“And Prairie Dogs Weren’t Kosher”: Jewish Women in the Upper Midwest Since 1855 by Linda Mack Schloff (review)

194 Canadian Review of American Studies Revue canadienned'etudesamericames and suggests that Knobel's decision to exclude anti-Asian sentiment from his study was unwarranted. Knobel's thesis concerning why and when nativism flourished also seems too closely tied to the OUA. He states that 11 nativism flourished whenever events could be interpreted as evidence of a loss of independence by republican citizens, and it assumed the character of a movement whenever it could take advantage of fraternal models of organization" (57). Knobel is right to highlight the fraternal aspect of so many nativist organizations, but the role of republican ideology in these groups appears to fade by the late nineteenth century. It is not central to the Populist critique of immigrants or the labour movement's efforts to restrict immigration. Knobel also ignores the role of religion in the nativist movement even though it is impossible to understand antebellum nativism without addressing the role of Protestant religious groups in fomenting it. Religious publications (especially those of the Methodists) spread much the same message as the OUA but to many more readers. Knobel's focus on the OUA also leads him to assert that the nativist movement opposed restrictions on the sale of liquor, because the OUA's handful of leaders opposed liquor restriction. Yet an overwhelming majority of adherents to the nativist movement saw the closing of immigrant saloons as a means to preserve the very republican values Knobel places at the heart of the nativist agenda. Thus, while Knobel's analysis of the OUA and Civil War-era fraternalism is enlightening and thought provoking, his work will ultimately prove unsatisfying to experts and misleading to general readers seeking a broad introduction to the phenomenon of American nativism. Tyler Anbinder The George Washington University Linda Mack Schloff. "And Prairie Dogs Weren't Kosher": Jewish Women in the UpperMidwest Since 1855. St. Paul, MN: Historical Society Press, 1996. Pp. x + 243 and photographs. Each ethnicity's migration to the United States, no matter its place of origin, resembles many others. There is always the story of being pushed out of the country of origin, and the story of being pulled toward the land of promise. Book Reviews 195 There is the story of adaptation and assimilation, or of retaining difference and marginality. There is the story of raising children in the new culture, among Americans or among other ethnic groups. These are stories still in the telling, as migration continues; since the 1840s, the periods in which few immigrants arrived are the aberrations. The patterns of immigration stories recur, the stories of people at the periphery of American culture, sooner or later making their way into the body of the culture, sometimes eagerly, sometimes in spite of themselves. Immigrants or America never remained unaltered. Still, each immigrant population's stories need to be told again and again to confirm their singularities and differences. If nothing else, And Prairie Dogs Weren't Kosher confirms that there are probably as many immigrant stories as there are immigrants, if we can only find them to tell. These particular stories, and the wonderful photographs that accompany them, remind one of patterns and of difference, among ethnicities, certainly, but also between rural and urban Jewish immigrants, among social classes, among intensities of orthodoxy, between German and east European Jews, and certainly between the experiences of women and men. Originally an exhibition, first-person accounts bring immediacy and vibrancy to this wonderful book, enriching compelling historical descriptions of Jews in Minnesota and North and South Dakota, and the Upper Midwest. The photographs enhance the text; perhaps I should say that the text enhances the images. A group of girls on a barren North Dakota street in 1912, kneeling and smiling in the dust; a Russian Jewish woman saying goodbye to her daughter's grave in 1970; a delicatessen on a treed Minneapolis street in 1920; an exquisite Torah mantle embroidered in 1930 by a woman from Grand Forks, North Dakota; collection boxes; clubwomen ; Passover tables; a woman rabbi: the book documents the rich Jewish life that Jews brought to the Midwest. Many of them remained faithful to Jewish rituals and artifacts and relationships; these are illustrated...