How did the vast number of Jewish immigrants from different regions of Eastern Europe form their American ethnic identity?

In his answer to this question, Daniel Soyer examines how Jewish immigrant hometown associations (landsmanshaftn) transformed old-world communal ties into vehicles for integration into American society. Focusing on New York--where some 3,000 associations enrolled nearly half a million members--this study is one of the first to explore the organizations' full range of activities, and to show how the newcomers exercised a high degree of agency in their growing identification with American society.

The wide variety of landsmanshaftn--from politically radical and secular to Orthodox and from fraternal order to congregation--illustrates the diversity of influences on immigrant culture. But nearly all of these societies adopted the democratic benefits and practices that were seen as the most positive aspects of American civic culture. In contrast to the old-country hierarchical dispensers of charity, the newcomers' associations relied on mutual aid for medical care, income support, burial, and other traditional forms of self-help. During World War I, the landsmanshaftnsent aid to their war-ravaged hometowns; by the 1930s, the common identity centered increasingly upon collective reminiscing and hometown nostalgia.

The example of the Jewish landsmanshaftnsuggests that many immigrants cultivated their own identification with American society to a far greater extent than is usually recognized. It also suggests that they selectively identified with those aspects of American culture that allowed them to retain emotional attachments to old-country landscapes and a sense of kinship with those who shared their heritage.

Examines how Jewish immigrant hometown associations (landsmanshaftn) transformed old-world communal ties into vehicles for integration into American society. Focusing on New York--where some 3,000 associations enrolled nearly half a million members--the study is one of the first to explore the organizations' full range of activities, and to show how the newcomers exercised a high degree of agency in their growing identification with American society.
Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

In a carefully researched and highly readable account, Soyer presents a detailed discussion of Jewish landsmanshaftn(hometown associations) from their origins in East European Jewish communities to their development and transformation in New York City during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Soyer's examination of New York's landsmanshaftndemonstrates convincingly that the maintenance of these distinct ethnic associations not only coexisted with but actually facilitated immigrant acculturation.

Soyer brings to his task not only fluency in Yiddish but also finely honed skills as a historian. It may well be the best work on the American Jewish immigrant experience since M. Rischin's pioneering treatment of Jewish New York, The Promised City...This book richly deserves the prizes it has won and should be of great interest to all scholars of modern Jewry, religious transitions in modernity, and the problem of immigration.

As ethnic and immigrant history, this is a marvelous accomplishment. This book will add much support to the argument that American ethnicity is dynamically flexible and situational and has as much to do with the nature of American society generally as it does with, in this case, the Jews.

that they selectively identified with those aspects of American culture that allowed them to retain emotional attachments to old-country landscapes and a sense of kinship with those who shared their heritage.

How did the vast number of Jewish immigrants from different regions of Eastern Europe form their American ethnic identity?

In his answer to this question, Daniel Soyer examines how Jewish immigrant hometown associations (landsmanshaftn) transformed old-world communal ties into vehicles for integration into American society. Focusing on New York--where some 3,000 associations enrolled nearly half a million members--this study is one of the first to explore the organizations' full range of activities, and to show how the newcomers exercised a high degree of agency in their growing identification with American society.

The wide variety of landsmanshaftn--from politically radical and secular to Orthodox and from fraternal order to congregation--illustrates the diversity of influences on immigrant culture. But nearly all of these societies adopted the democratic benefits and practices that were seen as the most positive aspects of American civic culture. In contrast to the old-country hierarchical dispensers of charity, the newcomers' associations relied on mutual aid for medical care, income support, burial, and other traditional forms of self-help. During World War I, the landsmanshaftnsent aid to their war-ravaged hometowns; by the 1930s, the common identity centered increasingly upon collective reminiscing and hometown nostalgia.

The example of the Jewish landsmanshaftnsuggests that many immigrants cultivated their own identification with American society to a far greater extent than is usually recognized. It also suggests that they selectively identified with those aspects of American culture that allowed them to retain emotional attachments to old-country landscapes and a sense of kinship with those who shared their heritage.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [207]-274) and index.

Daniel Soyeris a former archivist at the <”NEW”>YIVO Institute for Jewish Researchand Fellow with the "Sweatshop Project" of the <”NEW”>Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Note on Orthography and Transliteration

Introduction

The Old World

The New World

Landsmanshaft Culture and Immigrant Identities

Brothers in Need

TheBuilding Blocks of Community

Institutional Dilemmas

The Heroic Period

Looking Backward

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index