The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions

by Hillel Levine, Lawrence Harmon

Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon recount the death of a Boston community once home to 90,000 Jewish residences living among African Americans and white ethnic.

With frightening personal testimonies included, Death of an American Jewish Community provides blatant evidence of manipulated housing prices and illustrates how inadequate government regulation of banks can contribute to ethnic conflict and lives destroyed.

Written by a sociologist and a journalist, the authors believe that their findings may be true for American cities in general. The lessons included in this book are essential for students of ethnic relations and urban affairs.

Genres: History, Race, Jewish, Nonfiction, Religion, Judaism

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Karson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently drove an older Jewish man from a Boston hospital to his apartment in the suburbs of Sharon. I purposely drove down Blue Hill Avenue through Mattapan because I wanted to see if he would have any interesting social commentary on the state of Mattapan today vs. "the glory days" he grew up in. He said he was happy in the suburbs and he would never think of coming back to the city. It was like his old home was a pesky shadow he was trying to shake off but couldn't. By the time we arrived at his apartment in Sharon he seemed half nostalgic and half agitated, but my curiosity was peaked.
In this book Levine talks about how the slow fifty years of Jewish settlement in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan was at about 90,000 in 1968 and almost completely overturned in two short years. The spaces the Jews used to live is now taken up by the majority of the city's 120,000 black residents. It is the story of how a group of banks designated certain areas where they would finance houses to minorities for no money down. People capitalized on the opportunity to pursue the american dream of home ownership whether they had the money to maintain the houses or not. Building inspectors got used to "windshield inspections" where they would pass a houses inspection without getting out of the car to minimalize repair costs for real estate companies. The result was that people were buying homes that wouldn't have passed a true inspection and were doomed to have future problems.
The complications of the issue run pretty deep and it is hard to gain an understanding of all the elements that go into these types of social issues, but Levine is a great storyteller and writer, and he doesn't bog you down with unneeded terminology. He discusses the invisible hands behind rapid urban turnover in common language, and doesn't overlook the unfortunate people that fall through the cracks in areas highlighted for economic and social experimentation.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating & enlightening. I have a notebook filled with poignant moments in this tragedy of two communities. As a young person living in Boston, I knew the outcomes of these neighborhoods before opening the book, but seeing how they got there gave me a new sense of the history and loss of my neighbors.

[Simona · Rating 2 out of 5]

I attempted to read this for a Jewish bookclub collaboration between Boston Worker's Circle and Kavod's Housing Justice team but did not finish. While I was incredibly interested in this important housing history of nearby Boston neighborhoods (especially after going on the "Why the Jews Left Boston Bike Tour" with Lew Finfer), I found the narrative to be a little biased, lacking, and often careless in its treatment of underlying systems of structural racism and white supremacy.
This story is an important one, but this book was not for me.

[Barb H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not live in this part of Boston, but in the outlying suburbs. The areas covered in this book were heavily occupied by Jewish people, their shops and synagogues, with a lively, active community. This book clearly demonstrates how governmental processes and banking practices contributed to "white flight", along with real estate speculation to destroy a vibrant neighborhood.

[Benjamin Maron · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it covers an important history of Boston (specifically Dorchester/Mattapan/Roxbury), and how they were redlined, switched from predominantly Jewish working- and middle-class neighbourhoods to the neighbourhoods they are today, the language of the book itself was too often careless in its (deliberate? unintentional?) racism.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

My parents' neighbor recommended this book. I'm glad he did. It's an interesting community study, and I'm surprised I didn't encounter it when I was doing my Ph.D. Anyway, I didn't know that Boston is such a racist and tribal place until I was in college and met a lot of kids from the suburbs who were super casual in their racism. This book (and some others that chronicle events in the latter half of the 20th century in Boston) informed some of what I saw for me. Anyway, through much of the 20th century it was very hard as a Black person or family to buy a home in Boston. Furthermore, urban renewal displaced thousands of Black people, and didn't do much in the way of helping them find a new, suitable place to live. In the meantime, there was civil-rights-related pressure on the city of Boston to make homeownership a possibility for Black residents, in particular those who had lost their homes to urban renewal. In the 1960s, a partnership of Boston banks, called B-BURG, made mortgages accessible to Blacks who wanted to buy a home, but only within very strict geographical boundaries that just happened to coincide with where a large and thriving Jewish community was located, mainly in Mattapan and a part of (not-Irish) Dorchester. Basically, Blacks couldn't buy anywhere they wanted if it didn't fall within this area, so the banks were just shifting a ghettoized Black neighborhood from one area and creating another. Mattapan may have been chosen because a lot of the Jews who owned homes there had already paid off their mortgage, making the area not profitable for banks. There is also discussion in the book about how Jews were more passive than Irish or Italians in Boston when it came to neighborhood change (Irish neighborhoods were mostly rehabbed rather than demolished, and Italians from the West End were able to move pretty much anywhere they wanted when their neighborhood was demolished), and that Jews in the U.S. were, for the most part, very strong supporters of the Black civil rights movement because they could recognize, identify with, and understand the kinds of oppression that Black Americans faced. Many Jews in Boston were also for racial integration. I suspect, additionally, that the Jewish neighborhood was selected for this program because Jews were and are a minoritized group, and the banks were probably less concerned about fundamentally changing Jews' community than other whites' and white ethnic groups'. Once the B-BURG plan was implemented, there was aggressive block busting, threats, violence, etc., directed toward Jews to get them to sell their homes. Many Jewish residents moved to the suburbs (bringing a lot of the community institutions with them). Those who stayed were more often lower income and old (and/or idealists who truly wanted to live in a racially integrated neighborhood). Relations between Jews who moved to the suburbs and those who stayed in Mattapan deteriorated, as did relations between Jews and Blacks in Mattapan. The whole thing just sucked for everyone who lived in the neighborhood. Elderly Jewish people were mugged, beaten, their homes and synagogues were broken into and their stuff ransacked and stolen, and at least one person was murdered. Black people bought homes that were not properly appraised, so often they couldn't pay both their mortgage and the repairs that their home required, so more ended up losing their home to foreclosure or abandonment than being able to build equity. More than half who bought a home through the B-BURG program lost it within five or six years. Furthermore, as Mattapan became more Black, city services declined precipitously. The banks that created the B-BURG program were the only people/entities that saw any good come out of it; foreclosed and abandoned homes were turned over to HUD, and HUD paid out the remainder of the mortgage (sale price for Blacks was higher than for comparable homes for whites in Boston), so the local banks made a lot of money. Basically, banks put a structure into place that pit two marginalized ethnoracial groups against one another, killed one group's community, and ghettoized another group, all in the name of creating housing access.

[Karen Ghiron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always wanted to read this book after arriving in Boston in 1989. I heard it tells the story of redlining in Boston and discusses the history behind why Boston is so segregated. I finally pulled it from my shelf and had enough time to read. The Death of an American Jewish community clearly demonstrates and lays out the reasons the long established community of Jewish Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan changed over to an all black neighborhood in the late 60's. The Jews were happy to coexist, but through scrupulous methods the banks, realtors, politicians and Jewish leaders created policies with scare tactics for the Jewish neighborhood. The realtors said the value of their homes would go down and that with the black families moving in, they made up stories that their daughters might be raped and the neighborhood would deteriorate if they stayed. The Jewish community sold low and then the realtors turned around and sold to the black community at a higher rate, with an incentive of no down payment. Through first hand accounts the story of redlining in Boston was meant to be deceptive and calculated. See for yourself why Boston to this day is so segregated and how the politicians, realtors created the demise and downfall of integration in the city. Hopefully with our new Mayor Wu, change for the better can be made with more affordable hosting in Boston. The suburban towns like Newton can also increase more affordable housing units and change what was done in the 60's to create integrated suburbs and undue the criminality of Blockbusting.

[Leora Wenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Death of An American Jewish Community is an excellent, shocking history of the changes in Boston neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s. Along with reading this book, I suggest reading To Eliminate the Opiate Volumes I and II, written by Rabbi Marvin Antelman who is mentioned in Hillel Levine's book.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once upon a time, some of Boston's now-black areas were heavily Jewish. This book shows that this change was not just a natural result of the market -- that government "urban renewal" drove blacks out of older neighborhoods into those Jewish neighborhoods, thus spurring Jewish flight.

[patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book, not my style but fascinating read on the changing communities around Boston. I knew the area but not the history, I think the authors tell the story through the people who lived there and come to some very sound conclusions.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to understand urban America, read this book.

[Thacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book carefully documents the period of rapid white flight in Roxbury and Mattapan (Boston) during the late 1960s. It includes many stories of the people that we're caught up in this transformation. In addition, the authors provide a detailed political and philanthropic history of this period with specific focus on the impact of B-BURG (Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group), which restricted otherwise generous loan terms for minority families to targeted neighborhoods. Since its publication it has been highly criticized for putting to much emphasis on the effect of B-BURG in destabilizing the area. I tend to agree with this later viewpoint which is investigated in detail in Urban Exodus (which I have not read). Vale's book "Reclaiming Public Housing" has an excellent exposition and analysis of this debate.

[Carrie Kaplowitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can't help but draw parallels between the sub-prime mortgage debacle and this blockbusting that took place in the Jewish areas of Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury in the late 60's and early 70's. It is an interesting study in how government programs can effect the lives of people causing racial tensions and subsequently having the wrong outcome. Even though the intent of the program was to correct a problem.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an important book if you live in dorchester/roxbury/mattapan. There was a crazy on-line discussion yesterday that Larry Harmon joined and referred his book, which I did also. Read and understand the stereotypes, whether class or race, that persist in this city! I read this as part of a work book group and Larry Harmon came and discussed it with us.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, excellent journalistic treatment of the scandals of blockbusting, "reverse redlining" and not-so-benign bureaucratic negligence in Boston (especially Dorchester and Mattapan) in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Great Boston book- should be required reading, along with "Common Ground", for those interested in recent Boston history or interested in cities in general.

[annemarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book may only be interesting for people who grew up in and around boston. it is a fascinating tale of a section of boston that eventually faded as the older jew who were mainly refugees from eastern europe after WW II.

[Leiran]

Documents the neighborhoods my grandparents grew up in.