When Big Black Hats Meet Little Pink Houses
New Books Examine Suburban Orthodoxy
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Postville:
A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America
By Stephen G. Bloom
Harcourt, 338 pages, $25.
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And I Will Dwell in Their Midst:
Orthodox Jews in Suburbia
By Etan Diamond
University of North Carolina Press, 215 pages, $18.95.
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By ANDREW MUCHIN
History runneth over with stories of individuals and communities struggling to carve out meaningful Jewish lives in alien and often hostile societies. The many Jewish foods, customs, dialects and faces attest to Jewry's unique ability to survive as a smorgasbord of hybrid cultures, combining core Jewish values with the trappings and gene pools of host societies.
America's new societal frontier is in outlying communities flowing with shopping malls and money — or at least money. Even the Orthodox have staked their claim, with varying results. In "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America," journalist Stephen G. Bloom provides a gripping and bittersweet account of a Chabad Lubavitch community that set up camp in a northeastern Iowa farm town in 1987.
In 1993, Mr. Bloom, a New Jersey native and former newspaper reporter, moved to Iowa City from San Francisco with his wife and young son to begin a career as a journalism professor at the University of Iowa. He writes about how he and his family eagerly explored not only their new state but the new state of mind in which people, politics and restaurants exhibited an earthy and mostly friendly sameness. Writing with candid self-awareness and keen insight, Mr. Bloom recounts how he enjoyed his new job and colleagues, yet felt like an outsider in Iowa. He wondered why many neighbors skipped an annual watermelon party when he and his wife were hosts. Was it because he was too cosmopolitan? Too Jewish?
A gastronomic Jew in exile, Mr. Bloom felt he needed an emotional anchor. Uninspired by the local Jewish community, he sought kindred spirits in Postville. He had heard about the Chabad community that blossomed there around Agri-Processors, a thriving kosher meat-processing plant owned by one Aaron Rubashkin of Brooklyn. Driving into Postville one hot May day, Mr. Bloom realized that he had stumbled across a town in turmoil. Sure, Agri-Processors had brought new wealth, and the nearly 200 Lubavitchers it had attracted to town created a market for local housing. But the 1,800 indigenous Postvillians didn't understand, and many didn't like, their new neighbors. Why did these Jews not mow their lawns, rake their leaves or shovel their sidewalks? Why did they dress differently — black suits and fedoras for men, long-sleeved dresses and wigs for women — and walk everywhere on Friday nights and Saturdays? Why did they not share a meal with the locals or even say hello on the street? Some complained that the newcomers were eroding the town's character.
The roiling conflict, which Mr. Bloom characterizes as more xenophobic than anti-Semitic, came to a head over a 1997 referendum on whether Postville should annex land adjacent to the town, including the site of Agri-Processors. In effect, the vote became a referendum on the Jews — and its story infuses the book with suspense. Mr. Bloom builds on it with thorough, sensitive reporting and lively writing that bring Postville and its conflicts to life.
As a Jew, Mr. Bloom gained access to the Lubavitchers that Christian Postvillians were rarely given. The Jews kept their distance from their fellow townsfolk, explaining to Mr. Bloom that only through isolation could they maintain their strict religious practices. Mr. Bloom predictably rejected Lubavitch Judaism and pulled away. He was disillusioned when some Lubavitchers drove too hard a bargain with their easy-going neighbors.
And Mr. Bloom was angry at the Lubavitchers' protection of one of two chasidic ne'er-do-wells who injured a clerk in an armed robbery in a nearby town. Mr. Bloom brilliantly reconstructs the crime and its aftermath.
"Postville" lapses only in some of the explanations of traditional Jewish ritual and in halting the narrative in 1997. I have nosed around Postville myself, and if the conflict continues today, it's well below the surface, as both groups talk of getting along. This dÈtente is an important part of the Postville story. (A bigger problem is the needlessly contrived book cover, which juxtaposes a photo of a chasid with an image of seated farmers — though this isn't the fault of Mr. Bloom.)
As much as "Postville" wafts like a warm country breeze, "And I Will Dwell in Their Midst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia" chokes on academic stuffiness. This is a groundbreaking book that is far easier to read about than to read.
Etan Diamond, an American social historian at The Polis Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, writes that 50 years in the suburbs have shaped a Modern (or centrist) Orthodoxy that shares some of the materialist values of its neighbors across the hedges. Mr. Diamond exempts the charedi, or fervently Orthodox, whether living in the suburbs or in urban neighborhoods, from cultural assimilation beyond the embrace modern technologies — an assertion bolstered by "Postville."
Mr. Diamond focuses on suburban Toronto because of its similarity to other metropolitan areas with suburban Orthodox communities — Brookline, Mass.; Chicago; Cleveland; Indianapolis; Teaneck, N.J. — and for ease of analysis. Canadian census data, unlike U.S. figures, include religious affiliation. The idea of Orthodox Jews living in the suburbs seems to defy the convention of poor urban bubbes and zeydes, but it shouldn't. Mr. Diamond explains that as early as 1951, Orthodox Jews had formed the first Jewish institution, a daily minyan, in the Toronto suburb of North York. Synagogues, a day school and a mikvah soon followed. These metro-pioneers were primarily European immigrants with no ties to the established Orthodox community. As they built a community infrastructure, the established Orthodox moved out to join them.
Mr. Diamond shows how the usually well-paid suburban Orthodox Jews developed life styles that reflected suburban aesthetics and consumerism and defined a new Modern Orthodoxy: living Torah-true Judaism while succeeding in secular society. This distinguished them both from isolationist Orthodox who eschewed modernity and from suburban non-religious Jews. The suburban Orthodox developed the combined synagogue-community center, emphasized beauty in synagogue architecture, brought decorum to services and programming to youths, created the Jewish day-school movement and, according to Mr. Diamond, sowed the seeds of the Orthodox feminism that emerged in the 1970s.
The Orthodox were entrenched in the suburbs by the 1980s, and like Orthodox everywhere, they were becoming religiously more traditional. Mr. Diamond writes that unlike other faith groups, which were looking inward, the Orthodox pulled back only when they had accumulated the resources that allowed for independence from the broader Jewish community and its money. Actually, Orthodox institutions still rely on community money. Whether the rising generations will have the wealth to continue this communal growth remains a pivotal question, according to Mr. Diamond — a question faced by Jewish communities and institutions across the board.
This trend analysis constitutes Mr. Diamond's best writing. Unfortunately, his telling of the Toronto story is dull. Additionally, the book argues that nearly every important change in Orthodoxy is the result of suburban location rather than a wider combination of factors. (For instance, did deluxe mikvahs develop solely to meet suburban consumerist needs or also because of improved hygiene standards and a growing desire by Jews of all stripes for ritual purity?) And a minor point: Charts labeled with dots of different sizes are difficult to decipher.
Overall, though, Mr. Diamond's case is strong and his ideas are fresh. He and Mr. Bloom demonstrate, among other things, that Orthodox Jewish life can thrive in America wherever you can organize a minyan.
Mr. Muchin is editor and co-publisher of Jewish Heartland, a bimonthly magazine covering the Midwest. He lives in a suburb of Milwaukee.
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