White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics (review)

Joshua M. Zeitz examines the impact of religious and ethnic tenets on the political alliances that were forged and broken in New York City in the middle of the twentieth century. Focusing on Jews and white ethnic Catholics, Zeitz considers how the teachings and ideology absorbed in the churches and synagogues of the five boroughs influenced the evolution of ethnic politics between the New Deal and the social unrest of the 1960s. At the center of his argument is the observation that religiously based attitudes toward authority and dissent were primary in the political sensibility and strategies employed by the white ethnics who moved on from the alliances forged by Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the fractious postwar world of New York City.

To lay the foundation of his argument, Zeitz considers not just the catechism and Torah of both faiths but also a strong array of primary sources including oral histories, significant rabbinical speeches, sermons, and religious publications to demonstrate the inherent radical and conservative tendencies of Jews and Catholics respectively. He begins with the early history of first-generation Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants from the turn of the twentieth century and their experience in finding a voice in the political, social, and labor communities of New York. His points are provocative, and his evidence compelling, but it is sometimes selectively applied to make his points. He seems more comfortable and thorough in his discussion of Jewish religious and political positions. However, his examination of exactly how the religious influence and culture of a group seeps into the other elements of their lives offers great examples for scholars to consider seriously how the messages delivered at the kitchen table or within houses of worship translate to the campus and ballot box. This argument is not new, but his argument is so specific and detailed that it is quite fresh.

One of his more interesting anecdotes demonstrates his detail, but also the need to read his work within a broader context. Mark Rudd was the Columbia University student who led the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) takeover of the Ivy League campus in 1968. Zeitz suggests that Rudd's radicalism was not simply a generational dispute with his parents'way of life, as much of 1960s protest is typically explained. The author argues that Rudd actually embraced the culture of dissent that his middle-class Jewish background encouraged. To prove his point, Zeitz presents the testimony of Rudd's parents and other parents of protesters, most of whom were Jewish, who supported the students and felt the administration was wrong to stifle student protest. In contrast, Zeitz points out that the Columbia students who opposed Rudd and the SDS summarized their differences simply: "We're Staten Island; they're Scarsdale." Zeitz points to the statement as a coded reference to the ethnic and religious divide between the groups: European Catholic versus Jewish, but it also highlights their socioeconomic differences. Staten Island is clearly working class and Scarsdale distinctly middle to upper-middle class and privileged. How much of that entitlement figures into the student protests on campuses like Columbia? The influence of economics is also absent from Zeitz's interpretation of the impact of the Second Vatican Council on Catholics and Catholic youths in particular. He suggests that loosened stricture encouraged challenge and individual thought, but how much did affluence and a degree open the door to a more lax adherence to church law and the pastor's word as well as popular acceptance of Vatican II?

It is difficult to deny the power of religious thought and tradition on immigrant and ethnic groups. But they do not function in isolation. Zeitz's work raises as many questions as it answers. His is a valuable contribution to the study of the ethnic and religious experience in New York. It offers solid evidence for the very...