Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History (review)

In Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History Deborah Weiner "aims to unsettle commonly held views of both Appalachia and the American-Jewish experience" (1-2). For students of Appalachia the Jewish story serves as a test case of regional identity, in particular "the myth of Appalachian 'exceptionalism'" (119). For those interested in American-Jewish history, Coalfield Jews both affirms and questions a national narrative of immigrant acculturation. Weiner confronts the challenge of placing her considerable research into larger scholarly contexts while creating a narrative that evokes the local color of a vivid people and region. That she has been able to speak to all these audiences attests to both her scholarly credentials and narrative skills.

The Jewish settlement of Appalachia in the 1880s to 1920s came about as a result of the confluence of local and global historical movements, Weiner notes. East European Jews arrived in America just as the railroads and the coal industry were transforming an isolated, agrarian region into a capitalist economy. From Baltimore, where they found credit and merchandise, Jews followed the railroads into the coalfield boomtowns of Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Immigrant Jews entered a frontier society, fluid in its social structure, that very much needed their mercantile skills and welcomed their civic participation. Their European "cultural heritage as 'middlemen'" made them ideal mediators between town and country, industrialist and consumer (2). However dependent they were on the coal economy, very rarely did Jews become miners or owners. Fully 85 percent were in retail trades as clerks, peddlers, merchants, managers, or saloon keepers (49). When labor strife erupted, Jews maintained a delicate neutrality, sympathizing with the miners, who were their customers, but fearing the disorder that could disrupt their livelihoods. Rising from immigrant poverty, Jews left the roughneck proletarian coaltowns for the middle-class respectability of the county seats. Where they once had their share of gamblers and bootleggers, Jews became stalwarts in the chambers of commerce.

Weiner emphasizes the Jews' cosmopolitanism as a counter to Appalachian stereotypes. In this regard Jews were not alone. By 1908 the foreign-born comprised 28 percent of the coal miners, including East and Central Europeans (23). Hungarian miners bought from Jewish merchants who could literally speak their language. Jews maintained links to distant distribution centers, primarily Baltimore, where they also had family and religious ties. The rail lines that took coal from Appalachia also brought rabbis, kosher food, and Jewish spouses. Peddlers and storekeepers connected Appalachia to the national economy. Jews introduced not merely new styles and fashions, Weiner argues, but new sensibilities. They offered choices beyond the company store.

Local Jewish developments follow the national pattern. Immigrant Orthodoxy yielded to a liberal, acculturated Reform Judaism over generations although, as was typical, religious behavior was inconsistent. One congregant described his synagogue as a "'hodgepodge'" of worship styles (60). Dietary laws and Sabbath observance eroded, but Jews maintained community. First gathering to form charitable societies, Jews organized congregations and then built synagogues. Women maintained Jewish homes, educated youth, and conducted philanthropy although men controlled the ritual and leadership. Coalfield Jews, like small-town Jews regardless of region, recall being raised in strong Jewish communities that had the feel of "'one big family'" (163). Jews centered their lives on their synagogues just as Christians formed social circles around their churches. Their fraternal and Zionist societies connected these Appalachians to the global Jewish community.

Focusing on a numerically small minority, Coalfield Jews addresses larger questions of identity that have embroiled both southern and Jewish historians as to whether this region or this people are one or many. As Weiner concludes, the "success" of Jews in maintaining Jewish community while participating in Appalachian society "contradicts stereotypes that cling to the Appalachian region: a place typically thought of as isolated, homogeneous, inward, and hostile to strangers was none of those things" (188).