Writing New York’s Twentieth Century Jewish History: A Five Borough Journey

Abstract The most significant works that follow the journey of New York’s Jews through the five boroughs of Gotham in the 20th century have focused on the lives Jews lived, the nature of group identification and their relationships with other immigrant, ethnic and racial groups with whom they shared the city’s streets. When, some 60 years ago, professional work began on the Lower East Side, the first stop in this Jewish journey, the emphasis of studies on that iconic community was on downtown’s socialist tradition and labor activities. Subsequently, historical writing shifted largely to exploring religious and other aspects of communal existence. An important recent work has called upon scholars to reconsider the importance of the radical tone that permeated the immigrant quarter. Another new and important contribution has refocused attention on Jewish relations with other immigrants and Christians within and without the enclave. When, scholars, in the mid‐1970s, began following Jewish peregrinations out of downtown into Upper Manhattan, and eventually to the outer boroughs, much of the emphasis was on analyzing the textures of ethnic identification among Jews‐ particularly the children of immigrants‐ who settled in new neighborhoods. A concomitant major theme was their relationships with fellow New Yorkers, primarily the Germans, Italians and Irish around them. During the early post‐war period, New York Jews decided whether or not to depart older enclaves for suburbia or to cities far away from Gotham. Writers have engaged their decision‐making process. More importantly, studies of those who stayed continued to examine the question of ethnic persistence while delving into their relationships, not only with other White ethnic groups, but with African Americans with whom now Jews often struggled. Finally, the literature on the last decades of 20th century Gotham examines the position of Jews within different neighborhoods of the city and their sense of belonging in a metropolis that experienced periods of dramatic economic and social decline, and revival.

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