Joseph P. Schultz, editor. Mid-America's Promise: A Profile of Kansas City Jewry. Kansas City: Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City or American Jewish Historical Society, New York. 1982. Pp. xvii, 405 and William Toll. The Making of an Ethnic Middle Class: Portland Jewry over Four Generations. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1982. Pp. xii, 242

Author(s):  
Sefton D. Temkin

This chapter shows how the battles over the Pittsburgh Platform were being fought over a terrain which other factors were already transforming. Large-scale migration from Eastern Europe had begun. The number of Jews in the United States, estimated at 250,000 in 1880, reached the million mark in 1900, the year of Wise’s death. The acculturated community, speaking English albeit with a German accent, largely middle class, reformed in religion, was outnumbered by one that spoke Yiddish, belonged to the proletariat, and was untouched by Reform Judaism. The processes which Wise saw at work when he arrived in 1846 had to begin over again; but although many of the factors were similar, the answers were not necessarily the same. Incidentally, the presence of a second and larger Jewish community enhanced the importance of New York in American Jewish life and diminished the significance of Cincinnati and other Midwest communities where Wise had held sway.



Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document