions between East European and German Jews; descriptions of the immigrant's new living and work environment; contrasts between New York and the new locale; the writer's attitude to the local community and its attitude toward him or her. This is a very considerable burden for less than fifty letters to bear and, consequently, the reader gets only a very synoptic view of the three-sided relationship between the IRO, its immigrant clients, and the receiving community. Moreover, Rockaway rather...