Content area
Full text
Dispersing the Ghetto: The Relocation of Jewish Immigrants across America
JACK GLAZIER, 1998
Ithaca: Cornell University Press
pp. x + 245, $29.95
The migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States in large numbers late in the 19th century posed a difficult problem for the descendants of German Jews who had arrived earlier. Because they had finally achieved some measure of acceptance, the wealthier Germans feared that the hordes of poor Jews streaming into major cities, particularly New York, would stimulate anti-Semitism against themselves as well as the newcomers. At the same time, they genuinely sympathized with the plight of the easterners who were fleeing pogroms and political and economic persecution. This book traces these attitudes and focuses on the activities of the Industrial Removal Office, founded by prominent German Jews, which attempted to disperse the new immigrants throughout the country.
Glazier begins by showing the roots of German hostility to the newcomers, some even going so far as to suggest sending Jewish missionaries to Russia to "civilize" the easterners where they lived instead of running the risk of their emigration "Russianizing" American Jews. But after the rising repression of the 1880s, German Jews lobbied strenuously against immigration restriction; their problem then was how to blunt the rising tide of anti-Semitism. One major solution was to limit the growth of urban ghettoes by convincing new immigrants to move away from the major cities...