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.
