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51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's a Memoir, It's not Supposed to Be Objective..., July 26, 2005
This review is from: Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (Paperback)
I picked this book up randomly, at a thrift store, but I am always fascinated by non-fiction books that offer glimpses into other cultures and in books that look at the assimilation or non-assimilation of various groups into the American mainstream. POSTVILLE: A CLASH OF CULTURES IN THE HEARTLAND OF AMERICA is the portrait of a typical small midwestern town (almost stereotypical, as the author waxes on about parades, agricultural festivals, and kids who don't have to lock up their bikes in front of the corner stores) trying to come to grips with a settlement of militantly anti-assimilationist settlers in their midst: a group of Hassidic Lubavitcher Jews who have purchased the closed meat packing plant and reopened it as kosher slaughterhouse, bringing economic life back to the town but unearthing a host of conflicts with the locals over a host of issues of custom and lifestyle.
Many of the reviews of POSTVILLE here take issue with the author coming down on one side or the other of the division in Postville, Iowa and thus finding the book flawed because it is not objective.
But Bloom never pretends to be writing an objective or sociological treatise. The book is as much a memoir of his own coming to terms with his internal conflict between his Jewishness and his feelings of being a fish out of water in Iowa, and his longing to find a place that he fits in--is it by a deeper embrace of his Jewishness and thus his differences, or by further assimilation? A main part--if not the main point-- of the story is his own developing attitudes and his eventual realization that he has chosen to support one side--and thus one way of life--over the other.
Over a period of several years, Bloom makes trip after trip to Postville, at first drawn by the incongruous settlement of Jews there, and perhaps seeking a spiritual connection and answer to his own feelings of isolation. Bloom becomes fascinated with the schisms in Postville between the native (and nearly 100% Christian) Iowans and the Jewish newcomers who seem determined to stay separate and who seemingly deliberately flout local conventions of politeness, neatness and unassuming behavior.
As Bloom interviews numerous people in Postville, both Jewish newcomers and Postville natives, the schism in the town gradually coalesces around the issue of a referendum on annexing the land that the slaughterhouse is on, allowing the town to possibly exert more control over the business there and by extension, perhaps, the Jews. Both the native Iowans and several of the Lubavitchers reach out to him, telling him of their viewpoints and trying to recruit him to their point of view.
Bloom reports what he is shown by both sides, and in the end finds that he comes to support the native Iowans rather than the Jews. He does seem to give breaks to the native Iowans for sometimes nakedly anti-semitic statements (particularly when they move from concrete, personally unpleasant experiences with individual Lubavitchers in the town to generalizations about "the Jews" and the way all Jews are. On the other hand, some of the unpleasant behaviors of some of the Jews in the town feed entirely too neatly into a larger world of nasty stereotypes waiting to be applied.)
Bloom's conclusion seems to be that the Iowans he deals with, both in Postville and in Iowa City, are by nature of long isolation and homogeneity suspicious of and slow to welcome any outsiders, Jewish or otherwise, and that they are willing to try to get along with people who try to get along with them. The Lubavitchers, with their unconcealed attitudes of superiority, their rufusal to moderate even some of their behaviors in deference to local custom (even behaviors that don't infringe at all on their beliefs, such as keeping their yards neat or refraining from attempting to bargain prices at the stores, which the townsfolk see as insulting) and their complete disinterest in having any sort of relationship with the people they are living alongside, consistently show no inclination at all to try to get along. And Bloom, as a Jew and an outsider, ultimately chooses the path of trying to fit in over that of flaunting his difference. He chooses as his role model Doc Wolf, the legendary doctor of Postville and surrounding areas who for over 60 years doctored the locals, delivered babies and made housecalls, with most people unaware that he was Jewish and those who did not caring.
This is certainly a book well worth reading, but it's best to read it as one man's personal odyssey distilled through his observations of a larger sociological moment, than as a work of anthropological or sociological objectivity or disinterest. Of course, held to the latter standard it will fail, because that's not what the book ever set out to be.
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38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Another View by an Iowa City Jew, September 10, 2001
This review is from: Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (Paperback)
Stephen Bloom's book proved to be a quick and interesting read about a subject to which I can relate. Like Bloom, I am a secular Jew who moved to Iowa City a number of years ago and who has taken an interest in how the Hasidim and local Iowans in Postville have gotten along. I have visited the community on several occasions and have informally talked to a few of the Hasidim. I was even approached by two of them while having lunch at the kosher delicatessen and asked to put on tefillin (the Jewish "good deed" that Bloom himself performs with the owner of the slaughterhouse). My impression is that Bloom's portrayal of the transformation of the town as well as the clash of cultures is accurate. It is also valuable from a number of perspectives, including how it addresses the issue of assimilation. Jews, as well as other strongly identified religious and ethnic or cultural groups, have a difficult balance to strike in rural areas such as Iowa: retain (at least some) of their unique identity while also becoming a part of the community. Postville is an example of a place where the strongly identified newcomers, the Hasidim, choose not to even acknowledge the locals and their customs or way of life. This has dire consequences for all involved, although, paradoxically, the success of the Hasidic owned and run kosher meat packing plant has invariably influenced the local economy. For the better. While this book was informative and enjoyable to read over a weekend, I hesitate to recommend it whole-heartedly because the author's voice got in the way. Mr. Bloom seems to have concluded that he, as the narrative observor, was entitled to inject his own internal conflict about being a Jew in rural Iowa into the story as if it is of particular interest to all readers. As a reader who can relate to many of Mr. Bloom's observations about adapting to Iowa culture as an identified Jew, I am not quibbling with his conclusions. However, his own story impeded his ability to comment on the situation in Postville without generalizing to a rediculous degree about all parties. Even when he seems aware of this, I still found it to be annoying and difficult to ignore. For those seeking to understand the effect of multicultural perspectives on a small rural community, Postville is a worthwhile book. It is also informative and interesting for Jews who seek to answer some of their own questions about their religious and/or cultural identity by learning about how the author accomplished this. I just wish his own struggle had been a side-light to the main story rather than its competition.
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
an interesting look at ourselves, April 21, 2002
This review is from: Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (Paperback)
This is a good book and Mr. Bloom has done a very good job putting it together. The basic focus is on a group of ultra-orthodox Jews who set up a kosher meat-cutting business in little Postville, Iowa. I lived for a number of years in nearby Decorah, Iowa so I was interested in reading it as soon as I heard of it. I glanced at some of the reviews in Amazon and I could tell that the author has raised quite a bit of controversy over his approach to the subject. What is interesting is that he is accused of being biased both for and against each side of the controversy. Personally, I think he has done a good job of staying in a sort of middle ground approach. Let's face it, his Jewish background was a strong point given our current societal tendency to blame differing opinions on racism, sexism, anti-semitism, etc. Bloom is, thus, uniquely able to approach the subject unincumbered in ways that others would have been. As one who is proud of his Iowa roots, I felt proud of the praise Bloom gave my home state and some defensiveness when he was critical of its' citizens. I attended a junior high school in Des Moines that had two or three of the citie's synagogues in its' territory. In or around 1967, the junior high school was spray-painted with hateful ant-semitic statements. As I came to school that day, my reaction was one of great surprize. This was something that was obviously the work of someone not in touch with the mainstream of thought in our community. However, I learned that day that not all Iowans are perfect. Mr. Bloom has reminded us of that (not that we REALLY think of ourselves that way). The interactions of the two societies; rural Middle-America and Orthodox Jewish, did not go well in little Postville. The author ends up taking sides but only after a seemingly thorough attempt to hear both sides out. I was surprized at the aloofness of the Jews in their new surroundings. I knew that the local citizens would have done at least a reasonable job of making them feel at home if they had been given a chance. I found myself having to realize a different perspective on Orthodox Jews. I have read just about every book written by Isaac B. Singer and Sholom Aleichem. I love the stories of the Jewish societies in Eastern Europe in the decades prior to WWII. I always assumed that little mention was made of the Goyim because the Goyim didn't want anything to do with the Jews. I now realize that there was a likely, unspoken, opposite point of view in which the Jews wanted nothing to do with the Goyim. In many ways this is a tragic story but it is also an illuminating story of our modern American society which prides itself on its' diversity. To preach about assimulation as the method our ancesters followed ignores the seperation of different races and faiths that was the standard of the past. Yet to try and praise an ethnic group that disavows all others but their own gives us a distaste that's hard to ignore. Professor Bloom has written an excellent book. His style of writing makes the reader glad that a person of his talent is teaching journalism. You need not be Jewish or Iowan to get a lot out of this book; just American.
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