A Midrash On American Jewish History

260 Pages·1983·16.307 MB·English

by  Henry L. Feingold

ON AMERI C AN
JE W I S H HI S TOR Y
A Midrash on
American Jewish History

A Midrash on
American Jewish History
HENRY L. FEINGOLD
State University of New York Press
ALBANY
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Statc Cni\'Crsitv of :\'cw York Prcss, Albany
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Library of Congress Catalogillg ill Publicatioll Data
Feingold, Henry L., 1931N
A midrash on American Jewish history.
(SUNY series in modern Jewish history)
Includes index.
1. Jews-United States-Politics and government-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2.
Judaism-United States-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. United States-Ethnic
relations-Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Title. II. Series.
E184.J5F376 305.8'924'073 82-5527
ISBN 0-87395-637-0
ISBN 0-87395-638-9 (pbk.)
For Vera and my daughters
Margo and Duffy whose insights
reach beyond historical truth.

T able of Contents
Preface IX
I. Beginnings
II. The Success Story of German Jews in America 27
III. Americanizing Judaism: The Reform Movement 56
IV. The Ghetto as Bridge between Past and Future 69
V. The Yiddish Theater and the Genesis of Cultural
Consumerism 83
VI. Matching Power and Responsibility: The Jewish
Labor Movement 94
VII. Is American Jewry Really Organized? 110
VIII. A Problematic Synthesis: The Conservative Movement 127
IX. Israelism/Zionism: A New Civil Religion 141
X. Orthodox Judaism: A Problem Becomes a Prospect 160
XI. Anti-Semitism and the Anti-Semitic Imagination in
America: a Case Study-the Twenties 177
XII. American Power and Jewish Interest in Foreign
Affairs 193
XIII. Assessing Jewish Power in America: Case Study-the
Holocaust 207
XIV. Can American Jewry Survive? A Second Opinion 221
Index 237

Preface
T
HIS book examines the several historical processes which
together compose the Jewish experience in America.
But, like so many recent writings about American Jewry, its
underlying preoccupation is with the question of Jewish sur
vival. It seeks out those fortuitous factors that assured Jewish
continuance and success in the past. That preoccupation is
brought up to date in the concluding chapter, which wonders
aloud whether history has not disarmed American Jewry by
facing it with a survival challenge posed by a society beckoning
it to enter completely.
After so many millenia of paying witness to other civiliza
tions entering on and departing the historical stage, one would
imagine that Jews would take their survival more for granted. If
the Jewish historic persona is anything, it is that of survivor.
Yet Jewish survivalists seem unaware of how anomalous their
insistent alarums regarding an impending demise seem to the
ear of the historian. The threat of absorption into a benevolent
culture seems in the end no less ominous than the threat of
physical destruction. For survivalists the consequences are
identical.
The Jewish preoccupation with survival in America today is
amplified, perhaps even irrationally. Having lived in the time
space between Kishinev and Auschwitz, some Jews feel that
they do not strain the bounds of credulity by sensing that, at
least in some parts of the Western world, there was a conspir
acy against their survival. That it was not true in America does
not allay their fears, since Jews also take cues from the general
flow of Jewish history. One suspects that the manipulation of
despair has in itself become part of a survival strategy. When
IX