USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The early Jewish community of Boston's North End; a sociologically oriented study of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant community in an American big-city neighborhood between 1870 and 1900 > Part 4
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the former North End residents.
No doubt, there were important economic considera- tions in such aspirations. The immigrants knew that their children would be spared the feeling of foreignness and the hard lot of peddlers and laborers only through the fruits of knowledge grown on native soil. 44 Yet one is inclined to believe that, beyond these practical con- siderations, the adoration for learning in itself, which had been part of the fabric of the Jewish mentality for many centuries, was responsible for the readiness with which parents made their children take advantage of the opportunities of learning which America offered them.
It is, therefore, understandable that all parents sent their children to the public schools - despite the many problems that this created from the standpoint of Jewish upbringing. The very idea of Jewish children constantly being in the company of gentile playmates could cause consternation to many immigrant parents. Indeed, in some areas in Europe, Jews had refused - partly for this reason - to comply with local laws making secular edu- cation compulsory for all children. Those of the Second- World-War Jewish immigrants whose orthodoxy is com- parable to that of the immigrants of the eighties and nineties send their children today (with very few excep- tions) to Hebrew-English all day schools. Here all Eng- lish subjects are taught in a Jewish environment, thus giving an opportunity "for cultural integration without ethnic disintegration." The small minority of immi- grant children in these schools becomes Americanized through English instruction and through contact with the third-generation majority. No such schools, of course, existed in the North End. The immigrants, there- fore, sent their children to the public schools, making
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awkward attempts to grant them Jewish knowledge in chadorim or by private tutors. One North Ender recalls : "The English school for the area was the Eliot School. In 1906, out of 54 graduates, about two-thirds were Jewish."
In a different interview:
Q. Tell me, was the Eliot School a high school too?
A. No, it was only a grammar school.
Q. Did all Jewish children go to that grammar school? A. Yes, all.
Q. In other words, there was no tendency to keep the children home and teach them only Hebrew?
A. Oh, no! In addition to that we had a Hebrew school.
Attending high school was less popular among the North End Jews. Graduating from Eliot School (for boys) and from John Hancock School (for girls) was to most immigrant children the end of education. While all immigrants agreed on the necessity of public school edu- cation, the recognition of a need for high school studies, and especially for college attendance, was far from uni- versal, particularly in the case of girls. One must not for- get that at that time far fewer Americans in general went to high school or college, especially in the middle and lower income classes.
Q. What public school did they go to?
A. Hancock School for girls. But they went there only for [grammar] school. They did not believe in high school education for girls. They thought the girls would become too free.
Q. Did any girl go to college?
A. None that I know of. College was not necessary for girls in those days. They just had to learn how to cook.
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The economic situation among the immigrants has to be kept in mind in this connection. Schooling was ex- pensive. Furthermore, by the time children graduated from grammar school they were old enough to render much-needed help in the store or on peddling trips. If the young man went to school, this help was not forth- coming. "Not many families could spare even a minimal levy upon their budget for this purpose or, more crucial, the loss of earnings when youngsters were thus made unproductive."45 One interviewee says: "Everyone who could possibly make it, tried to get into college. There was a general desire for learning. Of course, it was an expensive program and not everyone could afford it." To those, however, who could afford it, high school and even college represented an opportunity welcomed by parents and students alike :
Q. What was your father's attitude to such things as the children going to high school?
A. He insisted upon it. He wanted his children to have a very thorough English education.
Q. Did the rest of the Jews in the North End, your friends and neighbors, have the same attitude or did you consider this exceptional?
A. No. Not too many in those days went to college. In a different interview:
Q. What do you think was the major factor in inspiring young people to go to college?
A. I think it was the fact that my father - and for that matter everyone I knew - regarded all intellectual pursuits as important. Desire for learning was a gen- eral attitude among the Jewish immigrants in those
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days. My father saw to it that all his children went to college. He himself wanted to learn.
Becoming acquainted with the culture of the new land was a quickly recognized necessity, which served very definite practical ends. Some of the immigrants, however, had misgivings - as this excerpt shows:
Q. What was the attitude of the older folks toward their children going to college?
A. Some of them did not mind. But in some, there was a fear that college would make them atheists.
Q. For those who did not go to college, was it this fear that prevented them?
A. No. Most of them did not go for economic reasons. Their parents could not pay for them and as soon as the boys were big enough to work, it was very im- portant that they did their share. So that's why only a few of the boys went. But there was this case of [name omitted] who went to Harvard, then abroad to get his Ph.D., and married a gentile girl. His mother said, "To me, he is dead."
IN SUMMARY: the North End Jews attempted to bring up their children as well-integrated Americans who would be able to take full advantage of the opportunities present in the free society of America. They were anx- ious, therefore, to grant their children a good secular English education which they regarded as an instrument of both social integration and economic advancement. To this end, they took advantage of public educational facilities. They also attempted to imbue their children with a loyalty to Jewish values. However, the Jewish educational facilities available at the time were inade- quate, old fashioned and totally unsuited to the Ameri-
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can environment. Even more important was the changed attitude toward schooling as a result of which Jewish scholarship had lost its prestige-giving function to Eng- lish education. The Jewish knowledge the first genera- tion managed to impart to the second was consequently sketchy and superficial. This fact, however, caused the first generation immigrants much less agony than it would have caused the same kind of people in Europe. They felt rewarded - with or without justification - by the strides their children made in mastering the lan- guage and culture of the new land. The parents were tolerant towards the deviation from religious practice displayed by their growing children, and only in ex- treme cases was their resistance called forth. This atti- tude was partly responsible for the rather quick break- down in observance by the second generation, demon- strated by a rapid spread of Sabbath-desecration and an extensive neglect of worship.
It is widely recognized that the second generation of most immigrant groups attempted to remove from them- selves all vestiges of foreignness - "They tried to for- get."46 This tendency is, however, usually described as a "reaction," an attempt to "break away" from the old world ways of the first generation. The manner in which the North End immigrants went about bringing up their children seems to indicate that the second-generation's rapid acculturation was in fact of the making of the fathers.47 By the profoundly changed attitudes of the immigrants, which their children were quick to discover despire tenacious external traditionalism, they helped shape the generation that marched headlong towards full Americanization.
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7
summary and conclusions
SOME OF THE HISTORICAL and sociological conclusions based on the preceding material may be summarized as follows :
(1) The North End was the first exclusively Eastern European Jewish community established in the nine- teenth century in the city of Boston. The first families moved there in the late 1860's and early 1870's.48 With few exceptions, they came from the Russian Empire - most of them from Lithuania.
(2) Cheap housing, the closeness of the waterfront, the proximity of the Hanover Street business district and of the neighborhoods where many Irish and Italian cus- tomers of the Jewish peddlers lived, may have been some of the factors that made the Salem Street area suit- able for the settling of these immigrants. In addition, it is possible that Eastern European Jews found it more pleasant to settle in a neighborhood not quite so close to that of their German co-religionists whose attitude to them was not always favorable.
(3) Up to the 1890's, the community constituted a mi-
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nority in the area, scattered as they were among the gentile inhabitants. It became an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood only around and after the turn of the century.
(4) The social patterns of the smaller earlier group from the late sixties to the late nineties differed from those of the later community of immigrant masses. The early community was sociologically similar to the communi- ties of the mid-century German Jewish immigrants. Peddling was, for example, more widespread than in- dustrial employment. A tendency to relax observance was noticeable despite the strong Eastern European re- ligious background of most immigrants. Linguistic ac- culturation was rapid. The financial conditions - after the first years - were regarded satisfactory by many people of the first generation, despite the rigors of the working conditions of the times. The later community had much more of the pressure, the poverty, the crowd- edness and the turmoil typical of the urban areas of large scale immigrant settlement.49 During this later period Jewish religious and cultural life experienced an upturn, which did not last long because many immigrants left the area after the first few years and the centers of Jewish community life were soon removed to other parts of the city and to the suburbs. Thus, while to most of the earlier inhabitants the North End was a place of more or less permanent settlement, to the later masses it was more of a temporary station.
(5) The people of the early community were enthusiastic about the freedom found in the new land. ("My father loved America. He hated like the dickens the idea of be- ing a foreign born person.")50 The aggressiveness they
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displayed in winning for themselves an economic foot- hold was perhaps one of the expressions of their con- fidence in a good future in the land of their choosing.
(6) The atmosphere of freedom and the greater oppor- tunities and burdens of making a living brought about various social changes. One was a rising materialism in Jewish society. The amhoretz, the person who had little learning, became emancipated in a milieu in which the task of making a living was paramount while education was de-emphasized. The apikoires ("heretic"), who fought an uphill battle in the shtetl against traditional beliefs, had a much better chance in the less rigid American Jewish environment. While excesses in overt irreligious behavior were still condemned, the pressure against un- orthodox pronouncements was much milder. Another aspect was the change in the role of the members of the family. The mother, for example, began to assume the function of the person in charge of all educational and synagogal matters. Growing children, helping in the earning process, acquired a hitherto unknown status within the family.
(7) There were two opposing tendencies in the first gen- eration immigrants. In practice they were strictly obser- vant and appeared to be guarding zealously the religious, cultural and linguistic patterns of life which they brought along with them from the old home. In their thinking, however, they were prepared for changes in their way of living, which they felt desirable under the new condi- tions. Thus, in theory, they leaned towards radical cul- tural changes even while they continued to live much as they had in Europe. This attitude can be observed, among other things, in the manner in which they
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brought up their children. They were proud if they be- came "real Americans." They made sure they had a good English education. At the same time, they did not seem to be overly disturbed when the ethnically adverse ef- fects of these aspirations became evident. The Bar Mitzvah teacher, the Siddur-peddler and even the cheder were ineffectual as agents of religio-cultural conserva- tion. Parents were "understanding" and "lenient" when, as a result, their children abandoned important aspects of observance. The pride European Jewish parents took in the scholarship displayed by their children in the Hebrew subjects was gradually replaced by a clamor for English education. A synthesis of Judaism and Ameri- canism seemed to them impossible. In their dilemma they tacitly decided in favor of the former for themselves and in favor of the latter for their children. Thus, their orthodoxy became superficial, resigned and inactive in contrast to the more ideology conscious, more aggres- sive orthodoxy of the twentieth century. The latter has addressed itself to the people of the second and third generations and its aim has been to show a way of Jewish traditional living on the American scene.
The members of the second generation, most of whom broke away completely from the ways of the first, were in reality only continuing on the path marked for them by their fathers. It seems to me that there are immigrant situations in which the decisive point in the process of cultural change is not in the second generation where the actual, visible adjustments are made but in the first, where the all-important attitudinal metamorphosis takes place. This idea, if correct, would lead us to concentrate in our studies of acculturation precisely on the phase in which overt adjustments are not yet observable. We may
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An early North End cemetery.
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A group of North End settlers pose for early cameraman sometime in the last quarter of 19th century
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find that - barring perhaps quickly formed large en- claves - the characteristic mood of this phase is not a determined resistance to change but rather a reserved, but not at all reluctant, preparation for change.
(8) Another point that would perhaps warrant further study is the function of a "pilot" community in the social development of a Jewish neighborhood. When the large-scale immigration began, the newcomers found in the North End an established, well rooted Jewish community. Although small in numbers, the members of this community were the ones who gave the new- comers an example of American Jewish living. Residents who are described by interviewees as "prominent," "leading," or "influential" in the North End during the later period are usually found to have been members of the early families. They invariably seem to owe their prominence in the area to some activity related to aiding in the adjustment process of later immigrants. They were the experienced peddlers, many of them influential owners of peddlers' supply stores, bankers, manufac- turers, community leaders - in short, people whose guidance the immigrants sought and needed. They, no doubt, had an important function in the acculturation of the later group. It could probably be demonstrated that, in general, if members of the same nationality ar- rive in successive waves of immigration, the later ar- rivals will not assimilate in the American environment directly. First, they will adjust to the already American- ized community of their own nationality. (In the case of the Jewish group, this may have had far-reaching conse- quences. The Jews were a people who, while in Europe, were native in various cultural environments. If a wave of Russian Jewish arrivals first assimilated to the earlier
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German Jewish community, we may have the curious situation of Jews getting "Americanized" by acquiring patterns typical of the German-Jewish Americans only, not of Americans in general. Early Eastern European Jewish immigrants who have been under the influence of the German Jews may have further transmited these patterns to the later arrivals who also accepted them as the "American way.")
The Jews of Eastern European origin were destined to become in time the dominant element in the Boston Jewish community. Those fifty families who settled in the North End around and after 1870 set a pattern of ad- justment for those who followed. Their avidity in com- mercial endeavor, their civic attitudes, their creeping religious liberalism, their fervor for American education were some of the ingredients of that pattern. By what was good and by what was bad in them, by what they did and by what they failed to do, they left their mark on the history of Boston Jewry.
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notes
1. The general principles found in E. and N. Macoby; "The Interview: A Tool of Social Science" in G. Lindzey (ed.) Handbook of Social Psychology (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), and in Herbert Hyman et. al., Interviewing in Social Research (Chicago, 1954), as well as in a number of articles in the American Journal of Sociology Vol. LXII No. 2 (September, 1956), were found helpful.
2. See Charles F. Cannell and Morris Axelrod, "The Respond- ent Reports on the Interview" in the American Journal of Sociology (September, 1956), p. 177.
3. "It is not easy to separate 'interview effects' from 'inter- viewer effects'" since "who tells what to whom under what conditions" is a basic problem in all social science interviewing. A favorable "homophilous" situation was created by the famil- iarity of the interviewer with the "world" the interviewees knew in their growing years. See M. Benney, D. Riesman, and S. A. Star, "Age and Sex in the Interview" in American Journal of Sociology (September, 1956), pp. 193-152; Herbert H. Hyman et al., op. cit., passim.
4. The more formal and technical problems arising from inter- viewing across language barriers are treated among others by Haim Blanc in "Multilingual Interviewing in Israel," in American Journal of Sociology (September, 1956), pp. 205-209.
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5. "The North End is less than half a mile in any of its dimen- sions. It is a 'tight little island', hemmed in by continuous and ever-encroaching currents of commercial activity ... The sta- tion thoroughfares lead to the markets, the markets extend to the docks. The docks reach around from the markets to the railroads again .... The interior form of the North End is that of one main highway to the East Boston Ferry, with a tributary street running on either side of it. The thoroughfare, Hanover Street, is cosmopolitan. Salem Street, toward the water, selected as a place of peaceful abode by Hebraist Puritans, is now, in the whirligig of time, turned over to the Hebrews themselves." Robert A. Woods, Americans in Process (Boston, 1903), p. 2 quoted by Lee M. Friedman, Pilgrims in a New Land (Phila- delphia, 1948), p. 438.
6. Interviewees disagree on the question of the relative age of the Jewish communities in the North and West Ends. Most of them consider the North End community to be older; some think the two emerged simultaneously. The former are prob- ably correct. The Boston City Directory lists North End Jewish congregations from 1875 on; West End synagogues appear much later.
7. Max Margolis and Alexander Marx, A History of the Jewish People (Philadelphia, 1927), p. 694.
8. "In the old world they had been men of their village or province, and known by that name . . . . And the first societies they formed as well as the first churches they tried to set up were along such village and regional lines. But American life was too fluid to permit the indefinite perpetuation of these local identities." Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew (New York, 1955), p. 24.
9. Oscar Handlin, Adventure in Freedom (New York, 1954), p. 84.
10. Article "Hebrews," in Edwin M. Bacon, Kings Dictionary of Boston (Cambridge, Mass., 1883).
"Salem Street . . . where Hebrew signs appear on all sides . . .
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and moujik faces and costumes abound amid the old homes of the Phipses and other grandies ... " M. F. Sweetser in King's How to See Boston (Boston, 1895), p. 188.
11. See Albert I. Gordon, Jews in Transition (Minneapolis, 1949), p. 17.
12. Ismar Elbogen, A Century of Jewish Life (Philadelphia, 1946), p. 333. See "The Russian Jewish Nightmare" in A. L. Sachar, A History of the Jews (New York, 1955), pp. 309-322.
13. See Margolis-Marx, op. cit., p. 607.
14. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (The Universal Library Edition), p. 145.
15. This was Congregation Beth Abraham according to Rabbi Zalman Yakov Friederman writing in Ozar Yisrael Vol. III, p. 7. The Boston City Directory, however, lists "Shomri Shabos" [sic] from 1875 on, while "Bath Abraham" [sic] appears only in 1879.
16. From an article by Annie Kropp Adelson in "S.E.G. News, Cherry Tree Edition" (mimeographed, Boston, 1954), published by the Saturday Evening Girls. The S.E.G. was a North End girls group which met on Saturday evenings in the North End Branch Library to listen to stories from great books. According to the above publication, "this group is still meeting though many of the 'girls' are now grandmothers." In the "S.E.G. News, Cherry Tree Edition" some of the members published their life stories.
17. The function of satisfactory economic adjustment in the assimilative process is dwelt upon by W. C. Smith in Americans in the Making, pp. 168-173.
"'Where bread is, there is my country' explains the readiness with which the immigrants in the eighteenth century, as well as in the twentieth, became Americans."
18. Handlin, op. cit. vividly treats the entire complex of immi- grant problems with constant reference to village background.
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19. Handlin, Adventure in Freedom, pp. 55-56, 95-97.
"He lacked the training and the skill to become a frontiersman ; the ax, the gun and the ability to live off the soil was alike strange to him." Ibid., p. 56.
20. The circumstances which made peddling in this period more difficult than earlier in the century are pointed out by Handlin, op. cit., pp. 86-87.
21. See "Modern American Radanites" in Lee M. Friedman, op. cit., p. 277 ff.
22. "Whenever they could do so, they would actually deny themselves food in order to be able to bring their relatives from abroad." Elbogen, p. 333.
23. Concerning the predicament of the intellectual immigrant, see W. C. Smith, op. cit., p. 67. I feel that the loss of status by the intellectual was not only a result of the foreignness which the American saw in him and in the peasant equally. The dis- integration of his own home society had robbed the intellectual of his privileged place and had challenged him in effect "to show how smart he is" in the changed circumstances where only practical accomplishments counted.
24. Rabbi Zalman Yakov Friederman in Ozar Yisrael (Hebrew) Vol. III., p. 8.
25. "Already the more prosperous Irish began to leave the North End and property value there was on the decline; it was then probably the lowest-valued real estate of the city. Rather naturally the poverty stricken incoming Jews began to fill the North End vacancies." Lee M. Friedman, op. cit., p. 300.
26. About the architectural characteristics of the North End see Kings Dictionary of Boston, p. 323. About the activities of Jewish real estate men in the area and about the process of re- building the North End see Friedman, op. cit., ch. 21, and the passages quoted there from the works of Robert A. Woods.
27. See Albert I. Gordon, op. cit., pp. 193-195.
28. Barbara Miller Solomon, Pioneers in Service (Boston, 1956), p. 41.
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29. See Gordon, p. 92.
30. "Immigrant women usually are more restricted and assimi- late more slowly than men." W. C. Smith, op. cit., p. 174. See note 24, the testimony of a North Ender.
31. See W. C. Smith, op. cit., pp. 151-152; Handlin, The Uprooted, ch. 5.
32. See "The Immigrant As A Marginal Man" in W. C. Smith, op. cit.
33. "A person may hold opinions, attitudes, and sentiments which would be considered heretical by his group should he openly admit them. That, however, is impossible in the case of overt practices which others can observe." Ibid, p. 319.
34. Boston Post, April 16, 1901.
35. "East European Jewry came in two ideological streams. The great majority were religious Jews . . . A significant minority, however, had broken with Orthodoxy and with Jewish religion and were caught up in one or another of the secularist ideologies of the time, usually labor radicalism." Will Herberg, Protestant- Catholic-Jew, p. 193.
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