Frankfurt on the Hudson: The German Jewish Community of Washington Heights, 1933-82, Its Structure and Culture

Introduction

Introduction For many years, I have felt a strong relationship between my personal connection with the German-Jewish community of Washington Heights and my interest in the social and cultural history of German Jewry. Certainly by the time I was in college, and perhaps earlier, I noticed the sharp discrepancy between the description of German Jewry found in virtually all books on Jewish history and my perceptions of the Washington Heights community in which I grew up. The almost unvarying picture of modern German Jewry given in history books, and indeed found in the mentality of many American Jews, is that of a highly assimilated community much more closely tied to German culture than toJewish tradition, wealthy and elite, and looking with condescension on Jews of other backgrounds. The German Jews of Washington Heights among whom I grew up seemed very different. To them there was no contradiction between German language and cultural habits and a deep tie to Jewishness. Traditional Jewish religious practice was quite common and obvious among them. In fact, the German Jews seemed more ttaditional and indeed more Jewish than the neighborhood "American Jews" whose parents had come to America at the turn of the century. In Washington Heights, most German synagogues were Orthodox, not Reform as the history books would lead one to expect . Though they had certain feelings of snobbishness about Jews 18 Introduction of eastern European background, the German Jews I knew could hardly have been considered wealthy members of the elite. Before fleeing Hitler in the 1930s most had come from modest backgrounds , grown up in small towns in closely knit Jewish communities , been small businessmen or white- and blue-collar workers, and could by no stretch of the imagination be called assimilated. The discrepancy between the traditional German Jews I knew personally and the image of assimilated German Jews prompted my initial research. I was interested in two questions: How did the bulk of German Jewry move from the traditional society in which they had lived until the eighteenth century into a modern "assimilated" community, and how did a minority of them remain traditional?FinallyI was interested in the socialdifferences between the twogroups. Since only very few of the literary sources on German Jewry dealt with the traditionalists in the small towns, I became interested in German-Jewish social history. Through the use of quantitative and qualitative studies of materials left behind by the large number of inarticulate Jews outside the intellectual centers, I tried to reconstruct a picture of the process by which a traditional community becomes less traditional. In the course of this study I came to the conclusion that the process of change was both slower and more complex than that suggested in the conventional picture of developments in modern Jewry. In this study of the German Jews of Washington Heights, I investigate the end result of the process of modernization of one group of German Jews. I do this with the full recognition that Washington Heights represents only one extreme of the spectrum of German Jewry. But this traditionalist end of the spectrum has generally not received sufficient emphasis in studies either of German Jewry in its original home or of the German-Jewishrefugees in America. ' A balancedview requires a study not only of the assimilated but also of the traditional elements in the Washington Heights community and elsewhere. The migration from Germany ended the complicated attempt of German Jews to adjust to the demands of German culture while striving to remain Jewish. The new situation was similar in structure to adjustmentto Germany but totally different in detail—requiring adjustment to the pressures of Americanization . What makes Washington Heights Jews so fascinating is the fact that they are the product of a double adjustment, first to Ger19 INTRODUCTION many and then to America. As the immigrants were to find out, traits that helped the adjustment to Germany sometimes hindered adjustment to America. Like other American Jews, the Jews of Washington Heights faced contradictory pressures to become American and to retain their identity. Everyimmigrant group that came to America was faced with a similar structural situation; however, the way that each group actually experienced and reacted to this dilemma differed. No matter which parallel reference group I looked at within American Jewry, I found both similarities of general situation with the refugees in Washington Heights and tremendous differences in the details of how this worked out...