By
– August 31, 2011
The great watershed in 20th century American Jewish history was World War II. Prior to the war America’s Jews were, by and large, psychologically insecure and socially, culturally, and economically insular. This all changed after 1945 when American Jews entered the American mainstream en masse, migrating from urban Jewish neighborhoods to suburbia and moving rapidly up the economic ladder. Within two decades, America’s Jews were disproportionately represented within America’s social, cultural, and economic elite.
This demographic transformation was particularly true for New York City’s two million Jews, the largest concentration of Jews in history and the city’s largest minority during the 1940’s. While Richard Goldstein’s breezy and journalistic volume says little about how the war directly impacted the city’s Jews, it does provide some clues. Thus, for example, it discusses the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “Oklahoma,” which proclaimed “the land we belong to is grand”; the exploits of Brooklyn native Meyer Levin, the bombardier of the B‑17 Flying Fortress piloted by Colin Kelly; the employment opportunities which war-related industries offered to Jews and other New Yorkers, and the limited wartime appeal of the city’s anti-Semitic agitators, such as Fritz Kuhn and Joe McWilliams.
Helluva Town ends in October 1947 with the docking at Pier 61 in New York City of the transport Joseph V. Connolly. It carried the coffins of over 6,200 servicemen who had been killed in the European war, and was met by an honor guard of ships. One of these was the destroyer Bristol, which had on its deck floral displays in the forms of a cross and of a Star of David. Sailors tossed these into the water when the Connolly approached. This was another indication that one of the casualties of the war was the belief that being Jewish and being American were incompatible.
This demographic transformation was particularly true for New York City’s two million Jews, the largest concentration of Jews in history and the city’s largest minority during the 1940’s. While Richard Goldstein’s breezy and journalistic volume says little about how the war directly impacted the city’s Jews, it does provide some clues. Thus, for example, it discusses the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “Oklahoma,” which proclaimed “the land we belong to is grand”; the exploits of Brooklyn native Meyer Levin, the bombardier of the B‑17 Flying Fortress piloted by Colin Kelly; the employment opportunities which war-related industries offered to Jews and other New Yorkers, and the limited wartime appeal of the city’s anti-Semitic agitators, such as Fritz Kuhn and Joe McWilliams.
Helluva Town ends in October 1947 with the docking at Pier 61 in New York City of the transport Joseph V. Connolly. It carried the coffins of over 6,200 servicemen who had been killed in the European war, and was met by an honor guard of ships. One of these was the destroyer Bristol, which had on its deck floral displays in the forms of a cross and of a Star of David. Sailors tossed these into the water when the Connolly approached. This was another indication that one of the casualties of the war was the belief that being Jewish and being American were incompatible.
Edward Shapiro is professor of history emeritus at Seton Hall University and the author of A Time for Healing: American Jewry Since World War II (1992), We Are Many: Reflections on American Jewish History and Identity (2005), and Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot (2006).
