New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (Yale Historical Publications Series) [Hardcover]

Professor Beth S. Wenger (Author)

Book Description

Series: Yale Historical Publications Series | Publication Date: December 25, 1996

Chronicling the experience of New York City's Jewish families during the Great Depression, this work tells the story of a generation of immigrants and their children as they faced an uncertain future in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the 1930s, the two million Jews living in New York City represented the largest ethnic group in the city. Jewish immigrants had established themselves as successful professionals and entrepreneurs during the prosperous '20s, but with the crash of 1929 and the ensuing years of the Great Depression, they were faced with more than just economic crisis. Wenger, a professor of Jewish history at the University of Pennsylvania, offers an informative history in which the Depression became the catalyst that transformed the Jewish immigrant into the American Jew. She puts a positive, though not altogether convincing or reassuring, spin on a process of acculturation through which "New York Jews ensured the persistence of Jewish identity and community by tailoring Jewish ethnicity to American norms." Challenged by rising anti-Semitism, employment discrimination and college quotas, New York Jews drew upon a tradition of private philanthropy and communal responsibility to establish "informal networks for economic assistance and personal support." In the New Deal era, the Jews of New York found that public welfare and social legislation were at one with this tradition, and forged a lasting bond with the Democratic Party. Wenger provides valuable detail on the history of philanthropy, social services and political activism in the Jewish community, though there is less than one would like on the personal and social lives of these first- and second-generation immigrants. But readers interested in the history of Jews in New York will appreciate the author's thorough treatment of a decade of transition. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this work developed from a doctoral dissertation, Wenger (Jewish history, Univ. of Pennsylvania) sets out to show that the Jewish experience in America has been a checkered one. To countless Jewish immigrants, America was a golden land; and New York City, which had the greatest Jewish population and a wide and noteworthy network of Jewish institutions, was a fitting mirror of American Jewish life. After the prosperity and expansion of the 1920s, the harshness of the Depression had a stultifying effect on the Jewish community, which Wenger illustrates through documents and interviews. Ultimately, it was the belief in Roosevelt, the New Deal, and the force of purposeful democratic change in America that kept hope alive for many Jews. Wenger succeeds in reversing some commonly held misconceptions of Jewish history, chief of which is that American Jewish history is solely the story of a rags-to-riches ethnic and religious community. Her book will most likely be appreciated by a scholarly audience. Recommended for academic and public libraries with strong Jewish studies holdings.?Paul M. Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., Ill.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (December 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300062656
• ISBN-13: 978-0300062656
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,086,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thorough and interesting, December 31, 2004

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This review is from: New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (Modern Jewish History) (Paperback)

Most of the editorial reviews are self-explanatory - a few things that surprised me:

1. The hardship that the Great Depression caused for synagogues and other Jewish institutions; I have always taken the financial stability of Jewish institutions for granted, but evidently Jews in the 1930s did not have this luxury.

2. That concerns over assimilation are nothing new. In 1929, almost 80% of NYC Jewish children received no religious training or Hebrew instruction (p. 184).

3. Where Jews lived (see p. 82 for table). I had always known that some once-Jewish neighborhoods have lost most of their Jewish population (mostly notably in the Bronx). But I did not know about similarities between then and now: for example, the Upper West Side, then as now, was heavily Jewish- and ditto for Borough Park (though the latter area was less homogenously Orthodox in the 30s than today). Other areas were virtually Jew-free in the 30s (Greenwich Village, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights) and may actually be more Jewish today, as gentrification has brought in Jewish professionals. Similarly, the Jewish presence in Queens was minimal in the 30s, but is far larger today- I was astonished to learn, for instance, that Forest Hills was less than 10% Jewish in 1932.