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North American Religions Series
Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America
Winner, 2017 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies presented by the Jewish Book Council
Finalist, 2017 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, presented by the Jewish Book Council
An engaging history of how Jews forged their own religious culture on the American frontier
Jews on the Frontier offers a religious history that begins in an unexpected place: on the road. Shari Rabin recounts the journey of Jewish people as they left Eastern cities and ventured into the American West and South during the nineteenth century. It brings to life the successes and obstacles of these travels, from the unprecedented economic opportunities to the anonymity and loneliness that complicated the many legal obligations of traditional Jewish life. Without government-supported communities or reliable authorities, where could one procure kosher meat? Alone in the American wilderness, how could one find nine co-religionists for a minyan (prayer quorum)? Without identity documents, how could one really know that someone was Jewish?
Rabin argues that Jewish mobility during this time was pivotal to the development of American Judaism. In the absence of key institutions like synagogues or charitable organizations which had played such a pivotal role in assimilating East Coast immigrants, ordinary Jews on the frontier created religious life from scratch, expanding and transforming Jewish thought and practice.
Jews on the Frontier vividly recounts the story of a neglected era in American Jewish history, offering a new interpretation of American religions, rooted not in congregations or denominations, but in the politics and experiences of being on the move. This book shows that by focusing on everyday people, we gain a more complete view of how American religion has taken shape. This book follows a group of dynamic and diverse individuals as they searched for resources for stability, certainty, and identity in a nation where there was little to be found.
Finalist, 2017 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, presented by the Jewish Book Council
An engaging history of how Jews forged their own religious culture on the American frontier
Jews on the Frontier offers a religious history that begins in an unexpected place: on the road. Shari Rabin recounts the journey of Jewish people as they left Eastern cities and ventured into the American West and South during the nineteenth century. It brings to life the successes and obstacles of these travels, from the unprecedented economic opportunities to the anonymity and loneliness that complicated the many legal obligations of traditional Jewish life. Without government-supported communities or reliable authorities, where could one procure kosher meat? Alone in the American wilderness, how could one find nine co-religionists for a minyan (prayer quorum)? Without identity documents, how could one really know that someone was Jewish?
Rabin argues that Jewish mobility during this time was pivotal to the development of American Judaism. In the absence of key institutions like synagogues or charitable organizations which had played such a pivotal role in assimilating East Coast immigrants, ordinary Jews on the frontier created religious life from scratch, expanding and transforming Jewish thought and practice.
Jews on the Frontier vividly recounts the story of a neglected era in American Jewish history, offering a new interpretation of American religions, rooted not in congregations or denominations, but in the politics and experiences of being on the move. This book shows that by focusing on everyday people, we gain a more complete view of how American religion has taken shape. This book follows a group of dynamic and diverse individuals as they searched for resources for stability, certainty, and identity in a nation where there was little to be found.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published December 12, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 9, 2018
Sometimes when I pick books to read at the same time there are some inspired similarities. For example, this particular book talks about union and disunion and points out the fears of assimilation and the ways that this fate was avoided by many Jews, and there are some significant parallels between this approach and that of a more comprehensive book I am reading right now on American Judaism by noted Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna [1]. I find it deeply intriguing how commonly the same sorts of expressions can be in the work of multiple people, and it is pretty clear that Sarna used this book as a resource, as they even site some of the same people and incidents in nineteenth century history. As a reader, it gives some picture as to the value of syntopical reading, where one can see the same subject through multiple eyes and examine how it is that different writers are influenced by each other's work when they are forming their own theses and making their own efforts at scholarship. As a relatively short book about an interesting subject, this is definitely a worthwhile one to read if the nineteenth century history of American Judaism is interesting to you.
This particular volume, other than the notes, takes up about 150 pages or so. The author introduces the subject of Judaism, America, and mobility as an organizing theme of the work after his acknowledgments. After that there three parts. The first part, movement and belonging (I), discusses Europe, America, and the politics of Jewish mobility in both places (1) as well as the way that voluntarism and social life helped isolated and not necessarily religious Jews maintain their Jewish identity (2). After that there is a discussion of the lived religion of America's Jews (II), including the relationship between family and the state (3) and the relationship between material culture and popular theology (4). The third part of the book then discusses the creation of an American Judaism (III) through the mobile infrastructure of stranger relationships (5) and the mobile imaginary of an empire of Jewry (6), followed by a conclusion that looks at two incidents in 1877 that were important in pointing to both the achievements as well as the continued struggle of Jews to achieve a position of security and legitimacy within the United States.
Admittedly, my own relationships with Jewry are somewhat complicated. As a (generally) Sabbath-observant believer who was circumcised on the eighth day with at least some ancestry among the subjects of this book, I could be considered Jewish in at least some sense, but the fact that my sympathies are with the karaites and others like them rather than the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform traditions makes me a marginal member at least of the community. Nevertheless, even if my visits to the local Hillel houses where I have lived are rare, I generally do try to keep up with what is going on in the Jewish community, and in that I found the author's discussion of the complex nature of Jewish identity in a place where the density of Jews was small and congregations and synagogues few and far between to be something that I could relate to very strongly. The author's suggestion as to the complicated ways in which people maintained identity and struggled to build trust with other members of a far-flung and marginal population were aspects I could relate to from my own life, and my own mobility in life is not so different from the people here. Even after so many generations, there remains some aspect of the habits and ways of our ancestors.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
This particular volume, other than the notes, takes up about 150 pages or so. The author introduces the subject of Judaism, America, and mobility as an organizing theme of the work after his acknowledgments. After that there three parts. The first part, movement and belonging (I), discusses Europe, America, and the politics of Jewish mobility in both places (1) as well as the way that voluntarism and social life helped isolated and not necessarily religious Jews maintain their Jewish identity (2). After that there is a discussion of the lived religion of America's Jews (II), including the relationship between family and the state (3) and the relationship between material culture and popular theology (4). The third part of the book then discusses the creation of an American Judaism (III) through the mobile infrastructure of stranger relationships (5) and the mobile imaginary of an empire of Jewry (6), followed by a conclusion that looks at two incidents in 1877 that were important in pointing to both the achievements as well as the continued struggle of Jews to achieve a position of security and legitimacy within the United States.
Admittedly, my own relationships with Jewry are somewhat complicated. As a (generally) Sabbath-observant believer who was circumcised on the eighth day with at least some ancestry among the subjects of this book, I could be considered Jewish in at least some sense, but the fact that my sympathies are with the karaites and others like them rather than the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform traditions makes me a marginal member at least of the community. Nevertheless, even if my visits to the local Hillel houses where I have lived are rare, I generally do try to keep up with what is going on in the Jewish community, and in that I found the author's discussion of the complex nature of Jewish identity in a place where the density of Jews was small and congregations and synagogues few and far between to be something that I could relate to very strongly. The author's suggestion as to the complicated ways in which people maintained identity and struggled to build trust with other members of a far-flung and marginal population were aspects I could relate to from my own life, and my own mobility in life is not so different from the people here. Even after so many generations, there remains some aspect of the habits and ways of our ancestors.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
August 5, 2018
My preliminary idea about the focus of this book (Jews on the Oregon Trail) was admittedly a bit off. Shari Rabin's slight volume takes pit stops all around the "settled" United States, mostly of the mid-19th century. Her primary thesis is that American Judaism was shaped by unfettered mobility.
The Ashkenazi and Sephardi-European Jews were seen, legally in the Americas, as white. I'd still argue that THE PRICE OF WHITENESS by Eric Goldstein points out a more complex reality when it comes to culture and interpersonal relationships. But in terms of the law, Jews were free to move about the country.
This is a huge shift from Jewish mobility in Europe. Admittedly, I'd mostly thought of European persecution of Jews in terms of violence, but there were also a bunch of non-physical operations in play to keep the Jewish people suppressed. Chief among them were quotas, taxes and difficult-to-acquire paperwork that restricted Jewish movement from place to place. In Europe, Jews were often stuck in specific jobs and specific places. In mid-19th century United States, there weren't many barriers when it came to immigration and mobility. (Immigration is a tangential part of this narrative, but of course it's difficult not to compare the issue then to what it is now. Or, for Jews, what it became in the late 19th century through World War II.)
But as the United States was expanding into new territories, Jews were staking claims further and further west. Individually, of course, this was very freeing. But in terms of group identity, it presented new complications. In Europe, religious institutions were handled by the state; in the United States, Jews had to figure it out for themselves. Assimilation and intermarriage were threats from early on. Rabin writes a bit about the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith as an American response to Jewish (male) lethargy, and the lodge membership style fits into her thesis below. (She doesn't get into this much, but perhaps B'nai B'rith helped give a cornerstone to the idea of Jewish culture. It didn't do anything for religious observance.)
Rabin's main argument is that American Judaism was defined by mobile Jewish individuals seeking survival in new places, not by a natural desire to assimilate, nor by the institutional schisms between what became the Reform and Orthodox movements. In so doing, she explores how individuals and families predicated belief and belonging, and how institutions tried to reach out to them in this tenuous space. She includes many excerpts from letters and sermons and newspaper articles concerning parental anxiety about wayward children or religious leaders kvetching about the people. I did find that her chapters were firmly book-ended by the reiteration of her thesis in a way that felt like she was over-stating her point sometimes, rather than letting her sources do the talking for themselves.
Still, for such a small book, I was impressed by the different perspective it gave me on American Jewish history. In SPEAKING OF JEWS, Lila Corwin Berman (who has a blurb on the back cover of this book) muddled the waters, I think, when bringing up the issue of 20th century Jewish missionary work. But Rabin's 19th century account made much more sense to me, because the focus was on Jewish institutions trying to whip the Jewish people back into shape. Sometimes the Jews wanted that whipping, because without some sort of unified oversight, congregations often got swindled by fake ministers and fake Jews. And congregations often had enough trouble just procuring religious objects; my own synagogue was included as an example! "Congregation Adas Israel of Washington, D.C., founded in 1869, relied on a congregant's Torah scroll until they could commission one from Europe, which was found to be defective and was replaced in 1874 by one purchased from a New York Hebrew bookseller." It's fascinating--as Rabin probes in her conclusion, a lot of individualistic approaches to Judaism haven't changed in the last century and a half, but one can't deny a more fortified and robust system for procuring religious artifacts and people. Then again, that too could fit into Rabin's mobility thesis--if the world moved fast during the advent of the trans-contennental railways, it moves SUPER fast now.
Perhaps another few positives, from my biased opinion--the proliferation of Jewish men marrying gentile women, and a general lack of Jewish men in prayer spaces, meant that patrilineal descent and including Jewish women in a minyan became more commonplace. (Again, Rabin is pointing to realities on the ground rather than the push and pull between Orthodox and Reform philosophies.) It's particularly nice to see women get a spot on the minyan sometimes, because of course, most advancement for (white) people still precluded one gender.
As a final note, Rabin particularly referenced two important Jewish leaders of the time--"traditionalist" Isaac Lesser and "reformer" Isaac Wise. One can definitely feel a strain of conflict between these two men, though both conceded to the language made popular by the broader, American Protestant culture. They both co-opted the word "progressive," but for Lesser that meant a return to traditional practice, perhaps with more zeal; Wise objectified Jewish progress into the railroad of forward expansion with fewer rituals holding the people back. But this covert-to-overt embrace of America's Manifest Destiny also meant that while Jews were rallying behind the "banner" of putting their religious/cultural stamp on the new frontier, they were also ignoring and/or buying into prejudice about Native American narratives. I'm glad that Jewish religion, at least, was up for debate and growth, where meanwhile this nationalist propaganda kept people narrow-minded.
This book is part of NYU Press's North American Religions series, so perhaps it's meant to be understood in a broader context than these 150ish pages on 19th century Judaism can convey. But with my narrow interest in Jewish history, religion and culture, it certainly offered enough food for thought on its own!
The Ashkenazi and Sephardi-European Jews were seen, legally in the Americas, as white. I'd still argue that THE PRICE OF WHITENESS by Eric Goldstein points out a more complex reality when it comes to culture and interpersonal relationships. But in terms of the law, Jews were free to move about the country.
This is a huge shift from Jewish mobility in Europe. Admittedly, I'd mostly thought of European persecution of Jews in terms of violence, but there were also a bunch of non-physical operations in play to keep the Jewish people suppressed. Chief among them were quotas, taxes and difficult-to-acquire paperwork that restricted Jewish movement from place to place. In Europe, Jews were often stuck in specific jobs and specific places. In mid-19th century United States, there weren't many barriers when it came to immigration and mobility. (Immigration is a tangential part of this narrative, but of course it's difficult not to compare the issue then to what it is now. Or, for Jews, what it became in the late 19th century through World War II.)
But as the United States was expanding into new territories, Jews were staking claims further and further west. Individually, of course, this was very freeing. But in terms of group identity, it presented new complications. In Europe, religious institutions were handled by the state; in the United States, Jews had to figure it out for themselves. Assimilation and intermarriage were threats from early on. Rabin writes a bit about the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith as an American response to Jewish (male) lethargy, and the lodge membership style fits into her thesis below. (She doesn't get into this much, but perhaps B'nai B'rith helped give a cornerstone to the idea of Jewish culture. It didn't do anything for religious observance.)
Rabin's main argument is that American Judaism was defined by mobile Jewish individuals seeking survival in new places, not by a natural desire to assimilate, nor by the institutional schisms between what became the Reform and Orthodox movements. In so doing, she explores how individuals and families predicated belief and belonging, and how institutions tried to reach out to them in this tenuous space. She includes many excerpts from letters and sermons and newspaper articles concerning parental anxiety about wayward children or religious leaders kvetching about the people. I did find that her chapters were firmly book-ended by the reiteration of her thesis in a way that felt like she was over-stating her point sometimes, rather than letting her sources do the talking for themselves.
Still, for such a small book, I was impressed by the different perspective it gave me on American Jewish history. In SPEAKING OF JEWS, Lila Corwin Berman (who has a blurb on the back cover of this book) muddled the waters, I think, when bringing up the issue of 20th century Jewish missionary work. But Rabin's 19th century account made much more sense to me, because the focus was on Jewish institutions trying to whip the Jewish people back into shape. Sometimes the Jews wanted that whipping, because without some sort of unified oversight, congregations often got swindled by fake ministers and fake Jews. And congregations often had enough trouble just procuring religious objects; my own synagogue was included as an example! "Congregation Adas Israel of Washington, D.C., founded in 1869, relied on a congregant's Torah scroll until they could commission one from Europe, which was found to be defective and was replaced in 1874 by one purchased from a New York Hebrew bookseller." It's fascinating--as Rabin probes in her conclusion, a lot of individualistic approaches to Judaism haven't changed in the last century and a half, but one can't deny a more fortified and robust system for procuring religious artifacts and people. Then again, that too could fit into Rabin's mobility thesis--if the world moved fast during the advent of the trans-contennental railways, it moves SUPER fast now.
Perhaps another few positives, from my biased opinion--the proliferation of Jewish men marrying gentile women, and a general lack of Jewish men in prayer spaces, meant that patrilineal descent and including Jewish women in a minyan became more commonplace. (Again, Rabin is pointing to realities on the ground rather than the push and pull between Orthodox and Reform philosophies.) It's particularly nice to see women get a spot on the minyan sometimes, because of course, most advancement for (white) people still precluded one gender.
As a final note, Rabin particularly referenced two important Jewish leaders of the time--"traditionalist" Isaac Lesser and "reformer" Isaac Wise. One can definitely feel a strain of conflict between these two men, though both conceded to the language made popular by the broader, American Protestant culture. They both co-opted the word "progressive," but for Lesser that meant a return to traditional practice, perhaps with more zeal; Wise objectified Jewish progress into the railroad of forward expansion with fewer rituals holding the people back. But this covert-to-overt embrace of America's Manifest Destiny also meant that while Jews were rallying behind the "banner" of putting their religious/cultural stamp on the new frontier, they were also ignoring and/or buying into prejudice about Native American narratives. I'm glad that Jewish religion, at least, was up for debate and growth, where meanwhile this nationalist propaganda kept people narrow-minded.
This book is part of NYU Press's North American Religions series, so perhaps it's meant to be understood in a broader context than these 150ish pages on 19th century Judaism can convey. But with my narrow interest in Jewish history, religion and culture, it certainly offered enough food for thought on its own!
July 3, 2022
Shari Rabin's study of the impact of mobility on nineteenth century American Judaism is scholarly and insightful and readable and interesting.
I wish her work contextualized the impact of mobility on American religion with more about the impacts of mobility on other religious groups, and more about the social consequences of far-reaching mobility for poor and middle-class people from across Europe in general in the nineteenth century. And more about the mobility that came with the end of corporative society, and the rise of voluntary communal organization. I feel like Rabin's work, which is altogether important and interesting, misses a much bigger picture of context.
Also, Rabin occasionally uses Rebecca Gratz as an example, even though Gratz lived in Philadelphia for her entire life. The usage of occasional examples such as Gratz's bring home the question of whether Rabin overstates the importance of mobility per se in the development of religious fluidity as she describes.
Also, it would have helped if Rabin emphasized more that there was a selection bias in who became a mobile Jew, and some of the religious fluidity she traces may have been more a reflection of who moves out to the frontier at all. Rabin mentions this point but does not emphasize it.
Quibbles aside, this is an enjoyable work with an important thesis and a lot of great research to support it. A quick and worthwhile read.
I wish her work contextualized the impact of mobility on American religion with more about the impacts of mobility on other religious groups, and more about the social consequences of far-reaching mobility for poor and middle-class people from across Europe in general in the nineteenth century. And more about the mobility that came with the end of corporative society, and the rise of voluntary communal organization. I feel like Rabin's work, which is altogether important and interesting, misses a much bigger picture of context.
Also, Rabin occasionally uses Rebecca Gratz as an example, even though Gratz lived in Philadelphia for her entire life. The usage of occasional examples such as Gratz's bring home the question of whether Rabin overstates the importance of mobility per se in the development of religious fluidity as she describes.
Also, it would have helped if Rabin emphasized more that there was a selection bias in who became a mobile Jew, and some of the religious fluidity she traces may have been more a reflection of who moves out to the frontier at all. Rabin mentions this point but does not emphasize it.
Quibbles aside, this is an enjoyable work with an important thesis and a lot of great research to support it. A quick and worthwhile read.
September 15, 2020
A fascinating read. I had no knowledge of Jews in America before the 20th century. I particularly liked this book because it focused on how America and Judaism interacted with each other and how Jews set about surviving and then thriving in an unknown land of better opportunity. There was still anti-Semitism and other pressures but Jews had more mobility and flexibility than they did in Europe and they used it to their advantage. I really appreciate the author using quotes from letters and journals to highlight experiences and how Jews at the time viewed the world.
June 26, 2021
The idea of "mobility", explored in this book, is a powerful one. The book suffers from two major flaws, however; one is the attempt to write in Academese ("De-normativized"). The other is the author's lack of context and seeming unfamiliarity with Judaism. For example, she misreads Hagiga 26a about the meaning of "chaverim"; similarly, signing a letter "your friend" was probably just a 19th-century affectation.
August 26, 2024
Even by academic standards this is repetitive and dry. Honestly, I’m sure the abstract would tell you all you need to know.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews