Eastern European Jews And The German Jews example essay topic

Jewish immigrants primarily settled in places where the Sephardic Jews had already established a large number of Jews. However, due to work situations they were placed in other parts of the United States. New York City was the hub of Jewish life. Since World War I, approximately 70 percent of all Jews that came to this country settled here (Spencer, 2000, p. 182). Survivors of the Holocaust settled where they had friends or relatives already established in America, or wherever Jewish social agencies, mainly the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, that brought them from Europe had found sponsors for them. It was decided that New York would take half of them, a number commensurate with the size of its Jewish population.

Competition for jobs and business opportunities would be very keen in the big eastern cities. Some of the agency representatives pointed out these job options to immigrants who were reluctant to leave New York for Iowa or Michigan. It was explained to them that they would do far better in a smaller town or city. On a whole, the newcomers went willingly enough wherever they were assigned, largely because, with the exception of New York, one place in America was as strange to them as any other.

Most of them did not argue about where they would live because they were so grateful to the authorities that had brought them to the United States and arranged for them to have a home and a job. Since the turn of the century, large amounts of Jews have moved to Sunbelt locations in California and Southern Florida. In 1997 the Los Angeles Population Survey revealed that 21 percent of Jewish Angeleno's were foreign-born, and 45 percent are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Reflecting their recent derivation, only 12 percent of Los Angeles Jews had American-born grandparents (Spencer, 2000, p. 184). Even though the Jewish immigrants came from different backgrounds and have had their minor differences.

Their religion fused them together as one, and all of them worked to support their common good of the community. Joseph Weibner explains that in the beginning, the Eastern European Jews and the German Jews got into fights over the nature of group identity, religious involvement, and location of their settlement (p. 2). However, the Sephardic and German Jews provided the Eastern European ones with organizations, activities, and jobs. At the same time, the Eastern Europeans also brought with them a strong tradition of communal organization and extensive involvement with social movements and political activism developed after their emancipation in Eastern Europe. Jews transplanted, modified, and invented a diverse array of associations, clubs, synagogues, and mutual benefit societies, which made up the communal basis of Jewish-American life. The groups they created provided religious and moral guidance, education, political socialization, economic aid, health care, burial services, musical training, dancing lessons, and summer excursions all of which support a social life and entertainment.

The social conditions that these immigrants faced were outrageous. From living in a ghetto to prejudice acts against them, they had a great deal to endure. The housing conditions for Jewish immigrants earlier in the century who lived in the Lower East Side of New York and the Jewish ghettos of Chicago and Philadelphia were abysmal. They had nearly 700 people per acre; the Lower East Side was more crowded than the worst slums of contemporary Bombay, India. Tenement fires were common because of the outhouses, cooking, and industrial activities. The polluted environment was described as the eyesore of New York the filthiest place in the Western continent (Weibner, 1999, p. 23).

Because of these horrible conditions, the Jewish people suffered from a number of health problems such as tuberculosis, venereal disease, mental health problems, and diabetes. Despite the low quality, their housing was expensive; therefore, thousands of families were evicted because they could not pay their rent. The Jews many problems were due to anti-Semitic acts. Jews living in the South, in places like Atlanta and New Orleans were warned by their friends in the North that the Ku Klux Klan would bomb houses or burn crosses in their front lawns. Other well known anti-Semitic figures of national prominence, such as the 1930's radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin, and automobile pioneer, Henry Ford. Ford published his Jew- baiting harangues during the 1920's in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent (Weibner, 1999, p. 36).

Both men engaged in public attacks on the Jews, impugning their character and patriotism. Jews in large cities also faced physical danger. Brutal attacks on young Jews were very common..