By
– December 5, 2011
In 1880, there were approximately 7.7 million Jews in the world, of which 75 percent lived in Eastern Europe and 3 percent in the United States. That picture dramatically changes in 1880 with the arrival of millions of Eastern European Jews to the United States, many of whom settle in New York City on the Lower East Side. These changes are described by Lawrence J. Epstein in his new book. Epstein tells us: “By 1920 there were about 3.6 million Jews on these shores, making up 3.41 percent of the U.S. population; 22.86 percent of the Jews in the world now lived in America.”
Epstein’s goal is to provide the reader with “experience more than analysis” of life on the Lower East Side, and he does that through detailed descriptions of living, courting, loving, marrying, raising a family, going to school, working, praying, politicking, organizing, and enjoying oneself in those crowded streets and tenements. Poignant and humorous archival photos and excerpts from memoirs, novels, scholarly texts, letters, musical scores, and the Jewish Daily Forward are cited and help recreate the vibrancy of the period. The book is not mere romanticized nostalgia. It contains incisive analysis of the socio-historical context of the immigration to the Goldene Medina and how it transformed the lives of the immigrants, world Jewry, and the United States. The book is both fun and informative.
Lawrence J. Epstein has published many books on Jewish culture, including A Treasury of Jewish Anecdotes and The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America. Archival sources, index, notes, references.
Epstein’s goal is to provide the reader with “experience more than analysis” of life on the Lower East Side, and he does that through detailed descriptions of living, courting, loving, marrying, raising a family, going to school, working, praying, politicking, organizing, and enjoying oneself in those crowded streets and tenements. Poignant and humorous archival photos and excerpts from memoirs, novels, scholarly texts, letters, musical scores, and the Jewish Daily Forward are cited and help recreate the vibrancy of the period. The book is not mere romanticized nostalgia. It contains incisive analysis of the socio-historical context of the immigration to the Goldene Medina and how it transformed the lives of the immigrants, world Jewry, and the United States. The book is both fun and informative.
Lawrence J. Epstein has published many books on Jewish culture, including A Treasury of Jewish Anecdotes and The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America. Archival sources, index, notes, references.
Carol Poll, Ph.D., is the retired Chair of the Social Sciences Department and Professor of Sociology at the Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York. Her areas of interest include the sociology of race and ethnic relations, the sociology of marriage, family and gender roles and the sociology of Jews.
