On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore<\/em> offers a prodigiously researched and highly nuanced history of Baltimore Jewry. \u00a0Readers unfamiliar with the contours of American Jewish history will find myriad connections to topics important in African American, ethnic, labor, political, and urban history.<\/p>\nDrawing from Baltimore\u2019s geographical and cultural position between the North and South, the authors convincingly argue that Baltimore Jews occupy a historical and historiographical \u201cmiddle ground\u201d (2).\u00a0 Jews have been in the middle of many of Baltimore\u2019s most important economic, social, and political developments. Despite their disproportionately large leadership role, Jews\u2019 involvement and impact are not easily characterized or uniformly positive, however.\u00a0 Nearly every aspect of Baltimore Jewish life, as well as Jews\u2019 relations with the broader community, display the \u201ccontradictions and ambiguities\u201d (2) inherent in their middle position.\u00a0 The authors\u2019 emphasis on these contradictions and ambiguities creates a thoughtfully crafted, though not easily summarized, exploration of the city\u2019s Jewish history as well as an important variation to established narratives about the American Jewish experience.<\/p>\n
Goldstein and Weiner\u2019s discussions of Baltimore\u2019s first Jewish leaders and the subsequent 1826 Jew Bill provide an early and effective example of their focus on the historical and historiographical middle.\u00a0 \u201cWhile histories of Baltimore Jewry have focused primarily on the perceived exclusion of Jews from public life,\u201d they write of the colonial and early national periods, \u201cthe truth is that the 1826 constitutional amendment giving Jews the right to hold public office was the result of Jews\u2019 already robust civic involvement\u201d (36).\u00a0 By the time the bill passed granting Maryland\u2019s Jews full equality, several Jewish businessmen had helped to advance nearly every aspect Baltimore\u2019s economic, institutional, and civic growth.<\/p>\n
From a population of 1,000 people in 1840, Baltimore\u2019s Jewish community grew ten-fold over the next four decades.\u00a0 The city\u2019s geographic location as a supply center for retail goods moving south and west drew immigrants from Central Europe (particularly Bavaria), many of whom made the economic climb from peddler to retailer or wholesaler.\u00a0 A vibrant array of synagogues, social and educational organizations, and charities formed to cater to Jewish communal needs.\u00a0 Though equal under the law and increasingly acculturated, Jews remained largely separate from their non-Jewish neighbors. Drawing from a long historiography that argues for the increasing influence of progressive tendencies in nineteenth-century American Judaism, the authors once again chart a middle ground, contending that new Baltimore congregations emerged more often for practical rather than ideological reasons.\u00a0 In the pre-Civil War era, Baltimore\u2019s traditional congregations were more progressive than in many other cities, and \u201creform-minded\u201d congregations were more traditional.\u00a0 Together, Baltimore\u2019s varied religious institutions represented a \u201cconfusing m\u00e9lange of pressures and opportunities that all Jews faced in their encounter with a new, open society\u201d (86).<\/p>\n
The \u201cgreat wave\u201d of Eastern European Jews who came to America between the 1880s and early 1920s transformed Baltimore and its Jewish community.\u00a0 Though some immigrants merely passed through the city on their way south or west, by 1920 only New York City had a larger percentage of Jews among its foreign-born residents.\u00a0 \u201cIn many respects,\u201d write the authors, \u201cBaltimore\u2019s distinctive qualities were bound up with its middle-ness \u2013 more industrial than cities to the south, yet lacking the heavy industry of the North; an immigrant port of entry with a historically large black population; a large city with a small-town, socially conservative culture\u201d (114).\u00a0 Within this setting, Eastern European Jews enjoyed relatively greater social acceptance in a society focused less on religious or ethnic distinctions and more on the racial divide.\u00a0 Orthodox Judaism, Yiddish culture, Zionism, charitable organizations, and garment industry trade unionism flourished in East Baltimore\u2019s crowded Jewish neighborhoods. \u00a0More acculturated (\u201cuptown\u201d) Jews helped support their Eastern European (\u201cdowntown\u201d) coreligionists\u2019 transition to America, but carefully guarded their economic and social standing and influence.\u00a0 The authors ably portray fluid community relationships characterized both by cooperation and conflict.<\/p>\n
With severe immigration quotas in force by the early 1920s, the years between the two world wars bridged Baltimore Jewry\u2019s \u201cimmigrant era\u201d from the post-World War II period when a \u201cfully American Jewish community emerged\u201d (243).\u00a0 Like earlier eras in the community\u2019s history, the transition was fraught with contradictions. Baltimore Jews experienced increasing Americanization but rising antisemitism, particularly in social and educational settings but less so in state politics where they became a political force within the Democratic party.\u00a0 Secular ideas and lifestyles appealed to a growing number of Jews, while Orthodoxy maintained a strong hold on others.\u00a0 Central and Eastern Europe Jews remained separate in many social spheres but came together to form the Associated Jewish Charities and for other matters of mutual interest and benefit.\u00a0 Some immigrant Jews continued to reside in East Baltimore, but over 80 percent of Baltimore Jewry relocated to the city\u2019s northwestern suburbs by 1940.\u00a0 Occupational mobility and growing affluence helped make this migration possible, but developers\u2019 and realtors\u2019 efforts to manage the spread of African Americans into Jewish neighborhoods and limit the spread of Jews into gentile neighborhoods preserved racial segregation, restricted Jews\u2019 residential options, and created new vibrant Jewish enclaves where synagogues, community centers, and other Jewish organizations flourished but Jews and Christians experienced limited social interaction.<\/p>\n
The authors\u2019 careful analysis of the interplay between race, religion, and residential patterns continues into their discussion of the decades following World War II, when Baltimore Jewry became more economically and socially integrated but also residentially segregated.\u00a0 By 1968, over 90 percent of Baltimore\u2019s 106,000 Jews lived in the northwest metropolitan area, particularly Pikesville.\u00a0 They were \u201cpulled\u201d further out of the city and into the northwest suburbs by Jewish builders who promised newer and nicer homes next to other Jewish families and near Jewish communal institutions. \u00a0They also were \u201cpushed\u201d into the county by blockbusting practices, which exploited racism to promote white flight, manipulate home prices, and steer black families seeking homeownership into older Jewish neighborhoods.\u00a0 As in other American cities, Baltimore\u2019s increasingly acculturated and affluent Jewish community played important leadership roles in politics, the arts, professional sports, and philanthropy. Unlike in other American cities, however, Baltimore Jewry\u2019s residential density, close-knit cultural identity, and social conservatism promoted continued attachment to Orthodox Judaism, which thrives in the city to the present day.<\/p>\n
In the book\u2019s epilogue, \u201cthe challenges of a new century,\u201d the authors explore forces that have reshaped Baltimore Jewry over the past two decades.\u00a0 These include the growth but increasing self-isolation of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, regional mobility and globalization, continued suburbanization and the spreading out of the city\u2019s Jewish residents, and the decreasing influence of Jewish business and philanthropic leaders.\u00a0 The cumulative impact of these forces prompted the authors to question the continued existence of a \u201cBaltimore Jewish\u201d identity.\u00a0 Their conclusion: \u201cFor now, both the Baltimorean and the Jewish aspects of Baltimore Jewish identity seem secure\u201d (320).\u00a0 Secure, as well, is the lasting and positive contribution of On Middle Ground<\/em> to the history of Baltimore and American Jewry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Review: On Middle Ground Mark Greenberg Mark I. Greenberg is Dean of Libraries, Western Washington University, Bellingham. JSR Volume 22 Cite this Article Mark Greenberg, “Review: On Middle Ground,”\u00a0Journal of Southern Religion (22) (2020): jsreligion.org\/vol22\/greenburg. Open-access license This work is licensed CC-BY. You are encouraged to make free use of this publication. Eric L. Goldstein…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1059","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1059\/revisions\/1145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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