In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

139 13 A Judaism for theAmerican Century The 1890s and the first decade of the 1900s saw shifting relations between the yahudim and the Russian diaspora. The established Jewish elite, the children of the Germans who came to the United States before the Civil War, may have felt some embarrassment at their less-­than-­cultured brethren from the East but did not abandon them. Nevertheless, clear class and ethnic divisions existed between the wealthier Jews of the Reform synagogues in New York, Philadelphia, and other cities and the Orthodox newcomers. In New York, German and Russian Jews occupied two separate geographical spaces, Uptown and the Lower East Side. The same was true in other cities. Even Denver’s small communities of Russians and Germans resided on different sides of town. All across the country,American Jewish leaders by the 1890s had established charitable and educational institutions, such as the Jewish Alliance, to aid immigrants in their transition to life in the United States.1 “It is a work of incalculable difficulty,” admitted New Orleans Reform Rabbi Maximilian Heller, but he was hopeful that“under the process of Americanization and with closer mutual acquaintance, [both sides] are drawing ever nearer to appreciation of and co-­ operation with each other.”2 After William S. Friedman, a prominent Denver Reform rabbi, visited New York’s Lower East Side, he returned to say that support for the Russian immigrants was necessary on moral grounds given the decade of mass persecution. In fact, this acculturated German Jewish migrant to the American frontier said that the Russian Jews“had the benefit of kindling with renewed fire the love for Judaism.”3 The Russians and Poles had to be integrated into American Jewry without tarnishing the acculturated German establishment’s good reputation. In St. Louis, Isidor Bush was one of the organizers of that city’s Jewish Alliance, 140 Politics, Faith, and the Making of American Judaism which was tasked with educating the Russians in the English language as well as in the laws of the land and respect for democracy.4 In New York, immigrants were invited to private homes, where they could“mingle as equals with a number of cultivated and earnest young men and women.”5 The Jewish Messenger expressed the paternalism of the uptown Jews when it argued,“The new immigrants must be Americanized in spite of themselves, in the mode prescribed by their friends and benefactors.” The Messenger recommended that Reform congregations establish branches in Russian neighborhoods, where rabbis would offer“sermons . . . of such a simple nature that [they] will attract, and of such a Jewish character,that [they] will not offend the class intended to be benefitted.”6 The Jewish Messenger also encouraged the children to learn mechanical trades and other professions.With about 60 percent of the New York Jewish labor force employed in the garment industry by the late 1890s, the needle trades were becoming a stereotypically Russian Jewish occupation in the same way that peddling typified the German Jews who arrived in the 1840s.7 In an 1884 attempt to deflect immigrants away from sweatshops, the United Hebrew Charities founded the Hebrew Technical Institute to train young men in manufacturing .8 Nevertheless, Jews continued to fill the need for tailors and seamstresses on the Lower East Side. The market for ready-­ made clothing was expanding rapidly as the nation pushed West and as merchant princes established department stores in cities and smaller towns across the country.Jewish predominance in the garment district cut both ways. While many gentiles clung to the unflattering image of the clothes dealer, the yahudim became more accepting of the Russian immigrants by the 1890s because the newer arrivals came with more skills. As the United Hebrew Charities observed in 1893, the Russians coming over were“better material” than those who arrived a decade or two earlier.9 The Battle over Immigration By the early 1890s, the number of people entering the United States—­ not only Jews but Italians on the East Coast and Chinese on the West—­ led to demands to put the brakes on immigration. Anti-­ immigrant feelings in general were fed by fears of radicalism and to a lesser degree by Madison Grant and other race theorists whose ideas were gaining popularity. Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race advocated eugenics and racial segregation, and he pushed for legislation to tighten immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. Grant blamed immigrants for importing socialist ideas and defined Jews as a lower...

Share