Arthur Read’s Reviews > Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America > Status Update

This book was either loved - or hated w/ vengeance. I portrayed Postville's Hasidim in a real way. Many I'd met feigned to be holy, but displayed bigotry & racism of the worst degree. I explored taboos like bargaining, poor hygiene, atrocious manners, elitism, crime & prejudice directed at Gentiles. I've received tons of hate letters from Orthodox readers. To them, to criticize any aspect of Judaism is unacceptable.

Mikey dropped out of his twice-weekly classes in Hebrew school at the Iowa City synagogue. One teacher told Mikey and the rest of the fourth graders that whenever they hear the name Queen Isabella of Spain, they should spit to protest her anti-Semitism.
We continue to talk about raising Mikey in homogeneous, monochromatic Iowa. Is it realistic? Are we giving our son the right tools to cope with the rest of the world?

these people were about to explode. The relations between the Hasidim & the locals had in fact gotten worse. These people weren't fearful. They were angry, plain & simple, fed up…The town was no longer the innocent place it once had been.
Ginger started. "The Jewish people just blew into town & took over. They don't have particular genteel ways—which is a Gentile word. And they are NOT Gentiles." Everyone nodded.

I asked Sharon how the locals & Hasidim were getting along these days. She'd been thru this b4, & her patience was wearing thin. "We are not anti-Semitic," she scolded. "If a group of French came to Postville to start a winery, & if they behaved the way the Jews behaved here, you bet we'd have problems…If the locals have issues, it's not based on the Jews' religion, it's based on how they carry on here."

Leigh hadn't lost any of his enthusiasm for showing the Hasidim the door. "We went to war to stop the extermination of the Jews, & now we have the Jews issuing us an ultimatum that if we don't do what they want, they're going to pack up. I don't care that they're Jewish. They're humans, & they should be acting more responsibly. I don't really care where they go - though if they leave, I pity the town where they move.

If any of the locals knew the Hasidim, Glenda did…But she had been affected, & I could see it…tears welled up in her eyes. "I'm not going to hold it against all of them, but I see now how important money is to them & how they'll do anything to get it…They take advantage every chance they can." I could plainly see she was pained to voice such a harsh assessment. It wasn't how she was raised...But now she knew.

there was a simple reason why I wanted the pro-annex forces to win: They deserved to. It was finally time for the pleasant, accepting Iowans to stand up to the Hasidim. If they couldn't get angry, I hoped they would get some cojones, neither an Iowa word nor concept. The locals had to know they'd been abused & ridiculed. Now it was payback time-even if it meant the Hasidim might take the goose that laid golden eggs.

Initially, I had gone to Postville to learn from the Hasidim, to share with them a sense of identity and belonging. Instead, what they ultimately gave me was a glimpse at the dark side of my own faith, a look at Jewish extremists whose behavior not only made the locals wince, but made me wince too. I didn't want to partake in Hasidism's vision that called on Jews to unite against the goyim and assimilation.

a sense I couldn't shake: the crime was a perverted outgrowth of how the Hasidim did business in Postville. The attitude shared by many Hasidim toward the locals nourished a destructive environment of contempt and scorn providing a setting for Stillman and Lew. While the Hasids would not encourage unprovoked violence against Gentiles, their everyday us-against-them mentality helped turn fantasy into reality.

In Postville, Lew began to discover for the first time the world outside of Chabad. He saw up close the enemy-the goyim. The stories the elders had told him about goyim were true. He made friends in the plant w/ locals & what he saw/heard amazed him. Some were drunks who could barely stand. Sex was openly discussed as workers sliced carcasses…Mostly what struck Lew was how bleak & meaningless the goyim's lives were