Insecure Prosperity: Small-town Jews in Industrial America, 1890-1940.

Moore, Deborah Dash

Ewa Morawska has written a gem of a book - not the hard-edged diamond she refers to in her fascinating appendix (itself a model account of a researcher's path), but the opalescent mother of pearl with its many nuances. Although she rarely refers to the "Jewish community" of Johnstown Pennsylvania - in fact, the word "community" is not even indexed as a relevant term her study in many ways belongs to the rich sociological and historical American tradition of community studies. An account of society, economy, religion and culture of two generations of Jews in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Insecure Prosperity describes the path not taken by most east European Jewish immigrants, who chose to settle in the large metropolitan centers of the northeast and midwest. Her thick description of the small retail business activities of Jewish immigrant entrepreneurs in Johnstown conveys not only the rhythm but also the culture of such economic endeavor. It is one of the finest studies of the middle class in America; in this case an ethnic middle class lodged in its economic niche without access to political power or social status.

Morawska writes lovingly about the business of small businessmen transplanted from eastern Europe to a steel town in western Pennsylvania. She captures their aspirations for a decent and secure life that drew them to Johnstown, seeing in its growing economy and large numbers of Slavic workers a place of opportunity. She details their ethnic networks that help them get started and sustained them during frequent economic downturns, carefully analyzing the complementary class and ethnic dimensions of these networks. She describes women's role and presence in the male business world of Johnstown and the interpenetration of work and family, public and private spheres. She discusses what it meant to grow up within a world permeated by the requirements of minding the store in a city with a rigid class and ethnic hierarchy. Finally, she links these dense historical and sociological accounts to Jewish religious culture, particularly the folk traditions of small-town, shtetl, Jews. Religion is a significant component of petty bourgeois life, embedded in the routines of daily living as well as in the world views that shape how individuals cope with adversity and good fortune.

What emerges is a collective portrait of substantial continuities despite radical differences between two societies, an agrarian eastern Europe and an industrializing America. Morawska does not dwell upon perhaps one of the most important differences - the utter minority position of Jews in Johnstown - although she does note the collapse of Jewish sabbath observance, a key marker of Jewish separateness in the shtetl that was accepted by the majority non-Jewish population. Irrespective of the demands of the marketplace and the need to earn a living, Jews did not work on the sabbath in the shtetl; in Johnstown they worked all the time. Instead Morawska lets the voices of Johnstown Jews be heard, emphasizing the "much more secure insecurity" (p. xiii) they found in America compared with what they knew in Europe. She also contrasts the Jews she finds in Johnstown with their big-city contemporaries, especially secularizing and modernizing New York Jews whose experience during the period of mass migration has often been seen as coterminus with that of American Jews. Morawska's comparative context situates the one thousand Jews of Johnstown within a larger Jewish world, allowing her to contribute to and refine historical debates over the character of immigrant experience and the process of ethnicization. Her most striking discovery is the absence of upward mobility through higher education; unlike New York Jews, few Johnstown Jews attended college or even excelled in high school before World War II. Her analysis historicizes important features of both New York and Johnstown Jewish life, distinguishing ethnic, class and gender dimensions of immigration and ethnicization.

In reconstructing the world of Johnstown Jews, Morawska persuasively places making a living at the heart of her discussion. The desire to be independent entrepreneurs drew Jews to Johnstown as the best way to fulfill their aspirations for a secure and decent Jewish life. Once settled in Johnstown - and Morawska uncovers very high persistence rates - Jews constructed a social and religious world around the synagogue. Until a charismatic rabbi arrives in 1931, the idea of modernizing Judaism remains a pious wish. The inherent conservatism of Jews' business practices influences their religious life. Johnstown may be an industrial city, but for most Jews shopkeeping is a traditional ethnic activity. While Jews bring useful ethnic and class skills to the task of setting up and succeeding in business in Johnstown, these are rarely innovative. Indeed, there does not seem to be room in the economic niche Jews occupy in Johnstown for the type of entrepreneurial energy associated with a burgeoning consumer capitalism identified with the first three decades of the century.

One might think small city life boring, especially for a group that appeared to disappear from the consciousness of the city's power elite, succeeding in remaining inconspicuous. Yet such is the subtle presentation and textured interpretation Morawska offers that Johnstown Jews become a microcosm of the most complex developments in social and immigrant history. Her engaging (self)reflections on the making of the book in the appendix reveal why. Johnstown Jews gave Morawska a template to test theories, refine methods, and modulate interpretations of data and "data as text." Minimizing whatever conflict existed among Johnstown Jews, Morawska reclaimed a lost world for herself. In the process, she set a new standard for historical and sociological studies of immigrants, small city societies, middle-class culture, and American Jews.

Deborah Dash Moore Vassar College