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| Format | Dissertation |
|---|---|
| Creator | Jick, Leon A. |
| Title | Jews in the Synagogue--Americans Everywhere. The German-Jewish Immigration and the Emergence of the American Jewish Pattern 1820-1870. Dissertation |
| Dissertation Note (type -- academic institution) | Columbia University, New York |
| Extent of Work | 298 pp. |
| Abstract | Between 1830 and 1860, one and one-half million immigrants from the provinces which were to become part of the German Empire settled in the United States. A significant proportion of them -- perhaps as many as 200,000 -- were Jews, for whom the contrast between the society they entered and the one they left behind was even greater than for Protestant or Catholic Germans. The experience of these German-Jewish immigrants as they sought to reorient themselves and to reconstruct their religious and communal life in the American environment is the subject of this thesis. For a variety of reasons which are examined, the economic advance and acculturation of these immigrants proceeded at an astonishing pace. Precisely because of the rapidity of their advancement, the process through which the adjustment took place was obscured. Most observers came to believe that the achievements of the German Jews resulted from the fact that -- unlike later East European Jewish immigrants -- they had been substantially secularized and "westernized" by their exposure to German culture prior to their arrival in America and that in fact they had brought their radically reformed version of Judaism with them. According to this view the emergence of Reform Judaism in America could more accurately be described as a transplantation rather than a transformation. Examination of the source materials of the 1830's, '40's, and '50's, when the immigration was at its height, reveals that the prevailing view distorted the actual experience of adjustment. It failed to recognized the relationship between upward mobility and acculturation and to identify the dynamics through which the German-Jewish immigrants developed an American Jewish pattern. In fact, the response patterns of German Jewish immigrants to America, like those of the later East Europeans demonstrate that in the 19th as in the 20th century, "changes in Judaism have their origin in changes in the lives of Jews." The study examines the social, economic and cultural background of the immigrants as well as their religious attitudes and practices at the time of their arrival in America. It considers their relationship to the Jewish settlers who preceded them as well as to the total society and documents their struggle to achieve economic security and social identity. It reviews their attempts to redefine their religious and cultural ideas in the new setting and to restructure a communal apparatus which would enable them to enter fully into American society while preserving some links with the Jewish tradition of which they felt themselves a part.Confronted by radical economic, social and intellectual challenges, German Jewish immigrants in the mid-19th century sought in the New World to maintain a balance between assimilation and distinctiveness, between change and continuity. Their experience constitutes a unique chapter in the annals of American-Jewish history and provides singular insights into the ongoing process of social adaptation. |
| Notes | UMI, printed in 1988. Book, in MadCat. |
| Call Number | MKI BM205 J524 1973a; shelved with MKI dissertations |
| MKI Terms | Jews, German/ Immigrants, German/ 19th century |